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Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

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Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#121

Post by moritzwarhier »

jcgrillo wrote: post #58
FloorEgg wrote: post #53

I was enjoying the article until I got to this paragraph: > Individual intelligence will mean nothing once we have superhuman AI, at which point the difference between an obscenely talented giga-nerd and an ordinary six-pack-drinking bozo will be about as meaningful as the difference between any two ants. If what you do involves anything related to the human capacity for reason, reflection, insight, creativity, or th…

In the context of the rest of the piece, I read this as sarcasm. The author is making fun of the species of narcissistic silly con valley techbro who actually believes such nonsense.

There's no worth in sarcastically repeating memes like "giga nerd" or whatever except for propagating this line if thinking / the meme.

Imagination knows no negation.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#123

Post by saulpw »

stego-tech wrote: post #50
voxleone wrote: post #10

The folks who keep the power grid running, write compilers, secure the internet, and design dependable systems don’t get viral fame, but their contributions are far more critical. That imbalance is no small thing; it shapes who gets funded, who feels validated, and who decides to pursue a challenge that doesn’t promise a quick TikTok moment or a crypto-style valuation bump. A complex technological civilization depend…

[dead]

It's charitable to frame this as resentment towards capital who gets the "credit". I'm sure people would grumble about this regardless, but the real resentment stems from them systematically eroding our ability to afford housing, healthcare, and retirement.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#124

Post by saulpw »

piperswe wrote: post #107
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at current software. Windows is maintained by morons, and gets shitter every year. Linux is still written by a couple of people. Once people like that die, nobody will know how to write operating systems. I certainly couldn’t remake Linux. There’s no way anyone born after 2000 could, their brains are mush. All software is just shit piled on top of shit. Backends in JavaScript, interfaces which use an entire…

Young people's brains have always been mush, according to the older generation. Your brain is mush according to those older than you. The term for this is juvenoia, and it's as old as humanity.

And yet, when they worried about what television would do to a generation of brains, they were right. The Boomers, as a generation, never became wise, and their brains are mushier than ever.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#125

Post by melody_calling »

maxwell wrote: post #96
butterbomb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people will be your new lords lmao

Please, they're ngmi with no fat. The unhealthy frat boy office sounds like a throwback to the early '10s. What woman would work there? They seem poised to crash and burn out. Historical aristocracy were defined by eating meat, while their subjects ate grain. "Beef" for the Normans, "cows" raised and slaughtered by the Anglo-Saxons.

They have a table full of Labubus though. Women love those.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#127

Post by moritzwarhier »

zozbot234 wrote: post #93
jcgrillo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of the rest of the piece, I read this as sarcasm. The author is making fun of the species of narcissistic silly con valley techbro who actually believes such nonsense.

It's a really bad take because AI is already "superhuman" in general knowledge, but it still has trouble figuring out whether I should drive or walk to the car wash place.

Declaring something as "superhuman" requires a hierarchy of inherent human value.

I'm not saying this for social reasons, just for the definition:

"superhuman intelligence" at what?

Calculations? Puzzles? Sudokus?

Or more like...

image classification? ("is this a thief?", "is this a rope?", "is this a medical professional?", "is this a tree?")

Oh, applying the former to the latter would be a pretty stupid category error.

It's almost as if people had this figured out centuries ago...

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#128

Post by GaggiX »

atomic128 wrote: post #79

Brilliant article. Now consider Reddit. On r/hacking people tend to understand the danger of mindlessness and support war against it: https://www.reddit.com/r/hacking/comments/1r55wvg/poison_fou... In constrast r/programming is full of, let's call them "bot-heads", who are all-in on mindlessness: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1r8oxt9/poison...

Your opinion on the two subreddit seems to be just influenced by how much they like your project or not.

A project that you spam in every of your comments.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#129

Post by MisterTea »

foruhar wrote: post #114
bee_rider wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyway, the original “power grid” guy was not some master craftsman or engineer, he was the original STEM influencer: Edison. He also popularized short videos.

Tesla was the real power grid guy. The scope of his invention from the generators at Niagara Falls power generation to the transformers to the motors is pretty impressive. More so given that he was eventually given the patents (originally issued to Marconi) for radio transmission.

Two others who come to mind are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Scott_(engineer)

Steinmetz contributed heavily to AC systems theory which helped understand and expand transmission. while Scott contributed a lot to transformer theory and design (I have to find his Transformer book.)

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#130

Post by MarceliusK »

voxleone wrote: post #10

The folks who keep the power grid running, write compilers, secure the internet, and design dependable systems don’t get viral fame, but their contributions are far more critical. That imbalance is no small thing; it shapes who gets funded, who feels validated, and who decides to pursue a challenge that doesn’t promise a quick TikTok moment or a crypto-style valuation bump. A complex technological civilization depend…

The scary part is that you can't just "hire mastery" on demand. You have to grow it
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