iprayiam3
3d ago
To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc).
Economics is often not intuitive, and this is not likely to actually help the situation.
It's pat to say this. But that isn't going to change the fact the CS grad working as a waiter can literally count the CS H1-Bs being brought in, and the CS foreign exchange students getting those jobs he isn't.
"No, no, no, this is all good for the economy" doesn't seem like it can hold if native americans can't get jobs.
iprayiam3
3d ago
Sure, what I'm saying is that this isn't itself a 'political constituency'- we aren't seeing protests, or advocacy groups that are explicitly around jobs for the young. There's no "Occupy Wallstreet", Tea party, or anything else. Rather, it's fractured and absorbed into the two other party's existing platforms - socialism on the left, and economic and immigration protectionism on the right.
On the left, this concern is subordinate to general immigration welfare, on the right it was kind of forefront, but has been backseated to the current... whatever.
iprayiam3
3d ago
Snap (Chat) stock rises on AI motivated layoff
Now, I am surprised that Snap even still exists, and would assume that financial pressures would have forced down layoffs anyway. The article says about 1000 people are affected, which implies they have over 6000 employees. Wild.
But regardless, whether AI is an accelerant (I can't see how it's not) or a convenient excuse, we are going to continue seeing tech downsizing and stock jumping, encouraging more of it.
Meanwhile 43% of US grads are underemployed.
I am not going to bank on any hard predictions, I am not a great forecaster. But it does seem like things have already unravelled much more than the PMC and neoliberal middle class want to admit.
We will continue to have more Mandamis and more Trumps gaining popularity as alternatives to the stuck middle that seems to be held hostage. As long as keeping housing market, medicare, and 401ks proppped up for the older middle class are the primary concern, we're building pressure to the system.
To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc). Yet somehow, the economic disenfranchisement hasn't quite reached that fever pitch. I am surprised (again I'm not a good predictor) that such an economically disenfranchised college graduate population (if that 43% is accurate) haven't solidified into any kind of a political movement yet. I can still understand (while disagreeing with) wanting to keep cheap laborers here to work manual labor. But the writing appears to be on the wall about the white collar squeeze that's already here.
Left unaddressed, I'm sure we'll get more Mandami's and socialism, with a leftish solution that is more about socialist subsidizing while promising immigrants can have it too; but we are also seeing massive fraud being uncovered in California, and Mandami claiming NYC is worse than broke; if both those fall apart, it will certainly undermine 'welfare' + immigration based solutions; and it seems like we will also have to get realistic economic opportunity protectionism as a major political block as well. But what do I know
iprayiam3
5d ago
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,
This is very sad because this was me. Eagle Scout, 1460, varsity athlete, interested in software development, graduated in the aughts.
I had the opposite problem: The future was so open wide, that I took gambles on more creative pursuits than b-lining a traditional software job, where I could have made much more money more quickly. Now in my late 30s, with a young family, I feel the combined constant breath of the treadmill trying to keep up and catch up, while simultaneously worrying about what the heck my children will do.
The best I can do, is to pretend it's not here. Living vicariously as a parent is, in many, ways sweeter than childhood itself,; you get to be a gardener as well as enjoying the fruits of their joys. My parents got to show us a wide open world, and tell us that we could be anything we wanted, be excited to see us reach further than them, on their own shoulders...
I, instead, have to build a careful facade and guard the edges. Not tell my kids that I have no idea if they'll get to be anything at all, that I have no clue what their future will look like, while panicking that it won't all fall down before I've given them a rich childhood.
I am, of course, very very lucky in that I get to still be where I am with a family and still living in the modal 'good life'. Much better being here worried about it ending, than being on the other side worried you'll never get a chance.
It really does seem like the Boomers ended up being History's main characters; the generation born at the absolute peak.
iprayiam3
6d ago
Anyone else get annoyed (or at least roll your eyes), when someone says they "built" X with AI? It comes off to me as stolen credit, and ironically highlights (for me) the diminishing human input in the value chain.
For context, I am referring specifically to work-related scenarios, where X is not some output of design and engineering, but actually the result of a few prompts. In the past few weeks, the overwhelming majority of the people I work with seem to have completely and openly outsourced their jobs to Claude.
While I've been using ChatGPT since it first came out to help out with work (from research, to QA, to drafting documents and communications, etc), I've always been very careful to keep it's input in any final product discrete. Those who have left their AI outsourcing lazy and obvious (including tech leaders and C levels who should know better) like leaving em dashes and AI fluff in emails have previously been quietly mocked for their 'boomerish' obliviousness, or resented for the obvious lack of engagement.
We had a C-level a few months back write a corporate communication that was meant to be both encouraging and strategically informative about some top level changes, that was clear AI slop. It ended up being the exact opposite - engendering resentment of what was obviously being too lazy to tell us yourself.
But anyway, in the last 3 weeks it's flipped. Everyone gets onto every call proudly announcing the latest thing they 'built' in Claude, while pre-apologizing for errors in the work in progress as if they couldn't possibly have been reviewed.
These are dashboards, briefs, presentations, documents, all things that would have previously been expected to be completely error free, and important enough to make strategic decisions off of. Now it's all yeah, I had claude do my work and I haven't even checked it yet. but as a flex. because currently 'Use AI' is a key KPI. But it all seems so short sighted, it makes me sad.
iprayiam3
9d ago
Bail. Can't handle stress well / you can't handle the way she handles stress well, is a recipe for disaster in a lifelong commitment. It will explode on you.
Second, I think the most basic rule of thumb should be if you need counciling while you're still dating, break up. You should have a relatively low 'fix it' tolerance while you're just dating something. That shit is for after the lifelong commitment has been made.
If you tough it out, you will spend the rest of your life resenting the possibility that there might have been someone out there who you would have fit like a glove with, and all those couples around that do have that.
Onto the paradox - #2 is stuff and nonsense. Yes you both need to grow; but not grow into a fit for eachother. You need to start as a fit and grow from there.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?
I don’t think equivocating the frames works in a world where opportunity cost exists.
The biggest reason it’s not in America’s interest is not the object level foreign policy goals but the cost of the already severely impoverished domestic policy agenda
iprayiam3
1mo ago
A child who spends three hours reading Wikipedia articles about the Byzantine succession crisis, watching a documentary about migratory birds, and then video-calling their grandmother is doing something categorically different from one who has spent those three hours cycling through TikTok thirst traps and casino-mechanic reward loops dressed up as games.
Who's to say grandma can't also be a thirst trap?
iprayiam3
1mo ago
You're missing the point of my post. I am emphatically not making any prediction about AIs first order effect on anything, including the market, much less an individul company's stock price. I am pointing to examples where it's already producing mainstream headlines, and (although early) seems to be quickening and broadening in it's reach. I am suggesting the depsite the realities, the costs of the narrative are surely already affecting real people.
Do you not thing there weren't CEOs out there who are udpdating on these stories? Hiring manager who update or hesitate on this news? White collar workers, who rethink their savings plans?
My whole point is not the effects of AI on the economy, which remains to be seen, but the effects of the anticipation of those effects on society, which is here today.
We don't have to agree on the CFR rate of Covid to note that schools are already closing, business trips are already being cancelled, toilet paper is already running out. 'Maybe wait a little and see how the CDC responds' is misunderstanding a comment that is specifically - regardless of how and whether this deepens and whether it's overblown, the effects are here and starting today.
You yourself gave an example of making a financial decision based on this news.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I think so too, but how many AI washes before it really gets to people heads?
iprayiam3
1mo ago
With that being said, im of the opinion that the "AI will take our jobs" schtick is slightly overstated
Maybe so; my post is explicitly agnostic to this. I am noting the toll of the social perception that is here today. Let’s assume it’s more than slightly overstated and straight FUD.
Still, right now articles in the MSM are openly pondering the possibility and whether there will massive economic fall out, “influencers” have viral doom posts, AI leaders go on popular podcasts and doom speculate, and then we see real world shake up’s at least being attributes to AI job displacement.
This is all happening today whether or not it’s based on hype, an my point is that this is going to affect decisions and cause aggregate mental and systemic stress in the immediate term, whether or not the tech pans out.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
To be clear, my thesis is not whether this is a bubble or not, rather the fact that already today, the fear is in the water and causing a mental toll on people and will affect decision making. Even if it pops in a few months, 1. That’s enough time to compound effects and 2. Does the shift in perspective just disappear?
Consider AI videos. That is certainly going dissuade may people from going to Hollywood or from seeing filmmaking as a career. Even if AI video capability stops right here and never completes the full verisimilitude, it is a bus stopped right on the edge of a cliff, and the will have a psychic toll.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
No, I don’t think it’s a fire Alarm. I’m not making a claim about the actual immediate affect of AI, but about the perception and how it is going mainstream. A few weeks with 1-2 headlines a week, and I think we get some level of self-fulfilling prophesy as the aggregate behaviors of worried citizens has a material effect
iprayiam3
1mo ago
The psychic cost of AI is already here
Ugh, another AI post.
Today Block laid of about half its 10k employees for AI reasons and the sock soared. Was this pr cover for shedding bloat? Maybe. Elon famously slimmed down Dorsey’s crazy bloated twitter, no AI cover story needed.
But still, the market loved this and will demand more.
Earlier this week IBM stock dived on some Anthropic COBOL skill. Was this premature doom? Maybe. But still.
Let’s put aside whether AI will destroy white collar work in a short term time horizon. Despite the outcome, the idea that it very much might is already mainstream. It’s in the water. How much is the impending fear already shaping decisions? How much psychological weight is it already causing? How much will it accelerate
Certainly people are already changing career plans, college plans, savings strategies, family planning, etc. and it will only get much worse. New broadly available opportunities in AI are not going to open up faster than the fear of AI disruption will spread; we are already in a spiral.
Like many in these spaces, I’ve been worried for a while now, but now it’s going mainstream and will cause aggregate changes in behavior which will have their own effects on society and the economy regardless of the first order effects of AI disruption.
As a minor example, my wife has wanted to move for a few years now. Unfortunately, we’re chained to a 3% mortgage without enough income to achieve escape velocity beyond moving sideways to pay more. We’re finally in a spot this year where we could be a little indulgent and justify moving into a house the right size for a young family of 7, even if means taking on some unoptimized mortgage rate increase.
But I can’t imaging compounding that risk with AI disruption. The music could stop and never start again. Our marriage is good, but my resistance causes its own minor stress. How many marriages aren’t so good, break down over things like this?
How many people don’t get married altogether, etc.
Regardless if Covid was just a flu, the real world response to the percieved threat was transformative. Regardless if AI is just a fad…
iprayiam3
1mo ago
Ok I’ll try in good faith to explain a final time.
You are asking the would be contestants to pick a challenge they think the AI is in capable of, but they have to guess within the bounds of what you think they are capable of. Yes, I get why you set it up this way, but it creates an extreme cherry-picking filter, which will naturally limit the amount of “updating”, which is going to occur.
There are other ways this “experiment” could be designed to avoid the cherry picking.
Joey Sportsdoer claims to be a great athlete, better than people give him credit for. And one of the ways he’s constantly underestimated is in how “broadly” athletic he is. So he lines up the doubters and says, start naming athletic feats you think I can’t succeed at, and then I’ll choose one I think I can do and do it.
This is not the best way to go about convincing folks of his general athletic prowress.
Of course neither is attempting feats he knows he can’t accomplish nor ones everyone agrees he can, but luckily these aren’t the only three ways to design his demonstration
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I do not see how you can interpret us in that manner.
What I’m saying is you are asking users to come up with examples that they already by definition don’t believe it can accomplish, by definition of their skepticism.
But regardless, either of my two examples would greatly impress me. The former (nes video game), I would not update by the ability to write 80s console code within the limits of a NES performance specs. (I would be impressed but not update).
Specifically I want to see it plan and execute a full coherent game AND code it. It doesn’t need to one shot, but shouldn’t take creative inputs beyond the general concept and considerations.
The second is about writing enterprise reliable IT infrastructure software that would make a lot of Software companies obsolete immediately.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
Your Bull and moderate option seems to miss an important middled. We go from ASI imminent to 'useful tool. I want to see a - will likely disrupt the economy and culture and society, regardless of whether AGI or ASI is coming.
Anyway:
we want a task that we agree is probably feasible for an LLM, and where success will change your mind significantly. By which I mean: "If it succeeds at X, I will revise my estimate of LLM capability from Y to Z."
This seems extremely, self-servingly narrow and contradictory. We want to show you how much an AI can do, in order to change your mind on it's limits. But please, do only pick something that it can do. This isn't question begging, but something like it.
Anyway, anyway.
How about an 8-bit side-scrolling video game with the relative complexity of Super Mario Brothers 3? If it can go write a full 'feature length' NES game, I'll be quite impressed. (But I'm playing more skeptical than I am)
Or more real world related:
A data replication tool that can move data from a SQL Server to PostGres database. It has to be able to use both time stamp incremental replication or log-based Change Data Capture on selection. You should be able to customize batch size, hard deletes, time-out, and activity on failure. I want a gui that allows me to select tables and ordering to schedule replication intervals, and to select columns on the table. Bonus points if it allows rows filtering conditions or other in-flight transformations.
If it does this latter one, I will beleive that most of IT infrastructure employment is over in 18 months.
iprayiam3
1mo ago
I mean, realistically, this is a very old debate. St. Bernardino (~1400) had writings and sermons criticizing older men marrying very young women. So, I think any explanation that treats it as a novel phenomenon is wrong.
It's more something that will slip in an out of the overton window as cultural and social dynamics shift.
I think there's a reason you're missing in your list, that at least explains why young men would support / go along with prohibitions. Older men taking younger women is fishing in their pond. I think there is some inherent disgust to it, that from an evopsych perspective comes from resource protection.
There is absolutely a social effect with the practice widely tolerated, on the shape of mating and family formation, and whether one finds those effects net ill or not, trying to handwave feelings about it as arbitrary is the most incorrect response.
There also multiple comments saying that this question is irrelevant because it's orthogonal to the capabilities of the model that will cause Mustafa Suleyman's Jobpocalypse.
Let's talk about the Jobpocalyse. I feel like much of the discourse comes from abstracted 'thinkers', who are already independently elite, wealthy or both, and plugged deeply into the discourse. Or it comes from rootless circles -> young tech-adjacent (or at least tech competent) terminally online people without too much to lose anyway.
I live in the center of middle-class striver-ism. If we disrupt the job market in such a short time (anything less than 5 years), even in the most well executed UBI transition scheme, I don't see how it isn't anything but apolocyptic. There's no preserving the social order. I think we'll get suicide on extreme levels. Whether it's virtuous or not, I don't think that you can tell the middle class "every sunk cost you've ever made in your life has been worthless" and have them take it on the chin.
And yet, I see no real effort to address anything like this, so I'll just live like everyone else, and assume it's not real. Whether my life as I know it is fucked or not, is orthogonal to whether I destroy myself with stress in the meantime.
And stuff like that viral blog's - get your financial house in order, anything beyond general good advice, is not really helpful to folks in the middle of life. If 1/2 your neighborhood gets laid off inside 18 months, whether you squeezed an extra few grand into a mutual fund is going to be less than irrelevant. YOLO is probably better advice. Whether that means, make big gambles now because hey, there's every chance the board will be cleared anyway if you lose, or if that means enjoy the normalcy LARP while you have time left, and don't suffocate it with preparing for a future you can't predict
iprayiam3
2mo ago
This is extremely confounded by selection bias. Sure the kind of person who ends up in that orbit ends up going along for whatever reason of being ok with it, accepting social signals instead of reasoning from other principles etc.
But to extrapolate that to 97% of the population is a farce. This is ignoring all the other decisions and avenues that a person who said no also would have taken to avoid (intentionally or more likely completely unintentionally) ever being in the place to “tell Jeffrey off” in the face of an invitation.
Plenty of people quietly lived lives that didn’t get them into his invitation list in the first place
iprayiam3
2mo ago
Contra a few posters below, this isn’t nutpicking, and I consider that term to be more often an asymmetrical dodge than helpful clear thinking.
Why isn’t this nutpicking? Because it is pretty within the general zeitgeist of what is currently happening. It’s not some outlier story that doesn’t fit or alters the narrative.
Nutpicking would be focusing on the schizophrenic protesting ICE because Zorblog, king of the lizard people is behind it.
We have a coordinated group of activists doing stuff like this, at enough of a scale that it is controlling a large portion of the media and political reaction. This example might have some outlier characteristics, but it doesn’t distort, change, or amplify what’s in the water. And to dismiss it as an anecdote is to attempt to tell people that the clear pattern in front of the can’t be extrapolated from or examined.
We just had a comment about some apparently prominent guys blogpost about how him and his wife are basically spending their winter vacationing through these protests.
In isolation, Pretti is a ‘nut’. Statistically what can we infer from a divorced murse with a gun getting in confrontations with ICE. Good is a ‘nut’, a newly lesbian widow, with children form multiple fathers, who gets involved with blocking ice with her vehicle.
Yes every anecdote has nutty contours, and no nobody here has “statistics” on just how many Karen a Karenchuck can Karen.
But the leap is to then, “you can’t notice what’s happening, who’s doing it, and the effects it’s having” is less than useless. It’s active attempts to disperse conversation from reaching “conclusions”. Some of it is malicious, a lot is “um ackshully autistic im-so-smart contrarianism”, a lot is quokkas gonna quokka.
But this anecdote here is not baseless, not nutpicking, and we’re well past the hour of avoiding noticing social trends and associated demographics by calling it “just a few kids on college campuses” metaphorically or not.
The banana thing is a combination of being picked too early and stored too cold.
Once bananas get too cold the ripening process stops and they will rot not ripen.
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