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

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

#241

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

sobjornstad wrote: post #231
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 automob…

I definitely agree that merely having automobiles doesn't require adopting characteristically American urban design philosophy, and that this philosophy isn't very compatible with dense walkable urbanism. But I don't see how to interpret

> The upsides of automobiles generally all exist outside of the 'personal automobile', i.e. logistics. These upsides and downsides don't need to coexist. We could reap the benefits without needing to suffer for it, but here we are.

other than as a claim we should not have personal automobiles.

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

#242

Post by rdiddly »

baal80spam wrote: post #36
lukev wrote: post #17

This is a must-read series of articles, and I think Kyle is very much correct. The comparison to the adoption of automobiles is apt, and something I've thought about before as well. Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. That said, I'm more open to using LLMs in constrained scenarios, in cases where they're an appropriate tool for the job and the downsides can b…

> 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.

The benefits accrue to the owners of the vehicles. The negative effects are externalized onto everybody else.

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

#243

Post by VirusNewbie »

code_for_monkey wrote: post #120
nradov wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upsides of automobiles, or personal mobility in general, are enormous . I can go wherever I want, whenever I want along with other people and cargo. I don't have to wait for a schedule set by someone else, or worry about union strikes. I love my cars!

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

#244

Post by cryptopian »

recursive wrote: post #216
cryptopian wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of people in this comment thread interpreting the post's analogy as "ban all cars forever" rather than "consider how to use them as part of a wider societal strategy that makes places better for everyone". You can implement all kinds of transport badly. Trains can suck if they don't take you where you want to go, bicycles suck if wherever you live doesn't provide acceptable parking methods. Cars are gre…

It seems like a hard argument to make that bikes can suck more than cars because of parking . As a bicycle enthusiast, I can provide you with some better reasons. You'll get rained on. You'll get sweaty. The helmet will mess up your fancy hair. You can't go as fast. Parking is one of the biggest upsides of bikes IMO.

The point I was engaging with was how urban spaces can discourage certain kinds of transport users if their needs haven't been considered. If you get to your destination and have to hunt for a nearby fence post to lock your bike to, that's a bit of friction that makes me less willing to cycle. If I know there's a nice safe, quiet route for me to take, and a sturdy rack at my favourite cafe, it's a much easier decision.

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

#245

Post by mrdependable »

yubblegum wrote: post #63

I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it, and almost all of the negatives cited by Kyle and likeminded (such as myself) are in fact positives for them in context of massive population reduction to eliminate "useless eaters" an…

It would be difficult, but not necessarily THAT difficult. With enough pushback from the public, AI would start getting regulated in meaningful ways. The problem is too many people love it, and see no problem with it. Because the momentum and money is on their side, it feels like it is impossible. Maybe things will turn out fine and we will just live in a similar but more depressing future, but if the pro-AI crowd gets bit and changes sides that could be a turning point.

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

#246

Post by drstewart »

SilverBirch wrote: post #25

Frankly I think it’s kind of childish to just put up a massive Uk wide block on your website. “Call your representatives”, ok dude, can I give you a list of things I want to change about your country’s policies?

>ok dude, can I give you a list of things I want to change about your country’s policies? reply

of course, non Americans never comment on American policies

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

#247

Post by iamnothere »

lossyalgo wrote: post #195
Marha01 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between personal and commercial cars is too small to allow effectivelly banning one while keeping the other. Any country that tries to do so will inevitably overshoot in one of the directions: either the ban will be too permitting, so people will still use personal cars, just less as today, or the ban will be too broad, which would negatively affect the commercial or logistical use cases and the econo…

I don't think anyone is arguing about banning ALL vehicles, much less all personal vehicles, but rather to simply become less car-centric. Most cities which top the list of highest quality of life worldwide all have fairly good public transportation options and/or are very walkable.

With respect, a few people are indeed making that argument.

Many car haters constantly play this motte-and-bailey game where they insinuate that cars are evil and should be eliminated, then they pull back and say “oh no, we don’t want to ban them” when confronted. But it’s clear that some subset really would prefer to eliminate civilian vehicles.

I like smart urbanism and pedestrian-centric development, but the anti-car culture annoys me to no end. It is self-defeating. The average person in the US has a car, and likes having a car, so you should start every argument with that assumption. We made a lot of progress on improving pedestrian access in the early 2000s by focusing on a positive message. But I guess there’s no room for non-adversarial messaging anymore.

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

#248

Post by tim333 »

yubblegum wrote: post #63

I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it, and almost all of the negatives cited by Kyle and likeminded (such as myself) are in fact positives for them in context of massive population reduction to eliminate "useless eaters" an…

The article skips the potential upsides of an AI future - like curing diseases, abundance, merge type immortality. I'm keen myself with nothing to do with the goals of the 0.001% really. I think the future generations will like the above and look back on now like we look back at medieval dentistary.

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

#249

Post by dang »

Here are the articles in this series that got significant HN discussion (in chronological order for a change):

ML promises to be profoundly weird* - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689648 - April 2026 (602 comments)

The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703528 - April 2026 (106 comments)

The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47730981 - April 2026 (169 comments)

The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47754379 - April 2026 (180 comments)

The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47766550 - April 2026 (217 comments)

The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778758 - April 2026 (178 comments)

* (That first title was different because of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47695064 - as you can see, I gave up.)

p.s. Normally we downweight subsequent articles in a series because avoiding repetition of any kind is the main thing that keeps HN interesting. But we made an exception in this case. Please don't draw conclusions from that since we'll probably get less series-ey, not more, after this! Better to bundle into one longer article.

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

#250

Post by ctoth »

masfuerte wrote: post #45
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.

I've always lived in walkable cities. I don't own a car and with pollution, congestion, accident risk, pavement obstruction, etc. other people's cars unequivocally make my life worse. We can argue about whether this is a good trade off, but the claim that cars make everyone's life better is straightforwardly false.

I live in a walkable city. I cannot drive because I am blind. Cars make my life better. Uber exists. I use it to get many places that I otherwise wouldn't go to.
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