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The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

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Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#111

Post by groundzeros2015 »

Aurornis wrote: post #88
iainctduncan wrote: post #63

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, an…

I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code. People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do. People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster. The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the…

I don’t think this is the full picture. Plenty of people who like writing code are happy to delete code too.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#112

Post by mannanj »

It seems to me with the rise of astroturfing and lies and deceit being more normalized, the benefit of using these AIs goes disproportionately to the AI companies who get experienced senior engineers training data.

And they get to convince people to pay them to give away their most intimate nontraining data and secret ideas to a for profit entity.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#113

Post by jwr »

iainctduncan wrote: post #63

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, an…

Similar age here. And I have similar thoughts, although not about AI specifically. AI helps me get more done and not spend time on trivia and yak shaving, which is great. I do get more projects done, but those are projects I always wanted to do, just never had the time (or, sometimes the motivation, because of yak shaving tasks).

I think the biggest difference is that I no longer care about what people think about me and how I am perceived, so the motivation to publish my work went down to near zero. I used to build open source stuff, I no longer want to spend time on preparing stuff for publishing, making it available, dealing with people who will inevitably want something of me eventually. There just isn't enough time.

I can still be baited into responding on HN for some reason, and I am trying to work on that, because that is the ultimate waste of time.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#114

Post by rossjudson »

spudlyo wrote: post #52

> It's a thermonuclear ADHD amplifier and I have seen the same effect in every single one of my adult friends. You make this sound like a bad thing. ADHD isn't always about attention deficit, although it is right there in the name. It's more about attention dysregulation. For those of us prone to hyperfocus, working with AI can provide the kinds of stimulation we crave. I can hardly remember a time when I've felt mor…

For me it's been useful as an idea categorizer: "oh well, that turned out to be a crap idea."

It's allowed me to clear out some long-standing brush on the forest floor. And burn it down once or twice.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#115

Post by Aurornis »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #111
Aurornis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code. People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do. People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster. The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the…

I don’t think this is the full picture. Plenty of people who like writing code are happy to delete code too.

When you write the code you learn from writing the code.

When you have an LLM produce something and then delete, you didn’t learn much.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#116

Post by FuckButtons »

Aurornis wrote: post #88
iainctduncan wrote: post #63

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, an…

I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code. People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do. People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster. The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the…

Well, you are learning something, just the thing you’re learning has an even shorter usable lifespan than programming languages, namely you’re learning what works to get useful responses from ai agents. Whether or not that has value to you is a different matter, but it’s worth bearing in mind something is being learned, even if it’s not engineering or programming.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#117

Post by xendo »

skydhash wrote: post #69
elliotbnvl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is patently false. I work with and on AI every day at multiple levels of the stack, and every day I'm learning massive new swathes of information. I'm honestly shocked how deep the field goes and how much more effective you can be with time. The floor is falling and the ceiling is rising and the gap between them is widening every day.

That would be more convincing if you put up two or more examples of what is there to learn.

Even with examples it's still not convincing. I'm working on real products so I don't have time to waste comparing models that won't be relevant next month.

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#118

Post by ALittleLight »

iainctduncan wrote: post #63

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, an…

I don't understand the "deathbed" perspective. Are you going to wish you made more hackernews comments on your deathbed? Probably not. Does this mean you should stop using hackernews?

If you optimized for minimizing deathbed regret perhaps you'd regret that on your deathbed!

If I have cogent thoughts on my deathbed I expect they'll be along the lines of "I wish I wasn't dying" and not regretting the many ways I enjoyed my time on Earth (which includes vibe coding apps nobody uses).

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#119

Post by miguelallamand »

Love the idea of the ADHD amplifier!! It’s so true, being a profound ADHD person i have made many (more than i’m willing to admit) throw away apps with AI. I must say some are pretty useful and i use on a daily basis, but all could’ve an excel heheheeh Love and hate AI

Re: The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

#120

Post by coffeefirst »

Aurornis wrote: post #88
iainctduncan wrote: post #63

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, an…

I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code. People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do. People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster. The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the…

I’m not sure that’s true. All my side projects exist to scratch my own itch, so the appeal to hop straight from design to done is really appealing.

But it’s never really that straightforward.

There is some truth to the idea that some people enjoy it and others do not. I haven’t seen a pattern between them.

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