PyotrVerkhovensky
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User ID: 2154
PyotrVerkhovensky
1d ago
The modern white-collar workplace has been understood by some as an exemplar of the "longhouse": an increasingly feminized environment where "alignment" and "consensus" matter more than "action" and "execution".
In the age of AI, I posit three phases in the evolution of the modern workplace, the labor market, and (as a result) society more broadly.
Phase 1: increased ossification and feminization. This will occur because the (mostly male) "doers" on which the company relies are likely the first to be automated. There may still need to be a handful of rockstar performers, but the age of AI will, at least initially, make all intellectual endeavors a winner-takes-all market. With the actual work mostly automated, the remaining management is free to spend even more time doing longhouse things.
Phase 2: the return of the laborer. There will be a simultaneous increase in blue-collar jobs (with a glut in software, demand will increase for physical/real-world goods) and an increase in blue-collar labor, occupied primarily by men. White-collar labor becomes increasingly rare. The layers of middle management are no longer required, and if capabilities continue on trend it won't be long before the only thing preventing some white-collar industries from full automation will be slow capability diffusion. In this step, society will become more masculine. It will appear that a "retvrn" to traditional gender roles is underway. Men will again perform the large share of labor.
Phase 3: automation. Robotics and automated factories to create the robots become a reality. Labor demand sharply declines. Depending on how society handles this transition it could be a time of broad prosperity and leisure, or it could be a time of strife and mass inequality. But either way, the longhouse will come back with a vengeance. In a society where labor and intellect are no longer required, the only thing that will matter is status games and relative positioning. This is a game that the feminine temperament is better suited for. The boot that stomps forever on our faces will be high-healed.
As a male in an intellectual role, none of these three phases will be kind to me.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1d ago
Is RSI well defined? I think a lot of confusion in this sub-thread is caused by one side saying that RSI is a model modifying its own weights (which is not happening yet in a way that is meaningful), and the other side saying RSI is researchers using AI to accelerate AI R&D (which is...obviously true. The vast majority of code written at Anthropic and OpenAI is AI generated)
PyotrVerkhovensky
1d ago
I'm creating new apps every couple days from a small local model. The time from idea to implementation is at least an order of magnitude shorter than it was, and the code is more consistent and better documented. It is not (only) hype, it is reality.
PyotrVerkhovensky
30d ago
Even if the Left got the permanent democratic majority they are seeking, it wouldn't really help with their pessimism. A huge schism would immediately develop between the most progressive elements and the second most progressive elements. Any time someone from the latter group became president, the person would be castigated as a Nazi.
"There is another theory which states that this has already happened"
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
Thank you for the recommendation, yes I need to read that. I have a long list of books to get through.
I've heard some proponents of vicarious soteriology essentially describe Jesus as God's "lived experience", where he is forced to admit that actually being human is kind of hard and he'll just forget our rebellion in light of that. It is almost eye-rollingly trite.
I do think that it is very compelling and comforting (though not salvific) that Jesus suffered and was tempted in every way as we are. We have an advocate who does understand, to his very core, what it means to be human.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
On your bullet on sacrifices and scapegoats, Rillera argues against sin sacrifices being morally atoning, but merely ritually atoning/purifying. And he calls the "scapegoat" a "tote goat" since it carries the sins away from the people but isn't actually imbued with the sin.
I'm not a sufficient OT scholar to say how legitimate Rillera's arguments are in this case.
PyotrVerkhovensky
1mo ago
From what I can tell there are a number of variations to ransom theory. The "Christus Victor" version says it was paid to the devil, who had rightful "ownership" of humanity due to our sin. Jesus was exchanged (not substituted!) for humanity in Gethsemene. The devil now had "rights" over Jesus, and brutally killed him. But by killing the sinless Jesus, who did not deserve death, the devil overstepped his "mandate" and Jesus arose victorious over death, sin, and the devil. I think some of the versions of this theory go too far (eg, the idea that God "tricked" the devil, which if I recall even some Church Fathers believed), but I like that there is a meaningful role for the devil in this narrative. In PSA the devil is an afterthought; the only participants are humanity and God.
PyotrVerkhovensky
2mo ago
Your username is Bombadil and you mostly only remember the movies?
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
LLMs, as impressive as (some) of them are, have reduced my opinion of human intelligence more than increased my opinion of machine intelligence. Many (most?) people go through life pattern matching, producing actions and words that could just as easily be modeled by an LLM. My hunch is that people have always been this way. Our machines doing the same thing puts the behavior in stark relief.
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
- Within the last 2 months
- I'm 37
- Awesome time
- Someone's fingernail or ring caught my arm and I have a scar now, though it didn't bleed much. My neck hurt the next day from headbanging.
- Yes
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
I’m a mediocre piano player. I can play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata, and on a good day the opening exposition of the third movement of the Tempest Sonata. I can play for a small church, but while no-one may notice mistakes they won’t walk away raving about the piano.
Yet I keep struggling through Beethoven’s sonatas that I have no hope of ever playing with anything resembling competency (I don’t even know how anyone CAN play the simultaneous trill and 32nd notes in the third movement of Waldstein). His arrangement and structure is both familiar (typically keeping a sonata structure) and surprising (subverting the structure), and I find ever more nuances the more I "play".
Sonatas typically follow an exposition, development, and recapitulation structure. The exposition has two main themes. The development extends and varies the themes (often in the opposing tonality). The recapitulation will return to the main themes from the exposition but usually in a different key signature. Mozart’s Sonata No. 16 (often played, like Fur Elise, due to its simplicity rather than its musical merits) provides a good example of this structure. Mozart opens with a basic motif in C, then develops the exposition ending in G. The development is a straightforward minor variant of the second theme. During the recapitulation, the first theme modulates to F, developing and resolving back to C.
An example of how Beethoven subverts expectations is in the first movement of the Appassionata. The opening F-minor theme softens into a calming second theme in A-flat major. But rather than recapitulate using the expected D-flat major, Beethoven uses perhaps the least likely key: F major! Delightful surprises like this abound throughout Beethoven’s work, and are hard to decipher merely through listening: one has to read and play the music to unravel the complexity.
I am also a big fan of metal. A high caliber metal band has the range, skill, and instrumentation to require rapt attention and multiple listens to understand. My interest has drifted slightly as I age, moving from nordic bands (Opeth, Windir, Moonsorrow) to Southern American bands (Periphery, Between the Buried and Me, Animals as Leaders). As I can’t play guitar or drums, and my screaming is not something anyone would intentionally listen to, the closest I can come to "playing" in a metal band is attending a metal concert and seeing live and up close how the musicians handle their craft.
Niche metal bands play in small venues. These venues are the only good way to listen to live amplified music. The speakers are sufficient to fill the space without distorting. The deleterious effect of the relatively slow speed of sound is not as noticeable in a small space. And the audience is typically much better: they are there because they are true fans and not to show off on instagram. Small venues also get loud. Hearing protection is a must to avoid permanent damage.
I don’t go to many concerts. Bands I like don’t usually perform close to where I live, and even when they do I have trouble convincing anyone to attend (and attending a concert alone just feels sad). But recently the stars aligned and for the first time in over a decade I saw one of my favorites live.
Over the past decade, some things had changed. The audience, of course, had aged. Rather than young 20-somethings that still had hopes for the future, the fans were now overweight, ossified, and lower-middle class. A good chunk of this is selection effect: the successful 20-somethings now have children and responsibilities that put the kibosh on moshing into the late hours of the night. Those that remain skewed "diner-goth".
Southern metal tends to be apolitical, and the band remained so. However, the venue itself overtly signaled leftist political affiliation, in contrast to the pre-Trump venue of the previous concert. Despite a relatively subdued June overall, this venue had draped their entrance in a "progress" flag. The sound mixer’s booth displayed both a Palestinian and transgender flag. There were a disproportionate number of lesbian couples in the crowd.
There were also some things that hadn’t changed. I was still the only one in the place without a tattoo. The band was still in peak form. The pit was still active. I still got cut and bruised during especially crazy parts of the set.
Unlike the audience, the band members were aging gracefully, looking almost respectable compared to their long-haired days. There was still nothing graceful about their music. If anything, the set was heavier than the previous time I had seen them live. The drummer played the double bass with ferocity and precision, the guitarists flawlessly balanced heavy riffs and soaring solos, the bassist cleverly counterpointed the guitars, and the lead singer juxtaposed growls with the occasional sublime melody. I was mere feet away from one of the guitarists, a literal front row view as he performed (I caught the guitar pick he threw into the audience at the end).
Much like Beethoven, this band has surprises for those who know a little music theory. One of their clean vocal sections ascends through an unsettling augmented triad, then descends back through the augmented triad and continues to descend in a diminished triad, then again ascends in an augmented triad a half-note lower than the original. When the tune repeats, it sounds as if it starts at a higher note, subverting the kitschy method often found in pop music of raising the final chorus a note to get a cheap dopamine hit.
The band isn’t against a little kitsch themselves. They have quasi-random “easter-eggs” that they fling into their songs. In isolation these should never sound good but somehow fits in the context of the song. One of their longer riffs is a metal-sounding version of Pachelbel’s canon. Typically, a "break" is an eye-rolling method of inducing audience energy, and one of their songs leans into it with a winking self-awareness. Live, it was still effective: even though the audience knew it was coming, the insanely heavy return from the break drove the mosh pit into a frenzy.
I have not mastered the piano, and I’m an amateur at theory. But even that is enough to enhance my appreciation and enjoyment of the complex and technical music that I listen to. Almost everyone likes music but few understand music. Take some time to learn the basics, and a whole new world will open for you. And go to a concert, whether classical or metal. Appreciate the creativity and skill of the players and the composition.
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
Interstellar has grown on me. Tenet had a good idea but couldn't execute it in a way that was entertaining.
Dunkirk was quite good. Oppenheimer was well shot and had sharp dialog up until the final scene with RDJ, which was so unbelievable it took me out of the movie.
PyotrVerkhovensky
3mo ago
I like Nolan as a director but he doesn't film great action sequences. His best ones involve massive vehicles or airplanes; anything that is human-on-human is a blurry, boring, mess.
PyotrVerkhovensky
4mo ago
Somewhere in the last 250 years, freedom became synonymous with democracy. Before the United States, freedom was considered to be attained when you were under the rule of the (relatively autonomous) lordship of one of your countrymen or clan. Tyranny was to be ruled by an outsider, who may set up puppet members of your tribe but whose commands were dictated by the foreigner.
Because democracy became synonymous with freedom, democracy is seen as an end in and of itself. But this is incorrect. Democracy is a means to good governance: to prosperity, well-being, and good order. If democracy is not providing good governance, democracy is no longer a reasonable means. It is the height of hubris to think that democracy is the final state of government. The world has seen city states, empires, democracies, monarchies, dictatorships. Additional governance structures will evolve, some of which will almost certainly improve on democracy.
For myself, I desire freedom. I desire the ability to walk my clean streets in safety. I want my neighbors to look and act like me, to believe in similar things, to hope in similar things. I want my children to grow up around adults who will seek to instill similar morals and myths. I want to be led by someone who genuinely has my best interests in mind, and not simply simpering for my vote. I want to be free of the tyranny of the election cycle.
PyotrVerkhovensky
4mo ago
Locke for the West, Hobbes for the Global South.
PyotrVerkhovensky
4mo ago
He who saves a nation violates no law
PyotrVerkhovensky
4mo ago
The NBA is particularly embarrassing. The players don't even try to hide their feet shuffling and routinely take five-step layups (I remember when "the Jordan layup" was a jibe for the (illegal) three-step layup). The whole culture around the NBA is bling, showboating, loud, celebrity-driven. There is no honor. Iso plays are considered the mark of a great player, instead of teamwork and making the extra pass.
That said, the NBA is still about winning. The game has adjusted massively over the last twenty years with the analytics revolution. Height matters but not to the same extent. Big men are only valuable if they can also hit a three. Mr. Process himself is not a bad three point shot, and Wemby at 7-4 shoots threes like he is Reggie Miller.
Basketball as a sport is great. Pickup games can be fun even with a range of talent. It doesn't take an entire field like soccer or football. Half-court games mean 20 players can simultaneously play on a single court.
PyotrVerkhovensky
4mo ago
Acceptance of a situation is different from intentionally creating (or uncreating) the situation.
Taken to an extreme, if I there had been some screen that showed my autistic child would have been autistic I could have aborted her and immediately had a (higher shot at a) "normal" child. But just typing that sentence makes my blood boil.
I don't like that she is disabled, but I wouldn't trade her or our experiences for anything.
No, that is not my position. Each child has their own joys and challenges. Some are more difficult than others. One of my children is "mildly" autistic and it is a very different and more challenging relationship than with my others. But we have also shared unique and memorable experiences. A couple months ago she made a mistake in a piano recital and looked at the audience with a one of the most genuine sheepish expressions I've ever seen and said "sorry". The audience chuckled in appreciative surprise. She then started over and played the piece perfectly. When we got back home she was inconsolable because she had "made a mistake and everyone had laughed at her".
We shouldn't seek out "odd" children (unless feeling called to adopt difficult children), but we should accept what life throws at us and find the joy in that life.
PyotrVerkhovensky
5mo ago
Arrival: A short review (Spoilers)
Villeneuve is a unique director. His movies use bizarre settings or scenarios as a backdrop to tell intensely human and personal dramas.
In Bladerunner 2049 he evolves the 1982 movie's dystopian frame into its full aesthetic. Skyscraper mausoleums, home to living creatures with dead souls and dying creatures with living souls. The ruins of Vegas. A glimpse, briefly, into a potential uprising. All in service of a story where a nobody ensures that a somebody has final closure.
In Enemy, it is not clear, even by the end, whether the story takes place entirely inside the unreliable narrator's mind. Huge spiders roam the city, eventually invading the protagonist's very living room (or mind?).
While Villeneuve's unsettling aesthetic is at its peak in Dune I and II, I consider them two of his weaker movies. There are two characters in Herbert's Dune: the planet itself, and the directed inevitability of massed humanity. What is personal must be in service to this setting. Instead, Villeneuve's interpretation foregrounds individual agency.
Fortunately, Villeneuve has already directed his SciFi masterpiece in Arrival. The alien ships are massive ellipsoids hovering impossibly mere meters from the earth. The aliens themselves walk on tentacle appendages, grotesquely squid-like. The camera frequently takes a near-first-person view, with panicked and claustrophobic breathing emanating from all speakers (1). These moments of enclosed fear are juxtaposed against equally breathtaking cinematographic vistas. The slow panning as the helicopter approaches the alien ship with low-lying clouds roiling across the Montana prairie. A human hand reaching fingers up as the alien's tentacles stretch downward.
Amy Adams is perfectly cast. In 2016 she could pass for 30 or 45 or anywhere in between, key to the time-bending unfolding of the plot. She treats her character, Louise, much like Villeneuve treats the movie: with understated grace and moments of sublime. Louise's loneliness palpably exudes in the first third of the movie, before running an emotional gamut from fear, hope, acceptance, and finally transcendence.
The science is inaccurate (2), but Villeneuve perfectly captures the academic aesthetic.
The idea that language constrains and shapes our experience of reality is thoughtfully if subtly explored (3).
While there are nods to liberal sensibilities (when a general tells Louise she made short work of insurgent Farsi recordings, she retorts "you made short work of the insurgents"; a soldier turns rogue following a phone call with his inconsolable wife and listening to the in-universe stand-in for Alex Jones), Villeneuve rarely lets politics infect his storytelling.
This movie feels quasi-religious and transcendent (4) in its celebration of life and meaning in suffering and loss. Louise through her contact with the aliens is able to view her life outside of time, revealing memory-like sequences of her future. This future includes myriad happy moments with her daughter, but concludes with her daughter's devastating death from cancer. Arrival climaxes with Louise joyfully embracing this future despite knowing that it means the premature end of her only romantic relationship and the heartbreaking loss of her daughter. The time that she will have with her daughter is worth it all.
Last week's discussion on Down Syndrome prompted this post. How many parents who have Down syndrome children would trade those children for nothingness? How many, if they had perfect foresight, would still choose to have the child? Age begets wisdom, experience shapes us, and relationships become our great source of meaning. A couple choosing to abort their Down syndrome child are doing more than making an expedient choice. They are depriving themselves and their child of a rich tapestry of experience; one that is perhaps more challenging and painful, but also one that can and should be fulfilling. A life of short cuts is a life cut short; not in time but in meaning.
(1) Watch this on a big screen and with surround sound
(2) At one point a whiteboard displays the "top 10" most famous equations including Black Scholes...none of which would be relevant to alien first contact. It is also preposterous that we perceive time linearly solely due to our linear language.
(3) Yes, the fact that this is the "reason" behind Louise's ability to view her life outside of time is not "subtle", but this reveal is blink-and-miss-it: my guess is most viewers would simply associate her time-bending ability with prolonged exposure to the aliens.
(4) Villeneuve grew up Catholic
PyotrVerkhovensky
5mo ago
Bad takes on AI seems to be the one commonality across creed, race, and IQ. This one from theringer is a particularly egregious example, but its rare to find anything both sufficiently technical to understand how it does and could work, and sufficiently "big picture" to understand societal impacts. (Of course, many others would consider my AI takes to be just as bad).
My current modus operandi is to be whatever the other person is not. If they are an AI maximalist I am the pessimist. If they are the doomer I am the optimist. If they think this technology is all hype I become the autistic technologist with in-depth details and explicit examples.
PyotrVerkhovensky
5mo ago
hey begin to think about targeting non-coding white collar work like finance and spreadsheet work since the models are not getting much better at JavaScript
This is already happening: https://www.anthropic.com/news/finance-agents
DeepSeek releases a model that is equivalent to 5.3 Codex
Already almost there if you include all Chinese companies, certainly will be by end of 2026: https://livebench.ai
Frontier models begin to entshittify as they are increasingly jailed to make them safer, while their private reputation is shattered among all of the normies who did not know how rights-violating the United States secret police are.
I'm with you on this one. We've already seen movements in this direction (eg, not releasing Mythos).
It's pretty clear to most people the general improvements to coding are dried up and a lot of the old hype was fake and tooling and chaining was the internal, secret meta from 2025 onwards
And more targeted RLHF, but yes agreed on this. However, I think there is still a ton of yet-to-be tapped potential in tooling, context, and feedback that will have massive impacts even at current model capability.
Overall my timelines are shorter than yours but I do think there is a "ceiling" and I don't think we are at risk of Yudkowsy's takeover scenario. I do anticipate "mundane" surveillance and increased slopification. My hope is in local/opensource models running on ASICs, which would at least alleviate privacy and intentional kneecapping concerns.
PyotrVerkhovensky
5mo ago
God is outside time. Time itself is created.
As for why he created, here is one of the first results in a Google search: https://ses.edu/why-did-god-create-anything/, which is a simplistic but cogent summary of the Christian perspective.
PyotrVerkhovensky
5mo ago
And this immediately fails the "and why couldn't that apply to anything else like the universe itself?" question.
I'm not understanding the thrust of your question. Are you suggesting the material world (or something in the material world) is eternal?
Every single thing is answered equally by "the Matrix creators want to fuck with us".
While I don't believe we are in a simulated universe, in this scenario the simulation's programmer would be, to us, indistinguishable from God.
Yes, but how many such men will we need? That was my point about winner-takes-all markets.
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