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Slop Terrifies Me

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Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#191

Post by tuhgdetzhh »

djoldman wrote: post #108

Now that generative AI products are becoming more widely used, it's a little depressing how folks don't seem to view the world with a broad historical context. The "AI effect" on the world has many similarities to previous events and in many ways changes very little about how the world works. > I'm terrified of the good enough to ship—and I'm terrified of nobody else caring. For almost every product/service ever offe…

Historically, every major general-purpose technology followed the same trajectory. Printing reduced the quality of manuscripts while massively increasing access. Industrialization replaced craftsmanship with standardization. Early automobiles were unreliable and dangerous compared to horse-drawn transport, yet they won because they were sufficient and scalable. The internet degraded editorial standards while enabling unprecedented distribution. None of these shifts reversed. They stabilized at a new equilibrium where high quality persisted only in niches where it was economically justified.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#192

Post by snozolli »

chung8123 wrote: post #47

AI slop is similar to the cheap tools at harbor freight. Before we used to have to buy really expensive tools that were designed to last forever and perform a ton of jobs. Now we can just go to harbor freight and get a tool that is good enough for most people. 80% of good maybe reframed as 100% ok for 80% of the people. It is when you are in the minority that cares about or needs that last 20% where it is a problem b…

Before we used to have to buy really expensive tools that were designed to last forever and perform a ton of jobs. Now we can just go to harbor freight and get a tool that is good enough for most people.

This just isn't true. First, cheap tools have always been around. I have a few that I've inherited from my grandfather and great-grandfather. They're junk and I keep them specifically to remind myself that consumer-oriented trash versions of better quality tools have always existed.

Second, Harbor Freight is the only consumer-oriented tool retailer that seems to be consistently improving their product lines. Craftsman, which was the benchmark for quality, consumer-oriented hand tools, dropped off a cliff in terms of quality around the mid- to late-2000s.

If you can afford professional-grade tools (Snap-On, Mac, Wera, Knipex, etc.) great. For the rest of us, Harbor Freight is the only retailer looking out for us. Their American- and Taiwanese-made tools are excellent. Their Chinese-made tools are good. Their Indian-made tools will get the job done, but it won't be pleasant. At least they give the consumer a range of options, unlike Snap-On, which gives you a payment plan.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#193

Post by SkyeCA »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #174
zozbot234 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not if you fed your kid doing it, and now you can't. Which happens all the time anyway. There just aren't that many people for whom being a call center worker is their long-term career, they'll just switch to some other job.

What other jobs? I hate how people just throw that out as a viable path. In a world with ever increasing wealth inequality there is lower velocity of money (lower available cash flow) to enable the creation of jobs. And just pointing to the industrial revolution is not the panacea that you think it is. Past economic/tech revolutions creating new jobs, I have yet to see anyone point to a vast creation of jobs (or at l…

> What other jobs? I hate how people just throw that out as a viable path.

People on HN are extremely privileged and massively out of touch with the average normal person, what's new?

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#194

Post by wtetzner »

bartvk wrote: post #3

I deeply hate the people that use AI to poison the music, video or articles that I consume. However I really feel that it can possibly make software cheaper. A couple of years ago, I worked for an agency as a dev. I had a chat with one of the sales people, and he said clients asked him why custom apps were so expensive, when the hardware had gotten relatively cheap. He had a much harder time selling mobile apps. Poss…

I kinda feel like we're at a point where it would be much more valuable to have higher quality software than more software.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#195

Post by pixl97 »

coldtea wrote: post #170
pixl97 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, wut? The world can produce more things cheaper and faster than ever and this is an economic decline? I think you may have missed the other 6 billion people on the planet getting massive improvements in their quality of life.

> I think you may have missed the other 6 billion people on the planet getting massive improvements in their quality of life. I think you have missed that it's easy to get "massive improvements in your quality of life" if you start from merely-post-revolution-era China or 1950s Africa or colonial India. Much less so if you plateaud as US and Europe, and live off of increased debt ever since the 1970s.

And yet in the US I can currently survive and illness by the means of technology where I would have died in the 70s. It can be really hard to see the forest from the trees when everything around us is rapidly changing technology.

Increased debt is mostly on the good that technology cannot at least yet reproduce. For example they aren't making new land. Taste, NIMBYism and currently laws stop us from increased housing density in a lot of places too. Healthcare is still quite limited by laws in the US and made expensive because of it.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#196

Post by pixl97 »

coldtea wrote: post #172
pixl97 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is all very easy to control. First is you get a particular group of people to work for you. You tell them they are better than all the other poor people out there, that is get them to be nationalistic/racist, etc. You also give them a little bit more than the abjectly poor so they have something they fear to lose. You also let them know if they upset the situation they are in retribution will be swift and br…

So easy to control that most rich people throughout history were murdered by their guards and close helper circle.

"Most rich people that were murdered" is a different statement from "most rich people"

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#197

Post by user____name »

djoldman wrote: post #108

Now that generative AI products are becoming more widely used, it's a little depressing how folks don't seem to view the world with a broad historical context. The "AI effect" on the world has many similarities to previous events and in many ways changes very little about how the world works. > I'm terrified of the good enough to ship—and I'm terrified of nobody else caring. For almost every product/service ever offe…

I feel like there's a false dichotomy here where there's an inverse relationship between quality and cost. I know seen plenty of cheap goods that do what they're supposed to and last forever, and I know plenty of expensive projects, both in purchasing price and development cost that are just steaming piles. So you get all this sloppy jank and say "well but at least it's fast and cheap". I'm not sure that's the argument you should be making, why can't we have high quality cheap things in the first place?

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#198

Post by ghaff »

graemep wrote: post #125
ghaff wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it is probably more part-time but, yes, people who are some definition of rich spend more money on people to do more work for them (cleaning, landscaping, accounting, etc.) Doesn't mean they don't do any of those things--and outsourcing some can be more effort than it's worth--but they don't necessarily cut their own lawn or do car repairs.

If you are rich "outsourcing" is easy because you have people to handle that for you. You have senior servants like butlers and housekeepers who manage the rest of the staff, for example, so you are not directly hiring cleaners. This is the difference between the affluent and the truly rich.

It's fair that's probably the difference. You don't have a full-time personal assistant/butler/whatever you want to call it. But you personally outsource a lot of individual tasks that you don't really want to do.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#200

Post by TaupeRanger »

fragmede wrote: post #82

The creme rises to the top. If someone's shit-coded program hangs and crashes frequently, in this day and age, we don't have to put up. with it any longer. That lazy half-assed feature that everyone knows sucks but we're forced to use it anyway? The competition just vibe coded up a hyper-specific version of that app that doesn't suck for everyone involved. We start looking at who's requiring what. What's an interface…

Right. If the "slop" is truly "90% as good" and that 10% actually matters to people, then they won't use the slop. If the 10% doesn't matter, there's probably a reason for that.
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