faceh
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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.
Almost everyone I know is intentionally not working, including myself (got burned out and retired 6 months ago).
Its hard to tell for sure, but everyone I know is now working harder than before to keep things at baseline. Like, longer hours, or multiple jobs, and still falling behind.
And I'm talking almost all industries. Actuary buddy, senior pharmacist buddy, construction foreman buddy, IT buddies, and all my friends who are even tangentially connected to the medical field.
People in my circle seem to have less free time. It fits with the apparent stats that show more people dropping out of the labor force, the increase in people drawing on welfare/disability programs, and, of course, the silver wave of boomer retirees. They still consume services, demand products, but aren't on the productive side of the equation any longer.
Oh, and its possible deportations are causing issues too.
Most sit-down restaurants seem understaffed. Hospitals are teeming with patients. Any services you need to set appointments for are pushed out for weeks. Municipal governments seem to be struggling to perform their core functions in a timely manner. One symptom I've noticed is that most 24 hour Wal-Marts (and fast food places) went away after Covid and haven't come back. Every service I have availed myself of seems to be more expensive and less flexible/available due to sheer demand.
Just more work to be done, everywhere, than there are people available to do it, and yet tons and tons of people also consuming services, many of whom don't seem to be working, themselves?
who's doing the actual work holding everything up? Some dedicated cadre of 10x engineers?
The forbidden question.
I can't say for sure, I assume there's a group of people who just quietly and diligently do their work (competently) and collect their paycheck and go home and do whatever they do or raise their families without posting about it online and they are generally content.
The thing I do notice is that businesses that do keep things flowing and keep their prices reasonable often have some form of "slave labor" they draw on. Maybe its their kids, maybe its some barely-sober recovering druggie, or illegal immigrant, or a dude with clear mental deficiency who is nonetheless very functional once trained.
That is, people who are able to do basic labor day in and day out and aren't prone to demanding better pay, and may have some specific incapacity (maybe physical, maybe social) that makes them unlikely to quit.
That's not universal, I've seen the flip side, where an employer treats his people so well and compensates them generously enough that they're extraordinarily loyal and productive.
The UK is handed access to the demigod machine and immediately wishes for all development to grind to an absolute halt. They've created the Saul Goodman protocol.
On the other hand, if the legal system grinds to a halt when every single participant is able to level every single possible legal argument that might return their desired result, that's a good sign that things need to be streamlined and reformed, and an incentive to do so.
On the YIMBY side, it should in theory make it way easier to get permitting and to anticipate all likely objections so as to be prepared.
Seriously, if the legal system is slanted in even the tiniest way towards either side in a given type of case, the ability to exploit every possible legal advantage will result in hugely asymmetric outcomes for the 'favored' side. Might make it clear precisely where the scales of justice need some re-balancing.
And I'd hope there are cases where the use of LLMs facilitates mediation that obviates the need for litigation entirely.
hell yeah brother.
The thing about singularity-like situations, reliable prediction becomes impossible. Although technically I don't have to predict with real accuracy, just better than 90+% of the population. Beat the masses to do alright, provided we aren't all killed. You can fret about this, or you can let go and focus in on the tiny parcel of territory in the vastness of probability-space that you have any influence over.
In my most primal moments, I sometimes think I should literally just locate the most physically enticing female I can attract (and compromise on everything else because what else matters if AGI hits?), liquidate most of my assets except like $100k kept in the S&P, and shack up in my house to have gratuitous amounts of sex, get all my groceries delivered, and just fuck around with AI art generators and see if I can make a bit of money off them before whatever comes next washes over us.
But man, it turns out somebody still has to do the hard work of keeping civilization turning so we can keep the lights on until we can finish the silicon god (or the false idol). Those data centers and nuclear plants won't build themselves. Yet.
I despise people who do that stupid "permanent underclass" posting, specifically to drive anxiety without any actionable outlet.
I had my friends over for a BBQ last night. Trying to do more of that this year.
Strong recommend. I've focused on keeping the friendships I have as strong as possible. Say "yes" to more social invites than you used to. As long as the activities don't kill you before we reach utopia, why spend this exciting time hunched over a desk or lying in bed doomscrolling?
faceh
4d ago
I'm not sure how they'll catch attorneys who are careful about the end products they're filing.
You might see attorneys staying suspiciously effective despite juggling large caseloads, making surprisingly adept legal arguments in their briefs while their performance at a live hearing is lacklustre.
But yeah it'll be banned from any client or public-facing roles to large extents.
As I understand it any website taking customers' financial information will usually use a third party's software rather than roll their own.
If Paypal et al. are vibe coding without regard to security we are in for some pain.
faceh
4d ago
I don't think the normies are THAT far along that they'd trust it with their financial information.
But not too far out, either.
faceh
4d ago
If they're going to enshittify the AIs, it'll have to happen after one company gets sufficient market dominance that swapping to a different one isn't trivial.
And we're not at that point yet. If anything, the competition is at its fiercest right now. People seem to be willing to drop one product for another if they notice any tiny loss of performance.
I've mostly stuck it out with GPT so far, but I can't see any way they could lock me in hard enough that I wouldn't leave if it was obvious their model was consistently 10% 'stupider' than the alternatives.
I've never looked and wouldn't understand if I did. I don't care, they work for me.
This might be a huge part of the divide between doubters and believers.
The code coming back might be ugly, buggy, insecure, and probably completely impossible to scale.
But if it works, how much does the 'average' user care?
Yet those who care for the quality of the code or product it might grate when they look and see the inelegance of the solutions and the lack of foresight.
Apply this to the AI art debate, too. Sure a trained eye will notice deficiencies and shortfalls. But the average user notices that they can produce a logo or a cute cartoon portrait in 15 seconds for pennies.
Me, I'm now basically using the LLMs to do final review on any work I don't feel 100% competent on, since its attention to detail is now impeccable and of course it never gets tired or complains.
Sometimes it hits some nitpicks I genuinely find stupid because in actual practice its an irrelevant detail for the actual outcome of the matter. But it catches things, so it almost feels like it'd be malpractice to not use the tool.
Anyway, its broke through to normies, AI agents are going to be huge among small busineses, I see people who are otherwise technologically inept with Grok AND ChatGPT on their phones lock screens. They are already relying on this tech to a degree that might startle you. Genie ain't going back in the bottle.
Get psychologically (and financially) prepared to adapt, that's the only advice that I can truly offer right now.
It's so exciting, and I hope to soon quit my job at $MULTI_NATIONAL_FINANCE_CO to capture more of the value of my labor, which is about to increase a lot (probably lmao, could also go to 0).
Love this uncertainty. On the one hand, I could 10x my productivity and cut my rates by half and still be making crazy money for myself. Seriously, the number of basic and intermediate tasks that GPT can do for me is freeing up time to engage with the higher leverage tasks that I enjoy and get paid the most for.
But if it gets just a little better then my role as an expert intermediary becomes redundant. I myself become a wrapper for the LLM, I'm just giving the stamp of approval to outputs that are already 99% perfect, and getting paid to eat the blame if something does go wrong 1% of the time. And competition with other humans in this role will drive my marginal profit down to pennies.
I hate this uncertainty.
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.
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