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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#351

Post by Arisaka1 »

y-curious wrote: post #215
wzdd wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, but there is a reason he was (best known as) a comedy writer and not, for example, a sociologist. Trotting this out adds nothing to the conversation and just comes across as vaguely ageist.

Call it ageist, but this aligns with the conversation about "it" at my job. The cutoff is around 42, but there is a significant split by age group of engineers on the value of "it".

I don't think it has to do with age but more than active years of work experience in the field. There is some strong correlation but, I'm 44 and with 3 years of experience I have integrated AI tools in my workflow because they're just tools right now and it would be silly not to leverage it.

Re: Bored of It

#352

Post by spencerflem »

mapt wrote: post #329
eMPee584 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart. Exactly, it all starts to fall apart when common sense is applied - it's just that we've become horribly dependent, many even addicted to the dehumanizing grind of our beloved competition economy.. The immanent rise of autonomous machines is the sudden emergency exit from capitalism we (or rather: some of us) have been rooting for..…

> The immanent rise of autonomous machines is the sudden emergency exit from capitalism we (or rather: some of us) have been rooting for.. IF we can convince the people of this planet that a non-commercial post-scarcity open-access open-source commons economy is a more hopeful trajectory into the long future.. Let's not give up on this one yet. Or, it's an invitation to plug us into the Entertainment-Marketting-Hyper…

Yea, I think this is more likely the case for AI as we have it now or will have it, imo.

If somehow AI is better than all humans at everything idk if we get communism or what but I don't think I can really think about it but it sounds meaningless and bad and not going to happen anyways.

Re: Bored of It

#353

Post by yapyap »

terhechte wrote: post #71

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the na…

well i dont know who in the world Douglas is, probably some geriatric weirdo but he is completely wrong.

am in the second group and ur comment just feels like ragebait, sure there are enough “hip and trendy” teenagers to twenty, thirty something people who like influence more than technology and are on their “vibe code” grind and idk, fucking their AI every night with their claude wrapped fleshlight but I for one am not one of them.

Re: Bored of It

#354

Post by lolinder »

mdp2021 wrote: post #265
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are you sure that would be the poster's attempt. What do you suspect he is attempting to do?

There is a chance he is just seeing whether discussing brings some benefit - as he likes to say. Which is a good thing. Better than the opposite.

There's no discussion happening, though! They're just repeating themselves over and over and ignoring the contents of any replies.

Re: Bored of It

#355

Post by layer8 »

thih9 wrote: post #70

> You know what I’m talking about, even though I’ve not mentioned it. Many comments here assume the "it" means AI. Is that certain though? As in: is there a line that without doubt would point to AI? In my view this text could just as well be about the iPhone (written 15 years ago and published today). Perhaps this makes "it" even more boring; i.e. that when the process ends with one "it", it starts again with a new…

“A decommissioned nuclear power station required to power it.”

“Not to mention millions of gallons of water required to cool it.”

Pretty sure that isn’t an iPhone. ;)

Re: Bored of It

#356

Post by brodouevencode »

lapcat wrote: post #168

Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the submission, the quality and utility of it is very low, so it's unfortunate that the submission has reached #1 on HN. I suspect the brevity of the submission has made it easy comment fodder.

This seems to happen with increasing frequency on HN these days.

Re: Bored of It

#358

Post by spencerflem »

mapt wrote: post #340
ElevenLathe wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to go along with this hypothesis. So first step is to end capitalism, then we can see if we still hate ads?

You don't need to "First, we end capitalism" to recognize a problem that has already gone out of bounds and promises to go further. Hawaii bans billboards, and has, since 1927. Look into that. They manage to do so without some kind of slippery slope that ends in authoritarian oppression, or some kind of guillotine wielding anti-corporate mob. There are lots of ways to limit the harm without trying to completely erase…

I agree we should do all that right now- but I will say a huge number of problems in our society right now are caused by a prioritization of profit over social stability which is inherent to capitalism.

One thing that convinced me is that we don't need to get rid of markets even- just make it so that its not a extremely small pool of unelected shareholders making all the major decisions affecting our lives.

Re: Bored of It

#359

Post by 9rx »

skydhash wrote: post #304
9rx wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble right now, in the context of engineering, is that it is terribly difficult to get AI to produce something you can be confident in. We've been burned by the human junior engineer who produces something that gets things done in the present, but two-three years down the line becomes a nightmare liability, and AI is now that same junior engineer. It is too early to tell if what AI produces will also become th…

How much time do we need? Industrial invention used to be judged by actual usefulness. If we take space exploration as an example, at every stage, we have actual usefulness for what the technology so far was able to accomplish. Same with computing. But now we're two years after the first release to the general public of LLMs and no one can provide an actual, reliable use case for it. Instead, it's mostly about destro…

> How much time do we need?

A few years will start to show if what AI is producing is a lability, or if it is just fine, methinks. If you haven't felt any pains from its legacy cruft by that point, it isn't apt to magically appear a long way down the line.

> If we take space exploration as an example, at every stage, we have actual usefulness for what the technology so far was able to accomplish.

When Archytas propelled a wooden bird with steam, the first recognized step towards building the rockets that got us to space, what usefulness was found in that?

It offered a basic foundation on which we were able to consider other solutions and the concept in general. But couldn't you say that is, at very least, where we are at with LLMs right now too?

Re: Bored of It

#360

Post by mapt »

zellyn wrote: post #278
lurk2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tactic literally hypnotizes you into dropping all your money on an arbitrary good or service. It is isomorphic to somebody mugging you. I like the quote and despise advertising of any kind for mostly the same reason, but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart. > The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfec…

This is a good point. You could equally well argue that the spherical cow “ideal” 100% marketing shows you exactly the right product right as you need it. And then shuts the hell up!

Ideal for whom?
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