Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#51

Post by prewett » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:32 PM UTC

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #22

> How should people make money? No idea, as in the "prosperous future", everything is replaced by AI. If we taxed land ownership a la Georgism and then taxed negative externalities like pollution, we could give everyone UBI and probably kick back and take it easy for a bit. Of course this would require a global democratic mandate bigger than the world's ever seen, so I'm not waiting up on it.

UBI didn't work for the Communists, can't see how it's going to happen in a fractious democracy.

I think a the biggest "global democratic mandate" ever seen is functionally a dictatorship... And apart from the Communists, dictatorship don't have the sort of priorities that lead to UBI.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#52

Post by embedding-shape » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

tbyehl wrote: post #50

embedding-shape wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice that it's bad/slop/shit, turn it off, do something else. If you don't notice it, then is it really an issue? And if you notice, you're one click/keypress away from making it disappear.

Sorry, I thought your contention was that nobody is forcing me to consume AI BS content.

Well, that's true isn't it? No one is forcing you to consume AI BS content, either close it when you come across it, at least works well on the computer.

As for TV ads or other shit you can't just skip, I guess looking away or do something else than accept it, is the way to go forward there.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#53

Post by schmookeeg » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

I don't know how you can claim to love technology but hate AI so much -- it's a technological achievement. Yeah it's disruptive and that makes it dangerous if not managed, and I'm not exactly optimistic we'll manage it, but why aren't you curious about how it works? How to make it integrate with society better? How to deal with the myriad issues surrounding IP, rights, likeness stuff... there is a lot of fascinating work being done around AI to figure this all out.

Were you only interested in technology so you could be one of the chosen elders holding a rare and valuable skill? Bummer if so, I think that ship has sailed. If not sunk altogether.

Otherwise? I guess learn plumbing? I think we're still a few years away from Claude telling me "You're absolutely right! Let me unclog that toilet for you" :D

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#54

Post by kevinfiol » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

There's a good CCK Philosophy video about AI Art that I think is pertinent here [1]. From my layman's observation, AI is forcing us to reflect on the kind of work we do, how it fulfills us, and maybe even exposing the danger of exclusively finding fulfillment from employment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT-bIYFdq9I

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#55

Post by jventura » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

fnoef wrote: post #36

ilya-pi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, specifically this.

Edited out the name, for you. Cant even be authentic in the internet anymore without being flagged as advertisement or an AI bot, jeez

> Cant even be authentic in the internet anymore without being flagged as advertisement or an AI bot, jeez

The sad state we got ourselves into..

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#56

Post by 1attice » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 10:41 PM UTC

Existentialism might say, "there isn't one; there never was; the meaning you felt has gone somewhere else, like a kite suddenly slack on the string."

You have to find out where the winds are blowing, especially your winds.

Retrieve your kite and find another hill. <3 is what I am doing. Not leaving industry exactly, but reshuffling my sources of meaning

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#57

Post by flashgordon » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 11:20 PM UTC

Im confused. Are you asking how to make money or how to spend your time if money was not a concern?

Answering the second question - I can find 48hours worth of things to do in a 24 hour day and none of them would be about work or just lazying around (nothing wrong with it). Life has so much to offer!!! Yeah AI can produce things. But theres a reason id consume human generated art. And thankfully real deep mastery still takes effort and passion!!

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#58

Post by markus_zhang » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:39 AM UTC

I firmly believe that the future is going to be dystopian -- thus I think that techs, especially low-level programming and hardware RE skills are essential.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#59

Post by tim333 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:41 AM UTC

Art music books and the like are still there. You can always ignore the AI versions.

Whenever tech has replaced jobs like agriculture when machinery came in people found things to do but probably couldn't foresee working as programmers or influencers or what have you.

It's probably heading for sci-fi type stuff which should be interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point Anymore?

#60

Post by onetokeoverthe » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #46

RiverCrochet wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flooded markets get bypassed. I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted. What AI is going to kill is the Internet, not human creativity.

> I see a future where real creatives simply don't post stuff online, and anything online is not trusted. This shift is already well underway. I know a fair number of artists of various sorts (most are writers), and almost half have disconnected their artwork from the internet entirely.

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