The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing • Hacker News Board

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#641

Post by impjohn » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

Yokohiii wrote: post #319

DavidPiper wrote: post #89

I've just started a new role as a senior SWE after 5 months off. I've been using Claude a bit in my time off; it works really well. But now that I've started using it professionally, I keep running into a specific problem: I have nothing to hold onto in my own mind. How this plays out: I use Claude to write some moderately complex code and raise a PR. Someone asks me to change something. I look at the review and thin…

This is my primary personal concern. I think it could be an silent psychological landmine going off way too late (sic). In a living codebase you spent long stretches to learn how it works. It's like reading a book that doesn't match your taste, but you eventually need to understand and edit it, so you push through. That process is extremely valuable, you will get familiar with the codebase, you map it out in your hea…

I believe it's ultimately a tug of war between what the business wants (more features, faster, etc) and the engineers want (maintainability, documentation, scalable patterns etc). Engineers rarely win this tug of war. At times it feels like watching a car crash in slow motion. I don't think this trend will meaningfully slow or change, until businesses interests are hit. That may take a while for this cruft to start causing pain. Even then, you may just throw money at the problem, or just live with it. Will companies go bankrupt because of vibe coding? I don't think so, and that's why ai coding is here to stay. My 2 cents

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#642

Post by thepasch » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #625

thepasch wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then you also need to explain how they will be able to develop the skills to analyze and “run more thorough verification” INDEPENDENTLY of LLMs I’m sure the students will manage. This is the exact same discussion we’ve all been through before, during the rise of Wikipedia, just wearing a new hat. The answer is “vet your sources, don’t trust unsourced claims.” The way they’ll develop the skills is the same way aspir…

> The answer is “vet your sources, don’t trust unsourced claims.” This was already a problem for Wikipedia (articles being written which upon further investigation were based on nothing but Wikipedia itself). With LLM themselves facilitating AI slop and plagiarism, this problem gets to a scale that it becomes impossible to control. > I’m sure the students will manage. The problem with your hubris is that you are not…

I have yet to see a single substantive argument from you that isn’t some sort of paraphrase for “this is definitely going to blow up because the article says so and I agree”. Three times now you’ve asked me to provide you with a detailed pitch deck contains every single solution for every single problem while offering absolutely nothing yourself that couldn’t just as well have come from an LLM for how much meaningful content it had.

I’ll get back to you as soon as you make an actual point that’s based in some sort of precedent, some sort of data.

Basically, stop indignantly demanding that I contribute and start doing it yourself. I’m tired of having to spell the same thing out for you in entire paragraphs over and over only to have you refuse to even make an attempt at comprehension, cherry pick two lines, and proceed to add absolutely nothing substantial.

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#643

Post by vinceguidry » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

xnzakg wrote: post #525

vinceguidry wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using ChatGPT to re-bootstrap my coding hobby. After the initial honeymoon wore off, I realized I was staring down the barrel of a dilemma. If I use AI to "just handle" the parts of the system I don't want to understand, I invariably end up in a situation where I gotta throw a whole bunch of work out. But I can't supervise without an understanding of what it's supposed to be doing, and if I knew what it was…

I suppose using an LLM-powered autocomplete might be something for you then? Then you can be writing the code, with the LLM doing the "boring" parts, in chunks small enough you can review them on the fly.

It might get there. I could never use VSCode or similar, I want my own editor.

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#644

Post by vinceguidry » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

foobarchu wrote: post #469

vinceguidry wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there for that war. Kids weren't listening and didn't care back then either. If anything, Gen Z is the most politically-aware generation we've had since we started keeping track. Trump doesn't have to justify a single thing because the billionaires behind him know that every last bet is off and their very livelihoods are at risk, and his entire base of support up and down the chain are either complicit or foole…

I was there as well, the bush presidency lasted my entire middle and high school career, and I got the chance to vote for Obama in my senior year. I remember things very differently. Everyone cared about the Iraq war, gay-straight alliance was one of the most up and coming clubs, and political music was everywhere. Green Day had their big second wave with American Idiot, System Of A Down was on top of the world, Rock…

I mean, yeah, we made music and staged protests.

Gen Z is conducting revolutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nepalese_Gen_Z_protests

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#645

Post by thepasch » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #575

thepasch wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn’t true, a car mechanic never evolves into an engineer, a nurse never evolve into a doctor. “Doesn’t generally happen” =/= “is literally impossible”. The word “never” should be used with care. > A car mechanic can learn to do some tasks you normally need an engineer for and same with nurses This statement can only make sense if you regard titles as something that’s imbued upon you, and until it is, you are…

You didn't read my closing statement: > There are maybe some exceptions to this, but those exceptions are so rare that it doesn't matter for this discussion. A few people still learning it properly wont save anything. It is fine it was stupid of me to not go and fix the "never" earlier but instead corrected it at the end of my post. You are right it would be very dumb if you thought people never ever could make such…

> It is fine it was stupid of me to not go and fix the “never” earlier but instead corrected it at the end of my post.

It did cause me to misread its point. The correction at the end read more like “sometimes a nurse can do some doctor stuff but that doesn’t mean anything.” You don’t seem to actually think that based on your correction, so fair enough.

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#646

Post by viktorianer » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #90

roenxi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound like much of an issue. Bob was already going to encounter problems that are too large and complex for him to solve, agents or otherwise. Life throws us hard problems. I don't recall if we even assumed Bob was unusually capable, he might be one of life's flounderers. I'd give good odds that if he got through a program with the help of agents he'll get through life achieving at least a normal level o…

> we're trending towards superintelligence with these AIs The article addresses this, because, well... no we aren't. Maybe we are. But it's far from clear that we're not moving toward a plateau in what these agents can do. > Whether a human does actual work or not isn't particularly exciting to a market. You seem to be convinced these AI agents will continue to improve without bound, so I think this is where the disc…

[flagged]

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#647

Post by noisy_boy » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

klabb3 wrote: post #592

noisy_boy wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that Bob's problem? When he said we need more time to do this properly, he was labelled slow. They pushed him to use AI all day long and told at the all hands that there will be programmers who use AI and those who don't will be left behind. So he said fuck doing it right for the project, let me do it right for myself. Now he got his promotion, they will hire 3 people in a cheaper location to handle various is…

> How is that Bob's problem? It isn’t. Bob has a different problem: that there are millions of Bobs with access to the same tools, meaning the value of Bobs labor is commodity priced. That may be good for some Bobs and bad for others.

No different than when all Bobs had access to similar power drills.

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#648

Post by dimal » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #266

AlexWilkins12 wrote: post #72

Ironically, this article reeks of AI-generated phrases. Lot's of "It's not X, it's Y". eg: - "The failure mode isn't malice. It's convenience", - "You haven't saved time. You've forfeited the experience that the time was supposed to give you." - "But the real threat isn't either of those things. It's quieter, and more boring, and therefore more dangerous. The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not unders…

Yes, the overwrought "It's not X it's Y" are signals of LLM involvement. No human uses them like that all the frickin' time . AI loves this construct way too much and cannot really tell whether the contrast is relevant/actually makes sense.

I think I must be an AI. I’ve written those types of phrases a lot long before the advent of LLMs and I love em dashes. LLMs were trained on human text. Where do you think they got these patterns from? Looking at the rest of the text, I don’t see some of the other LLM tells like excessive usage of bullet lists, and repetition of the same ideas over and over using different language.

It’s a well written, engaging article. Why would it need a disclaimer if they used AI on part of it? They’re not arguing against the usage of LLMs.

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#649

Post by rglullis » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

thepasch wrote: post #642

rglullis wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer is “vet your sources, don’t trust unsourced claims.” This was already a problem for Wikipedia (articles being written which upon further investigation were based on nothing but Wikipedia itself). With LLM themselves facilitating AI slop and plagiarism, this problem gets to a scale that it becomes impossible to control. > I’m sure the students will manage. The problem with your hubris is that you are not…

I have yet to see a single substantive argument from you that isn’t some sort of paraphrase for “this is definitely going to blow up because the article says so and I agree”. Three times now you’ve asked me to provide you with a detailed pitch deck contains every single solution for every single problem while offering absolutely nothing yourself that couldn’t just as well have come from an LLM for how much meaningful…

All I'm saying is "I do not know what is the real upside on leaving the current practices in academia and education in favor of 'let the LLM guide you'". If it was my ass on the line, I would apply the precautionary principle and I wouldn't take any significant bets with my future around this.

You on the other hand are the one "being sure" about how everything will be fine and of course there is no way for you to bring actual evidence because all you have is conjecture. So, given there is no way for you to back up your argument with evidence, the next best thing you can do is to put some Skin In The Game: can you back up with beliefs with actions? Are you willing to take any substantial risk in case your bet doesn't pay off?

Re: The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

#650

Post by thepasch » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #649

thepasch wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to see a single substantive argument from you that isn’t some sort of paraphrase for “this is definitely going to blow up because the article says so and I agree”. Three times now you’ve asked me to provide you with a detailed pitch deck contains every single solution for every single problem while offering absolutely nothing yourself that couldn’t just as well have come from an LLM for how much meaningful…

All I'm saying is "I do not know what is the real upside on leaving the current practices in academia and education in favor of 'let the LLM guide you'". If it was my ass on the line, I would apply the precautionary principle and I wouldn't take any significant bets with my future around this. You on the other hand are the one "being sure" about how everything will be fine and of course there is no way for you to bri…

> “I do not know what is the real upside on leaving the current practices in academia and education in favor of ‘let the LLM guide you’”

The fact that you think “let the LLM guide you” is the argument I’ve been making tells me everything about how honestly you’ve engaged with it. I’m done here.