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?

#661

Post by leonidasv » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

brotchie wrote: post #271

abricq wrote: post #70

> ML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand: the cultivation of what James C. Scott would call Imagine being starting university now... I can't imagine to have learned what I did at engineering school if it wasn't for all the time lost on projects, on errors. And I can't really think that I would…

Yeah, I think about this a lot. Those days of grinding on some grad school maths homework until insight. Figuring out how to configure and recompile the Linux kernel to get a sound card driver working, hitting roadblocks, eventually succeeding. Without AI on a gnarly problem: grind grind grind, try different thing, some things work, some things don't, step back, try another approach, hit a wall, try again. This effor…

What strikes me is that AI can also be the best teacher in the world: your Makefile is not working, you ask the LLM what's wrong, you learn something new about the syntax, you ask for more details, you learn more, you ask about other Makefile syntax gotchas, etc. This is the most efficient deliberate practice possible: you can learn in minutes what would take hours of Googling, tinkering and scouring docs. You have a dedicated teacher you can ask your silliest questions to and have the insight you need "click" way faster.

The problem is: (almost) nobody does that. You'll just ask Claude Code to fix the build, go grab a coffee and come back with everything working.

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

#662

Post by sjbzbeiks » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:03 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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age Read the section on social structure (pre 18th century)

Then consider the role of the clergy in the Middle Ages, and say nothing of Rome and large bureaucracy (Roman engineering alone).

On top of this you need to ignore very large bureaucracies and trading networks in Asia to go far with your narrative (Persian, Turkish, Mongol, Indian and Chinese).

There were a good deal of powerful nerds before the 1700s.

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

#663

Post by dgb23 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:08 AM UTC

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #152

ernst_klim wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to eliminate "useless eaters" It can't. It can't even deal with emails without randomly deleting your email folder [1]. Saying that it can make decisions and replace humans is akin of saying that random number generator can make decisions and can replace people. It's just an automation tool, and just like all automation tools before it it will create more jobs than destroy. All the CEOs' talks about labor replaceme…

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).

Here's some hope: You will figure it out. You are already a person who is very curious, competent and experienced with making stuff.

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

#664

Post by solatic » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:17 AM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #621

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…

Peter Drucker identified this phenomenon as the rise of knowledge work as "the means of production" in the 1950s and 1960s. Management (of people, tasks, responsibilities, and disciplines) and knowledge work were the two sides to organizational performance. Drucker felt that "post capitalist society" was the recognition that capital ceased being the primary factor of production. No matter how much capital you throw a…

> "post capitalist society" was the recognition that capital ceased being the primary factor of production. No matter how much capital you throw at a problem, if you can't retain people that know what you're doing, you won't get far.

This leads to the reformulation of knowledge workers as "human capital", and it's hardly post-capitalist. A capitalist society is one where people assemble different forms of capital to produce capital returns that are larger than the sum of the capital inputs, where the possibilities available to you depend on the amount and quality of capital that you have access to. This is all still very relevant when discussing human capital - access to human capital is determined by the quality of your professional networks, whether you decide to be present in geographic talent clusters (i.e. cities as centers of industry), and whether you have sufficient financial capital available in trade.

AI will not transition us to a post-capitalist society. Its promise is solely the ability to replace human capital with other forms: chips and electricity. It does not spell the death of human labor any more than computers and spreadsheets did for accountants.

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

#665

Post by dpark » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:26 AM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #635

dpark wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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://e…

Paved roads have been around for thousands of years longer than the bicycle.

> Horse-drawn busses predate private automobiles by almost a hundred years.

And they used roads that already existed for transit and transport. People have always built roads.

> Cars usurped preexisting infrastructure and drove out other road users, like trolleybusses and streetcars.

This is some significant historical revisionism. You’re making it sound like all the roads were built for buses and streetcars.

The good roads movement is certainly interesting history. But I don’t think it changes the reality that buses are only workable because they are mostly piggybacking on infrastructure buit for other vehicles.

Of course, that’s rather the point of roads, that they are infrastructure that benefits many forms of transit and transportation.

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

#666

Post by intended » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #496

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…

> 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…

> I hope.

For solving all things complex, there must be a plan.

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

#667

Post by pprotas » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:30 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #472

abricq wrote: post #70

> ML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand: the cultivation of what James C. Scott would call Imagine being starting university now... I can't imagine to have learned what I did at engineering school if it wasn't for all the time lost on projects, on errors. And I can't really think that I would…

My kids are high school age. It's hard to convey the deep existential dread their generation has about the future. * They are growing up in a climate that is worse than any prior generation had and getting worse. * In the US, they are growing up in a time with less upward mobility and more economic inequality than the previous several generations had. * Trust in social institutions and government is crumbling before…

I'd go with nail technician, barber, electrician, mechanic, beauty salon, plumber, coffee shop, window washer, construction

I see these types of jobs flourishing in my community. My barber is fully booked for the next month, and a hair salon owner in my street bought a new property and started a second hair salon... In the same street! And the second salon is also fully booked.

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

#668

Post by suburban_strike » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:32 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #496

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…

> 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…

[flagged]

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

#669

Post by vogelke » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:43 AM UTC

Your core skills are fine. Unfortunately, appreciation for those skills has already been blasted into orbit by the AI-BS bubble.

This tech has made it easier for second-handers to pass off inadequate work as the equal of your work. They're too lazy to exert the effort to read/think/write, and being second-handers, they're fine with the APPEARANCE of reading, thinking, and writing.

This has been going on for millenia, and the only fix I've seen is to call it out every time it rears its head.

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

#670

Post by Saline9515 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 7:43 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…

There are plenty of occupations that benefit from being "smart". Construction is one of them, and if you study a bit medieval or renaissance architecture, you'll be amazed by what our ancestors were able to do with just a few analog tools.

The same goes for other occupations, and...farming. Breeding cattle is a complex science, so is growing crops consistently and valuing the production.