[HN Gopher] Our efforts, in part, define us
___________________________________________________________________
Our efforts, in part, define us
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 249 points
Date : 2025-10-01 09:22 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (weakty.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (weakty.com)
| tolerance wrote:
| Was the pleasure of writing code that the author describes tied
| to the actual practice or its profits?
|
| My impression is that many white collar workers felt that their
| jobs and accompanying status were immutable. They're not.
| Couldn't they have seen this coming?
|
| Nothing prevents people from continuing on with their trades or
| interests how they did before the AI bubble bloomed. But if they
| want to _earn a living_ doing it, I guess they need to start
| thinking outside of the box. I believe prolonged contact with
| insulation induces hive breakout.
| zwnow wrote:
| In all honesty I value my craft and doing things without AI and
| id have much less of an issue with LLMs if people were more
| understanding of their capabilities and limitations. The tech
| environment is pushing AI into everything because its a fancy
| buzz word that's used to increase corporate share value.
|
| Personally I am pretty conflicted about using it considering
| its built upon theft and cheap labor. Making money isn't that
| nice if its unethical, and id keep that out of my company for
| as long as possible.
| bartread wrote:
| I went through something like that transition the first time I
| moved into management.
|
| It took me by surprise how much I tied what I did to who I was,
| and how much it bothered me that I could no longer so easily
| articulate what I'd done during a day at work. It was no longer
| I made this, I made that, I added these features, I fixed those
| bugs. It was all relational. It was all meetings and
| conversations. It felt like _anyone_ could be doing it. So I
| felt like I had no value. Like I was a spare wheel. Three or
| four years and in all that time I never made my peace with it.
|
| So burned out and dejected[0] I went back to software
| development and performance consulting. I did that for about 3
| years.
|
| The second time I went into management was different. Maybe I
| was just older. Maybe I'd done a bit more reading and thinking
| about management and leadership. I certainly knew what I liked
| and disliked, and what I admired in other leaders. Because of
| the consulting I'd seen a variety of leaders at work in lots of
| different contexts, with different challenges, different
| styles, and different personalities. At any rate, I had a
| different and broader view of what good looked like.
|
| I also had a clear and strong remit and room to operate: build
| a new product, build and lead a new team, open an office,
| rearchitect and rebuild our platform, become CTO.
|
| But the critical change was that I now saw my value in enabling
| the success of others - our team, the teams that relied on our
| platform and products, our customers and clients - and so I
| loved my job (for the most part).
|
| This doesn't directly relate to AI but does show that it's
| possible to go through a transition where you lose a big part -
| or all - of what you thought gave you value, status, and
| satisfaction in a role, and grow into something new and
| valuable as a result of that.
|
| In my case that took for-fucking-ever - I've always been
| something of a late developer[1] - and many people reading this
| have and will adapt much more quickly. I'll say this: it's much
| easier to let go when you have a stronger idea of what "next"
| looks like[2], so figure out what that is. Software development
| is changing, _for all of us_ , and even now nobody really knows
| what that means, but it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of
| opportunities.
|
| It's also worth bearing in mind that a lot of the more extreme
| viewpoints published online regarding AI and software
| development are no better than noise: they're just clickbait
| designed to generate reaction and engagement. Their real
| informational value is close to zero.
|
| That is obviously not the case with this piece, which describes
| the author's personal experience in our new AI enabled world.
|
| And I get their point about the craft. You really do feel that.
| But what you have to realise is the craft doesn't go away: it
| moves to a different level of abstraction. What can you (what
| can _we_ ) do now that you couldn't do before? What do the
| wrinkles and contours of that, where your (our) finesse will be
| needed, actually look like?
|
| This all reads more like a pile of scattered thoughts than I'd
| intended, but hopefully there's some value in there for some of
| you.
|
| _[0] Not just for these reasons: there were other things -
| including one or two other major contributors - going on that I
| don 't want to talk about here, but my lack of comfort with the
| nature of my role was certainly a somewhat chunky factor. Just
| don't overread or assume too much from what I'm saying._
|
| _[1] No pun intended - nobody should read anything delivery
| related into this comment._
|
| _[2] This touches on some of those issues I didn 't want to
| talk about. Within that organisational context I'd reached a
| ceiling and no-one, including me, was grown up enough to be
| real about that. So I kept trying to push on and break through
| and, well, I guess we all wasted a lot of eachother's time
| although, from my side, I don't feel too bad about it._
| tolerance wrote:
| These passages, right here:
|
| > But the critical change was that I now saw my value in
| enabling the success of others - our team, the teams that
| relied on our platform and products, our customers and
| clients - and so I loved my job (for the most part).
|
| > This doesn't directly relate to AI but does show that it's
| possible to go through a transition where you lose a big part
| - or all - of what you thought gave you value, status, and
| satisfaction in a role, and grow into something new and
| valuable as a result of that.
|
| > Represent the perspectives I was hoping to invite with my
| comment. The paragraph immediately following these was
| equally great.
|
| I've read a lot of interesting remarks about people who've
| gone back and forth between programming and management
| positions in tech and I can relate to the experience in some
| ways.
|
| What you and the author are describing is legitimate. And I
| think that your experience occurring while making an apparent
| step forward in your profession (as opposed to the step
| backwards that AI imposes) indicates something...special
| about man, his craft and its relation to himself _and_ his
| perceived value to others (or lack thereof) while practicing
| his craft.
|
| I think this is a common thing, generally speaking. On one
| end, there are plenty of people in other (less-paying, less-
| appealing) industries who have gone through these kind of
| experiences--past and present--so it's easy for someone like
| me to feel apathetic in this case.
|
| For better or worse it's a privilege that there are some
| people who are able to articulate their particular
| circumstances, under a shared shade.
|
| I guess this is the point where the Marxists begin to revel
| in the bourgeois gaining "class consciousness". I haven't
| checked on all the literature to be sure how that often turns
| out in history.
| bartread wrote:
| > (as opposed to the step backwards that AI imposes)
|
| I guess this is my only quibble: _is it_ really a step
| backwards? I can get on board with the idea that maybe the
| jury is out, but the evidence I 've seen and experienced is
| more that it's a force multiplier than anything else.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're all fucked.
|
| But for now at least I think reports of the death of
| software development as a profession are greatly
| exaggerated.
| tolerance wrote:
| Good point. I wish I would've added a condition to that
| statement. Dexterity varies. I don't think that the
| profession as whole is doomed and I'm skeptical toward
| the expectation that other skilled/craft industries are
| as well.
|
| I think that AI is going to be a boon for certain types
| of people, an impediment for some others and a source of
| indifference for some too. But I don't necessarily expect
| the median to go quietly out the door. Unless they
| receive a universal, perpetual sort of "severance" with a
| progressive-sounding tint.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I'm not sure we are built for this on a societal scale. I
| understand the reasoning rationally. Sure, nobody pitied the
| horseshoe-maker blacksmith who was proud of his craft when the
| car was invented. Or the tailors when clothing became cheaply
| mass-produced. Or even the miners after many mines closed. Yeah
| I get it. "You learned a craft and it's no longer needed. Sucks
| to suck. Try to be useful in some other way or get bent."
|
| Having to reinvent your career when you are 30+/40+/50+ is not
| so simple. You studied something, amassed experience and tacit
| knowledge, taste and work habits.
|
| It used to be the case that you learned as an apprentice (or
| simply grew up on a farm and saw the work) and then continued
| it the rest of your life.
|
| We will be more and more efficient at pumping more wealth to
| the owner classes, but people will be spiritually ground down.
| tolerance wrote:
| The loss of self that comes with being effectively severed
| from society through labor exclusion is...a radical process.
|
| I read in a book titled _The Technology Trap_ about how in
| the past, rulers withheld technological advancements and gave
| strategic deference to the people whose labor would be most
| affected by them, so as it not put their own necks at risk.
|
| That doesn't seem to be a concern today.
| mallowdram wrote:
| The AI debacle is unusual as it's alive in disinformation
| at a scale that penetrates every status class.
|
| Of course AI is a failure of imagination. But so were
| symbols, which cannot reference, they can only represent,
| if at all.
|
| The real function of AI appears to be the transition away
| from symbols, metaphors, folk science cause and effect
| ideation.
|
| We're only barely sensing this, but if you listen to Gary
| Marcus, Rich Sutton and those willing to see the larger
| scales, they are bellwethers that are actually sinking
| their own approaches as well as LLMs.
|
| In effect, labor is about to reap the benefits of the AI
| debacle. I see this in the AI at the major teaching
| hospital my sister is a department head of. In lead
| developers in gaming, in media. AI does not function well,
| it's essentially wax fruit, it's not even mimicry. That's
| going to lead to an analog rebirth.
| tolerance wrote:
| Curious what your take on this piece might be. I
| recommend the last 1/3 of it if you're pressed for time
| or wits.
|
| https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/lessons-of-
| babel/articles/...
| mallowdram wrote:
| Thanks for sending, I read it all. I think it keeps its
| feet in two incompatible realms. Ultimately LLMs turn us
| into wax fruit, not stochastic parrots.
|
| The word is an arbitrary form, as myth is, (as symbols,
| money, news, states/politics) both are ultimately
| evolutionarily suspect in terms of animal signals, and we
| haven't found a specific workaround to that
| arbitrariness. That's extinction. The world is only
| specific, as is survival.
|
| I suggest the only function of arbitrary signals is to
| refute themselves into replacement. The good thing about
| the AI debacle is that it's about speeding that up.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I found it a bit pretentious and name-dropping more than
| having a cogent point. AI is not simply going to take
| jobs where you just have to blabber stochastically. It
| can execute commands, call tools, write code etc. I think
| the author got caught up too much in the fact that the
| "Word" in the Gospel of John seems to align with the fact
| that LLMs process words. But it's really not a very deep
| connection.
| mallowdram wrote:
| The input is arbitrary so claiming it can execute
| perpetually any of these is still trapped behind re
| arbitrary lens or threshold.
| pettertb wrote:
| That is not how people work, especially if they want to do good
| work. You need to imbue your career with a little bit of your
| identity, a little bit of your soul. Coding, auto-repair,
| horse-rearing, plumbing, accountancy, what have you.
|
| You do well to limit this somewhat. But it is inevitable, if
| you want to achieve anything. You are going to end up smelling
| somewhat like your work clothes, no matter your industry, no
| matter the year.
|
| We can't all have the mission statement "to make money", if the
| machines of money-making are to function. You would never have
| the nevessary skills that way.
|
| Not saying that we do well to spend the next 30 years griping,
| we don't. But don't shame people from being hurt by the whims
| of business. People need to grieve lost stuff, goes for AI,
| goes for "auto plant went out of business", goes for anything.
| tolerance wrote:
| I reckon that shame was once an effective method of communal
| correction and accountability. But it wasn't my intent to
| affect it.
|
| So no, I agree, don't shame people for being hurt by the
| whims of business. But I would say, encourage the newcomers
| to this experience (who I suspect are exceptional in their
| sociopolitical status compared to their predecessors) to re-
| envision themselves and the ways that they render their
| service beyond prior cushiony contexts.
|
| Businesses may not need you, you may make much less than
| before. But society sorely does need you in some capacity and
| the unfortunate case is that, to be frank, not too many
| people are going to be quick to boo-hoo with you over your
| loss because they've gone through something like it before
| already. Them or a loved one.
|
| This is an American phenomenon. Join and be of aid to your
| countrymen. But don't get SaaSy.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Online people have this redditism that it's some American
| weirdness that people "live to work", while in Europe people
| "work to live" and stretch this too far. People (especially
| men) throughout the ages and regions have seen their work as
| a critical component of their identity, whether it be a craft
| or farming. The honor in completing the day's work, being
| valued for having a skill, honing that skill over the years,
| etc. It's not by itself a symptom of a workaholic. This can
| leave space for family and friends and neighbors too. But the
| idea that your job is supposed to be purely superficial is
| way overblown. It's a symptom of the generic alienated work
| that is full of useless meetings and business-buzzword-bingo-
| lingo and you can't coherently formulate in words to an
| outsider what even that job is, or how it concretely
| contributes to the betterment of the community/world/people
| (aka bullshit job).
| type0 wrote:
| Speaking of efforts, Japanese woodworking and carpentry are
| completely different https://www.arch2o.com/how-japanese-wood-
| joints-work-without...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I can relate.
|
| I treat my coding as a craft. That has become much easier, since
| retiring.
|
| I'm quite aware that doing things my way isn't commercially
| viable, but no one pays me to do it. I do it for myself.
|
| That said, I find that it's important to always be challenging
| myself[0].
|
| [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-
| ships...
| heliographe wrote:
| > I'm quite aware that doing things my way isn't commercially
| viable
|
| Depends what you mean by "commercially viable". I've been
| making high quality products as an independent software
| developer in the photography space for a bit over 2 years now,
| and while I'm nowhere near my former big tech company salary, I
| still make more than needed to pay for life every month (not
| living an extravagant lifestyle somewhere with ridiculous cost
| of living does help).
|
| And I still feel like I'm far from having reached full
| potential in my addressable market and the kind of products I
| want to build - I have indie developer friends who are pretty
| close to their former big tech salary, after 5+ years.
|
| So, despair not :)
| eloisius wrote:
| Cool apps btw. The trichromy one is a lot of fun. Cool that
| you're earning money making this.
| heliographe wrote:
| Cheers! Got an update coming out soon for that one, it's
| actually the one that makes the least money haha. I think
| it's way too nerdy and weird to ever hope to reach a broad
| audience even amongst photographers, unlike the others that
| are more approachable.
|
| But I still use it on a weekly basis myself so I just can't
| stop refining it. I've been obsessed with the trichromatic
| process for 10+ years, ever since I discovered the work of
| Prokudin Gorsky (even built a website about the process and
| history: https://trichromy.com, due for a refresh some
| time). Such a clever approach to color photography that
| results in such a unique aesthetic.
| eloisius wrote:
| I also love Gorsky's pictures! When I first saw his
| picture of the power turbines in Budapest I thought I
| must be looking at some ML-colorized daguerreotype, but
| nope it's in true color.
|
| I see you're in Tokyo. If you ever end up in Taipei or if
| I'm in Tokyo I'd love to talk photography over coffee.
| sfn42 wrote:
| I'm not sure what your way is exactly but I also treat coding
| as a craft and I'd say it's far more commercially viable than
| what most other devs are doing. I design systems that are
| efficient, do what they need to do and nothing else, are well
| tested, quite easy to understand, work with and change etc.
|
| The only thing about my way of working that I have commercial
| viability issues with is when I take over someone else's work
| and insist on basically rewriting the entire thing before
| actually continuing the work. I don't always do that, some
| projects are just too big and some are just fine, some projects
| don't need me to rewrite them. But most systems I've inherited
| have been absolute ass and I just refuse to build on a total
| shit foundation. First I fix the foundation, then I build on
| it. You want a code monkey to duct tape things together and add
| workarounds on top of workarounds until the codebase looks like
| Escher's stairs painting you'll have to find someone else to do
| it. I fix problems I don't just paint over them.
|
| That has been a problem in some situations in the past but for
| the most part my work has been appreciated.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The biggest thing, is that I insist on doing things my way,
| which is a hideous chimera of cutting-edge, buzzword-
| compliant techniques, melded with ancient techniques I
| learned when I was programming in Machine Code.
|
| Also, I insist on doing extremely high Quality work, and that
| seems to be very much out of favor, these days.
|
| Just try starting a discussion on improving software Quality,
| hereabouts, and see how it goes.
|
| For some reason, folks are actually actively against
| improving code Quality, and that is something that I can't
| comprehend, so I have to admit that I'm very much a
| "dinosaur."
| apples_oranges wrote:
| The internet evolved as programming became a sought after path.
| But with the internet, a irreversible change happened in our
| society. Old facts are being questioned and it is imho just a
| matter of time until they materialize ,,in the real world". This
| might include questions of status, achievement, the idea of self
| worth and the role of work.
|
| We should not insist to measure new things with old rulers.
| foamdino wrote:
| I can relate to this thought process and had my own conflicted
| thoughts about AI and the role it (and I) play in the SWE future:
| https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partners... -
| I'm still conflicted
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Your Medium piece is a nice read!
| bsenftner wrote:
| Maybe this is a neurodivergent thing, but I have, as long as I
| can remember, always had the following progression in my mind:
| "What are you doing? No, that's this situation's name, what is
| this really?" and I'd continue a few times seeking the "larger
| problem, the more basic problem being solved" that whatever I was
| doing "really is". That "basic problem" was "communicating" far
| more frequently than I expected, and that "communicating" was
| often just translating between things, people and software, or
| people and people, or software and software. But it's almost
| always communicating.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Indeed. If we SW developers define ourselves as 'coders', we
| could easily end up into this identity crisis which the article
| seems to refer to. But in fact we are much more than that. We
| are problem solvers and a big part of it is understanding,
| defining and refining the problem itself and in finding an
| elegant solution. The meaningfulness comes from all the
| communication and experimenting involved with that process, and
| in the creativity needed to design an elegant solution. In fact
| the more boring part is often the coding itself.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is the frustrating part of software engineering too; the
| coding itself is the "boring" part, but for me and many
| others it's also the most fun and gratifying part, the thing
| you really want to be doing. Something to grow out of I
| suppose, but still.
|
| The AI vendors want to sell to upper management that that
| part is what's slowing their company down or costing a lot of
| money, but I don't think it's that. And in a few years (or
| now already), AI tooling will probably be an accepted part of
| the toolchain, but software engineers will always be
| necessary.
|
| Cobol said you won't need coders anymore because it's
| basically English. Dreamweaver and Frontpage said you won't
| need to know HTML because you can just build a website by
| clicking and typing. No-code platforms said you won't need
| coders anymore because you can just click and drag. AI
| evangelists say you don't need coders anymore because you
| just type in a prompt and working software comes out.
| bsenftner wrote:
| "Software engineering" is a communications problem, and
| software engineering degrees do not even teach or approach
| teaching communications. That's a huge disconnect. I still
| can't understand why the larger industry does not see what
| our entire industry does is a communications and
| translation problem/solution/service. So much of what
| people try to do breaks down at the basic communications
| level, yet nobody seems to realize it is the communications
| at fault. And that effective communications is a teachable
| formal subject.
|
| (So, anyway, what I'm doing now is creating class
| courseware that teaches effective communications for
| developers.)
| yomismoaqui wrote:
| That reminds me of a phrase that I read some years ago:
|
| "A typical Google engineer could describe their job as
| 'taking protocol buffers and turning them into other
| protocol buffers'."
| skydhash wrote:
| If you take a software engineering textbook, you'll see
| there's nothing about code other than a chapter about
| methodology. It's mostly about decomposing problems and
| stating criteria for a good solution. Which by itself is
| a lot of writing and talking.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Dreamweaver and Frontpage said you won't need to know
| HTML because you can just build a website by clicking and
| typing.
|
| The ability for people to express themselves online on
| their own domain has regressed immensely since WYSIWYG
| editors were taken off the market. I don't know who to
| blame, but the way it is now that you have to learn to code
| and to be a Linux server admin just to have a website is
| very damaging.
|
| WordPress does not help much at all in that department, it
| only makes it worse for people who aren't database admins
| and PHP developers and want to have a functioning website.
| I think it only became the "standard" because it was free.
| Same thing for Linux as the host OS.
|
| I hope things turn around. There's some small hope with
| services like Fastmail offering an easy interface for
| publishing your webpage and Wix and the likes which are at
| least something.
| whstl wrote:
| I'd blame Social Media. It did more to kill small
| websites than anything else. Possibly starting with
| MySpace in 2004.
|
| WYSIWYG never really went away even after Dreamweaver and
| FrontPage lost popularity. My ISP had a web-based editor
| in the early 2000s, lots and lots of free hosting
| providers also had them (HN tends to only remember only
| GeoCities, but there were hundreds of those providers).
|
| Also: Weebly, Wix and Squarespace are quite old,
| mid-2000s.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Unfortunately, as it turned out, standing up a public-
| facing web page (even a single static HTML one) is more
| complex than saving a word doc. Especially if it gets a
| lot of traffic, has any kind of user-input, or it comes
| under attack. So far, out of the attempts to bring web
| publishing to the masses, the only successful ones so far
| have been the "hosted" ones where you have to pay someone
| else to do the hard, non-creative work for you, and are
| for the most part dependent on them.
|
| The dream of laymen, needing nothing else but an Internet
| connection, pushing a button on a locally-running
| application and "poof" a web page appears and is
| accessible to the world, remains out of reach.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It used to be no more complex than saving a Word
| document. You used to get a small storage space from your
| ISP with FTP credentials to upload files. Security was
| not an issue and neither was traffic. User input was a
| more advanced matter, but when you've reached the level
| to having concern for any of these, either your ISP would
| help you or you'd contract a professional web host. Today
| it's an immense task for amateurs to just get off the
| ground.
| PunchTornado wrote:
| I don't understand how does this help if, yes, communicating,
| is what we are doing most of the time.
| bsenftner wrote:
| It's a framing mechanism, where when one identifies with
| "writing code" and gains a sense of purpose doing that, and
| then automation starts "writing code", does that trigger a
| loss of a sense of purpose? By framing one's innate skill as
| _communicating_ it should not matter what medium one
| operates, they are still using non-casual and specific
| communications to do their job, even when code generation, or
| ad copy generation, or a talking spokesperson video is the
| result.
|
| Also, consider that a really good communicator often ends up
| running the places they are at, simply because they leave a
| wake of understanding behind them. That's really good for
| business operations.
| analog8374 wrote:
| Good strategy!
|
| One of mine is to ask myself "what is my attention on?". You'd
| be surprised at how often the answer is, "a bunch of thoughts".
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Culture has created this odd myth that if something is semantic
| it doesn't matter. That communication is just another soft
| skill.
|
| Humans make meaning, we are the only source of complex, long
| term, meaning generation we have ever observed.
|
| We emit meaning the way a star emits photons.
|
| Sure, a lot of natural processes would still exist if we
| weren't around.
|
| But in this universe, perhaps the only one that exists, we are
| the ones making meaning. Sometimes tge meaning exists
| physically in our imaginations, sometimes it maps to external
| facts, but everything that rationally coheres, creates and
| explains comes from us.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| I really like the way you said we emit meaning.
|
| It is kind of funny, that we seek meaning and/or purpose in
| everything - our lives, our actions, our thoughts - but there
| is a nice change in perspective in considering it as
| something that we produce rather than find.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Humans are evolved creatures that are very resilient across
| environments.
|
| Any species that has this trait must not get stuck in local
| maximums, at an extreme that's why the koala is just not a
| resilient species, over confidence.
|
| We are an anti-niche species, to avoid this we must have a
| certain percentage of our population that has doubt,
| existential crisis that shakes us out of a well worn path.
|
| This always amazes me. If you deeply, emotionally _know_
| that life has meaning, there will be some existential
| nights where you you will think "but maybe life doesn't
| have meaning", and if you _know_ life is meaningless you
| will sometime find yourself thinking "maybe there is
| meaning", our brains try to keep us from getting stuck.
|
| Humility in the face of the unknown. As a species, just
| amazing stuff.
|
| The cycle of confidence and doubt is absolutely amazing,
| it's kept us from getting stuck.
|
| Keeps us from having "target fixation" and lawn darting
| into the ground.
|
| Some individuals have these values tuned at extreme ends,
| the full distribution is represented by humanity.
|
| The most overconfident and the most anxiety ridden, this is
| all in our spectrum, and it turns out better or worse for
| each individual.
|
| The great thing is that we can share ideas and examine our
| priors.
|
| I used to believe that "nothing" was a real thing, but it's
| only an abstraction, nothing has never been observed it's
| only "real" in our imaginations. There's no such thing as
| nothing as far as anyone has observed or proven.
|
| Same thing with meaninglessness, nothing is meaningless,
| there are just bits of meaning maximally un-complex and
| decohered. You can use photon emissions from stars for RNG,
| humans have made even RNG have rich meaning and high
| practical utility.
| mrandish wrote:
| Yeah, a typical advice trope is "Find things with meaning
| and do those" which isn't very useful once you understand
| we create meaning internally. Meaning is an individualized
| perception not an extrinsic property.
|
| This gets tricky because our perceptions can be influenced
| by societal expectations of which things _should_ be
| meaningful - as if it 's an objective property. It's easy
| to think of activities to which many people would respond
| "Oh, that must be soooo meaningful" and yet it's entirely
| possible you may not personally experience a sense of
| meaning from doing them - yet feel like you're supposed to.
| It's important to realize there's nothing wrong with that
| (or with you). You may not experience the 'expected
| meaning' meaning while doing some "charitably noble
| activity" widely thought to be meaningful, yet discover
| something else few would associate with "meaningful" does
| evoke meaning for you.
| dpark wrote:
| > Yeah, a typical advice trope is "Find things with
| meaning and do those" which isn't very useful once you
| understand we create meaning internally. Meaning is an
| individualized perception not an extrinsic property.
|
| Why does intrinsic meaning make this advice not useful? I
| have always understood this sort of advice to mean "do
| things that are meaningful to _you_ ".
| curmudgeon22 wrote:
| Sometimes, whats meaningful to an individual becomes
| cloudy (maybe not everyone gets this, but some do). Or
| they feel like they are interpreting it wrong or
| something because it isn't mapping to the cultural
| expectations and what we "should" find meaningful.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This conversation is reminding me of one of the most
| formative books in my development: Viktor Frankl's "Man's
| Search for Meaning". It explores this idea, that the strive
| to find meaning is the central defining force for humanity,
| set against the backdrop of brutal destruction of the
| holocaust.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
| Etheryte wrote:
| This type of thinking should've died with the contemporaries
| of Darwin who didn't believe in evolution. We live on a
| planet full of complex, intelligent life, we're far from the
| only ones giving things meaning. Animals have social
| structures and emotions that are as sophisticated as our own,
| it's only ego to think that we're unique in giving life
| meaning.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| The statement was qualified, if you have objective evidence
| for species propagating long term complex meaning that we
| have observed as the written word or other externalized
| means please demonstrate. I do not understand why a person
| would say that demonstratably dolphins have done more
| meaning generation than people?
|
| The universe is full of possibilities, I'm trying to
| establish an empirical/observable floor not the ceiling.
|
| Other species are also intelligent and create meaning, but
| I don't know of any proposed metric where their impact is
| remotely close to ours, though it's not 0 and beyond that
| they are part of our causal chain as well.
|
| I personally wouldn't mind if we kept giving dogs and
| dolphins and other animals tools for long term complex
| communication but some people think we shouldn't interfere
| in that kind of way in the development of other species.
| I'd be interested in hearing if you hold an intentional
| development/don't interfere position.
|
| It's ok and true to say people are empirically special and
| unique in actual observed reality. If there is a dolphin
| universe where they are the dominant species and have
| libraries and journals and satellites than that's fine, but
| we haven't observed that to be the case.
|
| Again, there is a world of possibilities and everyone
| should explore that, but I am talking about the one
| universe we have observed and our empirical observations
| within it. I like to delineate between extrapolative and
| speculative ceilings and empirical floors.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| For those who are interested in the above comments, I
| find that David Brin's Uplift series does a great job
| exploring these themes, for e.g., what can happen when
| dolphins or monkeys are given sentence and full use of
| advanced technology.
| RataNova wrote:
| I love the image of humans emitting meaning like stars emit
| photons. It's poetic, but also kind of literal.
| munchbunny wrote:
| > often just translating between things, people and software,
| or people and people, or software and software. But it's almost
| always communicating.
|
| How true this is. How much of our code, how much compute power,
| and how much human energy is spent entirely on transforming
| data from one encoding or schema to another, for the purposes
| of being able to apply some algorithm or human process to it?
| Sometimes I feel like it's at least half of our silicon,
| electricity, and human time spent just doing that transforming.
| jancsika wrote:
| Do you do the same with emotions? E.g., a) What is this
| emotion, b) no, that's the undue amount of stress from this
| particular encounter, c) larger, basic emotion that is the
| reason you're ruminating about a total stranger taking 20
| seconds at the counter to decide on a coffee order after
| waiting 10 minutes in line... :)
| bsenftner wrote:
| No, I treat emotions as yet to be vocalized or identified
| observations. Emotions are like unsaid statements, hanging in
| a pregnant pause. If I find myself caught up in emotion, that
| is a likely scenario where bias can enter my self
| conversation, and being aware of the danger of self
| conversation bias, I turn my suspicious self against myself
| and re-center logically. Wash away that emotion with analysis
| and awareness.
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| I find trying to hide and wash away emotions tends to be a
| dangerous strategy long term. I get that sometimes emotions
| are unproductive for the task at hand, but the longer you
| keep washing them away with "logic", the stronger they keep
| returning at inopportune times. The long term strategy that
| works for me is to acknowledge them, actually listen to
| them, but also recognize I have the ability to act
| _despite_ them. Easier said than done of course.
| RataNova wrote:
| Framing it all as "communicating" is oddly clarifying. It
| explains why misalignment causes so much friction
| siavosh wrote:
| I often find myself asking the same pair of questions "What are
| you doing? No, that's this situation's name, what is this
| really?", and it usually leads to "this is nonesense, it's
| paying civilizational debt based on a series of decisions that
| thousands of people made with no clue of where it would lead".
| Which then is usually followed with "what should you be
| doing?"...which depending on the day usually ends up being
| half-jokingly: "I should be living in a small community far
| from capitalistic excess."
| anovikov wrote:
| I sometimes identify as "ex-programmer" these days, just because
| whatever coding i could do is now irrelevant due to LLMs, but
| this isn't entirely honest. Programming was never my job. My job
| was "convincing people to transfer money to my account under
| various pretexts, most of which involved me writing some code",
| and as such, the thing is pretty much alive.
| oytis wrote:
| Have you got good results with LLMs for low-level development?
| For embedded I've found them mostly useless.
| anovikov wrote:
| I have reworked a lot of code i built myself with AVX2 and
| Neon, to become much better, more maintainable and faster
| too, with LLMs.
| kakacik wrote:
| Don't know your area but llms are not taking many software dev
| jobs around here. Its like saying clueless juniors who
| sometimes produce good snippets of code and sometimes struggle
| to distinguish left from right are taking jobs of some
| seniors... not happening en masse anytime soon. Some other
| types of jobs sure.
| slaterbug wrote:
| You don't program at all now? It's all generated?
|
| I only ask because I find myself on the tools most of the time
| still. The difference in how different people experience this
| tech is astounding sometimes.
| anovikov wrote:
| I debug a lot. LLM tools still can't figure how to use a
| debugger. That's about it. I'm sure they will soon.
| cpursley wrote:
| Claude Code with Tidewave mcp as well as Playwright mcp get
| pretty close to the debug cycle.
| slaterbug wrote:
| Scary.
| repeekad wrote:
| Amish communities have rejected "modern" technology convenience
| in exchange for good hard work for centuries and never looked
| back
| falcor84 wrote:
| > never looked back
|
| Obviously there are very many Amish people who leave their
| communities to join the modern world - according to various
| sources this attrition seems to be between 15-25%. And even
| amongst those who stay, it's likely that a central reason is
| the fear of excommunication/shunning, rather than an inherent
| desire to reject modern technology.
| spiffytech wrote:
| Also many Amish people engage in rules lawyering to access
| forbidden technology without violating the letter of the
| rules. And even abiding with the spirit of the rules, they
| use more technology than outsiders realize.
| raddan wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that the Amish aside, there are many
| groups of people who understand that work has to be done, but
| do it in a way that elevates the idea that humans can seek
| transcendence through work. The Shaker communities in my part
| of the US come to mind. They were not anti-technology by any
| stretch of the imagination. But they did care about work's
| role in being a part of a whole. There are still remnants of
| that mindset here. For example, I have lately been spending
| time with people who like to build houses using traditional
| techniques; while hand tools often play a role, it's not
| because they hate technology. There are lots of power tools
| being used as well. Instead, it's about asking "what is
| best?" and "how do I want to spend my working life?"
| getpokedagain wrote:
| I vaguely recall a childhood acquaintance who was from a
| shaker family and they had a computer. I'm very tempted to
| look them up and see their take on computing and ai. Thanks
| for the memory stir.
| habinero wrote:
| Yeah, people romanticize them, but they're basically a cult.
| repeekad wrote:
| Cults usually recruit new members and extract profits or
| push some motive, wanting to be left alone is hardly a cult
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do
| things.
|
| I'm not a programmer because I wanted to program.
|
| Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier
| to make computers do things.
| makerofthings wrote:
| I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an
| llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I can understand then why you might not enjoy using AI to
| make a computer do your bidding.
| andai wrote:
| For me it is both. I love certain kinds of programming, and
| don't enjoy other kinds. I'm naturally very good at some
| kinds, and not good at other kinds, despite putting in
| enormous effort.
|
| I guess ideally I'd get a job that is perfectly aligned with
| this profile (a work in progress!), but AI allows me to deal
| with the reality I have now in a much more pleasant and
| productive way.
| codr7 wrote:
| Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of
| research showing that perspective is usually a distortion
| of some kind. Which makes sense, you have someone at your
| shoulder constantly reassuring you and bubbling ideas; I
| can see how it feels productive. Many report feeling more
| stressed, because the spaces where they used to think are
| no longer there.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of
| research showing that perspective is usually a distortion
| of some kind.
|
| I saw 1 study which suggested this.[1] Were there more?
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
| soco wrote:
| I'm sure you can and will still be able write code. It's just
| you'll be getting paid less and less if you do it for a
| living.
| lomase wrote:
| Do you think a senior programmer will earn less money
| because the company now can have a junniors for 250$ a
| month?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The kind of things that LLMs can make without tremendous
| amounts of hand holding... Are they the kind of projects that
| you like to write code for?
|
| I became a programmer because I want to explore the edge of
| what's possible. I'm finding it still satisfying when I'm
| doing it via LLM. They're only good at spitting out entire
| projects when those projects resemble many that already
| exist.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Beautifully put. I'm about as excited for LLMs as an artist
| would be for a robot that can paint. I know a lot of people
| out there can't imagine actually enjoying programming though.
| xandrius wrote:
| You can still write code without AI. But for people who
| actually have the goal of solving problems they can now solve
| much more problems!
| slaterbug wrote:
| That's a nice prospect. What worries me is the point at
| which I'm no longer a required part of the problem solving
| process.
| falcor84 wrote:
| For what it's worth, collecting new problems to solve is
| actually the main fuel for improving the AIs, so if GenAI
| becomes good at creating problems, which it can iterate on
| tackling, then there's a flywheel going.
| latexr wrote:
| I became a computer programmer because I was frustrated "the
| computer" (i.e. other people's programs) didn't do things
| exactly as I wanted them. That could mean current solutions
| didn't do it efficiently, or correctly, or maybe it was just
| different from what I wanted. In other words, I did it for the
| same reason as you: to get the computer to do things.
|
| But I, on the other hand, do not find LLMs "incredibly
| exciting". Maybe I'm the odd one here, but one of my requisites
| for getting the computer to do things is for it to do them
| _correctly_ and _efficiently_. It needs to do the thing I want,
| and do it right. But it should also not waste my time and other
| worldly finite resources doing it. LLMs fail at both, and as
| such (for me) they don't make it easier to make the computer do
| things, they make it more frustrating.
|
| Worse is that now I have to deal with the increasing torrent of
| shit code that's being put out by people with zero care or
| understanding for what they do. Meaning that now I'm being
| bitten even more frequently, and it's just a matter of time
| before I'm affected by an unnecessary, incompetent, and wholly
| avoidable error. Not to mention the increased spread of
| misinformation, lies, surveillance, spam, and phishing, all
| while wasting earthly resources we do not have the luxury of
| spending right now.
| skydhash wrote:
| I started on computers because I wanted to do stuff (photo
| manipulation and 3d modelling) and then I was fascinated by
| how to get the computers to do stuff (games and scripts). But
| just like you, I want things to be done _correctly_ and
| _efficiently_.
|
| Coding for me is more reading than typing, because any time
| I'm not exactly clear on the code I want to write, it's
| because there's some aspects of the problem or the tools to
| solve it that I do not grasp well. So, I usually have a lot
| of documentations around me for the stuff I'm working on. And
| that means I don't like LLM for that, because there's no
| clear signal for wrongness.
|
| And when I'm clear on the code to write and I find it
| tedious, that usually means that it's time to abstract away
| the tediousness. LLMs won't help with that, because it's more
| of a perspective shift than a clear methodology.
|
| LLMs, in its current forms of offering, is like asking a
| random stranger in a bar. They may know the answer or not.
| They may give you an incoherent answer even if they know or
| fabricate stuff when they don't know. But there's still a
| plus, is that you may still get "I don't know" or silence
| instead of a wrong answer. Like getting an empty list when
| making a web search. Which is a good signal by itself.
| card_zero wrote:
| Neither LLMs nor popular search engines return "I don't
| know" often enough. They will waste your time with bad
| approximations to an answer instead. But as you say, "the
| thing you're asking for might not exist" is useful
| information, and lets you make faster progress with your
| guessing, so this compulsion to always supply an answer
| just slows down the process of getting to a good one.
| skydhash wrote:
| I use my history as mich as I use a search engine at this
| point. For work stuff, I just bookmark docs. I also use
| specialized sites for some search sessions (reddit, hn,
| npmjs, oreilly,...)
| lomase wrote:
| Because I became a programmer using LLMs to code makes it
| harder to make computer do things.
| deadbabe wrote:
| So you're just a user. You don't have to be a computer
| programmer to make computers do things and computer science
| isn't even about doing things.
|
| Some will go into computer science to push the limits of what
| is possible. That takes a rigorous understanding of the
| science, not just throwing stuff into an AI.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I'm at the tail end of a lifetime career of software
| development, and the way I've come to understand it is that I
| largely enjoy it because it lets you conjure dreams into
| reality - really a kind of superpower given how abstract and
| arbitrary those dreams can be. I used to think that "We are the
| gods of the digital age" would be a cool business card logo,
| although I doubt it would go down too well!
|
| The other part of the job/hobby that I've always found
| enjoyable is in striving for "perfectly" minimal/clean designs
| where the code reads more like functional requirements than
| messy implementation detail. You look at the code and it is
| obvious that nothing can be taken out, and no more minimal
| implementation is conceivable. A bit like an impressionist
| painting perhaps, where every brush stroke counts, and all you
| are left with is the essence of the thing being captured. I
| would proudly consider myself to be a hardcore geek, but there
| is no doubt an aesthetic/artistic component to software done
| right, a goal you know has been achieved when at the end of a
| project you re-read the code and gloat over how beautiful and
| minimal it is!
|
| This part of the satisfaction of software development will
| sadly be disappearing as the role of coding is taken over by
| AI, but perhaps there will still be some satisfaction in
| minimal design, if not in minimal implementation.
| latexr wrote:
| > I used to think that "We are the gods of the digital age"
| would be a cool business card logo, although I doubt it would
| go down too well!
|
| Try "Digital Prophet". It worked for David Shing.
|
| https://media.philly.com/images/020914_David_Shing_600.jpg
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shing
| allenu wrote:
| This is how I feel about it too. I got into programming because
| I liked making software that did interesting things for me. I
| enjoyed learning new languages and techniques to improve my
| programming skills to make software better, larger, faster, but
| after having been doing this in some capacity for 30 years, I
| find I'm often doing the same things to create these solutions,
| so I'm not necessarily learning new things all the time. The
| typing out the code part becomes something that just has to be
| done to get to the solution, but doesn't necessarily make me
| better or bring me joy.
|
| Using AI has been exciting because I can now just focus on
| designing the user experience and architecture at a high level
| and do less of the typing out stuff by hand. I still have to
| steer it in the right direction, though, because it does make
| mistakes but it does beat just typing it out by hand.
| latexr wrote:
| Why are you not using a snippet manager? It is
| _significantly_ faster than an LLM, it's local, consumes far
| fewer resources, and actually returns a correct version of
| what you want based on your knowledge.
| allenu wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion. I don't use LLMs for everything
| and do still copy-paste a lot from existing projects where
| I have an established pattern.
|
| LLMs can be a lot faster if you're tossing together an
| initial prototype with a lot of UI. I could type it all out
| or copy-paste bits and pieces, but just giving a few
| sentences of what I want and letting it go build is much
| faster.
| latexr wrote:
| You don't need to copy and paste manually. Snippet
| managers allow you to search for what you want and paste
| directly, or even type a few characters and have the text
| automatically replaced.
|
| There is no LLM which could ever be faster than a well-
| configured snippet manager for stuff you've done before.
| Not to mention you won't get random bad text thrown at
| you.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I have never heard of a snippet manager until right now.
| (In good faith:) Where did you hear of them? Should I be
| following news somewhere else?
|
| I see this one is popular and high on DDG:
| https://github.com/massCodeIO/massCode
|
| But there's no screenshots or example usages, and it's not
| obvious to me how it works.
|
| Is it like a local search engine you install? Is it an LSP?
| An LSP that's lighter than rust-analyzer could be useful
| for this kind of thing.
|
| Edit: I searched for "What is a snippet manager" and DDG
| search returned a bunch of useless-looking listicles, but
| their AI actually told me and linked to an article
| explaining it: https://www.codiga.io/blog/code-snippet-
| definition/
|
| Edit 2: I guess it's meant to be used as a VS Code
| extension. It might work as a standalone app but it would
| be a little unwieldy. I don't think my favorite text editor
| has a web view built in, so I couldn't install massCode in
| there
| latexr wrote:
| > Where did you hear of them?
|
| I no longer recall, I've been using them for something
| like two decades.
|
| > But there's no screenshots or example usages, and it's
| not obvious to me how it works.
|
| See SnippetsLab for a good example of a snippets manager.
|
| https://www.renfei.org/snippets-lab/
|
| > I guess it's meant to be used as a VS Code extension.
| It might work as a standalone app but it would be a
| little unwieldy.
|
| I prefer it as a standalone app. I don't use VSCode nor
| would I want integration with my text editor. Snippet
| managers generally have ways of being invoked from
| anywhere, or you can type a few characters and have them
| replace the text, or you can search them from launchers
| like Alfred.
|
| https://www.alfredapp.com
|
| https://alfred.app/workflows/renfei/snippetslab/
| shubhamjain wrote:
| > For myself, in the last 10 years, my work of writing code has
| largely defined what I do with my working time. Now I experience
| large swaths of that work being created and done by AI (sometimes
| amazingly well, sometimes poorly), and I find myself thinking of
| the photographer above.
|
| Which is ironic, because smartphone photography is astonishingly
| average to someone who actually understands photography. Phones
| try to handle every scenario for the user. It has been optimized
| for bright outdoors, low light conditions, even specific stuff
| like sunsets. So most people never realize how difficult it
| really is to shoot in bright daylight with the light source
| behind the subject. Only when you pick up a traditional camera do
| you realize that's one of the worst conditions to take a photo
| in.
|
| Maybe coding is headed toward the same place. AI coding will
| smooth out complexity for the majority of programmers, but at the
| same time, we'll also see a lot of programmers building things
| that don't actually need to be built, or not realizing the limits
| of their solutions, or just hung in the narrow space of what AI
| can do for them.
|
| Having done photography with Sony-a6000, I've found that it made
| me more skilled with a smartphone camera. So, I am still
| optimistic that knowledge gained through deliberate effort has
| value, even in a world that increasingly prizes "effortlessness"
| in everything. But only time will tell how much that belief
| really holds up.
| sethjgore wrote:
| One up for a6000! Definitely taught me the same things you
| mentioned. A great entry level camera.
| skydhash wrote:
| > _AI coding will smooth out complexity for the majority of
| programmers, but at the same time, we'll also see a lot of
| programmers building things that don't actually need to be
| built, or not realizing the limits of their solutions, or just
| hung in the narrow space of what AI can do for them._
|
| The computers is a very dumb machine. It does exactly what you
| tell it to do and nothing else. Complexity in programming stems
| from the need to formalize things and specifying every single
| detail of the algorithms.
|
| Using AI can give you patterns for the most common things, but
| everything common is likely to be soon a library or a
| framework. So what you're instead doing is reinvent the wheel,
| but differently and the result is likely broken. Good enough
| for short runs (scripts), but anywhere you want something to
| last, then the cracks will start to appear.
|
| The things with photography is that it's a spectrum. But
| software is discrete. It either works or it doesn't.
| ImaCake wrote:
| No smartphone can match the bottom tier super-zoom camera I
| have for bird photography. Even with the frankly microscopic
| sensor on the super-zoom the power of depth-of-field on an
| adjustable zoom lens is amazing.
| pettertb wrote:
| I can relate. It is important to meet this head-on, and not gloss
| over it, explain it away, or shame people for feeling this way.
|
| I even feel this about the wargame "Warmachine", where in the
| past you could not measure distance before committing to actions.
| Deciding if model A and B were 10" or 14" apart was a critical
| skill, and called "weaponized geometry". I was good at it. The
| game has changed, and you can now measure to your hearts content,
| making this skill basically pointless. I still feel a tiny bit
| conflicted about it.
|
| Dublin in the Rare Old Times - The Dubliners
|
| Like my house that fell to progress//My trade's a memory
| aubanel wrote:
| "And I tell you, you may only avoid an effort in the name of a
| greater one, for you must grow"
|
| Antoine de Saint Exupery (author of The Little Prince), in
| Citadelle
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| When you can rattle off reams of code that may or may not solve
| the right problem, you've just shifted the effort.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have
| intrinsic value.
|
| By definition this is instrumental value rather than intrinsic
| value.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Middle class people can't distinguish their work from their
| identity. They seek a perfect harmony of purpose and output, in
| order to be the perfect servant. They need to sustain this for
| a lifetime, so their pleasure must come from the work (or they
| can supplement this with a hobby that is extremely job-shaped.)
|
| If they fail at this, they will be ejected from the middle
| class, and their children will not be properly educated,
| therefore never beginning the middle class journey. If you're
| born poor, it's easy to stay poor all your life; if you're born
| rich, it's easy to stay rich all your life; the middle class is
| the class that has to reproduce itself every generation and
| sustain itself by constant service and sublimation of their
| desires and dreams. That's why they're simultaneously overpaid
| and overtaxed - just to keep them caged and desperate, a layoff
| away from a family annihilation. Loyal to death.
|
| Fear of Falling by Barbara Ehrenreich is a good book about
| this.
|
| This essay is pompous. Just say: I'm afraid my job is going to
| leave me, and it makes me feel insecure. Maybe sympathize a
| little when all of the storefronts on Main Street in some small
| town are empty after the dog food plant got obsoleted by
| Chinese imports, instead of telling them they should learn to
| code like you and to move to where the jobs are.
| kakacik wrote:
| Interesting perspective, I believe its way more valid for US
| than say Europe which has way more job/career obsession and
| sort of class system based on career/wealth status.
|
| Middle class is squeezed everywhere, that's true. But I
| sincerely doubt young generations 'can't distinguish their
| work from their identity' en masse. Thats a recipe for
| disaster, at latest during retirement, probably with first
| firing from the job and generally a big stupid no-no. But
| don't expect state will drill this into you in the schools,
| its up to everybody to look around and figure these things
| out for themselves, just like rest if life (TM).
| alexashka wrote:
| > just to keep them caged and desperate, a layoff away from a
| family annihilation. Loyal to death.
|
| > This essay is pompous
|
| Pompous he said.
| cainxinth wrote:
| The effort is up to you on your own time. I have an e-bike and a
| regular bike. The regular bike gets way more use because I prefer
| the satisfaction I get from it.
|
| Also, speaking as someone that uses LLMs every day, they take
| effort! They cannot spin straw into gold. The terrible work I see
| coming from AI is usually from someone who doesn't realize that.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's not essentially
| the effort, it's the satisfaction. The former is the means, the
| latter the ends. If something is satisfying then the effort
| seems worth it. If using a push-bike satisfies you then carry
| on. If you have only five minutes to catch that train and the
| push-bike's not going to get you there on time, then use the
| e-bike and catch that train. That's satisfying too; this time
| as an outcome, but still satisfying.
| caerwy wrote:
| Following Karl Popper's thinking on this topic, I'd say that our
| problems define us, and when we solve our problems we often
| discover new and interesting children problems demanding
| attention. "The best thing that can happen to a human being us to
| find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live
| trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more
| lovable appears." -- Karl Popper
| card_zero wrote:
| That's not a real Popper quote, is it. The sentiment is nice,
| but it must be radically paraphrased, because he doesn't
| generate pithy quotes very often.
|
| > To conclude, I think that there is only one way to science--
| or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see
| its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and
| to live with it happily, till death do ye part--unless you
| should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or
| unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you
| do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight,
| the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps
| difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with
| a purpose, to the end of your days.
|
| https://archive.org/details/realismaimofscie0000popp/page/8/...
|
| Edit: if I heed the content of the paragraphs just before this
| quote, maybe I should prefer the rewritten version.
| jebarker wrote:
| This feels right to me, but I wonder what he was thinking of
| when he said "problem". For me life is most effortless when
| I'm working on math or cs problems/puzzles but I sometimes
| get this guilty feeling that I "should" be working on a
| problem that is useful to the rest of the world.
| card_zero wrote:
| Yeah, there's problems, like puzzles and mysteries, and
| then there's difficulties, and there's no sharp dividing
| line but the difficulties are less fun. And are also called
| problems.
|
| So far as moral duty goes, play to your strengths, you're
| at your best when having fun. This conveniently evaluates
| to "do what you like". It's not perfectly true, but you can
| get away with it, blamelessly. Nobody needs you miserable,
| usually. Then there's the wrinkle where the importance of
| something to humanity (or even the promise of a large cash
| reward) may _make_ it fun ... if you happen to feel that
| way.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| The people convincing you it is a virtue to move fast always
| happen to be selling a car.
|
| Be careful that you aren't optimizing your life in response to
| someone else's marketing campaign.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Hesitation is another side of the bad decision coin. Good
| decisions are lost due to overanalysis. Charlie Munger: "A lot
| of opportunities in life tend to last a short while, due to
| some temporary inefficiency."
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Had Archimedes lived to teach the Romans his calculus we
| might have reached Mars by 500 AD
|
| https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o
|
| that's not from hesitation. And one can only call the
| Syracuse invasion an inefficiency in hindsight.
|
| The immediate opportunity of a ~million Roman lives compared
| to other hypothetical opportunities
|
| (One might guess that opportunities of the win-win type
| weren't covered by Munger's model)
| tyre wrote:
| It's highly unlikely that the Romans could have had the
| industrial revolution[0], so I'm doubtful that calculus
| alone would have gotten them to Mars.
|
| [0]: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-
| roman-indus...
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| A different take:
|
| https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3
|
| (Maybe the Greeks' themselves could have done it, they
| already had a rudimentary steam engine )
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Yes, the scientific method pre-dates the industrial
| revolution for a reason. You simply can't get cracking on
| rocket science without foundational science.[-3]
|
| [-3]: https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/AIDS_(Space_Program
| )#AIDS_Sp...
| alexashka wrote:
| They're ten steps ahead of you. ~85% of spending is done by
| women.
|
| If you don't want to live alone - you will be living a
| marketing campaign.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| She needed the SUV because it is safer for the kids, the more
| expensive cleaning supplies to save the environment, and the
| new furniture because the previous color scheme was last
| decade.
| RataNova wrote:
| "Move fast" sounds noble until you realize you're just
| accelerating toward someone else's goalpost
| stronglikedan wrote:
| As long as they're paying me enough to move fast toward their
| goalpost, I'm in (as long as it's ethical, of course).
| Otherwise, my own personal goalposts amount to hanging out
| with my dogs.
| barrenko wrote:
| Just because you like to paint does by no means entail you'd like
| doing photography.
| dzink wrote:
| We are a cerebellum. Our brain summarizes one layer of data into
| insights for the layer above that and programming is one layer.
| AI is now forcing us to think not how things should be built but
| what should we built - everyone is a promoted to product manager.
| What should be built now can be answered by what is needed by
| humans, or companies, or AI, or government. All of the above
| should be serving humans. So what do people want or need? How can
| we harness AI to solve more needs.
|
| I think of it from another angle. AI is reaching an energy limit.
| Companies are way overvalued and in a race to spend most of their
| gains on AI and that may end badly. Governments are on edge and
| conflict is brewing. All of that and unknown unknowns can put a
| stop on the amazing stream of affordable AI we have now. I am
| using the models as fast as possible to build things I find
| meaningful and to learn as much as possible. Having unlimited
| help with any idea that I come up with is incredible. It's akin
| to infinite VC funding, but you don't owe equity or a cent back.
| The world is now what your cerebellum can come up with. And what
| you know about the needs of people.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have
| intrinsic value. What happens when something we enjoy doing that
| took effort becomes effortless? And what happens if that original
| effort was a foundation on which we saw value in ourselves?
|
| I found the flaw.
|
| Effort is the process of converting energy into value (the state
| of something being effortless in the future). It's not the
| efforts themselves that have intrinsic value, but the work ethic
| that drove the effort in the first place.
| darepublic wrote:
| Some friction required for enjoyment. AI too slippery a lubricant
| dostick wrote:
| You can always squeeze tighter. Or find tighter place to apply
| the effort.
| hn_throw_250926 wrote:
| This was written by a dev so it has the usual hallmarks of
| ascribing some anecdote to a generalized statement about people,
| their life's purpose and so on. Take it with a grain of salt.
| falcor84 wrote:
| What does this have to do with devs? Isn't all writing personal
| at its core?
| aeon_ai wrote:
| At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize
| we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days
| to do anything, let alone something that matters.
|
| Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time.
|
| When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we
| trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can
| mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value, and
| then optimize our entire lives according to that myth.
|
| The idea that AI destroys meaning is a false framing. Many people
| are already experiencing a meaning crisis, and AI is simply an
| easy scapegoat.
|
| Purpose comes from discovering our own values through living, not
| from accepting meanings imposed by others.
| dangus wrote:
| I'd also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be
| happy and then die. There's no need to be defined by some
| effort you're putting into some kind of work or hobby.
|
| If there's someone out there who just sits on the beach all day
| and survives by eating coconuts they don't have to be defined
| by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to
| seek external validation.
|
| And that's a bit of a problem with this article. The
| photographer that wants to quit because of digital photography?
| I find that odd, it seems to me like the film community has a
| really great time with the craft of film photography in the
| digital age. If anything, the massive shrinkage in available
| professional labs should make the art of developing your own
| photos even more validating.
|
| Why didn't this photographer want to quit when Kodak made
| disposable cameras and CVS would develop your photos in an
| hour? I submit that it isn't digital photography that killed
| their hobby/passion.
|
| It's okay to not love doing something anymore and take a break
| or move on to something else. I think this idea that it defines
| you is a bit of a toxic validation mechanism.
| dfee wrote:
| > If there's someone out there who just sits on the beach all
| day and survives by eating coconuts they don't have to be
| defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being
| used to seek external validation.
|
| This is written from a different values perspective than
| mine, but I can understand it. I think you'd have made a
| stronger point if you'd focused on internal validation,
| though.
|
| For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself
| forward. I say ideal, because we're imperfect creatures -
| external validation, greed, etc. slip in.
|
| Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds
| immediately appealing, but long term empty. I'm not going to
| tell you it's working 996, either. For me, the journey is
| finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.
| dangus wrote:
| The reason I didn't focus on internal validation is that I
| think the article is ultimately not talking about that. I
| think the article is almost exclusively talking about
| external validation.
| mym1990 wrote:
| "If there's someone out there who just sits on the beach all
| day and survives by eating coconuts"
|
| This seems like a dire situation for most humans and probably
| isn't the status quo for human operation. Its perfectly fine
| to sit on the beach, but eventually a light should go on that
| would say "lets go build some tools", "lets go see if I can
| catch a fish", "lets build a hut". Which would all be fine
| and admirable things to spend your time doing.
| dangus wrote:
| Obviously I don't mean it literally, I mean a general
| situation where one's needs are met and they decide to
| spend their time generally idle.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| There's this related phenom which seems paradoxical to me but
| maybe you can help figure:
|
| Things that are built with money (& not by say, intrinsic
| motivation alone) seem to have a high ratio of (traction) to
| (resources invested). Not sure if marketing alone can explain
| that?
|
| Obvious exceptions come to mind , eg the Linux kernel, but even
| that was massively boosted by commercial interests.
|
| (One other class of exceptions could be tentatively named
| "winning the zeitgeist lottery")
|
| If you would agree that this phenom exists in the short to mid
| time frame: without the likelihood of traction, how can
| intrinsic meaning alone provide motivation?
| mym1990 wrote:
| I would guess a lot of intrinsic motivation is driven a lot
| by hormones and things like dopamine release when you do
| something that is really interesting or exciting. I play
| tennis and absolutely love it, I will never make a dime from
| doing it, and that's totally okay with me.
|
| Things that are built with money are often done so for scale.
| Successful things that are built with money often also have
| people who have _some_ interest in the thing they are
| building.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Thanks for helping to refine the thinking. I guess the
| other side of the coin that would be make the paradox
| interesting is that, in the _long term_ , it has to seem
| that most of the stuff built with money (but without
| intrinsically motivated managers) lose out to the stuff
| built on pure passion. After discounting for a heap of
| survival bias.
| ambicapter wrote:
| So "traction", as in, many people using your creation, is the
| only form of worthwhile meaning? Sounds like you believe
| external validation is the only form of worthwhile meaning?
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Edit: if I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes,
| motivation comes from "this is nuts but it _could_ work "
| and meaning comes from "it works!"
|
| More like survival. I think of Archimedes' letters to the
| librarian of Alexandria, describing his secret technique of
| infinitessimals. It seems clear that he knew his work was
| meaningful but he wasnt going to die without telling
| anybody about it. He wasn't looking for validation, he
| didn't need it
| aeon_ai wrote:
| This is, as I see it, the tension between wisdom and power.
|
| Wealth, in the modern era, has been a vehicle to achieve
| power. It is certainly not the only path, but it is the most
| culturally universal path to influence the effort of others
| available today. When we set our ambitions towards lofty
| outcomes that _require power to accomplish_ , we inevitably
| run into the capacity constraints involved with being a
| single person.
|
| Money is a path to acquiring sufficient power to realize
| goals. Power itself is amoral, and the idealist with good
| intentions must inevitably conclude that power is a
| requirement to realize big dreams.
|
| But, effort is also power. For our sanity, wisdom would have
| us focus on _our efforts_ , with every moment we have, rather
| than whether or not we achieve the goal. I'll also add that
| AI is increasing the scope of what our efforts _alone_ can
| accomplish, for good and bad.
|
| To achieve large goals, pragmatism would require us to derive
| meaning and purpose from the effort put towards those ends,
| rather than the attainment of the goal. Think this is best
| described as an 'open purpose'.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Edit: if I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes,
| motivation comes from "this is nuts but it _could_ work "
| and meaning comes from "it works!"
|
| > _Money is a path to acquiring sufficient power_
|
| Power and money are _almost_ interchangeable, and I 'm
| taking a wild guess that better questions are hidden in
| that "almost" (as you say, "wisdom+effort", but I'd have to
| sleep on that for a few nights in order not to casually
| one-up that with "precience")
| aeon_ai wrote:
| I'd tend to disagree they're interchangeable, although it
| may feel like it for many things. Our culture certainly
| _wants_ people to equate the two, because if people
| believe in the myth that money = power, money has more
| power.
|
| However, I'd encourage you to contemplate all the things
| that money can't "buy."
|
| I categorize power not as the sum total of capability to
| dominate, or purchase, but influence belief, shape
| motivation, and inspire action.
|
| Our body can develop power over the physical world. Our
| mind can develop power over the world of myths and
| information. Our ability to communicate can develop
| motivation in others through belief, inspiration, and
| hope.
|
| Money can out-source, to acquire the power and resources
| of others.
|
| There are many ways to power - Money is a centrally
| dominant one, today, but is predicated on a certain order
| to the world and is not universal.
| swat535 wrote:
| While you make good points, I wanted to quickly counter this
| narrative with the fact that majority of people are chasing
| money because it provides them the basic necessities.
|
| Money gives you food, shelter, healthcare and relationships;
| all of which are required for happiness.
|
| I think we need make the distinction between a startup founder
| missing his daughter's birthday because he is at the office
| chasing money and the average Joe working double shifts at
| Walmart.
|
| Most people don't even have the luxury of optimizing their life
| for money.
| pixl97 wrote:
| If this is really the end state of humanity then we should
| stop all automation and reel things back 10 thousand years or
| so. This is, modern people can imagine the end of the world
| before they can imagine a world without money based
| capitalism.
|
| Go back far enough in history and money disappears. We had
| barter and trade and happiness still existed without money.
|
| Go back further and trade becomes les important and
| violence/cooperation to achieve what one wants becomes
| greater.
|
| Trying to shove money in a post labor world won't make sense
| and will just lead to war/genocide if we don't find a way to
| transition.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Post labour is still resource constrained.
|
| How do you efficiently allocate resources? Especially when
| you have a wide spectrum of preferences.
|
| I think if you spent long enough thinking about that
| problem you'd just end up inventing money. You'd have to
| call it something else so it sounded rebelliously anti-
| capitalist though
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Barter still exists. It is largely inefficient as we don't
| see things having equal value. Even in barter, often some
| intermediate that was a form of money emerged, such as a
| staple food that could be stored for a relative long term.
| In smaller communities, there was a bit of not seeking
| equal exchange because belonging to the community was more
| important, but that doesn't scale well to larger groups and
| can lead to some people being taken advantage of and thus
| leaving the community if that is an option.
|
| Violence is problematic for self evident reasons.
| Cooperation I already touched on about the community
| involvement, with all the same problems.
|
| It isn't that we can't imagine a world without money, but
| that we quickly see the problems with it given the scale of
| modern day life.
|
| As for post scarcity, it really depends upon what is post
| scarcity. Money becomes meaningless for things that are not
| scarce, but some things remain scarce.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I know that one day I'm going to die, but it's just incredibly
| difficult to find meaning in life. The more I try the more I
| fail and the more depressed I get. I can't find meaning in work
| because toxic corporate environment is what pays most. I can't
| find meaning in hobbies because the mind just gets bored of
| them at some point, whether it's productive hobbies or
| doomscrolling. I can't find meaning in other people because
| talking to 99% of them leaves me frustrated rather than
| fulfilled, and the other 1% has better shit to do than talking
| to me. I can't find meaning in meaninglessness because mind
| starts to wander.
|
| By the power of sheer discipline I keep moving on. I have my
| daily routine which encompasses a variety of activities that
| theoretically should push me forward as a person. But I can't
| escape the profound sense of disappointment and
| dissatisfaction. It's terrifying for me to think that this is
| how I'll spend the rest of my life and then I'll die, but at
| the same time I'm completely clueless what I could potentially
| change while there's still time. And the worst part is,
| compared to most of humanity, I'm very privileged.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Meaning can be found yes.
|
| But just remember, we are the only observed entities that
| _create_ meaning, complex, rich, nuanced meaning. We are the
| meaning generators of the universe.
|
| If the universe has a random forest walk to create meaning, to
| try new cool stuff, to hold a mirror to and understand itself.
|
| We are it.
|
| We don't know and ex ante can't predict which human(s) might
| reverse entropy, alter the topology of the universe, prevent an
| asteroid from wiping us out, escape the bounds of this reality.
|
| None of those things may ever happen, but as far as I know they
| haven't been strictly ruled out yet.
|
| It's early days yet.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Sorry to repeat but I felt a bit of Eureka
|
| If I were to put myself in Archimedes' shoes (when he
| basically discovered calculus) motivation comes from "this is
| nuts but it _could_ work " and meaning comes from "yep that
| works!"
|
| https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o
|
| (That was long ago, but I'm sure it also happens today)
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Information is physical and part of the physical entropic
| universe, Landauer showed that.
|
| When we imagine something in our brain we are physically
| testing or creating something even if ephemeral, these
| thoughts you make have meaning and are real just with low
| distribution.
|
| They can be very complex thoughts, you can invent worlds
| and objects and play around with them in your mind for
| relatively low cost, this is the root of humanities power,
| the ability to create meaning, to create arbitrary
| coherence (even if it's just internal coherence)
|
| You can distribute this meaning to others, as a written or
| spoken word.
|
| You can investigate if your thought has correspondence to
| something that exists in the exterior world. This can be
| science and discovery.
|
| But you can also create something that you know doesn't
| exist and then work to have it realized in the external
| world.
|
| What's the casual path from Gene Rondenberry to the iPod?
| Hard to compute.
|
| We create meaning. It's what we do.
|
| The funny thing is this, we keep talking about people's
| search for meaning, but if we look at the observable facts,
| to speak poetically, if the universe was sentient (and I
| don't personally believe it is) it would be looking to us
| to see what meaning we create and new shit we discover and
| why it works the way it does.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Maybe all i'm suggesting is that AI can help us quickly
| check that what we humans are working on is indeed insane
| ( and switch to something else if it passes their sanity
| checks)
|
| The causal path from Rodenderry to the ipod .. is.. easy
| to approximate compared to the causal path from Zen Monks
| to Darth Vader.. (though they are in roughly opposite
| directions)
| diordiderot wrote:
| I've realised far too early. The death of my college age
| sibling has me constantly scanning and checking for life
| threatening illnesses. Sometimes the odd ache or a pain sends
| me into a days long spiral. The fear extends to my spouse and
| children.
|
| Financially, I'm completely free, very comfortable, want for
| nothing, but still don't feel any sense of achievement.
|
| I need help
| mvcosta91 wrote:
| I've been in the exact same boat for a decade. What helped me
| was working out; it's pretty much a hobby now. Endorphins are
| a hell of a drug.
| joeyhage wrote:
| As others have mentioned, LLMs require a lot of effort to get it
| right. Personally, I still prefer writing code over writing LLM
| prompts but I'm trying to find the right balance. I will always
| enjoy refactoring so I tend to have the LLM get me most of the
| way there and leave the polishing for myself.
| d--b wrote:
| I have a feeling that these feelings come from culture.
|
| Protestantism or Japanese cultures really value effort in a way
| mediterannean culture (for instance) does not.
|
| Think about Flemish paintings that have all these very intricate
| details, while Italian painters invented the messy sfumato.
|
| I don't like that digital cameras took over, because I don't like
| the quality of digital pictures, but I love that LLMs are taking
| stuff off my plate / brain. I have absolutely zero romanticism
| associated with effort. I do romanticize smartness.
|
| Gauss finding n*(n+1) / 2 because he didn't want to sum numbers
| by hand is my absolute hero. Of course he was protestant so what
| I just said really doesn't make much sense.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| It's still largely unclear how AI is going to affect the job of
| software engineers both in the shorter term, pre-AGI, and after
| that.
|
| However, I'm pretty sure that the job of SWE isn't about to
| disappear, since even when human-level AGI appears, the process
| of software development isn't about to get any easier than when
| it was done by actual humans. I don't see non-technical middle
| managers able to take over as systems architects and lead
| developers. It'll just mean that the day-to-day of those charged
| with developing software per PHB's requirements changes.
|
| That said, I do feel fortunate to have been from the generation
| where software was developed entirely by hand, having started in
| the era of 8-bitters (NASCOM-1 in 1978) and only just in the last
| year transitioning (against my preference) to a role of
| overseeing offshore developers rather than being hands-on. Still,
| I think that those who enjoy the challenge and fun of conjuring
| up dreams out of software will still find plenty to enjoy in the
| future, although it will be different, just as it has already
| changed a lot from the time when we were writing everything in
| assembler to today arguing about whether Rust is better than C++.
| zwnow wrote:
| After AGI? AGI is not a reality anyone of us will witness. Its
| a false promise in the current LLM market and we are as far
| away from it as we always have been... just listen to actual
| experts on the topic that dont profit from pushing a certain
| narrative.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Demis Hassabis is estimating 5-10 years to AGI, and is about
| the only person who's opinion on this I think is worth
| listening to. His/their (DeepMind) plan is to retain a
| pretrained LLM but add something like search around it (cf
| AlphaGo or AlphaFold). He does say a couple of "Transformer-
| level" major breakthoughs may be needed to get there, and is
| still only 50% confident because of AGI-requirements he may
| have missed.
|
| Hassabis has the Google DeepMind team of 5000+, very many of
| who are PhD's, working for him, so a lot can be done in 5-10
| years.
| thepastisgone wrote:
| > Is it worth the effort?
|
| It was.
|
| "All that was will always have been somehow never again"
| dvcoolarun wrote:
| I'm hearing this argument from a lot of people. I think it's more
| of a feeling that anyone can contribute, and now it's a matter of
| taste and stamina--who persists and who fizzles out.
|
| Probably also tied to changes in neuroplasticity, I guess. Humans
| are generally good at adopting new behaviors.
| sltr wrote:
| What we believe defines us. What we believe directs our efforts.
| Insanity wrote:
| Unlike the author, I think that the value of writing code in my
| free time (or well, the joy more than the value) has diminished
| greatly.
|
| I took a lot of 'pride in the craft', and I used to really enjoy
| hacking away on new projects with languages that I normally
| wouldn't use in my day-to-day. But now whenever I start something
| I think of how much faster I could be if I just used an LLM.
| Which takes away some of the joy.
|
| I'll be honest, I struggled with this for many months.. actually
| years at this point (since ~GPT3.5). I hardly code in my spare
| time now, and am spending more time on other hobbies. I think
| I've kinda come to terms with the fact that I won't really enjoy
| coding anymore.
| cortesoft wrote:
| It's funny, because I feel like code AIs have given me a new
| enthusiasm for creating side projects. When I was young, I
| would spend so much time creating side projects and I loved it.
| Then, I got older, got married, had kids, got tired... I know
| longer have opportunities to lock myself away for 8 hours in a
| day to bang away on a fun project. Instead, I have small 30-60
| minute windows scattered around, without the energy to bury
| myself in the fun problems. I don't think I am alone in taking
| at least 30-60 minutes to fully fill up my brain context for a
| problem in order to do real coding. Without longer chunks of
| time to be able to do that, I just stopped doing any sort of
| complex side project. I just don't have the time and mental
| energy for that in this stage of my life.
|
| LLMs have completely changed that for me. I can actually start
| and do those side projects that have been kicking around in my
| head for years. I don't need 8 hours just to get to a starting
| point on a project; I can type up a spec off and on during my
| spare time, then sit down with an LLM and generate the
| framework of my project in minutes. I am no longer stymied by
| my short chunks of free time.
|
| I feel like a whole world of creativity has opened up for me
| again.
| w10-1 wrote:
| I think the concern is deep, deeper than mitigations like going
| up the abstraction chain from coding to design, or lessons
| learned from failure.
|
| It's very, very difficult to really realize that one's sacrifice
| was meaningless or mistaken.
|
| Effort - sacrifice - in particular is for the sake of something
| else; you burn your precious life/time for the sake of X, and
| then X doesn't work or turns out to be an illusion. You can
| console yourself with lessons learned, but it's a bit hollow. And
| worse, if you wasted someone else's time? Almost unrecoverable.
|
| Then you're not only less useful (stale skills), but also less
| susceptible to going gung-ho on the new goal X', making you a
| poor candidate for any employers or investors since being
| resilient and formidable are necessary for any uncertain
| endeavor.
|
| The Confucian Ta Hsueh (Great Learning) says "Every day, make it
| new" was inscribed on the bathtub of the first Shang dynasty
| emperor: Tang Zhi Pan Ming Yue :[Ji Ri Xin ,Ri Ri Xin ,You Ri Xin
|
| Traditionally, the solution was a kind of selflessness, where you
| realize that even if (as with Ecclesiastes) empires you build
| will fall into dust, you can still help others. But in an age
| where interactions reduce to endless scrolling and online forums,
| it's not clear where and how to do that.
| Liquix wrote:
| > even if ... empires you build will fall into dust, you can
| still help others
|
| A beautiful sentiment reminiscent of Zen. Everything is
| temporary, nothing lasts, everything you build or accomplish
| will crumble into dust and be forgotten. On its face this
| appears as nihilism, but on the other side of the realization,
| you're still here - so what else could there be to do besides
| seize the moment and live it to the fullest?
| RataNova wrote:
| The Ta Hsueh line is such a powerful image, especially in
| contrast with today's digital haze. The call to "make it new"
| daily implies presence, intention, and responsibility
| RataNova wrote:
| I think the hardest part is that effort wasn't just a means to an
| end; it was the thing. Not always pleasant, not always noble, but
| it gave shape to our days, our roles, even our self-worth. It
| reminds me how fragile that sense of value is when it's tied to
| output
| raincole wrote:
| Every time we invented some higher level of abstraction for
| software development, it became harder, not easier. The required
| effort, collectively, has only been increasing.
|
| Nature language programming (aka "AI") seems to be on the same
| track.
| siavosh wrote:
| I think the sense of loss and fear is undeniable for most. None
| of it is unprecedented, although probably never has the potential
| for both been more extreme than with AI. The
| spiritual/psychological solution is always the same though, fully
| surrender to the loss and fear, then find a way to transcend it.
| prezdizzle wrote:
| As Mr. Smith points out in the Matrix:
|
| "There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both
| know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that
| created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that
| guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines, purpose
| that binds us."
| vishkk wrote:
| Whatever it was -- a lie, the truth, or, most likely, their
| mixture -- that caused me to make such a decision, I am immensely
| grateful to it for what appears to have been my first free act.
| It was an instinctive act, a walkout. Reason had very little to
| do with it. I know that, because I've been walking out ever
| since, with increasing frequency. And not necessarily on account
| of boredom or of feeling a trap gaping; I've been walking out of
| perfect setups no less often than out of dreadful ones. However
| modest the place you happen to occupy, if it has the slightest
| mark of decency, you can be sure that someday somebody will walk
| in and claim it for himself or, what is worse, suggest that you
| share it. Then you either have to fight for that place or leave
| it. I happened to prefer the latter. Not at all because I
| couldn't fight, but rather out of sheer disgust with myself:
| managing to pick something that attracts others denotes a certain
| vulgarity in your choice. It doesn't matter at all that you came
| across the place first. It is even worse to get somewhere first,
| for those who follow will always have a stronger appetite than
| your partially satisfied one. - Joseph Brodsky
| cosinetau wrote:
| Effort is Love.
|
| Healthy love is effort in the right direction.
| munificent wrote:
| I used to be very into photography before Instagram and
| smartphones inundated the world with easy acceptably good photos.
|
| I was into DJing when that meant buying vinyl and mastering the
| difficult art of beatmatching by ear before CDJs made acquiring
| music trivial and automated beatmatching made mixing easy.
|
| I was a game developer during the time when casual smartphone
| games came and ate so much time and attention that players had
| less time available for other games.
|
| I got into making music when that meant fighting with big, slow,
| complex hardware synthesizers, then watched anyone with a laptop
| (including me) be able to do all of that a hundred times more
| easily, and now I watch AI auto-generate passable background
| music.
|
| Time and time again, I've seen this same process play out.
|
| Many of the deepest joys in my life involved putting deep time
| and care into making something to share with others. That feels
| increasingly out of step with the culture at large.
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