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I seem to be immune to it now. I’ve just accepted that I’m going to feel less and less useful as time goes by, and I should just enjoy whatever I can. Life will
by xanderlewis 3y ago
I seem to be immune to it now. I’ve just accepted that I’m going to feel less and less useful as time goes by, and I should just enjoy whatever I can. Life will probably never be as good as it was for people 30 years older than me, but it’s not something that looks likely to change.
Nothing about the future looks particularly good, other than that medicine is improving. But what’s the point of being alive in such a sanitised, ‘perfect’, instant-dopamine-hits-on-demand kind of world anyway?
Just say to hell with it and bury yourself in an interesting textbook. Learn something that inspires you. It doesn’t matter if ‘AI’ can (or soon will be able to) do it a billion times better than you.
And be kind to those around you.
- cyrialize 3y agoI feel this, thank you. I've started reading again, because reddit/instagram/etc. has become kind of boring for me? Like, I still go on them to get an instant dopamine hit from time to time, but like you said burying yourself in a textbook just feels so much more rewarding.
- xanderlewis 3y agoMaybe someone needs to start a small group of people who specifically want to do this — seek refuge from the chaotic and increasingly worrying world (in particular the threat of replacement by extremely general automated systems) by immersing themselves in learning, and sharing the results with others. I’m sure such groups already exist, but maybe not specifically with this goal in mind. Learning for its own sake really is the answer to lasting happiness… for some of us, anyway.
- chpmrc 3y agoI don't think it's too far fetched to hypothesize that the next major global conflict will be between accelerators (e/acc) and decelerators. I see a parallel with political/economic ideologies like capitalism and communism. One of them will eventually prevail (for most of the world) but it won't be clear which until it happens. Scary but also exciting times ahead!
- yyyk 3y agoI can't imagine any coherent 'deceleratorionist' political program. It will be all different flavors of acc.
- ethbr1 3y ago> seek refuge from the chaotic and increasingly worrying world (in particular the threat of replacement by extremely general automated systems) by immersing themselves in learning, and sharing the results with others. Since 529 CE! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictines
- xanderlewis 3y agoI skimmed the article and couldn’t see which part was particularly relevant. Can you point out the similarity? If you’re just talking about the idea of becoming a monk: yes, I very much like the idea of becoming a modern, digitally-enabled monk.
- phist_mcgee 3y agoI think his point is that people have felt like the world is going to shit for a very long time, it's just that with the presence of hindsight we can see that in the past everything worked out, but we can't see the future so our present is troubling. But none of these feelings are new, just different problems manifesting the same.
- Solvency 3y agoIs this a joke? Go outside. Go hiking. Make a garden. Visit Yosemite. Take up bouldering. Learn to surf. Cycle. Go camping. There's a world of living and massive communities but around real life. Explore what your body and mind can do together. Find kinship because it's out there in spades for people not obsessed with the automation of machined content.
- xanderlewis 3y agoWhat about it makes you think I’m joking?
- _njyk 3y agoSan Francisco, Zurich, etc are quite different from other places in the world. No mountains here + no garden for me, Yosemite is thousands of kilometers away. The sea has no waves. It's -5 degrees. Which is "fine", but it means that indoor activities are more prevalent, including computers. And I'm sure for some other people their options are way more restricted.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoI've got about a million things I'd like to delve into if such a group existed(let's call it a realist monastery?) The key though is to avoid becoming a cult.
- xanderlewis 3y agoCults presumably need leaders, and there wouldn’t be one. It would be kind of like a church though. But we worship pure knowledge and learning.
- anigbrowl 3y agoWe could call it...a university.
- theendisney 3y agoSure but since we know everything we know will be wrong in 500-1000 years we might as well register it as a church complete with creation myths. :)
- xanderlewis 3y agoHey, Euclid's ideas from 2000+ years ago are still going strong. I doubt much of what we know today will turn out to be wrong. Maybe our abstractions will turn out to have been naive or suboptimal, but at least they're demonstrably predictive. They're not just quackery or mysticism.
- theendisney 3y agoThings dont have to be wrong to be considered wrong :)
- xanderlewis 3y agoWell… in subjects like mathematics they kind of do, don’t they? There’s not much room for opinion on what’s true and what isn’t. Of course, how something is done or the language used to describe it is always up for debate. You did say ‘wrong’, though, not ‘considered wrong’.
- samus 3y agoSuch groups are by definition reclusive, hard to find on social media, and might be a lot more fringe or "weird" than you'd prefer. For a while, subreddits were a bit like this.
- jprete 3y agoI've abandoned all online content sources except HN, Substack, and YouTube. The latter two are aggressively filtered and still feel like they're getting less interesting over time. HN isn't the best habit, either, but it's good to have at least one source of news.
- mrb 3y ago"I’ve just accepted that I’m going to feel less and less useful as time goes by" It's probably the same feeling farmers had in the beginning of the 20th century when they started seeing industrialized farming technologies (tractors, etc). Sure, farming tech eliminated tons of farming jobs, but they have been replaced by other types of jobs in the cities. It's the same thing with AI. Some will lose their jobs, but only to find different types of jobs that AI can't do.
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoI see this "just adapt" response a lot and it misses the point. The goal of research like this is to create a machine that can do any job better than humans.
- someplaceguy 3y agoAnd when that happens, humans will no longer need jobs. The problem is the transition into that new world.
- dennis_jeeves2 3y ago>medicine is improving. I doubt whether this is true. Lots of hype, but no tangible improvement to show for chronic conditions for common people.
- Brusco_RF 3y agoGLP-1 isn't a tangible improvement for a chronic condition for common people?
- xanderlewis 3y agoMedical understanding is not getting worse, unless I’m severely mistaken. The systems that deliver the medical care might be, however (and indeed observably locally are, in many cases).
- dennis_jeeves2 3y ago>Medical understanding is not getting worse, unless I’m severely mistaken. You are mistaken. To realize that you will have to look back several decades and read the literature of those times, of what is left. Now note I'm taking about chronic illnesses (diabetes, cancer etc) not acute ones like an infection etc. The medical practitioner of yesteryear did not have the fancy diagnostic tools that we have today, but several of them appear to me to be sharp observers.
- TaupeRanger 3y agoYou're exactly right, but most people just believe the headlines about cancer cures and "individualized medicine" that pop up every week and don't realize that literally none of them produce anything that helps real life patients. Medicine is not getting better - it's getting more expensive and less efficient.
- xanderlewis 3y ago> literally none of them produce anything that helps real life patients If you make claims that bold no one should even bother to read on.
- brandonagr2 3y agoThis is an exciting future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg
- davedx 3y agoGet outside, go hiking, climb a mountain! That’s my big offline plan for this year and I’m excited to do it. The world is way bigger than technology and the Internet. It hasn’t really gone anywhere
- xanderlewis 3y agoGood idea. But for people like me, reading a book on a technical subject feels like climbing a mountain — but even more thrilling and enriching! Fresh air and sunlight are important though.
- Aeolun 3y agoYou can read any book outside.
- xster 3y agoThat isn't the OP's point I believe. I think the point was if the more productive means of production is ultra-centralized to a few owners of AI, the question wouldn't be whether to go outside, but whether you can afford to not be permanently outside, if the superstructure of society assigns housing to capital and not humans.
- konschubert 3y agoSince this is just knowledge, I don't think it can be guarded all that well.
- patientzero 3y agoAnyone can make a cotton gin.. Industrialization of an industry basically centralizes its profits on a relatively small number of winners who have some advantage of lead time on some important factors as it becomes not worthwhile for the vast majority of participants from when it required more of the population.
- ohthatsnotright 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- karmasimida 3y agoSame, I feel nothing. Just another tool. Until full automated agent that is able to carry out a task from start to finish without human intervention, there is something for us to do I guess.
- zingelshuher 3y ago> I’ve just accepted that I’m going to feel less and less useful as time goes by You are not alone : https://youtu.be/h3-va0umXTY?t=383 https://youtu.be/h3-va0umXTY?t=383 PS: youtube.com at 6:23, "Leonardo DiCaprio,,Julia Butters in Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood --break"
- ericmcer 3y agoI’m the complete opposite, I wish I was being born 20 years in future. I am kinda terrified of being 80 when they come out with some technique for heavily slowing down aging and our generation just has to sigh and accept we just missed the cutoff.
- xanderlewis 3y agoI don't necessarily wish I'd been born earlier (I probably don't, if I think about it). I just think it might have been more fun.
- imiric 3y ago> Life will probably never be as good as it was for people 30 years older than me > Nothing about the future looks particularly good, other than that medicine is improving. How do you reconcile your thoughts with what the CEOs of these AI companies keep telling us? I.e. "the present is the most amazing time to be alive", and "the future will be unimaginably better". I'm paraphrasing, but it's the gist of what Sam Altman recently said at the World Government Summit[1]. Are these people visionaries of some idealistic future that these technologies will bring us, or are they blinded by their own greed and power and driving humanity towards a future they can control? Something else? FWIW I share your thoughts and feelings, but at the same time have a pinch of cautious optimism that things might indeed be better overall. Sure, bad actors that use technology for malicious purposes will continue to exist, but there is potential for this technology to open new advancements in all areas of science, which could improve all our lives in ways we can't imagine yet. I guess I'm more excited about the possibilities and seeing how all this unfolds than pessimistic, although that is still a strong feeling. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15UZCAr3shU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15UZCAr3shU
- jamesear 3y ago> How do you reconcile your thoughts with what the CEOs of these AI companies keep telling us? I.e. "the present is the most amazing time to be alive", and "the future will be unimaginably better". I'm paraphrasing, but it's the gist of what Sam Altman recently said at the World Government Summit[1]. Three ways: * It's the job of CEOs to advocate the benefits of what they're doing. * Those things might be true, for them. * Those things might be true, from a global perspective, even if there are some people who are worse off. White-collar workers might just be those people worse off.
- xanderlewis 3y ago> How do you reconcile your thoughts with what the CEOs of these AI companies keep telling us? It gives me some hope, which fades rapidly as soon as I remember the vested interests such people have.
- bjelkeman-again 3y agoI have two observations. 1) My wife trained as a typesetter on a photo typesetting machine. That was already replacing typesetters working with lead, and the people sorting the used lead, and working with inks etc. They still needed a past-up artist and more. Eventually the GUI based computer arrived, with PageMaker, Quark, Indesign etc. These days she is super productive with a massive online icon library available, full printing and distribution capabilities. Able to do a job that could have involved half a dozen or more people previously. Are those people unemployed now? Not really (we are talking 1.5 generation now, so not the same people). Unemployment levels are low, and the workforce is significantly larger, with men and women working. The working (outside of the home) part of the population has gone up significantly over a few generations, despite all the new enabling productive tech. What I see is a lot of visually higher quality work being delivered, but often with the same core content. So productivity has increased, but you get a glossy new shiny report in a PDF, instead of a photocopy of a typewritten page. (Yes, I do simplify. But I think you get the gist.) 2) I started as a system admin, the a systems analyst, worked through project manager, etc. until I was leading startups. In the space where I work now, circular economy and food production, there is so much work to do, that any AI support we can get is welcome. But as the work is innovative, new and not done before, most often the AI tools aren’t that useful, yet. That may change, but with a society that needs to replace a significant part of the infrastructure and processes to achieve a long term sustainable society, I actually don’t worry the AI tools will take my job or any of my colleagues job away. There is plenty to do. I have enough new things in front of me that I could probably keep a whole big venture fund occupied for a long time.
- nkozyra 3y agoNo offense but jobs changing is a very different shift than jobs being entirely replaced by automation. One can adapt to needing to learn new technology, but one cannot adapt to an algorithm out performing you
- thomashop 3y agoThe parent commenter is saying that the moment automation entirely replaced traditional typesetting, people moved on and started using the new technology. Sure a part of the population is slow to adapt and therefore at a disadvantage. But the others, like his wife, adapted. The idea is that this wave of automation will be no different than other times this has happened to us in the past.
- AlexAndScripts 3y agoIf you think that's bad, try being 18 :) this field may not exist (at least in its present form) by the time I'm out of uni (I'm planning to hedge my bets by studying physics), and it seems the world is getting less stable by the minute. There seems to be no sense of urgency or even medium-term thinking in stopping Putin, and Article 5 appears to be becoming less sacrosanct by the minute. Society is increasingly divided, with absolutely no attempt to find common ground (particularly evident in my demographic) and the majority of my generation having a miniscule (and shrinking) attention span through their direct stream of Chinese propaganda. And, of course, the climate-shaped elephant in the room. I'm just trying to not let it get in the way of appreciating the world. I'm planning to travel to mainland Europe sometime next year (gap year). SpaceX has reignited spaceflight, and there's so much cool stuff going on in that space. Science marches on, with a steady stream of interesting discoveries. And programming is great - for now. It feels slightly strange spending a week writing a project that may be finished with a single prompt in a few year's time, but it's enjoyable. Maybe I'm overreacting? I've grown up in a pretty calm period, with the west in a clearly dominant position. Maybe this is, paradoxically, a return to normality?
- CaptainFever 3y ago“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” ― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
- ushuz 3y agoSo true. Even if it's not AI, climate change, or WW3 may doom us very soon. Just chill and enjoy life while we can.
- billiam 3y agoCheer up. It's not real. Generative AI is going to force us to confront what makes us human and the real world real, and learn to love it all over again. Sure, a lot of people will be lost in digital realms. Some might even like it. But I think that many will embrace the messy, imperfect, poignant realm we live in.
- xanderlewis 3y agoGood perspective. Thank you.