Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

aphyr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 830 posts

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#231

Post by sobjornstad »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #175
nehal3m wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, without judgement, your perspective may be wildly skewed because you’re American (going by your post history). I suspect the negative externalities in a society built around cars don’t register with you because to you it is the normal state of the world. As a Dutchman, I grew up in a built world that is based around the human scale and to me your parent’s claim comes across as astonishingly obvious.

The Netherlands has 513 cars per 1000 people compared to the US rate of 779. A significant difference, certainly, and it's plausible that there's a threshold effect where a society built around 50% more cars faces unique problems. But this doesn't at all seem consistent with the original idea that automobile technology itself is bad.

Car ownership is not a good proxy for how important cars are to living well in a particular place, when the places you're comparing have completely different design philosophies. If you look at how many trips the average Dutch car owner takes by car vs. how many trips the average American car owner takes by car, I guarantee you there will be a much larger difference.

I'm also not sure that anyone was claiming automobile technology itself was bad, just that in many places at many times it has been used in suboptimal and harmful ways.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#232

Post by denismenace »

grvdrm wrote: post #111

Two years ago, I was enjoying a drink with my wife, her friend, a very senior female VC partner, and another friend. Somehow we talked AI in some depth, and the VC at one point said (about AI): “I don’t know what our kids are going to do for work. I don’t know what jobs there will be to do.” That same VC invests in AI companies and by what I heard about her, has done phenomenally well. I think about that exchange all…

[flagged]

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#233

Post by grvdrm »

whstl wrote: post #14
miltonlost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using claude but then refuse to do much cleaning up of what it spews. Im leaving that for the PR reviewers who love AI and going through slop. If they want slop, I'll give them the slop they want.

Not advocating that people should follow this but: As someone that loves cleaning up code, I'm actually asking the vibe coders in the team (designer, PM and SEO guy) to just give me small PRs and then I clean up instead of reviewing. I know they will just put the text back in code anyway, so it's less work for me to refactor it. With a caveat: if they give me >1000 lines or too many features in the same PR, I ask the…

Favorited. I was talking to someone (non-dev) yesterday who prototypes with Claude and then goes back/forth with the lead engineer to clean it up and make it production worthy (or at least more robust). I like that model.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#234

Post by omegabravo »

iamnothere wrote: post #219
mynameisbilly wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't have to completely upend our lives to move to the small handful of major cities that provide the infrastructure to exist comfortably without a car. At least in the US, your options are limited to NYC, Chicago, Boston, and maybe a few others (Seattle/SF). And even then, the hard set default in these major cities is car ownership EXCEPT for NYC.

How is Bumfuck MT, population 250, going to support the infrastructure to live comfortably without a car?

as someone who lives there, they're not. Nor is that what is being suggested, it's critiquing car-centric cities where not having a car is needlessly difficult. Population 250 isn't going to ban cars, but the city may discourage driving and provide ample facilities for those who don't have a car.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#235

Post by underlipton »

nradov wrote: post #108
underlipton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna beat this drum till it breaks: General strike and bank runs. Not to collapse the economic system, but to present a credible threat of collapsing the economic system which AI development, as these elite and their platforms know it, relies on. When they're freaking out, we call for negotiations. This only works if people with "secure" livelihoods not just participate, but drive the effort. Getting paid six figure…

You're free to take a vacation or quit working if you want to. Go ahead. As for bank runs, no one cares. The big banks no longer need retail customer deposits as a source of capital for fractional reserve lending. Modern bank funding mechanisms are more sophisticated than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...

In which the FDIC took unprecedented action, drawing down the DIF to backstop depositors beyond the insured $250k and offering a credit facility to other banks, in order to prevent "contagion" - a panic, a bank run - which was presumed to be likely after the 3rd largest bank collapse in US history. A bank almost no one outside of California had heard of before it died.

Bank runs are serious business, and far from being something "no one cares" about, even just talking about them makes banks nervous, because they can happen to even "healthy" banks. The big banks have been undercapitalized for more than a decade, and even a moderate run on a regional institution threatens the entire system. Which is why it should be done, or at least signaled as incoming; it's good leverage.

  >You're free to take a vacation or quit working if you want to. Go ahead.
The implicit, "I'll stay here, where I'm nice and secure," is delusion. People care about your outcomes even if you don't care about ours. Take the invitation to organize with others to secure your own future, to show just how much you're needed before your employer decides that you're not (however erroneously).

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#236

Post by CityOfThrowaway »

nehal3m wrote: post #191
Aerroon wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose in the Netherlands they use carts and horses to stock up the supermarket? To transport coal to the powerplant (or the wind turbine blades to where the wind turbine will be built)? Surely a bicycle isn't enough for that. You might be only talking about personal cars, but you've got to remember that trucks share the same infrastructure cars use. Modern city wealth wouldn't be possible without engined vehicles…

Sure, industrial scale transport and personal transport share a rolling platform with an engine, but they're different platforms with different requirements, different economics and different lifecycles. However, you're making my point for me. If you fail to invest in good public transport it will suck. That is downstream from designing your society around cars instead of transportation for everyone. Bikes do not wor…

> Regarding bad weather; if winter is bad enough for bicycles to fail, then certainly it is not safe to drive either

This is a big claim with no justification.

Cars have dynamic traction control, internal temperature control, etc. You may get frost bite on your bicycle, but almost certainly not in your car. Having four wide wheels makes the vehicle radically more stable.

Add seat belts, air bags, etc. cars have far more safety features than a bike can.

Of course, cars go faster and going faster increases lethality at the limit. No argument there, far more people die in cars in general. But specifically concerning weather, cars allow people to do many things that a bicycle cannot.

Not to mention general comfort. Being in a bike in a snow storm is very unpleasant!

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#237

Post by iamnothere »

omegabravo wrote: post #234
iamnothere wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Bumfuck MT, population 250, going to support the infrastructure to live comfortably without a car?

as someone who lives there, they're not. Nor is that what is being suggested, it's critiquing car-centric cities where not having a car is needlessly difficult. Population 250 isn't going to ban cars, but the city may discourage driving and provide ample facilities for those who don't have a car.

Well I do agree that city living should not require a car, although cars should be an option for those who need them. I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect rural areas to discourage car use. Not everyone in rural communities has a car, but for many they are essential.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#238

Post by empyrrhicist »

prescriptivist wrote: post #68
armonster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their negative effects are much more vast, subtle, and cultural. You could say many of the broad and widespread mental issues we have in the US is the result of automobiles leading to suburbanization and thus isolation of people. It has created an expensive barrier of entry for existing in society and added a ton of friction to doing anything and everything, especially with people. That's not even getting into the cl…

> You could say many of the broad and widespread mental issues we have in the US is the result of automobiles leading to suburbanization and thus isolation of people. Yes, you could say that, though I'm not sure who would actually say that seriously.

That's a really rude and dismissive take - the impact of cars has been immense, in particular the ways in which they've been given primacy as a mode of transport and the ways in which that necessity has interacted with our laws and infrastructure development (sabotoging of public rail transport, parking regulations and the creation of car-dependent suburbia, pedestrian safety, highway projects decimating communities of color, etc. etc. etc.).

To blithely state that nobody could make such a claim seriously is an attitude which actually has a really fitting term: carbrained.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#239

Post by drstewart »

s1mn wrote: post #72
voidUpdate wrote: post #13

> "Unavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act. Now might be a good time to call your representatives." Having the "call your representatives" link be to your website as well isn't particularly helpful... I already can't get to it

I love it when Americans take the moral high ground

Funny that's how I feel when Europeans lecture about wars and imperialism

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#240

Post by Waterluvian »

armonster wrote: post #46
baal80spam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. You say it in a way that it sounds like automobiles don't have a positive effect. I don't agree - they have some negative effects but overall they have a vast net positive effect for everyone.

Their negative effects are much more vast, subtle, and cultural. You could say many of the broad and widespread mental issues we have in the US is the result of automobiles leading to suburbanization and thus isolation of people. It has created an expensive barrier of entry for existing in society and added a ton of friction to doing anything and everything, especially with people. That's not even getting into the cl…

I think a lot of it depends on personal opinions on what society should be like being treated like objective truths.
Post reply on HN