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The Eternal Sloptember

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#201

Post by card_zero »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187
soperj wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view. " the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machinery used to "fraudulently and deceitfully" manufacture inferior goods, bypass labor standards, and strip skilled artisans of their livelihoods."

And yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.

Doesn't that just say "a pair of pants"? Or literally one line pants.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#202

Post by Ekaros »

swiftcoder wrote: post #163
Nition wrote: post #17

With the level of ability that AI is at right now, I've found it useful personally to think of it something like a very good search over existing knowledge. Another step up in searchability in the lineage of reference books, stack overflow, GitHub etc. Programmers are rewriting and reinventing the same techniques more often than any other vocation I can think of, and so we were primed for a really good search over pr…

> Programmers are rewriting and reinventing the same techniques more often than any other vocation I can think of And the answer to that is clearly a tool that makes rewriting/reinventing cheaper than actually packaging nice reusable libraries

And on other hand I really do not understand how basic project boilerplate templating wasn't already a fully solved issue. Surely it should have been doable...

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#204

Post by omnimus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187
soperj wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view. " the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machinery used to "fraudulently and deceitfully" manufacture inferior goods, bypass labor standards, and strip skilled artisans of their livelihoods."

And yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.

I think you are misrepresenting the luddites. They were not against technological progress. Many of them were the ones who invented the machines. What they were fighting for were labour rights and distribution of power. They were fighting against enshitification by some guy who stole their collective inventions and by force kicked them out.

They were not against more clothes for everyone - quite the opposite. They were against fast fashion bad quality clothes made in horrible conditions by people (or children) who had no other choice.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#205

Post by ares623 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #186
forgetfreeman wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like neo-feudalism by way of breadlines.

It's hard to care much about how software is written when superpowers are invading their neighbors, democracy itself is under attack, the food supply chain is failing, and the world is hotter than it's ever been.

software plays a big role in enabling 2 (arguably 3) out of those. Least we could do is not make it worse. But it seems most of us are still just children. They give us something shiny that makes pretty lights and we happily burn the world to keep it.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#206

Post by kcguyu »

cafkafk wrote: post #74

I think a lot of the problem with the current discourse is how black-and-white it is. Either you're a luddite or "ai pilled". In most cases, LLMs can get you 80-95% of the way, sometimes less, sometimes more. And heck, sometimes, it just gets you somewhere wrong. But it seems everyone is arguing about whether LLMs can be perfect software engineers in isolation running in a closet, and using that to say that LLMs do n…

I completely agree with your sentiment of “black or white.” I believe it comes from social media with primarily “radical” perspectives being the ones in the spotlight. Just not an environment that promotes nuance or friendly discussion

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#207

Post by izacus »

omnimus wrote: post #204
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.

I think you are misrepresenting the luddites. They were not against technological progress. Many of them were the ones who invented the machines. What they were fighting for were labour rights and distribution of power. They were fighting against enshitification by some guy who stole their collective inventions and by force kicked them out. They were not against more clothes for everyone - quite the opposite. They we…

I think the case of Luddites shows just how strong anti-worker and anti-union propaganda is - making it a mock word was very effective at preventing uneducated people from understanding what they fought for.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#208

Post by torben-friis »

bruce511 wrote: post #197
soperj wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view. " the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machinery used to "fraudulently and deceitfully" manufacture inferior goods, bypass labor standards, and strip skilled artisans of their livelihoods."

Goods are usually (although not always) inferior when made by a machine. A hand-crafted solid wood table is still superior to something from Ikea. Of course hand made tables are expensive. They service a sliver of the market. Ikea serves the rest of us who'd prefer not to eat off the floor. Fundamentally, Luddites didn't like being replaced by a machine. They were skilled workers, who used to have very desirable skil…

>Of course hand made tables are expensive. They service a sliver of the market. Ikea serves the rest of us who'd prefer not to eat off the floor.

And yet my working class grandparents didn't eat off the floor, they had great quality tables.

Mine is made of disguised cardboard.

This is a big part of the problem, there is zero trust that any potential improvement in cost or access will reach consumers. Companies don't even bother telling us it will.

We will just be slowly moved into accepting a degradation as the new normal.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#209

Post by torben-friis »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187
soperj wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view. " the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machinery used to "fraudulently and deceitfully" manufacture inferior goods, bypass labor standards, and strip skilled artisans of their livelihoods."

And yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.

>the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house”

That's pants as opposed to skirts. It's a gender implication, not a scarcity one.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#210

Post by thaumasiotes »

card_zero wrote: post #201
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.

Doesn't that just say "a pair of pants"? Or literally one line pants.

条 is the appropriate measure word for pants; they're plural in English, but uncountable (like other nouns) in Chinese.

You could translate it as "a pair of pants", and that's the appropriate way to put it in English, but really it says "one pants".

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