iprayiam3
6mo ago
And at the end of the day, this is the problem -- I haven't spent enough time reading literature responding to it, so hopefully this critique is already well documented -- this is an un-trolley problem. It's designed so that there's absolutely no opportunity cost. But then used to imply therefore, the opportunity cost of other scenarios are handwavable.
If I'm walking by a pond where there's a drowing child; in all likelihood, rescuing that child is the most valuable thing I can do in that moment, and the ruin of a 1k suit, that I'm already wearing is a sunk cost.
But this doesn't extend to prove that some future fungible time and money, there's a best thing to do and thus it is a moral imperative to have it done.
As soon as we add any actual opportunity cost to saving that child or ruining the suit, the parsimony of the aesop falls apart. Suppose I'm risking being late and waterlogged for a very demanding interview, and nearly guarantee I won't get the job, a job at which will save many lives if done well, and I am especially best qualified to do it right.
At that moment, it just becomes a regular trolley problem, with a little bit of forecasting mixed in, and there's nothing really to gleam from it.
If alternatively we take the most superficial lesson from the problem: We should help others when we are able, at a cost to ourselves, even when we aren't physically near them. Then sure! It's a great reminder. And it has just about nothing to say about government spending on foreign aid.
Yes but that’s why we had a bare links repository.
The volume of effort posts has been diminishing anyway.
Bare links and aislop are routes toward similar ends you described, but it’s not the outcome that solely makes them bad. It’s that AI slop is an inferior low effort entry point into a topic, for the reasons I described.
Now ideally we would have nothing but effortful and timely top posts, sure. But my point is that in the event that someone wants to juice the conversation without the effort post, the bare link is a far superior and more earnest, and less empty way to do so.
That said of course bare links as top posts are bad roughly on par (well…) with AIsloptopposting. But nobody is advocating for that. The people are asking for the repository back.
If we want an experiment, let’s have the BLR and an AISlopTopShop that is exactly the same, but for AI posts. Let’s see which produces more fruit, while keeping the rest of the CWR thread clean
iprayiam3
6mo ago
In that (perhaps quite likely) eventuality then forums and social media as a concept are dead. AIs talking to AIs while people nod and curate them basically destroys the platonic purpose of social media.
This is like if you brought photographs to a painting club and claimed that it expressed what you which you could paint better than you can paint it yourself. Can you see how that might satisfy an itch you personally have but is thoroughly uninteresting to the painters there to paint?
Yes the existence of photographs and digital tools have fundamentally transformed art and even tradition methods can’t really exist outside of conversation with them to some extent. Yes AI has changed the nature of written discourse.
But no it’s not a good reason to dump AI slop and say ‘discuss…’
I am sure that, now having been convinced you will join me and the rest of the rising chorus to return the Bare Links Repository to the Motte
iprayiam3
6mo ago
And this is why daesch and self made human are wrong to want AI slop here. The purpose of a human forum is subverted when top posts are AI generated text walls.
I say, we bring back the bare links repository as a palette cleanser to this new trend. It’s the opposite of ‘I asked ChatGPT and here’s what it said copied and pasted’.
It is brief where AIslop is verbose. It doesn’t dress itself up as original thought or even a point of view. It doesn’t claim to be effortful. Most of all, it points outward instead of inward toward an actual external idea, rather than reposting an ephemeral private chat.
Leaving behind the BLR was the greatest mistake of theMotte, nay of the rat sphere (standing among other mistakes like trans murder cults and founding an entire movement on fanfiction of kid books) and it is time we correct this blunder.
If this post gets 20 upvotes the mods will have no choice but to retvrn to the glory of the blr.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
I find its response adequate. It is presented without any editing.
Copy pasting ai content is low effort nonsense. “I asked [AI] model…” is equivalent to “I had a dream where…”
In terms of being an interesting thing to talk about
iprayiam3
6mo ago
But here's the problem. Before the fact that this AI can now displace all blue collar work, let's magically assume away some reason that won't be the case even for a super narrow slice of time. Such an AI will also collapse a great deal of the SaaS software business, which itself will be extremely economically disruptive. Once an AI is generally that capable, a lot of differentiated software becomes useless. Already I see many folks trying to sell me lipstick on top of the same 3 AI models. There's quickly decreasing utility in the UX if it's just a pass through to an agent.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
There is no world in which the rich let everyone starve because it would lead to an extreme collapse in demand and a deflationary spiral that would quickly bankrupt them.
and
will cost negligible amounts to feed, house and clothe first-world publics
and
But capitalism, or at least this current form of it, is going to end
seem at odds. The end of capitalism is also the end of needing consoomers to keep the rich rich. Even if cost of keeping them alive materially is driven down to zero, they are still going to compete for land, political voice, and social heirarchy, without providing anything back. It might be a peaceful transition, but as long as we are earthbound, it seems this scenario would make >a few million humans completely negative value. Transhumanism would further make the billions of humans nothing more than space wasters.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
Sure, my point is that in my corner of the world, I’m already seeing signs of breakdown. The bubble is extremely fragile because it’s self consuming. I am stuck being asked to sign contracts and make decisions on software that I have no confidence will remain viable or a front runner by the time we get fully implemented.
The rate of change is already too fast and unpredictable to make business decisions on anymore. The landscape’s moving faster than sales cycles.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
Well this circles my point. If we got to that then we have such a fast and powerful AI, software isn't even on our mind. But even as we get closer to that, the entire SaaS ecosystem will start to collapse. If fundamental functionality from UX to API communication relies on an LLM, unbounded by underlying code bases, niche software vendors won't have anything to differentiate themselves.
I think we are already starting to see some collapses in the space I work in where, each vendor is completing to be nothing but a chatgpt terminal wtih some lipstick
iprayiam3
6mo ago
I'm being somewhat hyperbolic, typing this as I sit through yet another agent presentation. Basically every app is collating around an agent that automates everything within itself and / or across other tools it integrates with.
This is a mad rush to overturn UI into an LLM chat with flows being constantly chased by general browser agents that can do the same.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
My greatest fear at the moment is that we will reach a stage where people start designing UI for AI agents and not humans anymore, and from computers become truly incomprehensible.
This is the Star Wars Future. Where computers become so incomprehensible people have basically unplugged, and we have to have special robots who talk to them for us. Not the worst possible eventuality.
iprayiam3
6mo ago
AIAIAIAI
AI is going to maybe doom the world, but first it's going to doom the SaaS industry. We've all seen every company bumrush to build Generative AI into their tools whether it's useful or not.
But I am now dealing with the next wave. Everyone is pushing their AI agent. The thing is, there's an arm race between dedicated agents, and generic agents. Browser Agents can't yet make redundant specialized in tool agents, but it's not looking like a particularly long roadmap.
I think building / selling an AI agent offering is a fundamentally losing proposition. As I have been thrown several different demos over the last few weeks and manage a team to be buying some of these tools, my biggest perspective is that none of these companies can be trusted for long-term partnership.
These folks are building sandcastles on the beach while the tide comes in. It's not just a bubble, the pace of change has already gone faster than buying and implementation cycles.
The age of SaaS solutionsis going to cannibalize itself inside of the next 12 months even if AI stalls today.
iprayiam3
7mo ago
It’s fair to call out that the media and the left have poisoned the well of useful conversation and nuance with their hysterics. But at the same time, I’m fucking tired of this fully generalizable hand wave.
This is not even a response, it relies on a series of logical leap that are entirely lazy deflections.
first it requires jumping from the truism that political corruption is inevitable on the whole, to the unfounded conclusion thus any given circumstance its therefore inevitable.
It’s no different than identity politics that jumps from a tenable claim that racism exists, to the ridiculous conclusion that any given scenario must have racism hiding in it, thus justifying any reaction.
It also requires treating all corruption as binary, then voila with a side of what aboutism,
Suddenly any concern about blatent corruption becomes dismissed as aesthetics, nativity, or even argued as actually virtuous since it above the board and therefore some kind of subversive transparency.
At the end of the day this schtick is played out. It’s just the opposite side of the coin as TDS, and just as brain rotted and empty rhetoric
iprayiam3
7mo ago
I think in some cases it’s why the internet has become the hangout of choice.
What follows is speculative but, this feels to me as completely backwards causality. The internet didn't become a hangout because of the decline of 3rd spaces it's the opposite. People go to third spaces for things like
- It's a schelling point for engagement
- To get stimulation
- To get information
The internet is much more efficient at all of these things. Unfortunately, efficient doesn't= better at scale, and there are a bunch of 2nd and 3rd order benefits that have been lost to the point that the system of community is worse off for it in many respects.
But you can't return people to libraries by getting rid of the homeless. You have to get rid of high-speed, wireless internet. The homeless are in these places because communities abandoned them, not the other way around.
iprayiam3
7mo ago
We started the Hobbit, but my son got kind of scared when we got to the goblins (he's 6).
We've been working through the Chronicles of Narnia now. Treasure Island is in the queue.
iprayiam3
7mo ago
So probably 2 hrs/day Am I ...Underestimating people's daily time commitments?
I have four kids, all very young so yeah. 2 hours a day to hobbies is not realistic for me. Although, if you're willing to count childrens books I read several hundred last year. I read with my kids almost every night. The olderones get chapter books and the younger ones Dr. Seuss and such.
iprayiam3
7mo ago
What happened is kind of a sad story. Kulak, you see, unsuccessfully attempted the hock… and the rest is as it is.
iprayiam3
7mo ago
To this point the two kulak posts I most rememeber from the Reddit days are one where he had a foaming diatribe against sales as evil and soul sucking, but a humorous unawareness that sales as a field was more than cold calling. He had worked one soul sucking sales jobs and blindly extrapolated a nonsensical point out of his narrow angst.
The other was an incoherent unworkable point of view about living on boats. Something like a suggestion that everyone should.
Either way, the guy has always been extremely narrow in his point of view and very bad at scaling or extrapolation, which is why the default to fed posting is his sweet spot
iprayiam3
7mo ago
I think this is far too much credit to maga base and how plugged in they are. From my interactions with my most trumpy relatives it will be a combination of being completely uninformed and disconnected on the h1-b debate, agreeing with whatever trumps stance is anyway, and denying whatever of trumps positions that contradicts their own convictions are true.
But to your credit, yes trump has taken a side pretty clearly here:
https://x.com/DMichaelTripi/status/1874287613156487440
Still I am quicker to believe that MAGA will just finish their transformation into yankee centrists and give up on opposing immigration before they will abandon trump. I don’t understand why, but this is what any other historic issue has been as well (with the exception of the jab which they just #3 above and deny the dissonance)
The original Land Before Time film (all the sequels are direct to vhs garbage).
Not only is it beautifully animated and extremely well crafted, the message of the movie is an extraordinarily powerful lesson in servant leadership and duty.
Littlefoot, cast into tragedy, wants to feel sorry for himself and wallow in self pity, but is forced into a reluctant leadership position where he becomes responsible for the lives of others, and must learn a lot of hard truths about being a leader
iprayiam3
7mo ago
I think both are dystopian and we should recognize that a society has two reproductive mechanisms: genetics and memetic.
I also think it depends on the ontology underlying ideatopias culture. As a Catholic I am completely willing to accept ideatopia as far better if it’s a Catholic country and it’s exported Catholicism to places like bloodtopia. Less so if it’s just a moral framework, but almost none at all If the only trace back of cultural lineage is superficiality
iprayiam3
8mo ago
As things stand, your kids are already getting home in the dark, so that’s not a good argument to oppose any changes to the DST status quo
It's not an argument as a soldier, it's a stupid mistake of math on my part. Shifting both the time and the school day an hour wouldn't change the fact that my kids don't get home in the dark, you are right.
But the broader point stands: pushing both the school day and the time and my work an hour, undermine the argument for DST all year long. as it effectively negates it. My arguments are:
- DST in the winter means a great deal of the morning happens in the dark (school being the most relevant).
- This is unsatisfactory imo
- A solution which advances the start time of these things, effectively undermines DST all year argument.
- Therefore you are left with no DST year long or a variable schedule at different parts of the year which is just DST in effect.
- Thus the argument needs to either be for standard year round (for which the objections are the 4:30 sunrise) or for everyone negotiating their own schedule shift preferences in the winter, which has it's own drawbacks against centralized coordination.
Personally, I find the idea of standard time year round much more palletable
Yes I know, my point was in agreement with yours. That's why I said the original is an 'un'trolley problem. My point in describing some additional opportunity cost was exectly to illustrate that opportunity cost ruins the thought experiment.
And that's why it has very little to say about foreign aid or most other real world charitable activities that are abstracted from time and place. Because outside of immediate and present opportunities (like saving a drowning child right in front of you), opportunity cost does have to be considered.
And as you've agreed, it becomes different than the thought experiment, thus the thought experiment is no longer relevant.
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