I agree, the human connection is important. Also people value human-created things more than AI-created ones. AI-generated art does not fetch high prices, at least not yet.

The weather system is a complicated example of what's known as a chaotic system in mathematics. Most people have heard of the "butterfly effect", or the idea that a tiny perturbation of a system will exponentially grow into large-scale differences of behavior over time. This fundamentally limits our ability to predict the future with confidence.

An important parameter of any chaotic system is the Lyapunov time, which is the timescale over which perturbations grow large. The weather is a very complicated system, but current estimates for its Lyapunov time are around 15 days. Thus, any knowledge you have about particular weather conditions today won't inform your predictions very much for the weather in 15 days or so.

That being said, weather is driven by predictable factors like solar input, seasons, ocean currents, land topography, and so on. So at any given point on the Earth you can make some prediction of what the temperature, precipitation, and so on are likely to be on a given date, based on historical data. Those climate averages give you some degree of predictability.

So a way to think about it is:

• Weather forecasters are pretty good at telling you what will happen tomorrow.
• When they look out to 21 days from now, they can only predict based on historical climate data.
• Between "tomorrow" and "21 days from now", the accuracy of predictions gradually declines, because of chaos as well as limitations in the quality of our data and models.

The impression I get is more of a somewhat-convincing bullshitter. It says what it says very confidently, even when it's completely wrong. And it never gives short answers.

I think what you're calling out aren't problems with capitalism per se, but outcomes of the US's political system and cultural values. You could look at for example the Nordic countries for a different model of how to distribute the benefits of capitalism.

Cathedral-building is a good example and it highlights what is different now: We have so much less certainty about the future than we did in medieval times. Back then people could visualize pretty accurately the world their great-grandchildren would be living in. Now? It's bewildering. What will AI be like in 20 years, let alone 200? How will social norms change? What will be the dominant societal problems? In the face of so much uncertainty it's hard to make long-term plans.

I think we need to separate out two things: How to maximize wealth creation for society overall, and how to distribute that wealth within society.

Capitalism is unequivocally the best answer to the first question. There are no counterexamples.

The second question is distinct and has to do with taxation, regulation, education, and so on. This is where the real discussion should be.

"Tax the rich" I get. "Destroy capitalism" makes no sense, it's the only system that works.

As long as we live in a world where many of the economic activities people care about require resources to be invested up-front (in factories, stores, real estate, etc.), the question is who makes those investment decisions. Capitalism's answer is: Those with the most skin in the game. It's hard to argue with that logic.