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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9569 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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And there are those of us who think such a comparison is doing alot of heavy work not in evidence. To copy my reply on the topic above;

Nuclear you can point to solid returns that would benefit the common consumer directly - less reliance on hydrocarbons, energy independence, cheaper energy.

Data Centers you point to with the returns that basically boil down to 'Big Businesses need it, LLMs are magic bro, trust me, we've got to beat China!'

So color me a skeptic. On Data Centers, not Nuclear. For fuck sake people, just use the magic rock and be done with it.

There's no getting around the fact that I use LLMs near-constantly, find them incredibly useful, and have considerable expectation for future use cases once the bottleneckers like Apple get off their arses. You don't.

I have old family friends whose ancestors felt that electricity was a fad and literally bankrupted themselves buying up candle factories 'cheap' in anticipation of renewed demand. My own grandmother felt that heated houses were fripperies and didn't get central heating until her 90s. I give these examples not to call you a luddite but just to say that literally neither of us knows yet and good, sensible people have been skeptical of in-hindsight very useful technologies (and vice-versa of course). My preference would be that we leave LLMs 20 years and see how it looks.

And my reply to that is that if you gave a metal lathe to a skilled user, you'd likely get something beautiful, but if you gave it to a random guy off the street, there's a real chance they'd loose a limb and bleed out before anyone could get to them.

As I read this thread, I'm noticing a similar and similar implied arguement crop up - the 1% that can use LLMs beautifully naturally assume the moment the general masses they will be freed like a butterfly bursting from it's crysalis into something beautiful and everything will be wonderful.

Yet we all know what occured the last time something like that happened.

I'm not trying to argue that we shut down LLM development. What I'm trying to say is that a good chunk of LLM development and movement and usage isn't from honest improvement but from sales department buzzwords and artificial push.

Nor does it really help your side when people argue otherwise you immeadiately and covertly imply that they're just luddites(in your case - like, c'mon, really?) or building strawmen(elsewhere). Yet you forget that you're the one making the outlandish claims, with very little evidence beyond single datapoints - IE, what you can do with it.

A single datapoint is data, yes. But it does not equate to an overall data trend. I've no doubt that you and people like this guy can do alot with LLMs, but I've yet to see any broader overall concrete benefit to the world at large nor any market uptick that would imply this is making things better.

As I read this thread, I'm noticing a similar and similar implied arguement crop up - the 1% that can use LLMs beautifully naturally assume the moment the general masses they will be freed like a butterfly bursting from it's crysalis into something beautiful and everything will be wonderful.

It's a possibility, though I hope not. One part of me thinks that it would be better if LLMs were never mentioned again outside technical documents - the public would be deprived of something that I think is an immensely important resource that could edify them, but on the other hand we would be safe from the kind of spasms of public morality that caused the censorship of social media.

The other part of me thinks that this is a temporary moment, where LLMs are used only by the most curious, and is looking forward to seeing what a generation of people now in their teens do with the tech, in the same way we saw in the flowering of internet culture 2000-2010.

I'm not trying to argue that we shut down LLM development. What I'm trying to say is that a good chunk of LLM development and movement and usage isn't from honest improvement but from sales department buzzwords and artificial push.

Then we have very little quarrel. I broadly agree with what you've said, and I think the LLM marketers and grifters are doing more to damage the field than a thousand 'can't spell STRAWBERRY' bugs.

you immeadiately and covertly imply that they're just luddites(in your case - like, c'mon, really?)

Really not my intention. This anonymous forum is where I can be totally open about my feelings because frankly none of this matters. I was trying to provide examples of cases where good, honest, clever people looked at something, concluded correctly that they had no personal interest in it, and concluded wrongly that it had no long-term value. I think it's an easy trap to fall into, and I feel the same in other areas.

A single datapoint is data, yes. But it does not equate to an overall data trend. I've no doubt that you and people like this guy can do alot with LLMs, but I've yet to see any broader overall concrete benefit to the world at large nor any market uptick that would imply this is making things better.

In all sincerity, I've got my fingers crossed.

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