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I quit. The clankers won

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Re: I quit. The clankers won

#41

Post by keybored »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

Do you want a Stairmaster with that elevator? Life is for living, ostensibly. This Inevitabilism drone choir[1] may be correct that it will take my current job and after that maybe there will nothing fruitful in that department left. But I can’t imagine a life situation where I’m both surviving and using thinking-with-my-brain as some retirement home pastime/ “brainrot”-preventer.

> Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

Here’s how the rat race looks in the age of AI and how you can stay ahead.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487774

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#42

Post by mday-edamame »

EdgeNRoots wrote: post #36
cyanydeez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure all this AI is built on top of Silicon valley's technobabble of "permanent underclass" which seems to have zero introspection as to why we're just going to accept the feudal overlords of technology. But besides that, it's interesting so many people are willing to tailor their entire workflow and product to indeterminate machines and business culture. I recommend everyone stop using these infernal clou…

I agree on the over-reliance part, but I don’t think it’s AI itself .It’s how people choose to use it. Most people are outsourcing thinking instead of using it to go deeper. The tools aren’t the problem, the default behavior is.

True, but the tools make the default behavior so tempting.

I have a friend who uses Google Maps to find places, then memorizes the route there and closes the app to navigate because he wants to build a better mental map of our city. Meanwhile, I just check the app every five seconds like a dummy, and my hippocampus stays small.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#43

Post by none2585 »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #17

"Generative AI is art. It’s irredeemably shit art; end of conversation." I think most people cannot destinguish between "genuine" creativity and an artificial almalgamation of training data and human provided context. For one, I do not know what already exsists. Some work created by AI may be an obvious rip off of the style of a particular artist, but I wouldnt know. To me it might look awesome and fresh. I think man…

Further I'd argue we KNOW people don't care if you look at the music industry.

Pop music is often composed by dozens of people who specialize in a thin sliver of the track - lyrics, vocals, drums, &c. - and then it's given a pretty face and makes the charts. That's really no different than something like Suno.

I think AI is forcing people who thought that THEIR thing was too nuanced or too complex to be replaced by technology to reckon with what makes them special.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#44

Post by Waterluvian »

Improving developer skills is not valuable to your company. They don't tell a customer how many person-hours of engineering talent improvement their contract is responsible for. They just want a solved problem. Some companies comprehend how short-sighted this is and invest in professional development in one way or another. They want better engineers so that their operations run better. It's an investment and arguably a smart one.

Adoption of AI at a FOMO corporate pace doesn't seem to include this consideration. They largely want your skills to atrophy as you instead beep boop the AI machine to do the job (arguably) faster. I think they're wrong and silly and any time they try to justify it, the words don't reconcile into a rational series of statements. But they're the boss and they can do the thing if they want to. At work I either do what they want in exchange for money or I say no thank you and walk away.

Which led me to the conclusion I'm currently at: I think I'm mostly just mourning the fact that I got to do my hobby as a career for the past 15 years, but that’s ending. I can still code at home.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#46

Post by chii »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #17

"Generative AI is art. It’s irredeemably shit art; end of conversation." I think most people cannot destinguish between "genuine" creativity and an artificial almalgamation of training data and human provided context. For one, I do not know what already exsists. Some work created by AI may be an obvious rip off of the style of a particular artist, but I wouldnt know. To me it might look awesome and fresh. I think man…

most people are just utilitarian and do not care for "art" (in the high art sense).

AI is perfect for that. It reveal, perhaps to the dismay of those who revel in high art, that it might be an illusion that art has genuine creativity, if most people find ai to produce acceptable output.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#47

Post by malwrar »

I do find it hard to tolerate the feeling of being watched online. The second-most trending dataset on huggingface right now is a snapshot of HN updating at a 5 minute interval. It makes me not want to really comment at all, just like how I don’t really publish any software I write anymore.

Turns out it sucks to produce original works when you know that, whereas previously a few people at best might see your work, now it’s a bunch of omniscient robots and maybe half of those original people are using the robots instead.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#48

Post by CoastalCoder »

ramon156 wrote: post #32
bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

I can confidently say that, yes, reading helps a lot. My mental model has shifted a bit that words are cheap (printing -> writing -> typing -> generating) and that we should accept there is something like high quality text. I haven't really been a reader, but I can definitely notice when a book/text is "hard". I'm currently reading the old testament, and I understand very little (even the oxford one that has a lot of…

For the first time in quite a while, I've started reading a challenging, non-computer book ("The New Testament in its World").

I'm trying to decide if my attention span has atrophied, or if I'm just more aware now of my ADD.

Either way, I'm hopeful that my attention span for this kind of reading will grow with practice.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#50

Post by bombcar »

beeflet wrote: post #40
bombcar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

across the street, no? It's also a crime to jog on the railroad tracks.

If it's a crime to jog on railroad tracks, and the avalibility of rail makes it so that everything you need is only accessible by rail, I conclude that rail prevents you from jogging.

I'm sorry for all the people who lived in my original SimCity towns. They must have been nearly spherical.
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