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Punch yourself in the face with reality

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Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#131

Post by threethirtytwo »

overgard wrote: post #96
threethirtytwo wrote: post #37

No this isn't punching yourself in the face. Not for swes. What's written above is self confirmation that you are better than AI and that you will always have a job because you are better because AI can't build something that works. That stuff about convincing yourself you're building something useful is actually the easy question. Punching yourself in the face involves telling truths that are incredibly hard to stom…

What even motivates you to write something like this? In what universe is a software engineer a "rank"? You sound absurdly bitter that people want to keep their livelihood? This doesn't even match with reality. I got laid off in January because of "ai" (scare quotes because it was really about the salaries of the US based teams being more expensive than the overseas teams, I think). I got hired at a new job with bett…

"The fact that you still hold a rank as a software engineer right now is only because that machine is slightly worse than you. But as it improves, your role becomes meaningless. The life you built your skills around becomes meaningless. It is less about what AI is now and more about the trajectory of AI and what the current AI says about the AI of the near tomorrow"

^ read what I wrote. I'm telling you the future, but you're talking about your current job. So there's no contradiction here. Your current situation FITS what I said. And my prediction of the future is the most likely out come.

>What even motivates you to write something like this

Because it's the most likely truth? It's the most probably reality. The god awful truth is like the sun. It permeates everything, it's rays touch everything and it's a very obvious flaming fireball in the sky, yet nobody can stare directly at it. No one can fully face the sun.

I ask you, What motivates you to lie to yourself? To deny the obvious trajectory of AI? Does preserving your livelihood involve denying reality?

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#132

Post by threethirtytwo »

zahlman wrote: post #70
threethirtytwo wrote: post #37

No this isn't punching yourself in the face. Not for swes. What's written above is self confirmation that you are better than AI and that you will always have a job because you are better because AI can't build something that works. That stuff about convincing yourself you're building something useful is actually the easy question. Punching yourself in the face involves telling truths that are incredibly hard to stom…

> We don't code by hand anymore /usr/bin/vim on my machine begs to differ.

I mean some people on this earth refuse to use electricity and they still live away from civilization. When I say people use electricity I obviously don't refer to those people.

So when I say we don't code by hand anymore. I'm obviously not referring to you.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#133

Post by wolvesechoes »

AdityaAnand1 wrote: post #12
sorokod wrote: post #2

This quote from Philip K Dick seems relevant: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Love it. And something I wish the current crop of AI startups learn as well, just making XYZ agentic maybe isn't the answer to everything. Same folks that said crypto will destroy traditional finance are now saying stuff like, AI will "destroy" all jobs and create a permanent underclass. Almost feels like every few years a new cult gets created with messaging perfectly designed to trigger the Gen-Z(/current college g…

"AI will "destroy" all jobs and create a permanent underclass"

Of course, this is silly!

The rich people will do this, using AI at least as an excuse.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#134

Post by nimishpatel19 »

neongreen wrote: post #92

As someone who used to have an incredibly hard time putting my app in front of users, or asking for feedback, or getting rejected, etc: Posts like this one always made me feel like I was a coward. Like there was.. unvirtuousness.. in not killing one’s darlings, not validating ideas, not quitting things in time, not looking for product-market fit. I can report that looking for product-market fit, and everything else f…

[flagged]

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#135

Post by chung8123 »

uwagar wrote: post #88
vitorfblima wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, from my experience, if the AI dev is ill intended, he can just say nothing then the exec will go "we can ship now as it is!"

nobody throws a prototype so this will happen

On the counter point, it is so much easier to throw away code that cost nothing to build.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#136

Post by overgard »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #131
overgard wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even motivates you to write something like this? In what universe is a software engineer a "rank"? You sound absurdly bitter that people want to keep their livelihood? This doesn't even match with reality. I got laid off in January because of "ai" (scare quotes because it was really about the salaries of the US based teams being more expensive than the overseas teams, I think). I got hired at a new job with bett…

"The fact that you still hold a rank as a software engineer right now is only because that machine is slightly worse than you. But as it improves, your role becomes meaningless. The life you built your skills around becomes meaningless. It is less about what AI is now and more about the trajectory of AI and what the current AI says about the AI of the near tomorrow" ^ read what I wrote. I'm telling you the future, bu…

Such a bizarre train of thought. There's nothing inevitable about this future. Most people HATE what's being proposed. Why wouldn't you fight against something this shitty? These things cost hundreds of millions of dollars to train. Nothing about that is inevitable at all! What's actually probably inevitable is that these companies fail, because the amount of energy they're demanding and the amount of money they need to make to make this even remotely economically viable does not make any sense. The math doesn't work.

Also, what would even be your motivation for telling me my life is meaningless? Like, what's your expectation here, that I lie down on the ground and go "welp, why even bother".

My opinion is that the only people proposing a narrative like this have a direct financial incentive from the AI companies. I see no other value to promoting this narrative.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#137

Post by threethirtytwo »

overgard wrote: post #136
threethirtytwo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The fact that you still hold a rank as a software engineer right now is only because that machine is slightly worse than you. But as it improves, your role becomes meaningless. The life you built your skills around becomes meaningless. It is less about what AI is now and more about the trajectory of AI and what the current AI says about the AI of the near tomorrow" ^ read what I wrote. I'm telling you the future, bu…

Such a bizarre train of thought. There's nothing inevitable about this future. Most people HATE what's being proposed. Why wouldn't you fight against something this shitty? These things cost hundreds of millions of dollars to train. Nothing about that is inevitable at all! What's actually probably inevitable is that these companies fail, because the amount of energy they're demanding and the amount of money they need…

>Such a bizarre train of thought. There's nothing inevitable about this future

What's bizarre is that you attributed "inevitable" to what I said. I never used that term. Most probably and most likely is the more accurate term. The best possible odds according to the information we have and that is the trendline progression of AI for the last decade is that it will become better than us.

>Most people HATE what's being proposed. Why wouldn't you fight against something this shitty?

I'm not fighting anything right now. I'm just communicating. With truth. Whether I'm against AI or for AI or whether I want to fight AI is orthogonal to OBJECTIVE reality. I am simply communicating truth.

>Also, what would even be your motivation for telling me my life is meaningless? Like, what's your expectation here, that I lie down on the ground and go "welp, why even bother".

Because it's true. Whether you lie down after hearing the truth or attempt to lie to yourself is your prerogative.

>My opinion is that the only people proposing a narrative like this have a direct financial incentive from the AI companies. I see no other value to promoting this narrative.

I have no financial incentive. In fact I stand to lose everything just like you. The difference between you and I is that I have the ability to stare at the sun.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#138

Post by holtkam2 »

layla5alive wrote: post #111
holtkam2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy's head will explode when he realizes that AI has been better at coding than humans for years and yet software engineering employment % has barely twitched...

? Claude code didn't get very useable until about 4.5 - and its still not better than the best humans - only faster to first implementation. You must have a different definition of most of the words you used than I do.

Claude code? Who’s talking about Claude code? I am talking about generative AI. It has been better than humans at coding for years. It is also currently much better at things like taste, stakeholder communication, and literally everything else conceivable. Yet here we are and employment is pretty much unchanged. It’s a paradox imo.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#139

Post by layla5alive »

holtkam2 wrote: post #138
layla5alive wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? Claude code didn't get very useable until about 4.5 - and its still not better than the best humans - only faster to first implementation. You must have a different definition of most of the words you used than I do.

Claude code? Who’s talking about Claude code? I am talking about generative AI. It has been better than humans at coding for years . It is also currently much better at things like taste, stakeholder communication, and literally everything else conceivable. Yet here we are and employment is pretty much unchanged. It’s a paradox imo.

Generative AI is.. not better than the best humans at coding even today, let alone "for years" - I'm not sure how to even have a conversation if you believe this. Better than the worst humans, sure. Better than p50, probably also true.
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