Marius Schober

Progress Through Consciousness

Author: Marius Schober

  • Opportunities

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    2 min read

    Today, the largest opportunities arise from people living in the past. Obvious trends, like the exponential advancement of solar PV or electric vehicles, are irrationally badmouthed. There seems to be a longing for bringing back nuclear power, for bringing back manufacturing, for bringing back workers into offices, for bringing back military dominance. People still believe in college degrees, in standardized testing, credentialism in hiring, pension funds, the list goes on. Politicians try to compete with China, want to bring back supply chains, want to revive 40+h workweeks originating from the industrial revolution. This conservative nostalgia seems to be a large trend; or perhaps it has always been.

    What has worked 20 years ago will not miraculously come back. Politicians are selling “the good old days” to people not aware of current reality – of how incredibly fast exponential technologies and societal changes are evolving.

    The opportunities of today and the future are not in chasing the resurrection of the past but in identifying which underlying needs from those eras remain unmet in modern forms.

    For example: People don’t want manufacturing jobs back. They also don’t want to out-manufacture China. Who really wants to labor in a factory? Who wants to work 10 hours a day on a farm? The answer is: nobody really. What people do want is economic security and a trade balance that doesn’t feel like losing. They want protection from foreign economic coercion, and the dignity of creating tangible products the world needs.

    Another example: People don’t want coal plants or nuclear plants back. Who really wants polluted air or nuclear waste in their neighborhood? Again, the answer is: nobody really. What people actually want is affordable energy independence – which means electricity too cheap to meter – and a reliable baseload and a reliable grid during crises and days where the sun isn’t shining.

    The pattern is always the same: the surface demand is to reverse time; it is nostalgia. The underlying need is mostly emotional and social: security, dignity, control, identity.

    The opportunity is satisfying these needs through forward-looking solutions that people haven’t yet recognized as substitutes. It is in building for a world as it is, not as people wish it were. It is in accepting current reality the fastest and having the longest runway to build what’s actually next.

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  • This is AGI

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    2 min read

    I say that current AI is AGI. It is not obvious yet, because we haven’t yet connected very complex and fragmented software and data environments – and for R&D to turn into real-world change is a multi-year process anyway.

    Even if we stopped and freeze AI development here and now, we’d only realize that we indeed have AGI 2 or 3 years down the road. In some niches it will be faster (software or law) in others slower (complex logistics).

    However, AI development is not stopping here and now. It continues to improve – I say exponentially. Even if you are more conservative, then the linear growth still has undoubtedly a large rate of change.

    Today (!), we have AI models that evolved from barely completing sentences to writing code that ships to production, we have AI doing PhD-level research, and achieved gold medal-level performance on the International Math Olympiad. AI is solving medical problems that baffle experts.

    Again – what is currently mostly manually prompted work in long chat conversations will soon develop into agents that can do almost all knowledge work fully autonomously.

    I’m not talking about AI as an assistant, as a co-pilot. It will just straight up finish the work while you are napping on the beach.

    The difference between the GPT-3 model and today’s models – whether Grok 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, or ChatGPT o4 – is like comparing a Nokia 1011 to an iPhone 16 Pro. We went from purely text based chats to multimodal understanding – models that can see, hear, and reason across domains simultaneously. AI is starting to genuinely understand context and nuance in ways that feels human.

    The next phase is not purely larger AI models, but models that learn continuously. They can remember you, plan and execute multistep tasks over days, weeks, or months.

    An AI system that perfectly remembers, understands context, who never sleeps, and gets smarter every day. This is being built today in AI labs around the globe.

    We have AGI today, and it is only a matter of time for us to arrive at superintelligent AI systems. Is it 2 years? 3 years? 4 years? 5 years? Irrelevant. Whether it is 1 year or 10 years, the implications are the same: everything is going to change forever.

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  • Vraell – fil (feat Jasmïn)

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    2 min read

    Lyrics

    Pour quoi faire, te mettre à l’envers

    (What for, turning yourself upside down)

    Toujours danser sur le fil

    (Always dancing on the wire)

    Juste un autre verre

    (Just another drink)

    Pour sentir la terre

    (To feel the earth)

    Sous tes pieds et puis tu glisses

    (Beneath your feet and then you slip)

    Sens mon coeur, là t’auras plus peur

    (Feel my heart, then you won’t be afraid anymore)

    Tu pourras enfin me dire

    (You’ll finally be able to tell me)

    Toutes les choses qui font que t’as qu’une envie

    (All the things that make you only want one thing)

    C’est de danser sur le fil

    (It’s to dance on the wire)

    Comme une étoile tu files

    (Like a star you shoot)

    Tu t’en vas danser sur le fil

    (You go off to dance on the wire)

    Comme une étoile tu files

    (Like a star you shoot)

    Et on s’aime mieux que dans les films

    (And we love each other better than in movies)

    On a chanté jusqu’en pleurer sur les toits, toits

    (We sang until we cried on the rooftops, rooftops)

    Dansé et crié jusque tard, tard

    (Danced and shouted until late, late)

    On a chanté et pleuré sur les toits, toits

    (We sang and cried on the rooftops, rooftops)

    Dansé et crié, tout pour toi

    (Danced and shouted, all for you)

    Toi

    (You)

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  • Vraell — Guitar Meditations I

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    1 min read

    An absolutely beautiful solo guitar piece. It comes from the heart, and I feel it. WOW!

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  • Qalbi قلبي – SNX

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    1 min read

    I don’t understand a word, but I can feel the emotional energy with a melodic house beat.

    The song “Qalbi” (قلبي) by SNX, which translates to “My Heart,” is a poignant expression of deep love, longing, and emotional attachment.

    The lyrics convey a powerful sense of yearning for a beloved person, emphasizing the heart’s intense connection and the soul’s devotion, even in absence or separation.

    Some translated lines:

    “قلبي يا قلبي” (Qalbi ya qalbi) – My heart, oh my heart
    “يا روحي يا روحي” (Ya rouhi ya rouhi) – Oh my soul, oh my soul

    Many lines speak to missing someone dearly and the pain of their absence.

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  • Invisible Genius

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    1 min read

    Every time I wish the minds I admire would open up and show the full depth of their thoughts, ideas, and experiences, I realize – I’m doing the same thing by staying too silent online.

    The idols I look up to – for example Ido Portal, Bruce Poon Tip, Dr. Nun Amen-Ra, my Sifus, countless peers – are all masters of mind and body in private but leave little or no footprints online. The wisdom is real, yet it’s undocumented and the world barely sees it.

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  • Why a Marathon?

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    2 min read

    Marathon running is socially encouraged orthopedic self-harm disguised as virtue. 42 km of joint erosion, cardiac overreach, and dopamine-chasing disguised as discipline.

    Before you commit to run a marathon, take a moment and pause. Ask yourself: Why is running a marathon my goal?

    Odds are, you’re either unconsciously copying someone else’s coping mechanism or seeking social reward and Instagram likes through performative suffering – and calling it “fitness”. That’s not discipline. That’s mimesis. Read Girard. You’re not chasing health but someone else’s pain prescription, hoping it will fix your own.

    And if you really need to suffer publicly to feel alive, maybe it’s not your body that needs training, but your fear of sitting still without applause.

    If the idea of running a marathon truly comes from your heart, then you’d run 42 km on a Tuesday at dawn with no witness. If you need a start line, a medal, a round of applause, and pictures for social media, then you are suffering through a socially accepted identity crisis.

    Let’s get physiological. Marathons attack your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, suppress your immune system, and can induce irreversible joint damage – knees, hips, ankles, worn one kilometer at a time. Cardiac scarring is a real risk. Cortisol floods. Lymphocyte counts crash. This really isn’t health but a ritualized system failure.

    Discipline is not a spectacle. Movement is not masochism. Read Body by Science (Doug McGuff & John Little). Explore movement systems like Ido Portal’s (or try Kung Fu). Train for capacity, not applause.

    Stop running from the void. It keeps up.

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  • How We Use AI

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    2 min read

    Whether current AI systems qualify as AGI is beside the point. Five years ago, if you had asked me to define AGI, my answer would’ve closely described what GPT o3 or Gemini 2.5 Pro are now. So if this is AGI, then where are the breakthroughs?

    Valid question. The answer: we are the bottleneck.

    The limitation is no longer the model. The real limitation is that we haven’t really figured out how to use LLMs properly. Even if AI development froze today, and all we have available are o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro level LLMs, then we would still see a decade of profound disruptions and innovations across entire industries.

    Most users treat AI like Google, a friend, a mentor, or a novelty. Few understand prompting. Those who do don’t even scratch the surface of what is possible when you give AI the right prompt, the relevant context, and access to specific or perhaps proprietary data.

    Worse, we are not augmenting human intelligence, we are outsourcing it. TikTokified workflows, mindless automation, and prompt-template copy-paste culture are commoditizing subpar outcomes. Instead of expanding our minds, we’re paralyzing them.

    The real potential lies hidden in tandem cognition. Reimagining how we work with AI systems in a way that ensures our uniquely human traits (intuition, creativity, vision, …) aren’t ignored, but amplified. Without this shift, outputs will commoditize (across humans and organizations).

    We urgently need two things: first a methodology for extracting maximum value from LLMs and second a philosophy for not replacing our human genius, but empowering it.

    The future is not AI versus human. It is human with AI, at full capacity. Currently, the focus is on maximum capacity for AI compute. Now it’s time we focus on maximum capacity for human genius.

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  • NOW

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    1 min read

    The future is an illusion. Just as is the past.

    There is only now.

    Everything that is truly meaningful is happening now.

    You shape the future by your actions now, by your thoughts now, by your love now.

    Any moment is the future.

    There is only now.

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  • Creativity and Commoditization

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    1 min read

    Most products and technologies became commoditized. I believe this is mostly due to a lack of creativity.

    When was the last time you saw a product that totally caught you off-guard in absolute amazement?

    Nobody dares to create something uniquely NEW.
    Commoditization happens because everyone is just focused on incremental improvements, calling it proudly innovation. It is a delusion.

    Creativity is not listening to customers. It is creating something completely new that your future customers don’t even know can even exist. It is possible in your imagination but impossible in their imagination.

    Vision, creativity, intuition.

    I 100% believe that listening to customers is a trap that leads to mediocrity. True innovation comes from ignoring the noise of customer feedback and daring to invent what they can’t yet imagine – yes, it’s risky, but the only way to avoid competition.

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