Glossary
Luxury trap
Yuval Noah Harari's name for the pattern in which a labor-saving technology is adopted, life expands to fill the capacity, and the technology becomes compulsory.
Published Updated
Where this comes from
In the reference topic that owns this term
Reference topic 44, The Luxury Trap Accelerates, states the mismatch as a card: what the system evolved to expect, what it gets instead, and what happens in the gap.
Mismatch card
- What it expects
Daily problems that must be solved with the equipment inside the skull, in a world where nobody else holds the answer.
- What it gets
An external store for every fact, a route for every journey and, lately, a competent draft of almost any piece of thinking, available before the effort starts.
- What happens in the gap
Unknown at the level of brain health, and measurable already at the level of learning: work that looks better while the person doing it learns less.
What that chapter recommends
3 of the 5 graded recommendations in Reference topic 44, strongest evidence first. How the grades work.
Use AI like a spotter, not an elevator
ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.A gym spotter lets you do the lift and steps in only when you stall. To learn or retain something, choose or set up tools that withhold the finished answer and prompt the next step.
Favor whole food over an engineered replacement when the microbiome, your gut's community of microbes, is the point
ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.A shake or bar can be nutritionally complete and still lack the physical structure the gut ecosystem works on.
Set the defaults once rather than deciding daily
ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.The phone in another room during work, the assistant off for the first draft, one route a week walked without a map.
Related terms
The argument behind this term, its studies and its notes are in Reference topic 44 of the reference library. The book gives the practical version. Get the book.