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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

#141

Post by loss_flow »

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 original system that created those folks was also quite hype driven. I think more signal than "is there a lot of hype" is needed to determine if the system is broken.

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

#142

Post by munificent »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #116
butterbomb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This became clear to me over the last few years. We are quickly returning to a world of entrenched social hierarchy where there are lords and peasants and little room even for social mobility. With the corpse of meritocracy too rotted to deny at this point the elite simply seem to have run out of lies for placating the people. Or, more likely the people are so sickeningly impotent, that’s there’s no need for the lies…

The west had been fighting this since it's founding. “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” ― Ulysses S. Grant

He was wrong about which side patriotism would end up on.

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

#143

Post by kerblang »

FloorEgg wrote: post #60
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.

Ah, I struggle with sarcasm sometimes and I was a bit distracted while reading. I'll give it another chance.

I suspect the author is struggling with their own sarcasm.

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

#144

Post by TSiege »

FloorEgg wrote: post #60
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.

Ah, I struggle with sarcasm sometimes and I was a bit distracted while reading. I'll give it another chance.

It is not sarcasm he is fleshing out this sentence earlier in the paragraph, "One of the pervasive new doctrines of Silicon Valley is that we’re in the early stages of a bifurcation event"

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

#145

Post by com2kid »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #101
abraxas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t survive a steady erosion of mastery. That sounds like an onset of a certain type of dark age. Eventually the shiny bits will too fall off when the underlying foundation crumbles. It would be massively ironic if the age of the "electronic brains" brought about the demise of technological advancement.

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…

I was once one of the mush brained morons hired to work at Microsoft.

I think I did ok. Would I compare myself to the greats? No. But plenty of my coworkers stacked up to the best who'd ever worked at the company.

Do I think MS has given up on pure technical excellence? Yes, they used to be one of the hardest tech companies to get a job at, with one of the most grueling interview gauntlets and an incredibly high rejection rate. But they were also one of only a handful of companies even trying to solve hard problems, and every engineer there was working on those hard problems.

Now they need a lot of engineers to just keep services working. Debugging assembly isn't a daily part of the average engineer's day to day anymore.

There are still pockets solving hard problems, but it isn't a near universal anymore.

Google is arguably the same way, they used to only hire PhDs from top tier schools. I didn't even bother applying when I graduated because they weren't going to give a bachelor degree graduate from a state school a call back.

All that said, Google has plenty of OS engineers. Microsoft has people who know how to debug ACPI tables. The problem of those companies don't necessarily value those employees as much anymore.

> I certainly couldn’t remake Linux

Go to the os dev wiki. Try to make your own small OS. You might surprise yourself.

I sure as hell surprised myself when Microsoft put me on a team in charge of designing a new embedded runtime.

Stare at the wall looking scared for a few days then get over it and make something amazing.

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

#146

Post by FeteCommuniste »

chickensong wrote: post #122
pnt12 wrote: post #118

The quote "this...is...necessary" reminded me about this song. Wonder if the person who as singing it: https://youtu.be/CmJYZ1NIn1Y?t=150

I immediately heard this as well. Great song, great album!

Nice, there are three of us whose minds immediately went to Disgustipated.

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

#148

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

RealityVoid wrote: post #105
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…

> I certainly couldn’t remake Linux. There’s no way anyone born after 2000 could, their brains are mush. This is certainly false. There are plenty of young people that are incredibly talented. I worked with some of them. And you can probably name some from the open source projects you follow.

I have some level of faith here. Those kids you mention may not be visible online, but they certainly deliver. Honestly, it is not a good example, because that name is well known, but Gerganov came out of the blue for me.. I am not saying we don't lose more to the social media and whatnot.. but they are there.

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

#149

Post by eigencoder »

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?

I think it's this one: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-law-that-can-be-named-is...

But in general, Sam Kriss tends to weave fiction and nonfiction together in his writing.

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

#150

Post by mayhemducks »

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…

"the most valuable and important thing you can learn will be to think critically and communicate well."

I have heard some form this advice for over 30 years. Not one single penny I have earned in my career came from my critical thinking. It came from someone taking a big financial risk with the hope that they will come out ahead. In fact, I've had jobs that actively discouraged critical thinking. I have also been told that the advice to think critically wasn't meant for me.

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