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Some things just take time

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Re: Some things just take time

#71
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to with the phrase "status symbol"? I can't connect it at all to your listed points. An Olympic medal is about obvious a status symbol as I can imagine but it can't (meaningfully) be bought or transferred. The status signified with a knit sweater is membership (and good standing!) in a caring family with elders not yet fully subsumed into their phones. People, acquaintances and strangers alike,…

> it can't (meaningfully) be bought or transferred. https://www.ebay.com/b/Olympic-Medal/27291/bn_55191416?_sop=... > People, acquaintances and strangers alike, frequently comment on the knit socks I often wear, Ok, that explains pretty much everything about your line of thought. Thanks.

Buying someone else’s medal is not a status symbol. That is why they included the word meaningfully.

Re: Some things just take time

#72
"So welcome to the machine"

I'm reading Against The Machine by Paul Kingsnorth, and now reading this blog piece is hard not to make connections with the points of the book: the usage of the tree as a counter-argument for the machine's automation credo exposed in the blog post very much aligns with I've read so far.

Re: Some things just take time

#73

Also you know, for programmers, say a 3 day work week is right there up for grabs. Even still employers would see big productivity increases.

Programmers no longer have any leverage now they can all be replaced by machines. It doesn't matter how productive you are, the system will always demand more.

This hype too will pass. It's always ebb and flood...

Re: Some things just take time

#74
Sounds familiar, for most of my life I have tried to remove all "friction" from life – applying that engineering mindset to make everything as efficient as possible. Only then I realized that life somehow is about that "friction".

Re: Some things just take time

#76
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about the opinion of kids. I'm also completely unimpressed by someone wearing a Rolex though, so different mileage for different people.

You should be able to understand the definition of a common term such as "status symbol" though. Understanding words does not require being impressed by anything, nor caring about the opinion of kids.

If most people are thinking "whoopdedoo... you clearly have more money than sense" when they see your status symbol, is it still a status symbol?

Re: Some things just take time

#77
>Nobody is going to mass-produce a 50-year-old oak. And nobody is going to conjure trust, or quality, or community out of a weekend sprint.

absolutely although i wonder how different 'trust' is in the culture of tomorrow? will it 'matter' as much, be as cherished, as earned over the fullness of time?

i suspect it is a pendulum - and we are back to oak trees at some point - but which way is the pendulum swinging right now?

Re: Some things just take time

#78
post #52

I work at FAANG, and leadership is successfully pushing the urge for speed by stablishing the new productivity expectations, and everyone is rushing as much as they can, as the productivity gain doesn't really match the expectations, and people overwork to make up for this difference. This works very well with internal competition and a quota system for performance ratings, with some extra fear due to the bad job mar…

I’ve noticed this dynamic acutely working at YC startups the last 5ish years. Coding has become like a sweatshop. I don’t think it’s exclusive to startups or tech either, it seems more like a downstream consequence of the fact that there’s no real innovation anymore. Capitalism demands constant growth, and when there are real technological improvements you can achieve that growth through higher productivity. If there…

> it seems more like a downstream consequence of the fact that there’s no real innovation anymore

This doesn't sound right to me. We are currently getting smacked upside the head by an enormous technological innovation. I believe that, even within the framework of capitalism, this problem has social and political roots. The "robber baron" period late 19th century America has strong similarities to what we are seeing today, and technological stagnation was not the cause.

Re: Some things just take time

#79
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that wearing a sweater knitted by one's grandmother is its own kind of status symbol. I'm more impressed by that (someone having a grandmother willing to invest that much effort in a gift for them) than someone spending $1000 on an item of clothing. The fact that those items took a long time to make is part of what makes them status symbols though, because if you pay a lot of money for something that took…

I like the sweater, and some people like you might recognize it as special, but it doesn't have the universal cachet of a Rolex or something. It's also a bit chunky and funny-looking (but I guess so are some Rolexes).

"universal" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Re: Some things just take time

#80
I don't see the problem - everything the author describes has, and will always be, true. You can't vibe code anything of value in a weekend exactly because anyone _else_ with the same level of experience can do the exact same thing in the same weekend! This has always been true across all trades and technologies. Once again, the domain expertise, wisdom, and simply _time_ of doing something always win. LLMs literally don't change that at all.
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