The End of Identity: AI, Plasticity, and the Divergence Machine

Over the past year, the Contraptions club has been reading through history—from Giordano Bruno and Montaigne to Spinoza, Adam Smith, and Hume. We are now using using Venkatesh Rao's Divergence Machine framework as a lens to make sense of the modern world.For context, Venkat posits that human history operates through massive "world machines". The "modernity machine" was constructed around 1200 and operated…

https://aneeshsathe.com/2026/03/07/the-end-of-identity-ai-plasticity-and-the-divergence-machine/