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- Hacker News
- Hey, congrats on coming up on a birthday that ends in 0. Mine was just 5-0. I can give you two pieces of possible advice:
- nothing does matter. You will die. We may meet in the Bardo if you are spectacularly unlucky.
- the trick is now being kind and enjoying your time after discovering this.
by tclancy - Sounds like only materialism matter. But life is more than that fortunately. You can care, you can explore, you can love, be thankful, look around, go out, behind our ego...by t0bia_s
- I still think there's some junction between software and the physical world that's the next exciting frontier. There's a whole new world opening up that we've never been able to tackle before. Imagine a world where we can shift all these bright folks from working on ads and SaaS to working on new materials discovery, fundamental sciences, healthcare access, climate change, etc. Working to make the world around us a better place.
We can now build apps with a TAM of 1 or 2 viable at scale - I still have hope there's a lot of good we can do for the world with that new reality. Purpose-built tools for super niche, high-impact problems, where software isn't the end goal, it's just a means to an end.
What do you think? Still meaningless?
by kadhirvelm - Sorry, it was always meaningless. The shiny toys just distracted our attention enough to trick us into thinking there's a golden pot at the end of the rainbow. But now we can reach the end of the rainbow and it's emptiness.
Read Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Everything under the sun is vain, as we will all eventually find out.
Nothing will satisfy us because our emptiness was never meant to be filled with code, knowledge, or whatever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlvOrTq4Bes
by vanity0 - I agree that AI is a gamechanger in many ways, however it is not the end of life or the end of civilization. Life will go on, and people will be happy productive members of society, even with AI becoming part of everyday life - at least that is what I believe, since believing the alternative would be self defeating.
When I think back to the 90s when the internet became popular, to me, living in the middle of nowhere, being able to interact with others through a computer, it was such an exciting time and it is what got me into programming. I believe right now today, there will be young people who may, just like me, be super excited about this AI thing, want to learn more about it, become a wielder of it, with all the energy and hope that comes with youth, just like when I discovered the internet. To them AI is not a "learn this new thing or you are going to be left behind", but it is probably something that gives them hope.
Even older people can do this. I remember when I was 16 a taxi driver, probably in his 50s asking me to tell him about this internet thing: "what should I do to learn the internet?". I fondly remember this driver since he seemed to have such an innoncent interest and willingness to learn from this 16 year old who didn't know anything himself.
Even with AI, as good as it is now, as well as with it becoming better, people will be part of the process. Although I'm nostalgic about how software used to be created, I'm trying to embrace the new way of doing things and look for new opportunities and a way how I can make a difference, with a positive outlook - this has never failed for me in the past.
by ryuuseijin - > Life will go on, and people will be happy productive members of society, even with AI becoming part of everyday life - at least that is what I believe, since believing the alternative would be self defeating.
Unfortunately, I'm not so optimistic. If the rapid change in AI advancement continues at this rate, bar some world wars or an economic collapse, we will face an existensial crisis as humans. AI for me is not attacking or replacing human jobs, it is coming after the cost of our own intelligence. I fear that the cost of human intelligence will go down with time compared to AI. We will no longer be needed to perform tasks as part of an economic framework (capitalism or other will not matter). Money will not be worth anything and hopefully we get to UBI quickly. I don't believe that my son who is 5 will work till retirement age.
- Young People Hate AI CEOs So Passionately That It's Almost Hard to Believe
- 1. why haven't we developed blood in the lab yet?
2. why haven't we developed organs in the lab yet?
3. why haven't we invented space travel yet?
4. why haven't we solved food, shelter, cover for all human beings on planet earth yet?
5. why don't we have absolute democracy and have hold politicians accountable for their inaction, exploit and abuse? (specifically using Software and AI). Where are the dashboards of all public info of each politicians with organization chart of each country representing top leader with nodes of people working under him/her and further down.
by thomasjeff1 - I don't think (5) is called "democracy", but it sounds nice. Democracy is "everyone gets a vote", which devolves into a battle of populists. There's nothing in democracy that would guarantee the kind of accountability you are describing.
Besides, as soon as you introduce this kind of checking, you'll just cement the oligarchy. The winning strategy would be for a billionaire not officially in government to work their magic through a puppet with a clean tax report.
- 5.1. where are the alerts when a politicians takes a bribe or does insider trading?by thomasjeff1
- 5. Absolut democracy is available at the liquor store in various flavors, but has negarive long-term health effects.
I'd be happy with a sane system of taxation supporting a coherent budget.
by smitty1e - We need direct democracy. Representative democracy is a crutch and a workaround for the real thing.
- Because AI isn't for us. It's for those ruling over us. A simple proof would be that working hours haven't reduced despite "increase in productivity" claimed by everyone. Some companies more demand 30 to 50% more work due to AI
- I think the phenomena we are experiencing is "change". That's what change looks like. Out with the old, in with the new. It feels like nothing matters only because this is all happening too fast.
Since we are talking about AI, I'll bring up one thing that hasn't changed, or hasn't been solved at least by AI. Understanding. We are producing so much more than ever, yet we are not understanding the world better.
You can experiment it yourself, just because you have the world's knowledge at your fingertips doesn't make you an expert in every field. I asked an LLM to teach me everything I need to know about batteries so I can get into the business. All the information is there, a well crafted curriculum. The amount I didn't know that I didn't know before starting is depressing.
Extend this to the idea that now everyone knows everything about everything and you'll quickly realize that we still don't understand much about anything despite this powerful tool on our hand.
Understanding things still matters.
by firefoxd - So the next step is to make machines understand the things it needs to understand to solve the problems we care about.by thomasjeff1
- A lot of the old world's benefit was the gatekeeping of (legitimate) knowledge and understanding. You had to spend a lot of time to grok it, and you could then exploit this for money.
LLMs completely kill this gatekeeping, for good or bad. And we're seeing the after effects. I don't know how to feel about this.
by unified101 - I used to contribute to large open source projects. I don’t anymore. I used to read books about various programming languages and CS topics, thinking it would all help advance my career somehow. I perceive all of these activities as too risky now. It takes away time I could spend with loved ones or on other topics I enjoy. I think the best engineers combine advanced CS knowledge with LLM tool use, but the ROI on obtaining that knowledge is much less certain now. Now I have a much higher threshold for what I spend time/money on, other than hobby stuff… if it doesn’t directly lead to some return (like investing) or a chance at some entrepreneurial success, it’s not worth bothering about these days imo. Probably was never a good choice, but contributing to open source projects with the hope it will advance your career is a fool’s errand these days, same goes for useless side projects and leetcode. I don’t think I’m articulating my feelings on this very well, but hopefully you get the gist.by EmeraldSky
- I thought I was the only one, so burnt out from software engineering I am glad to be out of a job. I am starting to have physical revulsion at the thought of it, and I have been dealing with the fact that I have even lost my fun time in front of the PC, playing games or browsing. These days I literally feel better doing the dishes than opening Steam or watching YouTube.
If it’s only me, I can say it’s burnout and depression, if it’s an entire class of people, then the world is sick.
As for AI, I have mellowed in my extreme doomer position, though I still believe people have unrealistically high expectations and the reality of it is gonna hit tech very hard in the face soon.
Perhaps AI has instilled into me an appreciation for the human creativity, and humanity as a whole, and there’s not much of it to be found online. The Internet was an exciting place where we came to develop our nerdy selves, and today we find having to accept it has become a smelly, dirty shanty town with open air sewer, everybody hustling for a coin. It’s time to unplug.
by sph - I had this experience and then it completely flipped after being out of work for chemotherapy. I was ready to leave software engineering for good, a complete career transition with the years of investment it would take.
But in my time off, I've done my own coding projects and I've rediscovered my love for code. I realized it never left, what I grew to dislike is coding in a corporate environment. But coding for myself is different, I do it for my own rewards and satisfaction. And nothing beats coding for that, really. You get to make things and take pride.
by preg_match - I did my taxes on paper instead of digitally this year because of the same anti-computer feeling. It’s a very magnificent feeling, I do find it kind of interesting how I came to feel this way.by comment0r
- > enable cheats in a game
Great analogy. Life does not have cheats though. Things are changing fast but the limits of physics still apply and reality has a surprising amount of detail[1].
I find myself feeling the way you are feeling when I stop making things. When I'm making things it is very clear where the limits and frontiers have moved to, and that's where the fun is. I would say just start exploring and making things and you'll soon see that "you can do anything" is not true. There is still enormously fun work to be done and puzzles to be solved, with the help of AI or without it.
[1] http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
by chr15m - Well said. It’s easy to generalize doom and hard to make something real.by someguydave
- I think one aspect of this relates to extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.
I'm intrinsically motivated to work on my software projects because I want them to exist, and I enjoy exploring the problem space and working my way to a good solution. AI is great because it accelerates my abilities in this regard.
If I'd had only extrinsic motivations of credit and money, I can see that AI would affect them negatively. But I'd also have to believe that anyone else could AI-shortcut their way to whatever I make. I don't really believe that TBH. A real solution is extremely nuanced: it addresses many, many edge cases; it is performant in CPU and memory use; its UX steers the user away from incidental complications straight to the solution they're seeking. Being able to attend to all that doesn't seem everyone's cup of tea.
Finally, even if someone just copied whatever I had made, I would still have the satisfaction of knowing I was the original and they the copycat. That's good enough for me.
by kranner - > I'm intrinsically motivated to work on my software projects because I want them to exist
Isn't that extrinsic motivation? You're motivated by the desire to bring something outside of yourself into existence. The software project doesn't exist within you.
by maplethorpe - I am intrinsically motivated, but AI doesn't just accelerate, it changes the end product when used in the way we are forced by economics to use it: Broadly, and supported by tests rather than by looking at each line. Something I made is explicitly different from something somebody (or something) else made over which I merely acted as a manager. For my personal experience, that's a different end product - I know the architecture of the thing, but the thing itself can not be internalized. It's less interesting, and, despite requiring less thinking, it's more stressful. And even regardless, reviewing code is simply less enjoyable/motivating than writing code.
I am also extrinsically motivated, as everybody is. The "if you don't like AI, then you only cared about the money" implication is nonsensical. I'm not going to starve or become homeless, but I absolutely could lose my current home. That would drive me to depression. I also don't want to have a job I don't enjoy at all. That would turn me into a different person. A miserable person. Switching to something I can learn to do within a short enough time frame that I'm not being financially irresponsible, that I enjoy at least a little, and that ultimately ends up paying at least 75% of what my previous job pays, is essentially not realistic.
- I envy your enthusiasm. I sincerely enjoyed being proficient at something that was hard to replace, and still feel pride for it. There's still avenues like that, but they've grown thinner and it's not as one-sided. I'm still very happy to be in this field and keep toiling away, but with less joy.by xpct
- >Is it that I want it to be done? Would it have been done if I didn't? (Additionality)
>Is it that I want to have done it? Would I be happy if someone else did it? (credit)
>Is it that I want to be doing it? (achievement/process)
>I want to have a mix. I want to do some things for the experience and some things for the accomplishment. I want to do some easy things and some hard things. Some fun things and some unfun things. Some things just for me and some things for others.
Amit Patel, via https://digitalseams.com/blog/amit-patel-on-making-things
by bobbiechen - This is a form of ego death and should be taken seriously.
Your/our place(s) in society have been shaken up like dice in a cup...and someone may not even care to pour them out and see what numbers come out.
What are you like when no one is watching?
Like any death, it will re-arrange your values.
Fortunately existentialist philosophers have been grasping with this for some time.
The secret is you have to make your own meaning. It can be scary. Don't freak out. You've essentially been forced to become a radical non-conformist.
Also: the ego usually reassembles itself like the robot in Saturn 3. It just comes back a little different, a little more mature. And often it's grateful for every good thing you've ever done for yourself and others.
by diydsp - ^hell yeah! thxby quaverquaver
- Sound advice.by iJohnDoe