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Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
71–80 of 88 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#72"The golden rule of clean architecture is to strive for high cohesion and low coupling."
Perhaps communities will sprout up following that rule?
Regarding money, one needs to ask themselves what will be the impact of tokenized assets?
Perhaps being able to take ownership of kibbutz-like places will give them a sense of belonging and purpose. Doesn't matter how much technology there is, people need to live somewhere and will adapt by finding a place they can optimize for happiness. It'll be like starting a game of Civilization from scratch but with all the advanced technologies intact.
People may also go back to the early-human modes of survival of the first-nations groups. Digital and electric technologies aren't healthy things to be around. Do you want to live in the range of a 10G antenna or near a massive solar array? The naturalists may end up happier and healthier than the tech-heads. It's about taking/using what works for you and leaving the rest.
Worth noting that if someone really had an answer to your questions, would they state the truth here?
How do you know the robots won't come and just kill us all when they can because we have no power/influence/value? Where will people migrate to in order to avoid that? Antarctica? The moon? Underground to avoid weaponized satellites?
Conscience and consciousness really needs to grow with technology, really that's the challenge of today. Always has been.
How will people support the sick, old, disabled and retarded? Start there and work backwards, or how does one avoid those things altogether somehow and go beyond Homo Sapiens?
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#73Extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation.
I don't draw to do better than the AI, I do it because I like drawing. You have more free time to do what you want.
But maybe the goal was never to build the thing, it was to impose your individuality and uniqueness upon others.
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#74Sounds like you're getting burned out by too much hype-chasing. Follow your interests, and you'll always discover something that AI hasn't solved by itself. And keep in mind that people have always had these concerns whenever something new came along - photography, computers, etc.
This is different. AI is not a "personal computer" or a "digital camera". AI is a change in perspective of our entire society, how it works, and what we define to be human or human-made creation. The end goal of AI is to abolish all work possible. In a world where there is no work for the common man, I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
> The end goal of AI is
AI is a technology. It has no goal. You use a tool, the tool doesn't use you or have goals or plans for you.
> In a world where there is no work for the common man.
"Work expands to fill the time available" (Parkinson's Law). Work hours haven't been reduced even though technology has advanced tremendously over the centuries (they have been reduced due to push for worker's rights).
> I'm afraid to imagine what is left there.
Do not define yourself, or your worth, through work. You work to live, not live to work.
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#75One of the most revolutionizing life skills is to learn to seek out the good instead of learning to avoid the bad.
For great books and music, there is probably never a need to read anything published after 2020, or even after 2000. There's more than you will want to read in your lifetime. There's more than you can ever listen to. You'll get tired of music as a whole before that.
Here's some things AI can't do for you: Relationships and interacting with good people, every kind of sports and physical endeavour including any adventure you can think of, enjoying the perfection of nature. Psychedelic experiences and spiritual experiences. All of these require very little or no money.
Human art has always been an imperfect imitation of the creation, and the same is true for anything AI makes.
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might be one of those “the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent” cases, though. And for arts and entertainment, where the long term value is less important economically than the immediate click, AI slop is good enough that the percentage of people unable to tell the difference means there’s no point in creating any more except at the highest end or for the love of it.
Sorry ai slop is no where good enough. Not sure what hype you are consuming.
I’m watching people listen to AI-generated music and not notice (or even prefer it over human-produced music). I’m watching people on FB who can’t tell the most ridiculous AI-generated imagery from reality.
It may not be good enough for you or me; but the average consumer is not all that discerning. They’ll choose whatever gives them a dopamine hit.
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry ai slop is no where good enough. Not sure what hype you are consuming.
I’m watching people listen to AI-generated music and not notice (or even prefer it over human-produced music). I’m watching people on FB who can’t tell the most ridiculous AI-generated imagery from reality. It may not be good enough for you or me; but the average consumer is not all that discerning. They’ll choose whatever gives them a dopamine hit.
I think we are thinking about different things. Slop content has existed long before AI. I agree on the music front there is a possibility but I don’t see it much different than all the low effort lowfi music that flooded the study stations. I don’t see a future yet where engineers or other folks making tasteful content have to worry about their job security. When that time comes there are going to be real concerns from more than just the creative types.
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#78The point is to go beyond LLM training set. When the knowledge of LLMs, books, expert conversations etc. ends and cannot answer to your questions, you begin to feel where that boundary begins. From that line on, you are alone, and you can invent/discover something novel. Nothing is promised though, and it is the hardest thing to do, but at least the struggle gives a feeling of purpose.
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#79Maybe a rough analogy: why take a train when you can fly? Flying is faster and often cheaper. If efficiency were the only axis, trains should’ve died long ago. They didn’t. They became alternative infrastructure, used when people care about cost predictability, comfort, scenery, control, or just preference.
AI will do the same thing. Summaries won’t replace books, generated music won’t replace artists, and assistants won’t replace doing things yourself. They’ll replace the lowest friction default. Everything else shifts from “mass” to “intentional”
That doesn’t mean fewer humans have value, but instead it means value becomes less generic. The question isn’t “what’s the point anymore” , it’s “what survives when optimization stops being the only goal?"
Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?
#80Do you read a book just so you know what happens at the end, or because you like the journey there too? Do you read blog posts "just to know" or because you like reading? Sure, if you don't like reading, then it's great you don't have to. But personally I like to read, and be taken on an adventure by writers, that's why I read, I don't read just so I "know what happened". So everything remains the same, nothing has c…
You don't get it. You, and I, are in the minority. How do you expect authors to keep writing, when the market will be, eventually, flooded by AI generated slop? It's the same with coding: I no longer see point to write OSS by hand, as every day, 10 projects appear on HN front page, that are 95.9% AI generated. Becoming a successful writer / musician, is already hard. With software, it was easier, but in my opinion, i…
As an average Joe I have easy access to Taylor Swift on youtube etc. AI junk is also there but I don't choose it and only force fed a very small amount by my friend who likes making it.