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

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

#341

Post by neutronicus » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #318

nradov wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking is one of the biggest downsides of bikes IMO. Bikes are great, I ride mine whenever I can. But most places lack secure bike parking and the police don't take bike theft seriously. So sometimes I drive my car even to places where I could easily ride a bike just because I'm confident the car will still be there when I get out.

Fwiw the only place I had a bike stolen was the secured underground garage in my apartment complex. Never had issues just parking it out front while running errands or other such stuff, or parking outside work during the day. I'd figure foot traffic would keep angle grinding down. I've personally not seen angle grinding done that brazenly before, seems liable overnight though where the thief has time to work and the…

> Shops or restaurants don't seem to care if a bike is parked in the corner...

This doesn't scale to wider bike adoption, though.

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

#342

Post by ericmcer » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

matusp wrote: post #204

Despite all the AI hype, I wonder how much it only exists in the tech bubble full of terminally online folks. Unless you spend significant part of your day online, most of the AI risks mentioned in this series are probably negligible. The most affected demographic is computer nerds that grew up enjoying utopian Web that is now turning dark.

Seriously try saying "LLM" to anyone else.

There is a class next door to my office. An old woman is teaching ~20 people how to be insurance agents with a slide show. It seems like a two week course with a certificate at the end.

They don't seem worried that the slideshow could be pasted into an LLMs context window and outperform all of them on the test in 5 seconds and are diligently taking notes.

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

#343

Post by grvdrm » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #277

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…

At the beginning of the industrial revolution we didn't know what people would do for work but we eventually figured it out. Human demands are effectively infinite so there will always be work for other humans to satisfy those demands. The transition period may be disruptive.

I agree. Her statement in pure literal terms is quite negative whereas the reality may be quite different. Predictions aren’t certainties.

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

#344

Post by throwanem » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

chungusamongus wrote: post #293

throwanem wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go look in a mirror, not at me. That's where the argument is waiting that you're feeling urged toward.

What you just said was an elaborate tu quoque fallacy. You aren't comprehending my basic point, which is that individual ethical decisions are not going to make a difference when all of the broader incentives are causing people to act otherwise.

If you keep telling yourself that, do you think it will eventually help you sleep at night?

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

#345

Post by grvdrm » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

wrs wrote: post #224

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…

Assuming “phenomenally well” means what it says, the conversation would have suddenly gotten a lot more real if she had said that more precisely: “I don’t know what your kids are going to do for work.”

Totally. And yes you got it.

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

#346

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #240

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…

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

>personal opinions on what society should be like

Anyone who still even has a personal opinion at all pertaining to what the world should look like distinct from swallowing whatever 'the market' has decided to impose on them is worth listening to.

That's the most interesting thing about the situation of technology today. Most technology is banal, what's notable is that apparently now a culture needs to be in possession of 'objective truth' (no such thing exists) to defend what is, by definition, a subjective way of life.

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

#347

Post by nradov » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

Glemllksdf wrote: post #337

nradov wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nothing against AI as a technology but the notion of it "curing diseases" is so silly. The limiting factors are largely in fundamental biology research and then human clinical trials. There is no plausible way that LLMs will make those activities 10× faster or cheaper. Hard work still has to be done in the messy real world outside of computers.

LLMs help already a lot because plenty of normal people do not have programming skills. Evaluating test results is a lot harder if you do not know how to program or how to use a computer. But LLMs compute requirement is so high that it pushes the boundaries of compute, memory and memory bandwidth which is fundamental for curing diseases. LLMs math / neural networks can and are used for medical research. Simulating a…

More accurate biological simulations could help but there is zero reason to expect that LLMs will be an effective platform for such simulations. That's pure speculation and probably wrong.

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

#348

Post by ButlerianJihad » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

sambishop wrote: post #305

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…

automobiles -> suburbanization -> isolation -> mental health crisis seems like a fairly easy hypothesis to test since there are still millions of people in america living densely and carless in places like nyc and you could demonstrate that they have a statistically significant gap in mental illnesses. so easy to test that i bet several people already have and you could just check.

It is not merely suburbanization that has been caused by cars, but also the very urban fragmentation. Immigrants are no longer permitted to live in enclaves, ghettos, or the same neighborhood with one another.

Another thing about "this mental health crisis" is that it has been ongoing for many decades before we noticed it and before it was brought to the forefront. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was out and then President Reagan approved the mass closure of asylums. What happened was that massive numbers of citizens had been condemned and committed by their relatives and "put away" in homes, facilities, and institutions, and then Reagan shut 'em all down.

Today, the mentally ill live among us. Either their families care for them, or they live in jails/prisons because they became criminals and were convicted, or they live independently/on the streets. The mentally ill live now in "virtual institutions" where their chains and restraints consist of drugs. The drugs are what keep them connected to their home clinics and their psychiatrists. The drugs keep them coming back for more, month after month, to their pharmacies and clinics. The drugs they are convinced they cannot live without, making them compliant and unsure of what is really going on in their lives.

The non-criminal mentally ill are mostly encouraged to integrate and socialize, to seek employment and try to simulate functional human beings in society. So they live among us and they are causing more noticeable issues when they interact with people possessed of more sanity. The mentally ill are probably less likely to drive or own a vehicle, and more likely to rely on public transit, so you know where to find them.

But the mentally ill who live independently, and live with these "virtual restraints" are likewise living in fragmented neighborhoods that are not walkable and require a lot of effort to overcome the sheer distances that separate them from services and their employers. They're living among immigrants, foreigners, heathens and infidels, and on every corner is a moral trap such as easy alcohol, easy sex, easy gluttony, easy gambling that can ensnare even the sanest city dweller. These traps are, of course, legitimate businesses that cannot be shut down by a mere vice-squad raid.

So "this mental health crisis" in 2026 can perhaps be partly traced to the advent of personal motor vehicles, but I feel there are several causes that have brought it to the forefront.

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

#349

Post by Glemllksdf » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #347

Glemllksdf wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs help already a lot because plenty of normal people do not have programming skills. Evaluating test results is a lot harder if you do not know how to program or how to use a computer. But LLMs compute requirement is so high that it pushes the boundaries of compute, memory and memory bandwidth which is fundamental for curing diseases. LLMs math / neural networks can and are used for medical research. Simulating a…

More accurate biological simulations could help but there is zero reason to expect that LLMs will be an effective platform for such simulations. That's pure speculation and probably wrong.

Im not betting on LLMs for this, i'm betting on the LLM Compute infrastructure which is the same for simulations.

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

#350

Post by neutronicus » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

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.

> Parking is one of the biggest upsides of bikes IMO.

I think that's true at the moment, but only because there's so little demand for it. You can always find a sign post or something because no one else is snatching them up.

At the end of the day bikes are still private vehicles and, though they're smaller than cars, they aren't that small and the infrastructure to secure them (which is integrated into cars) isn't small either. So you get the same problem writ small.