I had a young guy in my office last month, with his dad (the client), who was apparently been accepted to Georgetown Law and was pretty hyped to be going.
I couldn't bring myself to tell him how badly I expected that to turn out for him in the end.
Important detail: he's black, so my guess is that he's getting some financial support.
faceh
11d ago
Yeahhhh the amount of support for the attempts coming out should be a wake up call of some kind.
I'm not sure he's going to heed it in any way other than boosting his personal security presence.
Funny enough, I've had the insight that the one thing you can do to increase your odds of success in the post-AI world is be pleasant and enjoyable to physically be around. Whatever that means for you. If other humans WANT to spend time with you and be in your presence, you can parlay that into success in whatever the situation becomes. Attractive women have a clear advantage.
As an introvert, the robot waiters work exceedingly well for me.
faceh
11d ago
a law school dropout.
i.e. a genius.
I'm sure supply and demand have normalized a bit since then,
Yes and no. Hiring is up, but I think there's significant turnover too. Some law firms realized that when you have a surplus of desperate new grads, you can churn your associates harder and replace them easier.
faceh
11d ago
That's a hard sell at this particular moment, for sure.
Might be worth a shot to see if he can get in the military industrial complex, maybe Palmer Luckey would hire him.
Okay.
As a lawyer, I am going to say no, don't do that.
His logic is not unsound, since we do in fact have control over how our profession is practiced and can use our guild authority to keep AI sidelined (for now). Here's a take I had three years ago that I still stand by. I've reiterated it. (holy crap GPT-3 was almost 6 years ago?)
Yes we can throw up barriers to AI adoption, and make the laws that protect us from AI competition. That's not as strong a moat as it seems. Even if lawyers are protected from AI competition... guess what your clients are doing.
And:
A) A bunch of other people are going to get a similar idea, so it'll be saturated, most likely. Already happening to an extent.
B) Most lawyers are miserable in their area of law. I am not, but I still had a long period of suck to get through, kept alive by my long-term goal of getting where I am now.
C) He will probably not become fabulously wealthy in this field even if AI doesn't supplant most entry-level legal jobs. MAKE HIM AWARE OF THE BIMODAL SALARY DISTRIBUTION FOR NEW GRADS. This was my big mistake early on.
There is now some evidence of downward pressure on new grad salaries.
I truly wish I had a more positive prescription to give out, but I am vehement about this negative one.
faceh
11d ago
The current elite needs to either shape up or get replaced.
The realization hit me this weekend as I was hanging out with some friends at an artificial lagoon with temperature controlled water, lifeguards on duty, and basically everything optimized for keeping guests from getting hurt (and keep them spending money).
This is precisely how a 'beneficent' superintelligence is most likely to resolve the problem. Stick humans into a simulation, or maybe a completely artificial environment with all the edges that cause death and misery sanded off.
A permanent Disney World vacation. Maybe swap out the aesthetics often enough to make it feel novel.
faceh
11d ago
I'm going to bring this up just because its in the back of my mind and I'm going to reserve some small amount of probability for it.
But I can imagine the scenario where Sam himself arranges for these (pretty ineffective, obviously) attacks against his home as a counter to the bad press and to make sure he keeps his grasp on power, as he's already been ousted once.
Yes, it's implausible that he'd pull a Jussie Smollet, it is VASTLY more likely to be actual random violence. But I have enough distrust for Altman that I think he'd be willing to do something like this, especially if it carried minimal risk of personal harm.
My youngest brother is a bright kid - top of his class, eagle scout, 1400+ on his SATs as a junior, the whole shebang. He's completely given up on his original goal of going to college for something software-related, and he's not only adrift about what he's going to do with his future, but he's angry about it. I hope he has a support network sufficient to keep him on the right track, but I don't like what I see.
Holy cow.
I guess the high achievers are technically the MOST likely to feel this anxiety, because they can directly perceive their competition is no longer just other high achievers... but this machine that can outperform them on every single metric that matters for success.
And as a former High School Valedictorian myself... I don't have a good answer here.
Its patently absurd to say he should toss out his academic achievement and instead divert into blue collar/physical work.
But to continue in academics would be a doomed play.
Uhhh get him in a gym and possibly doing some martial arts STAT, if only for the mental health benefits.
faceh
11d ago
I think there's something intrinsically appealing about the plucky underdogs pulling off a long-odds victory amidst a larger defeat... and of course getting a heroic last stand/death.
Hahaaaaa. I've still got the old AOL Instant Messenger (remember that, kiddos?) logs from when I used to chat with my high school girlfriend right up until she broke up with me in college.
I won't be getting rid of them because, as I have mentioned a couple times, she died in college and almost all my memories around her are actually good and pleasant. Not memories I actually want destroyed, especially since the person I share them with is gone.
faceh
11d ago
Most of the comments I write that get AAQC's were absolutely NOT intended as such at the time I started writing them.
But then at some point when I realize just how much thought and effort I'm pouring into it and I'm only halfway done writing it and I think "whelp, if I'm this committed, better make it worthwhile just in case it gets selected."
My longtime favorite is 15 Million Merits for being a particularly effective allegory about media consumption, celebrity culture, reality TV, corporate monetization of everything, and now it seems to have inadvertently predicted the future of doomscrolling short form videos and AI slop.
Nosedive is well-executed and still relevant.
Playtest is the most viscerally horrifying and genuinely dark episode in my opinion. With the possible exception of the one immediately after that, Shut up and Dance, which is honestly so grim its surprising they aired it.
Damn. Basically just watch season 3. The fourth episode is a bit of a palate cleanser and while I find it overall underwhelming a LOT Of people loved it.
faceh
11d ago
Our family dog dying (of old age) when I was young was a formative event for me.
More impactful, though, was the death of my hamster because I was actually present and watching when he took his last tiny breaths. I actually wanted to take the poor thing to the vet to try to fix him, I hadn't understood just how little lifespan most rodents get.
Our cat got hit by a car and we only found out from a nice lady leaving us a voice message about finding the body after we put up Lost Cat signs. That did a number on all of us.
Also, I will always, every time, cry about the ending of Old Yeller.
Point being, its going to be a traumatic, stressful event no matter what. Only thing I can suggest is to help them redirect any blame/anger they feel away from any particular persons and also be ready to help field questions about their own mortality too.
faceh
11d ago
Wonder if it was due to achieving relatively strong balance for the weapons selection.
You had interesting and unique weapons for any given playstyle you prefer. Snipers at distance, middle-distance/jack of all trades assault rifles, shotgun for close range, and a decent variety of pistols that were actually impactful on their own and not just backup weapons. Sticky grenades, as mentioned.
And of course, the Gravity Hammer and Energy Sword.
And fun vehicular combat.
This was before online multiplayer games were dominated by "THE META" such that certain weapons just get binned as nonviable if everyone else is playing 'optimally.'
If you wanted to run around like a madman crushing skulls with a hammer, you went for it.
The whole series (up until that one sequel. You know which one) is a perfect example of building on success after success, improving your product whilst maintaining the core of its appeal. This is something most series (including TV and movies, not just games) of the last, I dunno, 15 years have really failed to achieve.
And the Apotheosis is in Halo: Reach, in my genuine opinion, the one that you went into knowing you were gonna end up losing, but the whole endgame was to get the Pillar of Autumn off-planet to kick off the series of events that led to ultimate victory. So its not just perishing in a heroic last stand, you get to perish in a last stand while, as the player, knowing that the sacrifice achieves something very meaningful.
ODST is my personal favorite because it breaks the power fantasy a bit and puts you in a position where you're actually NOT an unadulterated force of nature, your arrival on the battlefield would not singlehandedly shift the tides, and indeed you're kind of in survival mode most of the time because some of the enemies are a major threat to you. Lets you appreciate how dangerous the Spartans are, and also fills in the lore to remind you that there's a whole-ass military involved in this war beyond the special forces. I, personally am a sucker for video games that put you on the ground level and have you experience major events up close even while you, personally, are not the catalyst of said events. ODST scratched a lot of itches for me.
You also didn't mention one of the more iconic and important parts of the game: The Flood.
Their introduction is like the perfect "and then things got worse" late-game plot device to amp the difficulty, and of course a perfect answer/resolution to the existence of the Halo rings themselves.
faceh
16d ago
I'd guess the U.S. benefits from actually having a chance to negotiate without the guy on the other side expecting to get a bomb through his chimney.
Iran gets the chance to show they can be reasoned with.
faceh
16d ago
Utterly hilarious to think that Iran is honestly going to dictate terms to the U.S. that leaves them in a stronger position than they were.
They get a chance to save some face, but I'd bet that we either get an agreement that publicly keeps Iranian leadership in place but has nonpublic terms that keep them neutered, or leaders start getting offed again.
faceh
17d ago
Yeah.
I pretty much want an 'everything app' that gets me through my daily life without having to constantly stay logged in, updated, and, god help me, subscribed to dozens of different services to interact with businesses.
The AI agents are sort of promising to become that.
The idea that every single person can deploy a bespoke app which other people can then download and use for [minor convenience] terrifies me in a certain sense.
Especially when these apps start to feel like they're just there to do rent-seeking by standing between you and the things you want, demanding payment to even get to see the options. Yes, why do I need an app to buy concert tickets? This deal was supposed to be between me and the venue and artist. Why do I need to download an app to pay for a parking space? Why do I need an app to to track calories and a DIFFERENT app to track workouts? Why do I need 6 different communications apps to stay in touch with friends? WHY DOES MY BLENDER NEED AN APP?
And yeah, in some cases I get why there are issues solved by having the app in place. I'm just saying the sum total is that I end up with 100 apps on my phone and I have to use 10-20 of them on the daily and my monkey brain isn't designed for this shit.
faceh
17d ago
Love Lewis' writing but this is a bit like "just stop being anxious lol."
It'd still be nice to know that somebody, in a position of authority, somewhere, had a plan to clip the risks.
Faith in God is a great salve for this purpose, but for many they are just raw-dogging cold reality and need something tangible to pin their hope to.
faceh
17d ago
Right.
And I think the asymmetry is that there's usually zero penalty to raising frivolous objections, especially if they have some basic validity on their face.
We can grant for argument's sake that each regulation is serving a decent purpose, but if there is indeed a cost associated to comply with or rebut the applicability of some rule, then invoking that rule should ideally include a mechanism for making you share in the cost if the objection was without merit.
Prediction markets (or similar) actually might solve this, funny enough.
Yeah, the 'deference' judges give to pro se litigants (if they are clearly unable to afford attorneys, that is) is going to backfire as it becomes more common for them to use AI for drafting basic stuff, and thus the volume of filings increases but the work of actually parsing and applying it still falls on the Judge and opposing counsel. Who will, 'ironically,' probably start using AI assistance to keep up.
The case I'm dealing with, thankfully, is a straightforward land use/partition action and the pro se party is otherwise very cooperative, but you can tell that the stuff they're filing is AI-assisted because the few times I've talked to them directly they have been unable to do anything but re-articulate their general position, and don't quite understand the processes they've chosen to invoke.
I'd hope the AIs would advise AGAINST 300 paragraph briefs, that's for sure.
That is 5000% my own objection to the Culture as portrayed.
The ONLY entities with true volition in that universe are the minds. No human ever makes a meaningful choice, and whatever influence they have on their own fate is inherently pre-calculated in by the minds.
And somehow the humans are 100% aware of the arrangement and there are few dissenters, although they can get uppity from time to time.
It honestly makes me sympathetic to Culture opponents just on the basis of "yes, maybe they're sadistic, evil, and backwards, but at least they're the masters of their own fate dammit!"
I think that's the precise objection leveled by the main character of the first book, actually.
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