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Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#91

Post by sirodoht »

I think I can help you find a good answer to this but I don't have enough data (one sentence statement is not enough). If you want to have a call and dive into this, feel free to email me: theo@torchandzen.com

In general, the direction I would explore is: it's not about AI, it's about something in the way your perceive AI. For example, maybe you value (some part of) the process. AI is about short-circuiting the (creative) process, so that may make making things feel pointless.

This is just one assumption, there are probably many more dimensions and variables at play. Maybe you read some perspectives about AI (and/or AI safety) that triggered something in your values about the creative process. Or maybe you want to create via a specific way of collaboration, which is no longer viable. As I said, we (and you) would need more to understand.

Have you ever thought about making your values explicit? Here's a PDF that has a list of values to assess between important and not important:

https://www.motivationalinterviewing.org/sites/default/files...

(I like this PDF because it includes definitions.)

Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#92

Post by DamnInteresting »

Speaking for myself, when I see AI being used, I see industrial-grade plagiarism. Plagiarism is when someone claims to have written something--a book, essay, software, etc--when they did not write that thing. AI is a tool that cobbles something together from other people's work and gives compensation and credit to the incorrect person.

There's a reason we as a civilization decided to create intellectual property laws. We wanted there to be an incentive for creative people--authors, coders, illustrators--to improve the world with creative works. Art and writing improve our lives. AI dismantles that incentive, and thereby makes life that much more bland.

Yes, I do use emdashes. But I don't use AI.

Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#95

Post by joquarky »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #84

AI has systematically destroyed the tech industry, as well as any adjacent hobby or interest that requires tech. This is burning people out at astronomical rates. We had a principal engineer randomly quit and he said he is straight up leaving IT and not coming back due to the AI nonsense. I've heard this same story across the tech world as well - people are done with this garbage.

> as well as any adjacent hobby or interest that requires tech

I can understand your sentiment for work-related tasks where we are all under the microscope of KPIs and OKRs in a survival-mode society, but for the quoted part specifically, i'm curious what was the underlying motivation that no longer exists.

Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#96

Post by joquarky »

alansaber wrote: post #12

Choose between 1. You don't love what you're working on or 2. You don't enjoy working with AI. IMO those are the two primary problems, and both solvable in their own way (more or less).

I'm starting to notice a pattern that would merit another option:

3) showing off your complex hand-crafted accomplishment no longer earns you as much social capital as it did five years ago.

Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#97

Post by harryquach »

CoolestBeans wrote: post #60
gagabity wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the journey is the exact thing AI took away though! The destination mostly has remained.

If you can't resist the temptation to pull the AI slot machine lever (which is not necessarily a personal failing!), you might want to seriously examine what your actual motivations are. If you have to use AI for your day job, then yeah it sucks the journey is being taken away from you.

It seems most companies who employ developers are going the direction of agentic coding, so for most of us there is not an option. This is where the real crisis is.

Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#98

Post by Huarache1 »

I've never actually gotten into programming despite learning so many different languages, and never really knew where to start after learning the basics. Any project I wanted to do simply fell apart after a few days, barring some simple Mods in XML for some old games.

Even I don't really feel like doing much in programming, although I've always wanted to code. Vibe coding still feels a little nebulous and difficult to direct to make something good.

I'm looking to go into Medicine, so I don't think its just me being less intelligent (even though I recognize that as a possibility).

Re: Why do I lose my passion and want to do nothing?

#99

Post by brailsafe »

CoolestBeans wrote: post #59
brailsafe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you love the process what do you care that AI can do it faster? You can still do the thing I can still hike to the top of mountains even though helicopters exist, but if helicopter tourism is as popular as it seems to be becoming, and Bluetooth speakers are as available as they are, the journey and result is going to feel very different, if it's not entirely ruined.

The comparison breaks down because noise pollution is unavoidable. AI hype might be unavoidable unless you code in a vacuum but you can be disciplined in how much you let it in. Even if AI cheapens the actual output, it fundamentally cannot touch your intrinsic motivations for work, which was my original point.

> The comparison breaks down because noise pollution is unavoidable.

That's not remotely true, but it's not just noise pollution, it's also actual pollution, and it cheapens the overall experience with the presence of an excessive amount of people who've potentially pnly bought their way there and have no long-term care for keeping it serene. More litter, dog shit on the trail perhaps, etc.. and yes more noise.

It's an analogy for the poisoning of the market for whatever you'd be working on, hollowing of the process to get there, and further destruction of the long-term viability of the pursuit itself by compromising its integrity through transactional commodification. In theory, there will always be people who exclusively and ruthlessly only care about the numbers, getting the product "done", or the raw numeric achievement of climbing the mountain, which is how everything gets enshittified.

Similar thing with gaming. You could tell me that if I truly like a game, it shouldn't matter how much they gradually dumb it down, make it efficient to play for almost anyone, or pack it tip-to-taint with microtransactions, but the reality is that all of those factors are the equivalent of strip mining the player base and leaving an empty pit.

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