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The Rise of Whatever

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Re: The Rise of Whatever

#481

Post by satyrun »

globnomulous wrote: post #415
Miraltar wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example might be bad but the argument still stands. Painting hasn't disappeared when photography was invented. Drummers still drum after the invention of drum machines.

Music is actually a terrific counterexample to your point. It perfectly demonstrates the culturally and artistically destructive power of the steady march of progress in computer technology -- which really has led to fewer drummers. Far fewer people make their living as musicians than did even thirty years ago, and being a musician is no longer a viable middle-class career. Jaron Lanier, who has written on this, has…

I know the writings of Jaron on this and I think he is mostly wrong.

What he is comparing was a brief time in history that the music industry was at the absolute peak.

We have just gone back to normal that most people can't make money being a musician just like being an actor is not really a viable middle class career option.

Sure, when I graduated high school you could have just made a living in a local rock band because everyone wanted to be in a band to be the next Guns n Roses.

To me, it is like how even Hitler wanted to be a painter because everyone wanted to be a painter at that time. The way everyone wanted to be a rock star when i was a teenager.

Times change and the collective artistic taste change with them. So many musicians are doing better than ever before because of youtube too.

I play the baroque lute and I can tell you that it is much tougher to get a gig in a bar today than it was in 1650 in France.

The best lutenist though are killing it on youtube with Bach videos.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#482

Post by Expurple »

This is a very good description of the modern issues with slop "content" and advertising plaguing everything they touch. (including human-made slop, as the author correctly identifies)

But I disagree on LLMs being "worse than useless".

Sure, "vibe coding" an entire app from a short prompt will always give you fragile, subtly broken nonsense. *Code is the spec*. In most cases, you can't meaningfully "compress" your requirements into a short informal prompt. We need better formal languages for expressing requirements concisely and declaratively! Think: Prolog, Haskell...

LLMs are good at small tasks that you can review much quicker than doing it yourself. Something tedious, like doing some local refactoring, writing ad-hoc Bash scripts, SQL queries, FFmpeg commands. I use Bash and SQL regularly, but somehow I always have to google the exact syntax. I already use ShellCheck, by the way. It's a must, and it helps a lot when reviewing LLM output.

I like the autocomplete feature too. It often saves time when writing repetitive or obvious code. `if bad_stuff {` usually autocompletes `return Err(BadStuff)` for me. `MyStruct {` initializer usually autocompletes the list of fields for me. I know that incorrect suggestions piss off some people and make it a net-negative for them. Incorrect suggestions are common, but they don't bother me in practice.

UPDATE: I've turned this comment into a blog post. https://home.expurple.me/posts/my-take-on-llms-for-coding/

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#483

Post by sfn42 »

eesmith wrote: post #453
sfn42 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. If society no longer needs your job then you need to find something else to do. Doesn't have to be software, we mine other things than coal. We need builders, plumbers, electricians, lots of possibilities. Software dev opportunities won't collapse any time soon, any half decent dev who's tried vibe coding will tell you that much. It's a tool developers can use, it's not a replacement.

If society no longer needs my job, society should help. What's your solution to the miners of West Virginia? https://www.wvva.com/2025/06/25/coal-miners-face-layoffs-fed... "As West Virginians face possible cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, they are also being hit hard in the job market." "“I’m worried for the people that are laid off, and are they going to be able to find another job? You know, are they my age? How are you…

I'd suggest that Mr. Estes find a different mine to work at if he insists on continuing to work in mining. He could also pivot to other industry, safety is a big deal in most industry. I'm sure they would consider him at many locations for similar positions.

I'm not opposed to having programs to help these people, not at all. I'm from Norway where we have free healthcare, education, social security nets etc. I'm all for that stuff, it benefits all of us.

All I'm saying is if new opportunities don't fall into your lap you need to find them yourself.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#484

Post by globnomulous »

satyrun wrote: post #481
globnomulous wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music is actually a terrific counterexample to your point. It perfectly demonstrates the culturally and artistically destructive power of the steady march of progress in computer technology -- which really has led to fewer drummers. Far fewer people make their living as musicians than did even thirty years ago, and being a musician is no longer a viable middle-class career. Jaron Lanier, who has written on this, has…

I know the writings of Jaron on this and I think he is mostly wrong. What he is comparing was a brief time in history that the music industry was at the absolute peak. We have just gone back to normal that most people can't make money being a musician just like being an actor is not really a viable middle class career option. Sure, when I graduated high school you could have just made a living in a local rock band be…

> What he is comparing was a brief time in history that the music industry was at the absolute peak.

Could you provide data defending this claim? Without it, and even with it, all I see in your comment is that you're begging the question or shrugging your shoulders at the data and saying, "so what," not actually or substantively disagreeing with anything Lanier has said or written.

What caused the decline? You seem very sure you know the answer, and yet your answer basically seems to be to stop asking the question or investigating: "music was at its peak, so obviously it declined." If music was at some absolute peak, why was that? "It was at its peak" isn't an answer. It's a restatement of the question.

And can you show me that there were fewer musicians per capita, making less money in adjusted terms, twenty or thirty years earlier?

And do you have any data showing that more than a tiny, miniscule fraction of musicians are doing "better than ever before" thanks specifically to YouTube? "So many" is slippery and frustratingly difficult to quantify in a manner that lets me evaluate its accuracy.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#485

Post by sfn42 »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #409
sfn42 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in a dead town with no opportunities then you either make your own opportunities or you move to a place with opportunities. If you just sit on your hands complaining about the lack of opportunities then you won't get any sympathy from me. People aren't entitled to live wherever they want, humanity's entire thing is adaptability. So adapt. Life is what you make it.

When I say 'place' that includes entire countries . Adapting then depends on the kindness of strangers towards foreign refugees. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future something like "Adapt. Life is what you make it" could be read in big bold letters above the entrance of a place like Alligator Alcatraz.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm not referring to Palestinians, Ukrainians or Syrians etc here. I support refugee programs but I also acknowledge that we have limited resources. We can't help everyone. We can't just open the borders and let everyone in.

I hadn't heard about alligator Alcatraz until now, I'm not American so I don't keep up with all of Trump's shenanigans. I feel compelled to make it clear that I in no way support Trump. The fact that the US has elected that clown not once but twice is frankly embarrassing.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#486

Post by sfn42 »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #470
sfn42 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of rural areas with plenty of opportunities. Cities are not the only option. If I lived in a dead mining town I'd move elsewhere. You can blame corporations or whatever you want, doesn't matter whose fault it is. Complaining and blaming doesn't solve anything. Finding solutions does. Stop complaining, start finding solutions. I grew up in a beautiful rural place. I'd like to live there, but what I like…

And that is extremely difficult at a large scale. Especially when you reduce safety nets and heighten the consequences of failure. A lack of healthcare, poor rural hospitals, extortionate tuition at colleges, high housing costs; these all make it extremely difficult to adapt. Sure, you can smugly say that the hard-working will survive. But i don't want to imagine what the USA will be like millions of unemployed and u…

I'm not talking about large scale. I'm also not talking about politics, which I assume is what you're implying re my motives. I don't have any motives, I'm not even American. I don't really care about all the crazy stuff happening over there. They got what they voted for, meanwhile the world is wondering how they elected that clown not once but twice.

The ironic thing in all this is that these rural people you're talking about are probably the exact people responsible for electing him. Evokes images of leopards eating faces and such.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#487

Post by eesmith »

sfn42 wrote: post #380
eesmith wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rarely. I feel lost when I use GPS to get places. Alec Watson of Technology Connections points out that GPS routing defaults to minimizing time, even when that may not the most logical way to get somewhere. His commentary, which starts at https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA?t=1804 , is an example of his larger argument about the complacency of letting automation do things for you. His example is a Google Maps routing which…

If you drive into a lake or anything like that it's your own fault not the GPS. It doesn't control the car it just tells you directions. And if you know the area well enough to make judgements like the other things you mentioned, you don't need gps. Gps is specifically for when you don't know where to go. I use it all the time, pretty much zero issues.

I view this thread as part of bryanrasmussen comment "I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time" with zpeti pointing out that people use a GPS despite how it gets the route sometimes.

I don't know how to respond to your comment in that context.

Do you double-check your calculator all the time, to ensure it's not giving you the wrong answer?

As to Alec Watson's commentary about GPS, how do you know the area well enough to make judgements if you always follow the GPS routing which avoids the neighborhood?

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#488

Post by Revisional_Sin »

prmph wrote: post #366
marcus_holmes wrote: post #194

I think I share the conclusion, but coming at it from the other side. The point of doing things is the act of doing them, not the result. And if we make the result easily obtainable by using an LLM then this gets reinforced not destroyed. I'm going to use sketching as an example, because it's something I enjoy but am very bad at. But you could talk in the same way about playing a musical instrument, writing code, wri…

Are you not contradicting yourself? If the point of doing things is the doing itself, not the result, then how is it meaningful to just issue a low-effort prompt for the AI to do it?

They are saying that the option to make AI art, but not doing so, helped to clarify their purpose for making art.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#489

Post by lubujackson »

dwedge wrote: post #152

It's probably just me but I really struggle to read this whiney tone that became common around ten years ago. It's not about the subject matter itself, it's about the jokes that are always sad somehow, the font choice, the tone of the language. Some kind of perpetual-victim style of writing.

I agree, it's immature, repetitive, polemic and dismissive. Not that it doesn't capture a popular mindset or make a decent point, but it does so without clarity or persuasion. Then again, it's just a blog post.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#490

Post by sfn42 »

eesmith wrote: post #487
sfn42 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drive into a lake or anything like that it's your own fault not the GPS. It doesn't control the car it just tells you directions. And if you know the area well enough to make judgements like the other things you mentioned, you don't need gps. Gps is specifically for when you don't know where to go. I use it all the time, pretty much zero issues.

I view this thread as part of bryanrasmussen comment "I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time" with zpeti pointing out that people use a GPS despite how it gets the route sometimes. I don't know how to respond to your comment in that context. Do you double-check your calculator all the time, to ensure it's not giving you the wrong answer? As to Alec Watson's commentary about GPS,…

I don't generally keep the entire thread in mind when reading and responding to comments.

If I spend a lot of time in an area I learn it and don't need gps to navigate it, however I might use gps just to find specific addresses as I don't usually memorize every street name. I also usually find that Google maps chooses perfectly sensible routes anyway, I don't see much point in trying to second guess it. Oh maybe I can save a minute or two or save a few kilometers by avoiding a highway, honestly who cares? I certainly don't. It will usually offer multiple route alternatives anyway, your ideal route or something close to it is probably among them.

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