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This is not the future
81–90 of 430 posts
Re: This is not the future
#82I do think AI involvement in programming is inevitable; but at this time a lot of the resistance is because AI programming currently is not the best tool for many jobs. To better the analogy: I have a wood stove in my living room, and when it's exceptionally cold, I enjoy using it. I don't "enjoy" stacking wood in the fall, but I'm a lazy nerd, so I appreciate the exercise. That being said, my house has central heati…
Where is that mentioned in the article?
Re: This is not the future
#83Everything is inevitable. If it happened, then it couldn't have happened otherwise. "Your computer sending screenshots to microsoft so they can train AIs on it" was inevitable, because that's what incentives pushed them to do. Vocal opposition and boycotting might become a different kind of incentive, but in most cases it doesn't work. The fact of the matter is that corporations are powerful, shareholders are powerfu…
> The fact of the matter is that... you are powerless.
Trivialities don't add anything to the discussion. The question is "Why?" and then "How do we change that?". Even incomplete or inaccurate attempts at answering would be far more valuable than a demonstration of hand-wringing powerlessness.
Re: This is not the future
#84nothing is inevitable IN THEORY... but in practice, systems that minimize effort beat systems that maximize agency. People want things to be simpler, easier, frictionless. Resistance to these things has a cost and generally the ROI is not worth it for most people as whole
seems the author never work in normal day to day job basis in average company
nothing in real life is ideal, that just reality
Re: This is not the future
#85I think a more accurate and more useful framing is: Game theory is inevitable . Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives. The specific examples called out here may or may not be inevitable. It's true that the future is unknowable, but it's also true that the future is made up of 8B+ independent actors and that they're going to react to incentives. It's also true that y…
I mean, in an ideal system we would have political agency greater than the sum of individuals who would put pressure/curtail the rise of abusive actors taking advantage of power and informational asymetry to try and gain more power (wealth) and influence (wealth) in order to gain more wealth
Re: This is not the future
#86I think a more accurate and more useful framing is: Game theory is inevitable . Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives. The specific examples called out here may or may not be inevitable. It's true that the future is unknowable, but it's also true that the future is made up of 8B+ independent actors and that they're going to react to incentives. It's also true that y…
> Game theory is inevitable.
Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives.
That's not how mathematics works. "it's just math therefore it's a true theory of everything" is silly.
We cannot forget that mathematics is all about models, models which, by definition, do not account for even remotely close to all the information involved in predicting what will actually occur in reality. Game Theory is a theory about a particular class of mathematical structures. You cannot reduce all of existence to just this class of structures, and if you think you can, you'd better be ready to write a thesis on it.
Couple that with the inherent unpredictability of human beings, and I'm sorry but your Laplacean dreams will be crushed.
The idea that "it's math so it's inevitable" is a fallacy. Even if you are a hardcore mathematical Platonist you should still recognize that mathematics is a kind of incomplete picture of the real, not its essence.
In fact, the various incompleteness theorems illustrate directly, in Mathematic's own terms, that the idea that a mathematical perspective or any logical system could perfectly account for all of reality is doomed from the start.
Re: This is not the future
#87I think a more accurate and more useful framing is: Game theory is inevitable . Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives. The specific examples called out here may or may not be inevitable. It's true that the future is unknowable, but it's also true that the future is made up of 8B+ independent actors and that they're going to react to incentives. It's also true that y…
Game theory is not inevitable, neither is math. Both are attempts to understand the world around us and predict what is likely to happen next given a certain context.
Weather predictions are just math, for example, and they are always wrong to some degree.
Re: This is not the future
#88The idea that the future is architected by our choices (or lack of it) is the crux of one of the opportunity spaces at the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) in the UK.
Worth getting on your radar if this stuff is of interesting: https://aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/collective-flourishin...
(full disclosure: I'm working with the programme director on helping define the funding programme, so if you're working on related problems, by all means share your thoughts on the site or by reaching out!)
Re: This is not the future
#89I do disagree that some of these were not inevitable. Let me deconstruct a couple: > Tiktok is not inevitable. TikTok the app and company, not inevitable. Short form video as the medium, and algorithm that samples entire catalog (vs just followers) were inevitable. Short form video follows gradual escalation of most engaging content formats, with legacy stretching from short-form-text in Twitter, short-form-photo in…
> Perhaps Bitcoin as proof-of-work productization was not inevitable (for a while), but once we got there, a lot of things were very much inevitable. Explosion of alternatives like with Litecoin, explosion of expressive features, reaching Turing-completeness with Ethereum, "tokens" once we got to Turing-completeness, and then "unique tokens" aka NFTs (but also colored coins in Bitcoin parlance before that). The cultural influence was less inevitable, massive scam and hype was also not inevitable... but to be fair, likely.
The only way I can get to the "crypto is inevitable" take relies on the scams and fraud as the fundamental drivers. These things don't have any utility otherwise and no reason to exist outside of those.
Scams and fraud are such potent drivers that perhaps it was inevitable, but one could imagine a more competent regulatory regime that nipped this stuff in the bud.
nb: avoiding financial regulations and money laundering are forms of fraud
Re: This is not the future
#90It's not inevitable but it's probable.