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Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#41

Post by intended »

No one has a clear idea about what’s going on, especially with AI. I’ve spoken to a glut of people at this point, consumed months of content from leaders to influencers and used it myself.

Currently Singularity fears, AI factories, Vibe coding productivity are super positioned with unthinking hallucinations, vibe disasters, ghost productivity and cognitive debt.

“Nothing changes in my life if GenAI disappears tomorrow” coexists with “I’m wildly productive and having the best time of my life.”

I’ve heard of negative productive gains, 15% faster search times, to 2x productivity and an increase in new project starts.

I think the bull case for AI is wrong, and I have not yet seen a process that will work with the quality and process control expected of assembly lines.

You hear hints of it, or major headlines, which don’t pan out.

Recently LLMs were used to generate financial models, and they looked like they worked.

Except they got the historical wrong and made mistakes humans would not.

Many claims do not survive scrutiny. Except for the new project starts.

The best analogy I can share for this moment is to talk about sketching or pottery.

AI gets a master, with the right workflow, to a rough sketch or rough state quickly.

Then the master has enough experience and skill to know if the foundations are solid, and what to discard to get to a final working vase.

Something that can actually hold water, doesn’t have holes in the back or a stem which is blocked, or is made of paper.

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#42

Post by pendenthistory »

patrickk wrote: post #25
pendenthistory wrote: post #13

My biggest problem right now is thanks to Claude I'm making much faster progress on my passion project and I'm working in a maniac state almost, but then I remind myself that it's probably meaningless because if things progress as they have, anyone can just copy what I've built, and if we get to AGI all bets are off anyway. Balancing these two moods is tough. Lots of sleepless nights lately. Thankfully I have a large…

In a similar boat. I’m running “ClaudClaw” a clone of Openclaw to enforce discipline in my limited free time to get an AI agency off the ground, in order to try to escape the miserable corporate grind. On the one hand, it’s a massive productivity boost, on the other hand, this tech is going to further hollow out the middle class everywhere and make so many people redundant. I don’t have the luxury to simply quit and…

Leaving your job has a different sense of finality now. When time comes to look for a new job, will the job even exist anymore? Makes the risk calculus a bit different. Maybe there won't be mass unemployment, but even a modest increase in SWE unemployment could make it so much harder and more stressful to find a job.

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#43

Post by intended »

I’m deep into nihilistic territory myself, but here’s one neat trick to turn nihilism on itself!

Jokes aside, the fact is that humanity will always find ways to disappoint you.

So the moment you completely give up hope, humanity will find a way to prove your doomsaying wrong.

For AI and policy, the questions I found that was useful to ask smart people is “what are you sure of / 100% confident about.” If it’s people who have a tendency to not be taken away by hype you can add “confident about In a practical, ‘I am betting money on this’ way“.

Hopefully that helps extract signal from noise for you.

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#46

Post by 2-to-15 »

ManlyBread wrote: post #7

>AI I'm apathetic. It's there, it's a tool. >international conflicts I am fortunate enough to not live in the countries mentioned. I am close to Ukraine so this one is sort-of important to me in terms that I don't want Russia to win, but at the same time there's no point in following the news closely. If something big happens I will most definitively hear about it whether I'd like it or not. >The US / Europe Nothing…

There's been a couple of posts recently that have been great and I apologize about not having links, but one was about talking to strangers and the other was about helping others. For me, it's amazing how helping someone out or taking with a stranger can revitalize my look on life and everything going on in the world. It reminds me that there's good in this life and the world.

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#47

Post by m4tthumphrey »

boyter wrote: post #8
ManlyBread wrote: post #7

>AI I'm apathetic. It's there, it's a tool. >international conflicts I am fortunate enough to not live in the countries mentioned. I am close to Ukraine so this one is sort-of important to me in terms that I don't want Russia to win, but at the same time there's no point in following the news closely. If something big happens I will most definitively hear about it whether I'd like it or not. >The US / Europe Nothing…

All of the above. Stop reading the news. It makes you depressed or angry. Go hiking. Walk on the beach. Play with a dog or your children. Climb a tree. Leave the slave slab phone at home, or delete every news and social app. Do not browse the web. Take a book and read. It will be hard at first. Then it gets easier. Best thing I ever did. Reminder. What passes for news today wouldn’t have registered for most people 10…

> Reminder. What passes for news today wouldn’t have registered for most people 100 years ago.

This is a great point.

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#48

Post by muzani »

A lot of people predicted all this. Check out Ray Dalio's analysis.

Empires rise because of resourcefulness, education, good work ethic and humanity, effective resource allocation (low corruption), high productivity. There's a snowball effect here. These countries become stable. Stability turns them into financial centers.

Then they get rich. There is no work ethic - cultural values reward consumption and not working, which tends to lead into things like colonization and slavery. The wealth gap increases. Wars overextend and become more cost than income.

To catch up with lowering productivity and the habit of war for wealth, there's more debts. They hit a point where it's not possible to pay debts, so printing money becomes excessive. Excessive printing causes them to be dropped as a reserve currency. The wealth gap causes internal conflict. There's more gatekeeping. Castes grow stronger (in modern times, it could be ivy league degrees, gender, and skin color).

All these conflicts and problems end up with weak leaders taking advantage of the situation. Eventually, it ends up in civil war or revolution/reformation.

That's the pattern of rise and decline. It's not chaotic but rather quite predictable.

Instability and poverty is the norm globally; the average person does not have disposable income. While Americans can afford to buy a car with cash lol. It's the US falling to the situation where they're similar to the rest of world. And place like China which are starting to feel things like disposable income and 40-hour work weeks.

I guess just adjust your expectations. The mismatch hurts sanity.

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#49

Post by iso1631 »

I assume previous generations had similar feelings with the looming threat of nuclear annihilation for 30 years. I came of age in that wonderful time between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. It feels that was an unusual period of time without major threat - however still had the messes of the balkans, terrorists blowing up kids in my home town,

A couple of wise words. One from decades ago:

Que será, será Whatever will be, will be The future's not ours to see Que será, será What will be, will be

And of course one from more recent times

Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old-- and when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders

Re: Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?

#50

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

It’s a long story, for other venues. I participate in an organization dedicated to personal development, and helping others.

Gives me a purpose, and a framework for life.

Acceptance is a pretty key Principle for me. There’s only so much I can actually affect, so I’m best off, dedicating my focus where it will actually get something done.

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