8 ms·

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. -- Douglas Adams Let me guess your age.

lm28469 2y ago
> Someone said something cool once hence it's valid ad vitam aeternam and can be used as an argument in a discussion. Mass automatised eugenics robots ? Well if you don't like it you must be a boomer. Brain implants that are controlled by your employer and can literally kill you on the push of a button if you don't follow the rules ? What ? you don't like it ? You dumb luddite Between that and the "TeChNoLoGy iS JuSt a ToOl, a HaMmEr Is NeItHeR gOoD nOr BaD" people...
- terhechte 2y ago
  How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? The reason the quote can be applied is because it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Did you grow up watching Data (Star Trek), C3PO (Star Wars), KITT (Knight Rider) thinking "Who comes up with these violent sadistic ideas"?
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? Well it's just a technology, don't you love technology ? Technology is progress and progress is good! > it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Eugenics would objectively solve a lot of suffering though, your AI might even come to that conclusion > Did you grow up watching Data (Star Trek), C3PO (Star Wars), KITT (Knight Rider) thinking "Who comes up with these violent sadistic ideas"? That's how 80% of ai "enthusiasts" sound to me, "AI is good because these sci-fi AIs were cool when I was a kid"
    - flappyeagle 2y ago
      Are you being obtuse on purpose?
      - terhechte 2y ago
        His purse is empty already, all’s golden words are spent. – William Shakespeare
jsheard 2y ago
The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.
- diggan 2y ago
  I initially picked up programming because I wanted to create things (well, initially break things, but moved on from that), and the programming was one way of doing that. I only learned how to structure my programs, because they became hard to change. I only learned testing and refactoring, because I noticed I was faster when the code was better and more tested, even if the upfront cost was slightly higher. If I was 14-15 around this time, when I first picked up programming, but had an LLM on my side, I'm not sure what the outcome would be, to be honest. I'd use them, that's for sure, but once I got a working application out of them, would I be curious enough to understand as much as I understand now, if it wasn't required? Or would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks?
  - n4r9 2y ago
    > would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks? Would even that have some downsides in the long-term, since the process of banging one's head could be crucial to rewiring your brain to understand new concepts.
    - diggan 2y ago
      Yeah, I'm guessing that most of my valuable knowledge comes from sessions like this, where something is hard, and eventually you solve it. If I was in the same situation today, I'd probably keep throwing stuff at the LLM until it got it right, and not really learn anything. But then on the other hand, the point was never to learn, but to create. I'm still not sure if I'd be better or worse at actually creating things if I had LLMs in the beginning or not.
atemerev 2y ago
Well, if you have ADHD, you are always fifteen. Novelty-seeking is built in, part of physiology, cannot be ignored. I am 42, and LLMs still provide a lot of excitement to me.
v9v 2y ago
This can be taken as an instance of the Shifting Baseline phenomenon [1]. The fact that we can only perceive certain changes over large timescales doesn't mean we can safely ignore them. It's harmful to ignore experienced perspectives. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline
nsagent 2y ago
I'll bite. I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at. How old do you think I am?
- Kerrick 2y ago
  Doesn’t that feel a little bit like saying that the hype around transistor-based logic gates is ridiculous because they’re designed to execute Boolean logic, and that’s exactly what they’re good at? The simple mechanism isn’t what’s exciting. The exciting part is composing that into a symphony of functionality, running fast and cheap, to better our lives.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    no, because before transistors we had vacuum tubes so the functionality of a transistor was well understood and the breakthrough was in size and power consumption. the analogy would be more apt if tomorrow I could run ChatGPT 4o, the hosted model, on my wrist watch, and run it indefinitely for pennies.
    - TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago
      3.5 turbo?
- dandellion 2y ago
  I was in my 20s when crypto was "it" and I was definitely on the last group about it, so it's definitely not just about age, even thought there's probably some correlation.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- SamBam 2y ago
pera 2y ago
Based on those rules your guess would be wrong :) This is not about age really: "NFTs"/"web3.0"/"Blockchain technologies" for instance were hyped by every age group.
wzdd 2y ago
I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, but there is a reason he was (best known as) a comedy writer and not, for example, a sociologist. Trotting this out adds nothing to the conversation and just comes across as vaguely ageist.
- y-curious 2y ago
  Call it ageist, but this aligns with the conversation about "it" at my job. The cutoff is around 42, but there is a significant split by age group of engineers on the value of "it".
  - layer8 2y ago
    There is some truth to it, but it also isn’t exactly accurate. #2 isn’t true for me in its generality. Some new things were exciting and revolutionary, but by no means all. Regarding #3, some new things still excite me today, and many more could excite me, but nobody is making them. Even #1 isn’t accurate. What’s true is that “excitability” goes down over time the more one is aware of the flaws and trade-offs.
  - Arisaka1 2y ago
    I don't think it has to do with age but more than active years of work experience in the field. There is some strong correlation but, I'm 44 and with 3 years of experience I have integrated AI tools in my workflow because they're just tools right now and it would be silly not to leverage it.
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      I added them, because they are a plug-in like anything else, but rarely find a use for them. They are best at helping me remember syntax for single statements, nothing more. Like autocorrect but vaguer.
- ant0ni 2y ago
  I found the parent comment humorous as it cites a lighthearted quote from Douglas Adams. it is relevant to the conversation in a similar way an xkcd is, when called relevant.
fipar 2y ago
As much as I like Douglas Adams' work, I think that quote describes what, for lack of a better term, and in no way trying to be derogatory, I'd call a "normal person"'s reaction to technologies. I mean obviously the age boundaries may change a bit but otherwise he's spot on. Also, I'd say it's not just technology as I've seen a similar attitude towards other things (e.g, how a dress code is not that common any more, or how you can walk up to a store or even go to a hospital and be greeted by someone with tattoos and green hair "is against the natural order of things"). And to stress again that I'm not being derogatory, I've got close people who have those reactions and I love them even if I disagree with them. But for people not in that "normal" group my experience is nothing like that. I've seen: - People being amazed at how exciting something that existed when they were born is, to the point of building emulators and even physical replicas of it. - People way after 35 who go deep in on very new things that drastically change the way they work (the example I'm thinking of here is the old musicians I know who've embraced modelers and DAWs, things that only got good enough to be used by professionals in, what, the last 20 years? - In that same line though, I know young kids who use portastudios and hate DAWs. Some release cassettes too. One has to guess their target audience never wasted life untangling tape and rewinding with a ball pen ... Still, I think your last line is most likely spot on as far as the author goes. Probably going through some mid-life crisis (lest this come across as ageist, I'm way past half my country's life expectancy). Also, "Every pub conversation winding up talking about it." That's just the author going to the wrong pubs! Like the Jonathan Richman song says: "Well the first bar things were alright But in this bar, things were Friday night."
b3lvedere 2y ago
"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual." Terry Pratchett
SkyBelow 2y ago
I'm against calculators in schools due to their detriment on learning. What's my age?
wormlord 2y ago
This was written at a time when people had lived through inventions like the internet, personal computers, refrigerators, microwave ovens, jet liners, vaccines, television, etc. While all of those inventions had negative externalities, their primary function overall improved people's lives. Generative AI is all negative externalities.
gavinhoward 2y ago
Those rules do not work for me. I hate AI.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
yapyap 2y ago
well i dont know who in the world Douglas is, probably some geriatric weirdo but he is completely wrong. am in the second group and ur comment just feels like ragebait, sure there are enough “hip and trendy” teenagers to twenty, thirty something people who like influence more than technology and are on their “vibe code” grind and idk, fucking their AI every night with their claude wrapped fleshlight but I for one am not one of them.
gnfargbl 2y ago
I'm in my mid-forties and I think the LLM revolution is amazing. It reminds me of the dotcom era in many ways: a genuinely transformative technology which is currently no more than maybe 20% of the way into realising its potential; a technology for which expectations have been hyped up to maybe 200% of potential; and a technology around which a stockmarket bubble has formed. I'll leave the rest of the LLM story to the reader's imagination, but to see this slightly fragmented and ossified mind it's extremely obvious what happens next, and then what happens after that, and then after that (which is when we get to the really good bit). So no, I'm not bored, and I'm not tired. I'm as happy to be working in technology now as when I was a younger man. Happier in some ways, even.
listless 2y ago
I do think this is true. I'm 46 and I find myself wondering when things are going to "return to normal". But I can't really define what that is besides saying "2019". I'm not even sure what I'm referring to other than I hate short form video. I don't know how I feel about AI. It does seem like something that has a lot of promise though if we can figure out the context issues.

lm28469 2y ago

> Someone said something cool once hence it's valid ad vitam aeternam and can be used as an argument in a discussion. Mass automatised eugenics robots ? Well if you don't like it you must be a boomer. Brain implants that are controlled by your employer and can literally kill you on the push of a button if you don't follow the rules ? What ? you don't like it ? You dumb luddite Between that and the "TeChNoLoGy iS JuSt a ToOl, a HaMmEr Is NeItHeR gOoD nOr BaD" people...

terhechte 2y ago
How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? The reason the quote can be applied is because it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Did you grow up watching Data (Star Trek), C3PO (Star Wars), KITT (Knight Rider) thinking "Who comes up with these violent sadistic ideas"?
- lm28469 2y ago
  > How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? Well it's just a technology, don't you love technology ? Technology is progress and progress is good! > it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Eugenics would objectively solve a lot of suffering though, your AI might even come to that conclusion > Did you grow up watching Data (Star Trek), C3PO (Star Wars), KITT (Knight Rider) thinking "Who comes up with these violent sadistic ideas"? That's how 80% of ai "enthusiasts" sound to me, "AI is good because these sci-fi AIs were cool when I was a kid"
  - flappyeagle 2y ago
    Are you being obtuse on purpose?
    - terhechte 2y ago
      His purse is empty already, all’s golden words are spent. – William Shakespeare

jsheard 2y ago

The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.

diggan 2y ago
I initially picked up programming because I wanted to create things (well, initially break things, but moved on from that), and the programming was one way of doing that. I only learned how to structure my programs, because they became hard to change. I only learned testing and refactoring, because I noticed I was faster when the code was better and more tested, even if the upfront cost was slightly higher. If I was 14-15 around this time, when I first picked up programming, but had an LLM on my side, I'm not sure what the outcome would be, to be honest. I'd use them, that's for sure, but once I got a working application out of them, would I be curious enough to understand as much as I understand now, if it wasn't required? Or would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks?
- n4r9 2y ago
  > would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks? Would even that have some downsides in the long-term, since the process of banging one's head could be crucial to rewiring your brain to understand new concepts.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm guessing that most of my valuable knowledge comes from sessions like this, where something is hard, and eventually you solve it. If I was in the same situation today, I'd probably keep throwing stuff at the LLM until it got it right, and not really learn anything. But then on the other hand, the point was never to learn, but to create. I'm still not sure if I'd be better or worse at actually creating things if I had LLMs in the beginning or not.

atemerev 2y ago

Well, if you have ADHD, you are always fifteen. Novelty-seeking is built in, part of physiology, cannot be ignored. I am 42, and LLMs still provide a lot of excitement to me.

v9v 2y ago

This can be taken as an instance of the Shifting Baseline phenomenon [1]. The fact that we can only perceive certain changes over large timescales doesn't mean we can safely ignore them. It's harmful to ignore experienced perspectives. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

nsagent 2y ago

I'll bite. I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at. How old do you think I am?

Kerrick 2y ago
Doesn’t that feel a little bit like saying that the hype around transistor-based logic gates is ridiculous because they’re designed to execute Boolean logic, and that’s exactly what they’re good at? The simple mechanism isn’t what’s exciting. The exciting part is composing that into a symphony of functionality, running fast and cheap, to better our lives.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  no, because before transistors we had vacuum tubes so the functionality of a transistor was well understood and the breakthrough was in size and power consumption. the analogy would be more apt if tomorrow I could run ChatGPT 4o, the hosted model, on my wrist watch, and run it indefinitely for pennies.
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago
    3.5 turbo?
dandellion 2y ago
I was in my 20s when crypto was "it" and I was definitely on the last group about it, so it's definitely not just about age, even thought there's probably some correlation.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
SamBam 2y ago

pera 2y ago

Based on those rules your guess would be wrong :) This is not about age really: "NFTs"/"web3.0"/"Blockchain technologies" for instance were hyped by every age group.

wzdd 2y ago

I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, but there is a reason he was (best known as) a comedy writer and not, for example, a sociologist. Trotting this out adds nothing to the conversation and just comes across as vaguely ageist.

y-curious 2y ago
Call it ageist, but this aligns with the conversation about "it" at my job. The cutoff is around 42, but there is a significant split by age group of engineers on the value of "it".
- layer8 2y ago
  There is some truth to it, but it also isn’t exactly accurate. #2 isn’t true for me in its generality. Some new things were exciting and revolutionary, but by no means all. Regarding #3, some new things still excite me today, and many more could excite me, but nobody is making them. Even #1 isn’t accurate. What’s true is that “excitability” goes down over time the more one is aware of the flaws and trade-offs.
- Arisaka1 2y ago
  I don't think it has to do with age but more than active years of work experience in the field. There is some strong correlation but, I'm 44 and with 3 years of experience I have integrated AI tools in my workflow because they're just tools right now and it would be silly not to leverage it.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    I added them, because they are a plug-in like anything else, but rarely find a use for them. They are best at helping me remember syntax for single statements, nothing more. Like autocorrect but vaguer.
ant0ni 2y ago
I found the parent comment humorous as it cites a lighthearted quote from Douglas Adams. it is relevant to the conversation in a similar way an xkcd is, when called relevant.

fipar 2y ago

As much as I like Douglas Adams' work, I think that quote describes what, for lack of a better term, and in no way trying to be derogatory, I'd call a "normal person"'s reaction to technologies. I mean obviously the age boundaries may change a bit but otherwise he's spot on. Also, I'd say it's not just technology as I've seen a similar attitude towards other things (e.g, how a dress code is not that common any more, or how you can walk up to a store or even go to a hospital and be greeted by someone with tattoos and green hair "is against the natural order of things"). And to stress again that I'm not being derogatory, I've got close people who have those reactions and I love them even if I disagree with them. But for people not in that "normal" group my experience is nothing like that. I've seen: - People being amazed at how exciting something that existed when they were born is, to the point of building emulators and even physical replicas of it. - People way after 35 who go deep in on very new things that drastically change the way they work (the example I'm thinking of here is the old musicians I know who've embraced modelers and DAWs, things that only got good enough to be used by professionals in, what, the last 20 years? - In that same line though, I know young kids who use portastudios and hate DAWs. Some release cassettes too. One has to guess their target audience never wasted life untangling tape and rewinding with a ball pen ... Still, I think your last line is most likely spot on as far as the author goes. Probably going through some mid-life crisis (lest this come across as ageist, I'm way past half my country's life expectancy). Also, "Every pub conversation winding up talking about it." That's just the author going to the wrong pubs! Like the Jonathan Richman song says: "Well the first bar things were alright But in this bar, things were Friday night."

b3lvedere 2y ago

"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual." Terry Pratchett

SkyBelow 2y ago

I'm against calculators in schools due to their detriment on learning. What's my age?

wormlord 2y ago

This was written at a time when people had lived through inventions like the internet, personal computers, refrigerators, microwave ovens, jet liners, vaccines, television, etc. While all of those inventions had negative externalities, their primary function overall improved people's lives. Generative AI is all negative externalities.

gavinhoward 2y ago

Those rules do not work for me. I hate AI.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

yapyap 2y ago

well i dont know who in the world Douglas is, probably some geriatric weirdo but he is completely wrong. am in the second group and ur comment just feels like ragebait, sure there are enough “hip and trendy” teenagers to twenty, thirty something people who like influence more than technology and are on their “vibe code” grind and idk, fucking their AI every night with their claude wrapped fleshlight but I for one am not one of them.

gnfargbl 2y ago

I'm in my mid-forties and I think the LLM revolution is amazing. It reminds me of the dotcom era in many ways: a genuinely transformative technology which is currently no more than maybe 20% of the way into realising its potential; a technology for which expectations have been hyped up to maybe 200% of potential; and a technology around which a stockmarket bubble has formed. I'll leave the rest of the LLM story to the reader's imagination, but to see this slightly fragmented and ossified mind it's extremely obvious what happens next, and then what happens after that, and then after that (which is when we get to the really good bit). So no, I'm not bored, and I'm not tired. I'm as happy to be working in technology now as when I was a younger man. Happier in some ways, even.

listless 2y ago

I do think this is true. I'm 46 and I find myself wondering when things are going to "return to normal". But I can't really define what that is besides saying "2019". I'm not even sure what I'm referring to other than I hate short form video. I don't know how I feel about AI. It does seem like something that has a lot of promise though if we can figure out the context issues.