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

harpers.org

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

#131

Post by _dwt »

advisedwang wrote: post #78

> Not long before I arrived in the Bay Area, I’d been involved in a minor but intense dispute with the rationalist community over a piece of fiction I’d written that I’d failed to properly label as fiction Anyone familiar with what work this is referring to?

This one IIRC: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-law-that-can-be-named-is... He writes about it here, a little: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/against-truth

In general long meandering semi-factual pieces like this, with odd historical excursions, are one of his things and I don't know anyone else that does it quite the same. (Hmm... oddly enough Scott Alexander, who he cites here, also does some similarly Borgesian stuff, but with a different bent.) One of my favorite writers and I recommend pretty much everything he's done since the early 2010s.

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

#132

Post by MarceliusK »

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…

Historically, tools that made thinking cheaper didn't eliminate thinkers...

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

#133

Post by ianmcgowan »

advisedwang wrote: post #78

> Not long before I arrived in the Bay Area, I’d been involved in a minor but intense dispute with the rationalist community over a piece of fiction I’d written that I’d failed to properly label as fiction Anyone familiar with what work this is referring to?

Probably the burning man essay, which is one of the best things I've ever read online.

https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/numb-at-burning-man

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

#134

Post by chickensong »

keiferski wrote: post #63

The strangest thing about all of this to me is how contemporary SF seems to have absorbed basically none of the city's previous culture. You can detect the commercial, artistic, cultural histories of NYC in the various industries there, from media to finance. Ditto for LA, or London, or Paris. In SF though, it’s as if the previous culture of the place has just been overwritten entirely. Hard to believe that it’s the…

SF is quite small compared to the other cities you mentioned, both in land and population density, and is quite a young city in comparison. The beats and hippies were a flash in the pan. They left a mark, but many dispersed rather quickly, and the rest have been ironed out for many decades.

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

#136

Post by temp8830 »

krapp wrote: post #68
qgin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has the world ever rewarded effort?

No. Not once in the entire history of the human race, from the time we were dwelling in caves to today, not in any tribe, village, hamlet, city, state, kingdom or nation, in no culture or circumstance, has effort ever been rewarded. It's weird that homo sapiens sapiens has been around for approximately 300,000 years and it's never happened once. Not even once.

In the village, the horse works the hardest. But the horse will never be elected as the chief.

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

#137

Post by keiferski »

chickensong wrote: post #134
keiferski wrote: post #63

The strangest thing about all of this to me is how contemporary SF seems to have absorbed basically none of the city's previous culture. You can detect the commercial, artistic, cultural histories of NYC in the various industries there, from media to finance. Ditto for LA, or London, or Paris. In SF though, it’s as if the previous culture of the place has just been overwritten entirely. Hard to believe that it’s the…

SF is quite small compared to the other cities you mentioned, both in land and population density, and is quite a young city in comparison. The beats and hippies were a flash in the pan. They left a mark, but many dispersed rather quickly, and the rest have been ironed out for many decades.

The exact same thing is true of smaller cities like Pittsburgh, as well. The point is that their cultural histories still manage to exist today, even at some level, whereas tech has turned SF into a historical culture-free zone, entirely detached from what SF was even 25 years ago.

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

#138

Post by FloorEgg »

marcosdumay wrote: post #77
FloorEgg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a successful startup is very hard, and not just in the "it's a lot of hard work" sense, but also in terms of making good decisions. For the average person who went to college and worked in some other industry/capacity, the good decisions are very counterintuitive. Most VCs have no idea how to accuratly judge startups based on their core merit, or how to make good decision in startups (though they may think t…

So... You think it's because the VCs are conning their investors and those con-man are the best extend and pretend opportunities? I can believe in that. But just a couple of years ago it was clearly happening because the VCs wanted those people to sell the companies into some mark and return real money to them. I wonder when did the investors became the marks?

Mayb in some extreme cases, but I wouldn't go so far as using the "con" word most of the time.

The hardest part of startups is probably the making good decisions part. To be a good VC you need to be better at founders at judging startup decisions, AND you need to be good at LP deal flow AND you need to be good at startup deal flow. LP deal flow has to come first (otherwise there is no fund), and because of zirp a lot of VCs got funds up without good startup deal flow or the ability to judge startups well.

In other words it's hard to be good a VC too, but for a while it was artificially easy to be a bad VC.

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

#139

Post by krapp »

temp8830 wrote: post #136
krapp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Not once in the entire history of the human race, from the time we were dwelling in caves to today, not in any tribe, village, hamlet, city, state, kingdom or nation, in no culture or circumstance, has effort ever been rewarded. It's weird that homo sapiens sapiens has been around for approximately 300,000 years and it's never happened once. Not even once.

In the village, the horse works the hardest. But the horse will never be elected as the chief.

Horses tend not to run for office. Because they're horses.

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

#140

Post by atomic128 »

GaggiX wrote: post #128
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.

I used to "spam" (as you call it) about nuclear fission on Hacker News. But this the wrong crowd. Hopelessly wrong.

Poison Fountain is top of mind currently so it's understandable I talk about it constantly. Even to my wife. Also I think it's highly relevant to the excellent Harper's article we're reading today.

Whether the Redditors "like the project or not" reflects whether or not they think there is a problem with mindlessness.

What they actually say is almost immaterial. Either it's FUD about malware or illegality or something they imagined without evidence about how easy the poison is to filter. These fictions are just a manifestation of their opposition to the idea.

You can see that among the bot-heads on r/programming (perhaps forced to embrace mindlessness by career considerations) there's nothing that can be said without attack. A dozen downvotes immediately. They actually logged into Hacker News and posted FUD directly to the HN post I linked to. Spectacular.

The opposite is true on r/hacking. Except for a few in opposition (some of whom did unsuccessfully attempt to DDOS the fountain) most people sympathize and agree. They don't want to be dependent on Sam Altman or Elon Musk for their cognition.

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