The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here? • Hacker News Board

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#721

Post by aphyr » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #518

Question: The author makes this article available on the web as a series of posts, a PDF ( https://aphyr.com/data/posts/411/the-future-of-everything-is... ) and an EPUB. What do you suppose their tooling looks like? Is there a single "document containing all the words," and it updates the website, pdf, and epub whenever you change it? What struck me was that the presentation is beautiful. It seems worth emulating. Bu…

I talked about this in the colophon of the piece, but perhaps you'd like an example? This is Pandoc Markdown--basically Markdown, a little bit of YAML front matter, a smattering of inline LaTeX, and some very small shell scripts. Here's the the build scripts and a little bit of fronttmatter if you'd like to do the same:

https://gist.github.com/aphyr/6f0cd6910ccfe2cd7828d1ade2eac5...

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#722

Post by npilk » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #445

"I could retrain, but my core skills—reading, thinking, and writing—are squarely in the blast radius of large language models." Yes. For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. Prior to 1800 or so, those skills were not all that useful to the average farmer. There were more smart people t…

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#723

Post by duskdozer » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #466

Animats wrote: post #445

"I could retrain, but my core skills—reading, thinking, and writing—are squarely in the blast radius of large language models." Yes. For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. Prior to 1800 or so, those skills were not all that useful to the average farmer. There were more smart people t…

These takes ignore how much more important critical thinking is becoming, as LLM's are clearly unreliable and prone to slop.

Assuming there must be a reliable and high-quality outcome. There's nothing stopping things just becoming unreliable and bad without alternatives.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#724

Post by the_af » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:28 PM UTC

BirAdam wrote: post #596

the_af wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So we reach this post scarcity society A full automation society, where the implied post scarcity is not necessarily for everyone. Maybe it needs most of the population not to exist in order for the few to enjoy the lack of scarcity. Resources aren't infinite, but greed is. I mean, resources and wealth could be far better distributed right now , no need for AI, yet most times this is attempted the wealthy fight too…

Powerful people like to wield power over others. They want the masses to exist specifically so that they can feel superior and exercise their authority over others. They simply want the masses to be forever below them.

This is actually an argument I find convincing. The powerful need the less powerful to exist, because otherwise in relation to whom would they be powerful? Who would show them they are powerful?

But even then, how many of the others would they need to exist?

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#725

Post by LelouBil » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #352

chungusamongus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, people are talking about the butlerian jihad without any sense of irony or subtext. Dune is literally a feudal hellscape that takes place in the wake of that event. It didn’t make things better. Lmao

I think your other comment is basically right that what Herbert really wanted was a fantasy epic with feudal structures, knife fights, and humans with near-magical abilities, and reverse engineered a vaguely plausible future that might bring that about without invoking any actual magic. Arguing whether this is supposed to be considered "good" or not is kind of beside the point. Fiction novels are mostly meant to pres…

At least WALL-E had a good ending.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#726

Post by duskdozer » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #459

poncho_romero wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these use cases exist because of the prevelance of personal vehicles. We reach for cars because they are there. We see the world through windshields, so when problems arise we conceive of car-based solutions. Cars force us into city designs and styles of living that require cars. That is to say, cars necessitate cars.

Everyone hates cars until they need an ambulance. Yes, obviously there are many negative externalities to a car-driven culture, but just like we can easily become blind to the diffuse societal costs of a piece of technology, I think a culture of nay-saying makes it very easy to be blind to the diffuse value of a piece of technology too. Loud stinky cities full of pollution and climate change are obviously horrible. B…

I like being able to use a car. I don't like being effectively dependent on using a car to go anywhere.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#727

Post by the_af » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #637

munksbeer wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we're considering scifi scenarios, imagine this: if full blown automation of everything is achieved, why would the "haves" need the "have-nots" buying anything at all? Why would they need them to exist, at all? Think about it. It's an extreme and we're not near it... yet. So we reach this post scarcity society, where everyone could be living a life of luxury, but this whole group of "haves" as you call them (who…

80% of “serious” discussion on contemporary LLMs is no better then sci-fi. Worse, even, because it’s by the readers and not the writers, who ostensibly made some effort to make their works realistic.

I'll add to this that 80% of any discussion of LLMs is instigated by CEOs of AI companies, and they themselves seem to believe scifi is a real-world education.

So yes, it's a bunch of scifi-addled selfish amateurs guiding and predicting the future. The AI people.

(Remember the "do not build the Torment Nexus" meme? It has a point).

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#728

Post by xienze » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #612

munificent wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids are high school age. It's hard to convey the deep existential dread their generation has about the future. * They are growing up in a climate that is worse than any prior generation had and getting worse. * In the US, they are growing up in a time with less upward mobility and more economic inequality than the previous several generations had. * Trust in social institutions and government is crumbling before…

> Blue collar jobs are already gone This isn't true at all. There's never been a better time to be in the trades.

> There's never been a better time to be in the trades.

I imagine it was _slightly_ better when you didn't have to worry about unlimited numbers of illegal immigrants ready and willing to undercut you.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#729

Post by Saline9515 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

duskdozer wrote: post #720

Saline9515 wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that some people can be born with 6 fingers doesn't mean that saying "a human hand has 5 fingers" is generally false.

It also means you can't use the generalization "a human hand has 5 fingers" to then say that "therefore because your hands have 6 fingers, you are not a human"

I the sense of what OP did say, it would be more "grafting a sixth finger doesn't mean that you are not human anymore".

Just like taking meat from your arm to create new genitals doesn't make you a man, biologically (psychologically it may be different).

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#730

Post by dalyons » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

DavidPiper wrote: post #706

dalyons wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ll still lose their job to AI, whether they’re paying attention or not.

You don't have any idea what job they have, how good they are at it, what their company does, what industry they work in, whether their income is backed by labour, knowledge work, emotional connection, government relationships, capital investments, ... See above.

I’m assuming their job is one at least somewhat in the firing line for AI, otherwise it’s a pointless anecdote. “My friend is a plumber and doesn’t worry about AI” isn’t particularly interesting because of course.