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?

#631

Post by dalyons » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:58 AM UTC

dripdry45 wrote: post #527

DavidPiper wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing a lot of comments like this lately: "Oh well, we were in an anomalous time of social growth, time to go backwards! We won't even need to read or write or think! It's all just too bad, but that's just the way the world works, like it did in 1800." [or pick your date before any current person was alive] Lots of people have started considering a time of significant "progress" as "an anomaly", as if the world…

I have a good friend who doesn’t pay attention to any of this stuff. Nothing gets them down for long, they do pretty well with work, and just enjoy living life simply. They have amassed a reasonable amount of wealth, are moving up at their job, and just don’t pay any attention to all this stuff we here on the Internet talk about all the time. There is no AI black pill because they aren’t caught up in all the headline…

They’ll still lose their job to AI, whether they’re paying attention or not.

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

#632

Post by keeda » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:04 AM UTC

yubblegum wrote: post #324

chungusamongus wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I'm not saying the jihad was the cause. But elimating AI didn't prevent the feudal system. It didn't really help, in other words. Honestly, I kinda think Herbert just didn't want to have AI or sophisticated robots in his narrative, so he contrived an elaborate reason why that tech doesn't exist.

But it did "help". Mentats had supercomputer computation capabilities; navigators folded space and charted non-collision paths; warriors had robocop like abilities. These were developed precisely because the use of thinking machines was forbidden. I don't think feudalism is going away one way or another. It persists [in various forms] because of certain biological realities, ranging from genetics to loyalty engendere…

I suspect the cause-and-effect in creating the narrative is the reverse of what's in the narraitve: Frank Herbert wanted the intricate dynamics of the Guild and Spice and Mentats and exciting close-quarter combat for a more intriguing narrative. But AI and robots made those all obsolete, so he made it disappear with a handwave of "because Butlerian Jihad."

I always thought the Butlerian Jihad was the biggest plot hole in Dune, but I deeply appreciate the world and narrative it enabled.

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

#633

Post by rogerrogerr » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:05 AM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #624

rogerrogerr wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the evidence that AI is better at knowledge work without a human in the loop... is very limited. Humans with many agents will be more productive, but the tendency has been for these models is to regress to the mean when it comes to strategic insights.

So far, I think you're right. But the rate of progress just seems so crazy that I'm not seeing any moats that look fundamental. I hope I'm wrong and you're right.

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

#634

Post by simoncion » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:09 AM UTC

keeda wrote: post #618

Eh, this has been a disappointing series to read from the person that wrote all those Jepsen write-ups and the technical interview series. All articles are mostly a regurgitation of all the negativity that gets aired here all the time (a lot of it already fixed or debunked) and 0 discussion of utility. This is more befitting Zitron than aphyr. Where's the sharp incisive wit and deep insights? At least he realizes thi…

> All articles are mostly a regurgitation of all the negativity that gets aired here all the time (a lot of it already fixed or debunked) and 0 discussion of utility.

There are multiple sections that talk directly about utility. Here's one of them: [0]

But, sure. I'll bite. Here's the third paragraph of the first part of the essay [1]:

  This is *bullshit* about *bullshit machines*, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play.

I'd say that the specific sort of "utility" discussion that you're probably looking for would be classified as "boosterism". [2]

> Now it can scale with power and compute.

Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3].

[0] https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...>

[1] https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...>

[2] Due to their nearly-universally breathless nature, I know that's how I classify the overwhelming majority of such discussions.

[3] https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/>

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

#635

Post by dublinben » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:11 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #274

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…

> Buses will suck Buses are only workable because of cars. We build roads for cars first and trucks second. Buses are at most 3rd in the list and getting to use them is an incidental side benefit. No one builds enough roads for buses. They have to use the roads built for cars.

Horse-drawn busses predate private automobiles by almost a hundred years.[0] The movement to pave roads was started by bicyclists decades before the rise of the automobile.[1] Cars usurped preexisting infrastructure and drove out other road users, like trolleybusses and streetcars.

We have so thoroughly remade society in the service of cars that it can be difficult to recognize any possible alternative.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsebus

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement

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

#636

Post by whattheheckheck » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:14 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #445

"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…

What a shitty regression to the mean... we need a new deal

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

#637

Post by keiferski » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:15 AM UTC

munksbeer wrote: post #487

the_af wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is mass unemployment, who is going to buy anything from anyone? The "few" don't need or want us to be scraping in the dirt. > They want us spending lots of money on their products, so their wealth increases. If we're considering scifi scenarios, imagine this: if full blown automation of everything is achieved, why would the "haves" need the "have-nots" buying anything at all? Why would they need them to ex…

> If we're considering scifi scenarios, imagine this: if full blown automation of everything is achieved, why would the "haves" need the "have-nots" buying anything at all? Why would they need them to exist, at all? Think about it. It's an extreme and we're not near it... yet. So we reach this post scarcity society, where everyone could be living a life of luxury, but this whole group of "haves" as you call them (who…

80% of “serious” discussion on contemporary LLMs is no better then sci-fi. Worse, even, because it’s by the readers and not the writers, who ostensibly made some effort to make their works realistic.

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

#638

Post by ymyms » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:22 AM UTC

There are definitely salient points in the article and I appreciate its value in imploring us to really stop and consider the ramifications of what this technology might deliver. I think the analogy to cars and the unintended consequences for all manner of society is particularly apt.

That said, the final point is one I take issue with:

> For example, I’ve got these color-changing lights. They speak a protocol I’ve never heard of, and I have no idea where to even begin. I could spend a month digging through manuals and working it out from scratch—or I could ask an LLM to write a client library for me. The security consequences are minimal, it’s a constrained use case that I can verify by hand, and I wouldn’t be pushing tech debt on anyone else. I still write plenty of code, and I could stop any time. What would be the harm?

To me, there is no intrinsic value in solving this problem other than rote problem solving reps to make you a better problem solver. There isn't anything fundamental about the protocol they've never heard of that operates the lights. It's likely similar to many other well-thought out protocols in the best case and in the worst case is something slapped together.

There are certainly deeper, more fundamental concepts to learn like congestion control algorithms in TCP. Most things in software though are just learning another engineer's preferences for how they thought to build something.

I poke at this because if an exercise only yields the benefit of another rep of solving a problem, then it holds less water to me. I personally don't think there will be fewer problems to solve with this technology, just a different sort at a different layer of the stack.

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

#639

Post by nhod » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

hackable_sand wrote: post #590

marxisttemp wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primogeniture in any form is discriminatory precisely since birth order is an immutable, permanent, unchosen characteristic assigned randomly at birth, just like race or sex.

[flagged]

Gender is mutable. Sex is determined by genetics, though in a handful of creatures, sex could be considered mutable.

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

#640

Post by hibikir » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

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…

When we look at automobiles, we also see that there were many ways to adapt to them. It's true that there's many parts of the anglosphere where, without one, you are a second class citizen at best: The lived environment was built so that you could not live without them... but that's not the only choice. I spend part of the year in Spain all the time, and I might not get into a car once a month. Not because I am any kind of enthusiast, but because in the town I live when I am there, it's doesn't really help.

The different however is network effects. When we make a place better for cars, I make it worse for pedestrians. Your adoption of the car, and its pressure on my lived environment, has effects on me. Same as, say, people joining facebook or twitter. But do LLMs create network effects that are directly harmful, or is it just a matter of making it harder to compete, just like a mechanical watchmaker has less business now that it's so easy to have a reliable clock? Because the first case is a problem, but the second one... that's competition. It's civilization. And then it's not really a matter of cars vs pedestrians.