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This time is different

shkspr.mobi

251–260 of 400 posts

Re: This time is different

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My empirical experience is that people with ADHD are more vulnerable to get addicted to LLMs due to the feeling of instant gratification. But when PRs take ages and 3 different people are reviewing, you are just making prompting a group effort. If you think meetings are a time waste multiplier you should watch LLM PRs. For that reason, and my own experience with AI users being unaware of how bad of a job the LLM is d…

I "pray" that you'll learn how work in an inclusive and non-toxic work environment. What did I say? I lean on LLMs because I can't get help without being subjected to unnecessary degradation. And what do you and others do? You immediately prove my point by saying things that amount to unnecessary degradation.

I have many friends and loved ones with ADHD. It's very common in the IT industry, and probably >50% of people in the hacker spaces I frequent are neurodivergent in some way.

What I wrote is my empirical experience, but also what friends and loved ones tell me. I have friends with ADHD who have gone through the exact "wow I'm getting a lot done" -> "wow this is actually wasting a lot of time in hindsight" thing I described. If you think others lived experience is degrading to you it may be hitting a sore spot. What if I had ADHD? My friends with ADHD have the same opinion. Would you then say you were degraded by another person with ADHD that were offering their lived experience?

Maybe we live in very different countries but help has been good for everyone I know who got it. More want it the problem is money. You basically have to be suicidal to get public help, and private costs a fortune. It is a psychologists whole job to use their knowledge to help you self reflect and then act on it. It is uncomfortable, and I can understand why you may experience it as degrading. I don't know about the kind of help you've tried, though.

I hope you get the help you want.

Re: This time is different

#252
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless you consider Frankenstein part of the hype cycle It absolutely is. Frankenstein is a seminal work of science-fiction horror, and the mysterious power of electricity to change everything is what made it so chilling to its readers in the 19th century. > it really doesn’t compare to how much people hyped social media The media is considerably different now from in 1818, thanks, in significant part, to the power…

> It absolutely is. It was published as Fiction. The vast majority of people didn’t think it was anymore realistic than Interstellar etc. There’s plenty of stories where we cure cancer, but the 50% improvement in cancer treatments over the last 40 years just doesn’t get much hype because it’s so slow. It’s hard to get excited about the idea cancer may be gone in 200 years because while that will be awesome for people…

The electrical telegraph was integral to the growth and consolidation of the British Empire. Britain acquired more colonies and held on to them for longer than the other European powers partly due to its naval might, but also due to far superior bureaucratic and communications technology.

Re: This time is different

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is smuggling this in. The debate is over. It's transformative. We're in the midst of transformation.

It's really not over. Somebody has to actually put something into production with it first.

No, it is over. Compare today to even two years ago.

Re: This time is different

#254
No; the shift to AI seems to me like the shift to smartphones. Sure, not the only tool, but very significant and affecting everyday life. Unlike Stadia, 3d tv, or other examples listed in the article.

Re: This time is different

#255
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you know they are nearly perfect?

The unit tests written by the LLM all pass!

When I asked it if the tests correct it responded absolutely yes sir !

The tests were so good they all passed before the code was fully finished and during huge refactoring they've never failed !

Re: This time is different

#256

I’m doing enterprise coding tasks that used to take a month of whole team coordination from mockups to through development and testing in 3 days now. It’s all test driven development, codex 5.3 and a small team of two people who know how to hold it right orchestrating the agents. There’s no reason not to work this way. The sociotechnical engineering aspects of this change are fascinating and rewarding to solve.

[flagged]

I'm thankful that you're securing the job of many consultant/troubleshooting type devs in the near future. Good work

Re: This time is different

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and despite every single one of these world-changing inventions, people in rich countries still go to work every day, even though UBI is generally not a thing. People claim AI will eliminate large numbers of jobs. Maybe it will, just like the tractor did. But new jobs are created. I would never have guessed that “influencer” would be a thing! This current “AI will destroy all the jobs and make most people useles…

Ex historian here, now engineer. I would gently suggest you’re underestimating the magnitude of some of the transformations wrought by the technologies that OP mentioned for the people that lived through them. Particularly for the steam engine and the broader Industrial Revolution around 1800: not for nothing have historians called that the greatest transformation in human life recorded in written documents. If you t…

Another interesting thing about the steam engine is much of science in the 1800s was dedicated to figuring out how steam engines actually worked to improve their efficiency. That may be similar for AI, or it may not!

Re: This time is different

#258
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thoughts. Selective whinging indeed. Also meta-platitude whinging like > The ideology of "winner takes all" is unsustainable and not supported by reality. Sometimes the winner deserves to win, AND that's a good thing even at scale. It kindof depends.

The winner that deserved to win might turn into the complacent monopoly pf tomorrow. It might vow to Not Be Evil for a while, but the investors will demand that it does whatever it takes to grow.

Enshittification usually means you are right over time. It still kindof depends.

To be fair, I also dislike abstract platitudes that are overly optimistic as I think you might be.

"Diversity is our strength"?? I mean, I guess diversity of _opinion_ is desirable to a point so we get all the ideas on the table. But not at the sacrifice of unity and shared goals. Unity is our strength. Discord and wasteful politicking are our undoing.

Re: This time is different

#259
This time is different. That’s why we are even discussing it.

The problem is that this time is 20% different, not the 80% people are implying it is. So the same things that killed it last time will kill it again, unless that 20% has gotten us up some stairstep we got stuck on last time. But then the next thing will get us and we will go back to a new and improved version of the old thing.

Re: This time is different

#260
post #65
post #19

By the looks of it, 2026 might be the year where reality and fiction will finally collide with AI and we'll be able to see if all the hype was warranted. But like all the previous hype, most of the people that were the loudest won't say they were wrong, and they'll move to the next thing, pretending like they never were the one that portrayed AI as the holy Graal.

There are all sorts of algorithms in use that were once thought of as AI, but transitioned to being mere algorithms well before they entered public awareness, if they did that at all. Some are still useful and used everywhere, but they have never been thought of as AI by the public. For them, AI is a term that has long been reserved for some far-off, sci-fi future. LLM's are not artificial general intelligence (i.e.…

Are you saying "algorithm" as a funny way to say things deemed "dumb" or algorithm as in any turing system?

Do you think ai can never even conceptually become equivalent to a human or merely that the current crop is not there yet?

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