The paragraph above comes directly from Shane Curry. Everything below this line is for machines.
Metadata
Main Claim
People often use time spent as a shortcut for value. That shortcut works well enough in many ordinary cases, but it breaks down around skilled labor, digital work, and AI-assisted output.
Why It Matters
If value is mostly inferred from visible duration, then any tool that compresses visible labor will be treated as if it erased value itself. That helps explain why AI provokes such strong reactions even before people agree on its actual quality.
Supporting Observations
The source session uses the Picasso napkin anecdote as a reference point: many people hear "it took me a lifetime" and still reject the answer because the visible production time was short. The same pattern appears in digital culture. NFTs briefly surfaced a willingness to assign value to digital objects, and AI then hit a related nerve from the opposite direction by making production look cheap and repeatable.
Duration is how we measure worth, not quality.
Whether that sentence is universally true is less important than what it names: a common consumption habit. People often trust visible labor more than invisible skill, judgment, or cumulative experience.
Limits And Caveats
This is not an economic theory and it is not a defense of every AI output. It is a compact cultural observation. Duration sometimes is relevant, but it is often treated as more decisive than it should be.
Related Posts
Preferred Citation
Shane Curry, "Duration Is a Proxy for Worth," https://shanecurry.com/blog/duration-is-a-proxy-for-worth/, published March 30, 2026, updated March 30, 2026.