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> There’s so much of the world that would be better off if GOOD software was cheaper and easier to make. But… we’d need far, far fewer programmers. And program

> There’s so much of the world that would be better off if GOOD software was cheaper and easier to make. But… we’d need far, far fewer programmers. And programming was the last thing humans were supposed to be able to do to ear a living.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I disagree. For every 100 problems that would be convenient to solve in software, maybe 1 is important enough to the whims of the market that there are actually programmers working on it. If software becomes 100x easier to make, then you don't end up with fewer programmers, you end up with more problems being solved. And once 100% of the problems that can be solved with software are already solved with software... that's pretty much post-scarcity, isn't it?
- jrumbut 3y ago
  I'm all for this, as long as we programmers continue to capture a reasonable amount of the value we create. The danger doesn't come from some immutable law of nature, it comes from humans organizing. Some people want to be able to hire programmers cheaply, programmers want to continue to be expensive (maybe get more expensive because now we can deliver more value?). It will be up to us, the people living in this moment, to determine what balance is struck.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I don't really know what "value" means in a post scarcity world. We're probably going to have to rethink it. It made a lot of sense when we were all worried about the same things, e.g. not starving. In such a world, anything you could trade for food was objectively valuable because you could use it to fend off starvation--and so could everybody else. But if efficiencies improve to a point where we can easily meet everybody's basic needs, then the question of whether progress towards a particular goal counts as value becomes less clear, especially if it's a controversial goal. I imagine that whether we write the code or not will have more to do with how we feel about that goal and less to do with how many shiny pebbles we're given in exchange.
    - trealira 3y ago
      The idea behind the market economy is that people still will always strive for more. Some examples of commodities that aren't strictly necessary, but can always be improved: - video games with more beautiful or realistic graphics - food that tastes better, costs less, or is healthier - wedding dresses that are cheaper and look nicer - houses that are comfortable and affordable - to be able to take more education (some people I know wish they could take more classes unrelated to their major in college) And what's considered the minimum standard of having one's needs met is subjective, and varies by person. For example, some people wouldn't consider raising children without buying a house first, but it's not strictly necessary for survival; my parents rented a house until I was 19.
      - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        I don't think that a world where all software problems are easy problems is one where we stop wanting more. I just think that what we will see a change in what people want more of such that "capturing value" is a less relevant concept. We will want more of things for which the production of goods does not scratch the itch. If I want more clean air and you want more rocket launches, and we're both willing to work to get what we want, then whether we get it is less about how much value we capture and more about how aligned our work is with our goals and who in particular values the outputs of that work such that they're willing to support our endeavors.
        trealira 3y ago
        > If I want more clean air and you want more rocket launches, and we're both willing to work to get what we want, then whether we get it is less about how much value we capture and more about how aligned our work is with our goals and who in particular values the outputs of that work such that they're willing to support our endeavors. That sounds like another problem of allocation of inherently scarce resources. Do you mean that weĺl just focus more on getting those resources, since other goods will be "post-scarcity" and therefore they won't be as much of a focus?
- Xelynega 3y ago
  Who's paying those programmers to solve those problems you've identified the market doesn't care about? It sounds like that would require an economic shift more than "just add chatgpt"
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Well, the market cares a little, it just doesn't care a hire-a-full-time-software-engineer amount. It'll probably be the people who are already being paid to solve those problems, but who couldn't afford to hire a software engineer for them. They'll be able to automate their jobs without having to hire that person after all. I'm not saying that chatgpt alone will cause this. I'm saying that if software becomes so easy to make that a vastly reduced set of software engineers can do the same job, then it will get easier for everyone else too, and an economic shift will indeed be upon us.
- WhyOhWhyQ 3y ago
  Why do you think this is post-scarcity?
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    The assumption (from the comment I was replying to, and which I'm taking for granted here) is that software will be drastically easier to make. When things become easier they become cheaper. When things become cheaper we end up with more of them. Also, things that are currently too complex to be worth bothering with currently will become viable because taming that complexity becomes easier. Together these things mean that a greater percentage of our problems will be solved by software. So what kinds of problems does software solve anyway? Well, it's things that we already know how to do but would prefer not to spend time doing: Drudgery. Our concept of value is coupled to scarcity. Even if two people have vastly different perspectives, they can both trade a scarce thing for progress towards their goals. We used to use gold as that scarce thing. Now, the scarce thing is intervals of time where a human is willing to tolerate drudgery. So in a world where the scope of software is maximized, the existence of drudgery is minimized. That breaks our scarcity based economic system, so unless you have an idea for some third thing--not gold, not willingness to endure drudgery, but something else whose pursuit can be used to underpin "value", the conclusion is that we'll have to come up with something else to do. Something other than blindly chasing value without a thought about whose agenda were furthering by doing so. It can't happen soon enough, because our scarcity based system is currently causing us to do a lot of really dumb things.
c2occnw 3y ago
When we get to that point -- beyond a machine regurgitating reasonable facsimiles of code based on human examples, but actually designing and implementing novel systems from the ground up -- we'll need far, far fewer workers in general.
- briHass 3y ago
  Exactly. Far before high-level software engineering is perfected by machines, a revolution will have already come for the vast majority of white-collar work. This includes all creative work as well, since software engineering has a large component of that also. Coding is not uniquely vulnerable to AI, it just feels that way because initial AI products are targeted at technical audiences, and a large corpus of training data could be snagged with minimal legal burdens.
dudinax 3y ago
You'll need a ton more programmers each 10x more productive at half the salary.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

I disagree. For every 100 problems that would be convenient to solve in software, maybe 1 is important enough to the whims of the market that there are actually programmers working on it. If software becomes 100x easier to make, then you don't end up with fewer programmers, you end up with more problems being solved. And once 100% of the problems that can be solved with software are already solved with software... that's pretty much post-scarcity, isn't it?

jrumbut 3y ago
I'm all for this, as long as we programmers continue to capture a reasonable amount of the value we create. The danger doesn't come from some immutable law of nature, it comes from humans organizing. Some people want to be able to hire programmers cheaply, programmers want to continue to be expensive (maybe get more expensive because now we can deliver more value?). It will be up to us, the people living in this moment, to determine what balance is struck.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I don't really know what "value" means in a post scarcity world. We're probably going to have to rethink it. It made a lot of sense when we were all worried about the same things, e.g. not starving. In such a world, anything you could trade for food was objectively valuable because you could use it to fend off starvation--and so could everybody else. But if efficiencies improve to a point where we can easily meet everybody's basic needs, then the question of whether progress towards a particular goal counts as value becomes less clear, especially if it's a controversial goal. I imagine that whether we write the code or not will have more to do with how we feel about that goal and less to do with how many shiny pebbles we're given in exchange.
  - trealira 3y ago
    The idea behind the market economy is that people still will always strive for more. Some examples of commodities that aren't strictly necessary, but can always be improved: - video games with more beautiful or realistic graphics - food that tastes better, costs less, or is healthier - wedding dresses that are cheaper and look nicer - houses that are comfortable and affordable - to be able to take more education (some people I know wish they could take more classes unrelated to their major in college) And what's considered the minimum standard of having one's needs met is subjective, and varies by person. For example, some people wouldn't consider raising children without buying a house first, but it's not strictly necessary for survival; my parents rented a house until I was 19.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      I don't think that a world where all software problems are easy problems is one where we stop wanting more. I just think that what we will see a change in what people want more of such that "capturing value" is a less relevant concept. We will want more of things for which the production of goods does not scratch the itch. If I want more clean air and you want more rocket launches, and we're both willing to work to get what we want, then whether we get it is less about how much value we capture and more about how aligned our work is with our goals and who in particular values the outputs of that work such that they're willing to support our endeavors.
      - trealira 3y ago
        > If I want more clean air and you want more rocket launches, and we're both willing to work to get what we want, then whether we get it is less about how much value we capture and more about how aligned our work is with our goals and who in particular values the outputs of that work such that they're willing to support our endeavors. That sounds like another problem of allocation of inherently scarce resources. Do you mean that weĺl just focus more on getting those resources, since other goods will be "post-scarcity" and therefore they won't be as much of a focus?
Xelynega 3y ago
Who's paying those programmers to solve those problems you've identified the market doesn't care about? It sounds like that would require an economic shift more than "just add chatgpt"
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Well, the market cares a little, it just doesn't care a hire-a-full-time-software-engineer amount. It'll probably be the people who are already being paid to solve those problems, but who couldn't afford to hire a software engineer for them. They'll be able to automate their jobs without having to hire that person after all. I'm not saying that chatgpt alone will cause this. I'm saying that if software becomes so easy to make that a vastly reduced set of software engineers can do the same job, then it will get easier for everyone else too, and an economic shift will indeed be upon us.
WhyOhWhyQ 3y ago
Why do you think this is post-scarcity?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  The assumption (from the comment I was replying to, and which I'm taking for granted here) is that software will be drastically easier to make. When things become easier they become cheaper. When things become cheaper we end up with more of them. Also, things that are currently too complex to be worth bothering with currently will become viable because taming that complexity becomes easier. Together these things mean that a greater percentage of our problems will be solved by software. So what kinds of problems does software solve anyway? Well, it's things that we already know how to do but would prefer not to spend time doing: Drudgery. Our concept of value is coupled to scarcity. Even if two people have vastly different perspectives, they can both trade a scarce thing for progress towards their goals. We used to use gold as that scarce thing. Now, the scarce thing is intervals of time where a human is willing to tolerate drudgery. So in a world where the scope of software is maximized, the existence of drudgery is minimized. That breaks our scarcity based economic system, so unless you have an idea for some third thing--not gold, not willingness to endure drudgery, but something else whose pursuit can be used to underpin "value", the conclusion is that we'll have to come up with something else to do. Something other than blindly chasing value without a thought about whose agenda were furthering by doing so. It can't happen soon enough, because our scarcity based system is currently causing us to do a lot of really dumb things.

c2occnw 3y ago

When we get to that point -- beyond a machine regurgitating reasonable facsimiles of code based on human examples, but actually designing and implementing novel systems from the ground up -- we'll need far, far fewer workers in general.

briHass 3y ago
Exactly. Far before high-level software engineering is perfected by machines, a revolution will have already come for the vast majority of white-collar work. This includes all creative work as well, since software engineering has a large component of that also. Coding is not uniquely vulnerable to AI, it just feels that way because initial AI products are targeted at technical audiences, and a large corpus of training data could be snagged with minimal legal burdens.

dudinax 3y ago

You'll need a ton more programmers each 10x more productive at half the salary.