Our efforts, in part, define us • Hacker News Board

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#121

Post by mvcosta91 » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

diordiderot wrote: post #113

aeon_ai wrote: post #83

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value,…

I've realised far too early. The death of my college age sibling has me constantly scanning and checking for life threatening illnesses. Sometimes the odd ache or a pain sends me into a days long spiral. The fear extends to my spouse and children. Financially, I'm completely free, very comfortable, want for nothing, but still don't feel any sense of achievement. I need help

I’ve been in the exact same boat for a decade. What helped me was working out; it’s pretty much a hobby now. Endorphins are a hell of a drug.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#122

Post by allenu » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #13

I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do things. I’m not a programmer because I wanted to program. Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier to make computers do things.

This is how I feel about it too. I got into programming because I liked making software that did interesting things for me. I enjoyed learning new languages and techniques to improve my programming skills to make software better, larger, faster, but after having been doing this in some capacity for 30 years, I find I'm often doing the same things to create these solutions, so I'm not necessarily learning new things all the time. The typing out the code part becomes something that just has to be done to get to the solution, but doesn't necessarily make me better or bring me joy.

Using AI has been exciting because I can now just focus on designing the user experience and architecture at a high level and do less of the typing out stuff by hand. I still have to steer it in the right direction, though, because it does make mistakes but it does beat just typing it out by hand.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#123

Post by latexr » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

allenu wrote: post #122

andrewstuart wrote: post #13

I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do things. I’m not a programmer because I wanted to program. Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier to make computers do things.

This is how I feel about it too. I got into programming because I liked making software that did interesting things for me. I enjoyed learning new languages and techniques to improve my programming skills to make software better, larger, faster, but after having been doing this in some capacity for 30 years, I find I'm often doing the same things to create these solutions, so I'm not necessarily learning new things a…

Why are you not using a snippet manager? It is significantly faster than an LLM, it’s local, consumes far fewer resources, and actually returns a correct version of what you want based on your knowledge.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#124

Post by latexr » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #108

andrewstuart wrote: post #13

I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do things. I’m not a programmer because I wanted to program. Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier to make computers do things.

I'm at the tail end of a lifetime career of software development, and the way I've come to understand it is that I largely enjoy it because it lets you conjure dreams into reality - really a kind of superpower given how abstract and arbitrary those dreams can be. I used to think that "We are the gods of the digital age" would be a cool business card logo, although I doubt it would go down too well! The other part of…

> I used to think that "We are the gods of the digital age" would be a cool business card logo, although I doubt it would go down too well!

Try “Digital Prophet”. It worked for David Shing.

https://media.philly.com/images/020914_David_Shing_600.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shing

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#125

Post by aeon_ai » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #104

aeon_ai wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, as I see it, the tension between wisdom and power. Wealth, in the modern era, has been a vehicle to achieve power. It is certainly not the only path, but it is the most culturally universal path to influence the effort of others available today. When we set our ambitions towards lofty outcomes that require power to accomplish , we inevitably run into the capacity constraints involved with being a single pers…

Edit: if I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes, motivation comes from "this is nuts but it could work" and meaning comes from "it works!" > Money is a path to acquiring sufficient power Power and money are almost interchangeable, and I'm taking a wild guess that better questions are hidden in that "almost" (as you say, "wisdom+effort", but I'd have to sleep on that for a few nights in order not to casually one-up…

I'd tend to disagree they're interchangeable, although it may feel like it for many things. Our culture certainly wants people to equate the two, because if people believe in the myth that money = power, money has more power.

However, I'd encourage you to contemplate all the things that money can't "buy."

I categorize power not as the sum total of capability to dominate, or purchase, but influence belief, shape motivation, and inspire action.

Our body can develop power over the physical world. Our mind can develop power over the world of myths and information. Our ability to communicate can develop motivation in others through belief, inspiration, and hope.

Money can out-source, to acquire the power and resources of others.

There are many ways to power - Money is a centrally dominant one, today, but is predicated on a certain order to the world and is not universal.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#126

Post by gsf_emergency_2 » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:56 PM UTC

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #120

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to repeat but I felt a bit of Eureka If I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes (when he basically discovered calculus) motivation comes from "this is nuts but it could work" and meaning comes from "yep that works!" https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o (That was long ago, but I'm sure it also happens today)

Information is physical and part of the physical entropic universe, Landauer showed that. When we imagine something in our brain we are physically testing or creating something even if ephemeral, these thoughts you make have meaning and are real just with low distribution. They can be very complex thoughts, you can invent worlds and objects and play around with them in your mind for relatively low cost, this is the r…

Maybe all i'm suggesting is that AI can help us quickly check that what we humans are working on is indeed insane ( and switch to something else if it passes their sanity checks)

The causal path from Rodenderry to the ipod .. is.. easy to approximate compared to the causal path from Zen Monks to Darth Vader.. (though they are in roughly opposite directions)

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#127

Post by alexashka » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:58 PM UTC

hermannj314 wrote: post #63

The people convincing you it is a virtue to move fast always happen to be selling a car. Be careful that you aren't optimizing your life in response to someone else's marketing campaign.

They're ten steps ahead of you. ~85% of spending is done by women.

If you don't want to live alone - you will be living a marketing campaign.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#128

Post by SkyBelow » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #112

swat535 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you make good points, I wanted to quickly counter this narrative with the fact that majority of people are chasing money because it provides them the basic necessities. Money gives you food, shelter, healthcare and relationships; all of which are required for happiness. I think we need make the distinction between a startup founder missing his daughter's birthday because he is at the office chasing money and th…

If this is really the end state of humanity then we should stop all automation and reel things back 10 thousand years or so. This is, modern people can imagine the end of the world before they can imagine a world without money based capitalism. Go back far enough in history and money disappears. We had barter and trade and happiness still existed without money. Go back further and trade becomes les important and viol…

Barter still exists. It is largely inefficient as we don't see things having equal value. Even in barter, often some intermediate that was a form of money emerged, such as a staple food that could be stored for a relative long term. In smaller communities, there was a bit of not seeking equal exchange because belonging to the community was more important, but that doesn't scale well to larger groups and can lead to some people being taken advantage of and thus leaving the community if that is an option.

Violence is problematic for self evident reasons. Cooperation I already touched on about the community involvement, with all the same problems.

It isn't that we can't imagine a world without money, but that we quickly see the problems with it given the scale of modern day life.

As for post scarcity, it really depends upon what is post scarcity. Money becomes meaningless for things that are not scarce, but some things remain scarce.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#129

Post by skydhash » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 4:00 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #81

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the frustrating part of software engineering too; the coding itself is the "boring" part, but for me and many others it's also the most fun and gratifying part, the thing you really want to be doing. Something to grow out of I suppose, but still. The AI vendors want to sell to upper management that that part is what's slowing their company down or costing a lot of money, but I don't think it's that. And in a…

"Software engineering" is a communications problem, and software engineering degrees do not even teach or approach teaching communications. That's a huge disconnect. I still can't understand why the larger industry does not see what our entire industry does is a communications and translation problem/solution/service. So much of what people try to do breaks down at the basic communications level, yet nobody seems to…

If you take a software engineering textbook, you’ll see there’s nothing about code other than a chapter about methodology. It’s mostly about decomposing problems and stating criteria for a good solution. Which by itself is a lot of writing and talking.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#130

Post by fellowniusmonk » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

tofuahdude wrote: post #119

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture has created this odd myth that if something is semantic it doesn't matter. That communication is just another soft skill. Humans make meaning, we are the only source of complex, long term, meaning generation we have ever observed. We emit meaning the way a star emits photons. Sure, a lot of natural processes would still exist if we weren't around. But in this universe, perhaps the only one that exists, we are…

I really like the way you said we emit meaning. It is kind of funny, that we seek meaning and/or purpose in everything - our lives, our actions, our thoughts - but there is a nice change in perspective in considering it as something that we produce rather than find.

Humans are evolved creatures that are very resilient across environments.

Any species that has this trait must not get stuck in local maximums, at an extreme that's why the koala is just not a resilient species, over confidence.

We are an anti-niche species, to avoid this we must have a certain percentage of our population that has doubt, existential crisis that shakes us out of a well worn path.

This always amazes me. If you deeply, emotionally _know_ that life has meaning, there will be some existential nights where you you will think "but maybe life doesn't have meaning", and if you _know_ life is meaningless you will sometime find yourself thinking "maybe there is meaning", our brains try to keep us from getting stuck.

Humility in the face of the unknown. As a species, just amazing stuff.

The cycle of confidence and doubt is absolutely amazing, it's kept us from getting stuck.

Keeps us from having "target fixation" and lawn darting into the ground.

Some individuals have these values tuned at extreme ends, the full distribution is represented by humanity.

The most overconfident and the most anxiety ridden, this is all in our spectrum, and it turns out better or worse for each individual.

The great thing is that we can share ideas and examine our priors.

I used to believe that "nothing" was a real thing, but it's only an abstraction, nothing has never been observed it's only "real" in our imaginations. There's no such thing as nothing as far as anyone has observed or proven.

Same thing with meaninglessness, nothing is meaningless, there are just bits of meaning maximally un-complex and decohered. You can use photon emissions from stars for RNG, humans have made even RNG have rich meaning and high practical utility.