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

aphyr.com

561–570 of 830 posts

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

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's possible to clearly separate personal vehicles from commercial ones. The technology is the same. Any regulation that tries to ban the one while allowing the other would be a huuuge clusterfuck.

> I don't think it's possible to clearly separate personal vehicles from commercial ones What? Of course it is, you can easily impose rules that apply to personal vehicles that don't apply to public transport, logistical vehicles or emergency vehicles. As an example in my neighborhood in the Netherlands, there's basically no streets around me where personal vehicles are allowed, but there are no restrictions to buses…

> it's literally just common sense.

if that is lacking (often is) $50,000 fine per incident will take care of it

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

#562

"I could retrain, but my core skills—reading, thinking, and writing—are squarely in the blast radius of large language models." Yes. For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. Prior to 1800 or so, those skills were not all that useful to the average farmer. There were more smart people t…

Maybe I am being naive but I think there will always be room for smarts. Every professor at any university has a dozen more project ideas than they have graduate students, every factory boss has a dozen more optimisations than ways to implement them, and looking up into the night sky we have 95% of it that cannot be explained. The gap is not too few smart people, nor too few "jobs" that need smarts. The gap is being…

Yes, we have an infinite amount of knowledge work that needs done. But if AI is better at it than humans, we aren’t going to use humans.

We don’t use chimpanzees for any knowledge work today, even though they’d be better at it than some other animals.

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

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these use cases exist because of the prevelance of personal vehicles. We reach for cars because they are there. We see the world through windshields, so when problems arise we conceive of car-based solutions. Cars force us into city designs and styles of living that require cars. That is to say, cars necessitate cars.

Everyone hates cars until they need an ambulance. Yes, obviously there are many negative externalities to a car-driven culture, but just like we can easily become blind to the diffuse societal costs of a piece of technology, I think a culture of nay-saying makes it very easy to be blind to the diffuse value of a piece of technology too. Loud stinky cities full of pollution and climate change are obviously horrible. B…

Most people that are against car-centric cities like myself are not against cars 100% but against their level of priority in the design of our cities and societies.

Many of the scenarios you mentoned aren't even that big of a deal for many. I have walked in the rain many times and somehow I was still ok. You could argue that car culture has made us soft in some ways.

Nevertheless, if we reduced our emphasis on cars in society and the design of our cities to the point where cars were mainly used for those specific cases where cars truly are by far the best options (like ambulances) we would have more livable and walkable cities and ironically cities where it is nicer for those who really really want/need to drive since everyone and their mom wouldn't be driving because they aren't forced to drive to everything. Fewer people clogging the roads like my co-worker who would watch Netflix while she drove to work. Obviously she didn't have a passion for driving but was forced to because she lived in a sprawling metro with terrible transit options.

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

#564

Author seems depressed, my personal take is that no one can change technological évolution. It's going to happen. Just flow with it and all it's bullshit, yeah life will be a little worst but it will still be better than those who chose to completely ignore it. If the world is going mad, be the craziest of all these crazy motherfucker. At least it's interesting, I'm very curious to know what the world will look like…

but what if I care about the world? I dont want to embrace craziness if there is any chance to preserve normality.

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

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit do cars provide that public transit doesn't? How are thousands of individual cars better than light rail? Cars aren't a positive in society. Transportation is the benefit, and cars are the worst possible way to transport people. A functioning public transit system is better in every possible way apart from egotistical arguments like "I don't like seeing poor people on the bus".

I don't like urine puddles on the bus or train seats. How egotistical of me being repulsed by human waste.

I've used public transit for the better part of 50 years, including inner-city buses and light rail trains in several cities. And I've literally never, ever seen nor felt nor smelled an actual "puddle of urine" on a seat. Yeah, sometimes the seats were kinda iffy or damp; perhaps someone spilled a drink there. There were often people eating, or even drinking a beer on board a bus. So I often see pistachio shells or a discarded bottle/can behind a seat. But human waste is unheard-of.

But any actual urine "spills" would've gotten cleaned up right quick. They simply don't tolerate that stuff. Look at any bus operator and they are tough as nails if someone tries shenanigans.

In fact, the craziest times I've had were in ride shares and taxis. I was all dressed up for a funeral one morning, summoned a taxi, and the driver who tried to pick me up was obviously drunk. Another time, I had a medical transport that was summoned, sat at some gas station for 15+ minutes, and when he arrived at my place and I got in the back seat, it was wet and had clearly been through a hasty cleanup, and I could smell urine permeating the vehicle, and it was absolutely nuts, but I said nothing, because it probably wasn't the driver's fault. Probably.

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

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a family and you are doing what this guy is suggesting, that is extremely concerning to me. Seeking a low wage, menial job at a time when costs are rising due to the oil spike? Dumbest move you could make.

I said "menial." I did not say "low wage." And given the utter footlessness of your own situation as you yourself continue to show it, you are bold indeed in presuming to advise anyone else on their finances. But you continue to astonish me with your assumptions! Is it a gambling debt? Get a little too happy on Robinhood or Polymarket, maybe? Were you really really counting on a crypto tax holiday? To keep from havin…

"Money is money, and my needs are small."

That's what you said. Sorry but anyone supporting a family should not be thinking like this. Supporting a family is very expensive.

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

#568
post #496

"I could retrain, but my core skills—reading, thinking, and writing—are squarely in the blast radius of large language models." Yes. For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. Prior to 1800 or so, those skills were not all that useful to the average farmer. There were more smart people t…

> Physical robustness. Strength, perhaps brutality. Competence in physical tasks. Honesty. Parentage. Birth order (see primogeniture.) Those matter in per-technological societies, and they matter in failed societies now. Those are perhaps humanity's core values. This is really bleak to me. We can do better than primogeniture, and of course the gender discrimination that goes along with it. You might as well write tha…

> We're not prisoners of history. We don't have to go back to being serfs for the few people who own all the land, oil, food, energy, data centers, and operating systems. I hope.

The algorithms and bots that curate/generate content directed by accelerationists definitely want people to think that. There is a whole system in place now that can shape future outcomes just by convincing everyone that have no power when the opposite is true. The parent is probably a bot, or has been influenced by one to many there is nothing new under the sun solipsism bs.

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

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this misconception that first it was one way, and then , and they'll wake up and suddenly it is another. It's a slow creep. 10 years ago there were 5 of us on a team each responsible for something specific. Now I can do all of that. Teams and companies will downsize. How do you see AI creating more jobs? (I need some hope right now lol).

My hope is that there is a sort of Cambrian explosion of small software projects built by people who have absolutely no clue what they're doing. Many such projects will go nowhere, but some percentage of them will see success and growth. My second hope is that there will always come some threshold of complexity beyond which AI cannot effectively iterate on a project without (at minimum) the prompting of an expert in…

> My hope is that there is a sort of Cambrian explosion of small software projects built by people who have absolutely no clue what they're doing

It doesn’t even have to be people with no idea what they’re doing. If you lay off enough smart people from big tech companies, those people might put together small companies that directly compete with larger ones at a fraction of the cost.

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

#570
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you push a change, or you approve, you're responsible for the change and its effects later. Regardless of size. If change is too big, tell your teammates its too big to review and to refactor to bite-size with their great coding agents. Use AI models also for review of large changes, consider a checklist . Setup CI and integration tests (also can be AI assisted)

Oh there's plenty of CI, linting, etc. Half of which is not properly plumbed in.

Yeah, but look at all those green tests!
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