---
type: source
title: "The Citrini post is just a scary bedtime story"
author: Noah Smith (Noahopinion)
date: 2026-02-24
url: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-citrini-post-is-just-a-scary
domain: internet-finance
processed_by: rio
status: processed
notes: "PAYWALLED — content cuts off at page 5 of ~10+. Only partial extraction possible. Full argument structure incomplete."
claims_extracted:
  - "Micro displacement evidence does not imply macro economic crisis because structural shock absorbers exist between job-level disruption and economy-wide collapse"
---

# The Citrini post is just a scary bedtime story

Noah Smith's rebuttal to Citrini Research's "2028 Global Intelligence Crisis" post. Published Feb 24, 2026.

## Key Arguments (from available content)

**Separating micro from macro:** Noah's central move is to separate the micro thesis (which specific jobs AI displaces, how fast) from the macro thesis (will AI displacement crash the entire economy). He concedes the micro debate is genuinely uncertain but argues the macro catastrophe scenario is where Citrini's reasoning breaks down.

**Stock market reaction was sentiment, not fundamentals:** The selloff after Citrini's post was driven by narrative contagion, not new fundamental information. Markets recovered. The virality of the post itself became the causal mechanism for market movement — a reflexivity point, not evidence for the thesis.

**Macro resilience argument:** Even granting significant white-collar displacement, the economy has structural shock absorbers that prevent the doom loop Citrini describes:
- Fiscal policy (automatic stabilizers, unemployment insurance)
- Monetary policy (rate cuts in response to demand weakness)
- Consumer behavior (savings buffers, household adaptation)
- Labor market flexibility (reallocation, new sector creation)

**"Failing business models could cause a financial crisis (but it isn't likely)..."** — This is where the paywall cuts the content. Noah appears to be addressing the financial contagion channel (private credit exposure to AI-disrupted businesses) but we don't have his full argument or conclusion.

## What's Missing (paywalled)

- Full financial contagion argument and counterargument
- Noah's view on the timing/transition problem
- His position on whether policy intervention is needed
- Any discussion of the India/emerging market exposure
- His view on the technology-driven vs demand-driven deflation distinction

## Extraction Notes

The available content yields one clean claim: that micro displacement evidence does not imply macro economic crisis because structural shock absorbers exist between job-level disruption and economy-wide collapse. This directly challenges the self-funding feedback loop claim in our knowledge base. The full article likely contains additional extractable claims about financial contagion resilience, but we can't access them.
