This is not the future • Hacker News Board

Re: This is not the future

#361

Post by gilbetron » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

alwa wrote: post #285

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A practical formula: 1) Identify coordination failures that lock us into bad equilibria, e.g. it's impossible to defect from the online ads model without losing access to a valuable social graph 2) Look for leverage that rewrites the payoffs for a coalition rather than for one individual: right-to-repair laws, open protocols, interoperable standards, fiduciary duty, reputation systems, etc. 3) Accept that heroic non-…

As a recent example, Jon Haidt seems to have used this kind of tactic to pull off a coup with the whole kids/smartphones/social media thing [0]. Everybody knew social media tech was corrosive and soul-rotting, but nobody could move individually to stand up against its “inevitability.” Individual families felt like, if they took away or postponed their kids’ phones, their kid would be left out and ostracized—which was…

He didn't cause that, he is just riding the wave. The call to ban them has been going on for years, it was just put on pause during the pandemic.

Re: This is not the future

#362

Post by lbrito » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:31 PM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #119

I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously. However tech people who thinks AI is bad, or not inevitable is really hard to understand. It’s almost like Bill Gates saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being…

>saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being against the internet, industrialization, print press or mobile phones.

All of those things had positive as well as negative consequences. It's not entirely unreasonable to argument against any of those, at least in part.

Re: This is not the future

#363

Post by kazinator » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:36 PM UTC

There is a possibly less harmful trend now than internet-connected beds: electrically grounded beds and bedding. There is a whole quackery around some alleged benefits of being electrically grounded while you sleep. LOL!

Re: This is not the future

#364

Post by aldousd666 » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:40 PM UTC

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #158

rmah wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement "Game theory is inevitable. Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives." implies that the "actors" are humans. But that's not what game theory assumes. Game theory just provides a mathematical framework to analyze outcomes of decisions when parts of the system have different goals. Game theory does not claim to predict human behavior (humans make mistakes,…

A practical formula: 1) Identify coordination failures that lock us into bad equilibria, e.g. it's impossible to defect from the online ads model without losing access to a valuable social graph 2) Look for leverage that rewrites the payoffs for a coalition rather than for one individual: right-to-repair laws, open protocols, interoperable standards, fiduciary duty, reputation systems, etc. 3) Accept that heroic non-…

'defect' only applies to prisoners dilemma type problems. that is just one, very limited class of problem, and I would argue not very relevant to discussing AI inevitability.

Re: This is not the future

#365

Post by kazinator » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:41 PM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #119

I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously. However tech people who thinks AI is bad, or not inevitable is really hard to understand. It’s almost like Bill Gates saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being…

> Does it matter?

Yes. The work of art should require skills that took years to hone, and innate talent. If it was produced without such, it is a fraud; I've been deceived.

But in fact I was not deceived in that sense, because the work is based on talent and skill: that of numerous unnamed, unattributed people.

It is simply a low-effort plagiarism, presented as an original work.

Re: This is not the future

#366

Post by cameldrv » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #38

I think a more accurate and more useful framing is: Game theory is inevitable . Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives. The specific examples called out here may or may not be inevitable. It's true that the future is unknowable, but it's also true that the future is made up of 8B+ independent actors and that they're going to react to incentives. It's also true that y…

Yes it's one thing to say that game theory is inevitable, but defection is not inevitable. In fact, if you consider all levels of the organization of life, from multicellularity to large organisms, to families, corporations, towns, nations, etc, it all exists because entities figured out how to cooperate and prevent defection.

If you want to fix these things, you need to come up with a way to change the nature of the game.

Re: This is not the future

#367

Post by underlipton » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:50 PM UTC

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #119

I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously. However tech people who thinks AI is bad, or not inevitable is really hard to understand. It’s almost like Bill Gates saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being…

Contemporary AI is bad in the same way a Walther P.38 is bad: it's a tool designed by an objectively, ontologically evil force specifically for their evil ends. We live in a world where there are no hunting rifles, no pea-shooters for little old women to protect themselves, no sport pistols. Just the AI equivalent or a weapon built for easy murder by people whose express end is taking over the world.

...Okay, now maybe take that and dial it back a few notches of hyperbole, and you'll have a reasonable explanation for why people have issues with AI as it currently exists. People are not wrong to recognize that, just because some people use AI for benign reasons, the people and companies that have formed a cartel for the tech mainly see those benign reasons as incidental to becoming middle men in every single business and personal computing task.

Of course, there is certainly a potential future where this is not the case, and AI is truly a prosocial, democratizing technology. But we're not there, and will have a hard time getting there with Zuckerburg, Altman, Nadella, and Musk at the helm.

Re: This is not the future

#368

Post by jrowen » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:50 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #315

jrowen wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billboards and other such ads, which were once commonplace are now solely the domain of ambulance chasing lawyers and car dealerships. TV ads are no better, production value has tanked, they look cheaper and shittier than ever, and the products are solely geared to the boomers because they're the only ones still watching broadcast TV. This actually strikes me as a good thing. The more we can get big dumb ads out of…

> This actually strikes me as a good thing. The more we can get big dumb ads out of meatspace and confine everything to devices, the better, in my opinion (though once they figure out targeted ads in public that could suck). I mean the issue is the billboards aren't going away, they're just costing less and less which means you get ads for shittier products (see aforementioned lawyers, reverse mortgages and other fin…

> If they were getting taken down I'd heartily agree with you.

At some point it won't be worth it to maintain them, hopefully.

> I still largely get the experience that after I buy a toilet seat for example on Amazon, Amazon then regularly shows me ads for additional toilet seats, as though I've taken up throne collecting as a hobby or something.

This is definitely a thing, I feel like it's getting better though and stuff like that drops off pretty quickly. But it still doesn't bother me nearly as much as watching the same 30 second TV commercial for the 100th time, I just swipe or scroll past, and overall it's still much better than seeing the lowest common denominator stuff.

> I mean, I personally loathe the way my attention is constantly being redirected, or attempted to be, by loud inane bullshit. I tolerate it, of course, what other option does one have, but I certainly wouldn't call it a good or healthy thing. I think our society would leap forward 20 years if we pushed the entirety of ad-tech into the ocean.

I hear you, the attention economy is a brave new world, and there will probably be some course corrections. I don't think ads are really the problem though, in some ways everything vying for your attention is an ad now. Through technology we democratized the means of information distribution, and I would rather have it this way than having four TV channels, but there are some growing pains for sure.

Re: This is not the future

#369

Post by ajkjk » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 7:55 PM UTC

wiether wrote: post #355

ajkjk wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those statistics really gloss over / erase the vast cultural changes that have occurred. america / the west / society's relationship to fast food and obesity is dramatically different than it was thirty years ago.

I'm genuinely curious about the changes you are talking about? Keep in mind, thirty years ago, I was a kid. I thought that fast food was awesome. My parents would allow me a fast food meal at best once a month, and my "privileged" friends had a fast food meal a week. Now, I'd rather starve than eat something coming from a fast food. But around me, normies at eating at least once a day from a fast food. We have at lea…

In the interim America got obsessed with fitness and being out of shape much less obese became dramatically less popular in the middle / upper class.

Like now it's possible to go days in some cities without seeing a single obese person. It's still a big problem. Outside of the cities and in lower class areas, but... I think the changes are trickling down / propagating? That's been my impression at least.

Surprised by your take on fast food, by the way. When I complain about fast food like was ubiquitous in the 90s I think of McDonald's and other highly processed things. The type that are covered in salt and cheap oil and artifical smells and where the meat is like reconstituted garbage, where lunch is 1500 calories, where everyone gets a giant soda, where kids are enticed with cheap plastic crap.

But a corner kebab or taco place seems like an unequivocal positive for society, I have no complaints about their existence at all. I feel like most people eating at corner shops for half of their meals is pretty much ideal--if it's affordable to do so then it is a very sensible and economically positive division of labor. On the condition that the food be of decent quality, of course. Which sometimes it is. Perhaps not as much as it should be though, but people do have standards and will pick the better places.

Re: This is not the future

#370

Post by mat_b » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 8:01 PM UTC

chaseadam17 wrote: post #266

mat_b wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't the real levees though. The system we live in is. Yes, a few people will push back and try to change the momentum to a different direction but that's painful and we have enough going on each day that most people don't have time for that (let alone agree on the direction). Structural change is the only real way to guide the river.

How does structural change happen in a democracy?

I get your point. I'm merely pointing out that some things, even though they aren't technically inevitable, are (in practice) essentially inevitable because larger forces are pushing things in that direction.