Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

harpers.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 284 posts

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

#151

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

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…

This. Just thinking that those with power would even allow that leveling seems on the verge of impossible. In a sense, you can already see it practice. Online models are carefully 'made safe' ( neutered is my preferred term ), while online inference is increasingly more expensive.

And that does not even account for whether, 'bozo' will be able to use the tool right.. because an expert with a tool will steal beat a non-expert.

It is a brain race. It may differ in details, but the shape remains very much the same.

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

#152

Post by devin »

HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #109
hdtx54 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the power grid fell out of the head of some master craftsman thinking in decades? They dont teach the history of science for various reasons, but its basically a ledger of how over rated 3 inch chimp brain intelligence is. The power grid is thing of beauty. Today. But the path to that Beauty is one train wreck after another. Boiler explosions that kill hundreds. Wiring that burns down towns. Transformers th…

It would all be undergrounded and made resilient, if it weren't for perverse incentives.

This is a tradeoff. There is value in being able to do upgrades to lines above ground. Underground is not automatically better. Like most things, it depends.

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

#153

Post by jason_pomerleau »

> A man paced in front of the advertisement, chanting to himself. “This . . . is . . . necessary! This . . . is . . . necessary!” On each “necessary” he swung his arms up in exaltation.

Tangential, but this sounds an awful lot like Disgustipated (‘The Cries of the Carrots’) a ‘hidden’ song on the Tool album Undertow, including the exaltation part: the narrator of the song is a preacher.

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

#154

Post by jcgrillo »

TSiege wrote: post #144
FloorEgg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Right, but in the context of this article about these wretched enfents terribles, and later when we get to the rationalist termite colony, it's clearly something to chuckle at. Like, the fact that people think this "bifurcation event" idea is real is legitimately funny.

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

#155

Post by shimman »

doctor_blood wrote: post #47

Kriss doesn't touch on the deeper issue of why investors keep giving money to people that openly advertise themselves as con artists.

Have you been paying attention to what has been happening for the last year? Now is the era of con artists: break the law, pay a small vic, and you're free to scam again.

Why wouldn't investors give these people money? It's not like being an investor implies having morales, all they care about is making money whether it's legal or not and luckily for them crime not only pays but it's legal now too.

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

#156

Post by chickensong »

keiferski wrote: post #137
chickensong wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't say I know much about Pittsburgh's culture, but I wonder how it would have held up over decades of insane money being pumped in and wild rent increases? SF has changed a lot over time, but it has a boom town history of being invaded by hustlers looking for money, so I guess that's something. Gay pride has persisted in SF as well, strong pockets of Asian culture, a saucy underground, etc... Tech has definitely left a mark, maybe not physical libraries and concert halls, but Long Now and the Internet Archive are doing good work to preserve culture.

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

#157

Post by samiv »

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…

Nah this isn't right. We also have access to a ton of information even regarding arcane things such as writing x86 boot sequence in real mode or writing boot loaders. More now than ever before.

In fact today on GitHub alone you can find hobbyist OSs that are far far more advanced what Linuses little weekend turd ever was originally.

Their success is not gated by technical aspects.

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

#158

Post by holoduke »

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…

You should go outside of the "web" world. Automotive, medical or heavy industries. You will see that their are plenty of low level developers/engineers our there. Yes even ones born after 2000.

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

#159

Post by socalgal2 »

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…

Has it ever been any different? In school, the majority of kids just wanted to have fun. As one example, in 9th grade I took "yearbook class". This was a long time ago, no idea if they do yearbooks still but I'm old and so this was before desktop publishing, it was 1979. In any case, of 30 kids in the class ~3 of them did all the work. The others couldn't or wouldn't follow the print company's instructions for layout.

Maybe it will be worse now but I kind of feel like the 90% is just more visible than it used to be.

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

#160

Post by TSiege »

jcgrillo wrote: post #154
TSiege wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Right, but in the context of this article about these wretched enfents terribles, and later when we get to the rationalist termite colony, it's clearly something to chuckle at. Like, the fact that people think this "bifurcation event" idea is real is legitimately funny.

I see your point, but I don't think he's being sarcastic in this paragraph. To me this paragraph isn't sarcasm rather he's presently a serious factual recounting of the logic driving AI evangelists that he then undermines by contrasting it with the callousness, messiness, and illogic of the people pushing this narrative. (I too had a good chuckle at the termite description)

But this is veering into lit crit territory, so agree to disagree

Post reply on HN