4 ms·

It seems pretty clear that LLMs will create another cleavage between the upper and lower classes. 200 years ago if you were rich you were overweight, and everyo

It seems pretty clear that LLMs will create another cleavage between the upper and lower classes. 200 years ago if you were rich you were overweight, and everyone else was skinny. These days it's reversed. You need a combination of money and impulse control to avoid being overweight. Right now, if you're scrolling on your phone constantly vs. reading, working out, doing chores, etc., you probably fall somewhere between the middle and the bottom of the bell curve for impulse control. The privileged few among us (I am not one of them) don't struggle with avoiding these addictions. And finally, LLMs. They certainly _could_ be used to help individuals bootstrap and quickly gain a basic competence in a new topic, and allow those individuals to reach greater expertise more quickly. But _a lot_ of people will just offload their thinking to the LLMs and actually erode their skills. Is this strictly inevitable from a conceptual standpoint? No. But practically speaking a lot of people will fall into this trap, which enlightened technologists will scratch their heads. "I don't understand why people say LLMs make you dumber, I've used them to advance my career and expand my knowledge, etc. Sounds like you guys just don't like progress."

raincole 1y ago
> everyone else was skinny Malnourished. The word you were looking for is malnourished. Junk food is a problem but the abundance of food didn't somehow cause "cleavage between upper and lower classes."
- everdrive 1y ago
  Depends on when in the past, but fair enough. I'm not saying "the past was better" but that our overabundance of calories presents a novel problem (ie, the need for money & impulse control to avoid obesity, heart disease, etc) that didn't previously exist, and now pretty clearly marks class boundaries.
  - philipkglass 1y ago
    In 1970 Americans already had an abundance of calories available, but they didn't yet have an obesity epidemic. One big difference is that in 1970 a typical person could afford 4000 calories of food a day, but most people still ate food cooked or assembled from basic ingredients at home. It's possible but less likely for someone to prepare and eat 4000 calories a day worth of homemade fried chicken, cookies, mashed potatoes, etc. Americans today can afford to eat 4000 calories worth of food and it's already optimized for palatability and convenience. It's relatively easy to eat 4000 calories of Doritos, microwave burritos, and boxed cookies. There's advertising to remind you of its existence and researchers dedicated to optimizing the delight of eating these products (increasing the odds of overeating just because it's pleasurable and frictionless). The transition from "abundance" to "abundance multiplied by advertising and product optimization" drove obesity more than simple availability of calories, IMO. I see a parallel with digital information. There was more than enough information on the Web to spend all day looking at it even before social networks were common. But that "home cooked" experience wasn't engineered for engagement time, so companies that optimized products for engagement were, in practice, a lot better at getting people to look at digital information for many hours per day.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      People also smoked cigarettes in the 70s Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant. Easier to control your calorie intake if you aren't feeling hunger pangs often
- scandox 1y ago
  Not all the time and not across all populations. Even many poor people had adequate nourishment a lot of their lives. The real problem they faced was the precarity of their situation, since I think we can agree that even a short period without adequate nourishment is a critical problem.
- nsxwolf 1y ago
  Famine, war rationing, economic depression and the widespread use of tobacco and methamphetamine diet pills was why Americans were historically skinny.
khamidou 1y ago
> The privileged few among us (I am not one of them) don't struggle with avoiding these addictions. Counterpoint, the richest man in the world is clearly addicted to being on twitter and posts at all hours of the day. More generally I don't see why the richest wouldn't be addicted to social media like the rest of us – after all they have a lot more free time and disposable income
- reaperducer 1y ago
  A single data point doesn't change the bell curve. The richest people in SV send their children to schools that are deliberately devoid of, or carefully restrictive of, technology. This is do they can learn to think, not follow.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    [citation needed] As far as I can tell, rich kids are just as addicted to phones/etc as anyone else.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - reaperducer 1y ago
      [citation needed] Six seconds of DuckDuckGo: https://parkervillesteiner.wa.edu.au/2022/08/08/hello-world/ https://parkervillesteiner.wa.edu.au/2022/08/08/hello-world/ https://archive.ph/mzxtZ https://archive.ph/mzxtZ
  - khamidou 1y ago
    Just because they send them to a school without cell phones doesn't mean they're not hopelessly addicted to them
- everdrive 1y ago
  Agreed, and I think Musk is an outlier. I think a bigger counterpoint for me would be "to what degree does wealth intersect with impulse control." I'd be shocked if there wee not a strong association, but it's also not going to be strictly linear. The might be diminishing returns at the poles, as well. The very low ends of impulse control look like "this guy blew grass clippings at my car so I shot him."
mattgreenrocks 1y ago
Consumer tech tilts toward those with poor impulse control because that ensures survival for the creators of said tech. Eventually, it becomes less of a means to an end, and more of an end in and of itself. This is a problem because it reinforces addiction. I'd argue the iPhone crossed that line at some point within the past five years, though, admittedly, it is the iPhone + social media services working together. I doubt Jobs would have approved the gaudy, Myspace-aesthetic-level Messages backgrounds that iOS 26 was proud to launch with.

raincole 1y ago

> everyone else was skinny Malnourished. The word you were looking for is malnourished. Junk food is a problem but the abundance of food didn't somehow cause "cleavage between upper and lower classes."

everdrive 1y ago
Depends on when in the past, but fair enough. I'm not saying "the past was better" but that our overabundance of calories presents a novel problem (ie, the need for money & impulse control to avoid obesity, heart disease, etc) that didn't previously exist, and now pretty clearly marks class boundaries.
- philipkglass 1y ago
  In 1970 Americans already had an abundance of calories available, but they didn't yet have an obesity epidemic. One big difference is that in 1970 a typical person could afford 4000 calories of food a day, but most people still ate food cooked or assembled from basic ingredients at home. It's possible but less likely for someone to prepare and eat 4000 calories a day worth of homemade fried chicken, cookies, mashed potatoes, etc. Americans today can afford to eat 4000 calories worth of food and it's already optimized for palatability and convenience. It's relatively easy to eat 4000 calories of Doritos, microwave burritos, and boxed cookies. There's advertising to remind you of its existence and researchers dedicated to optimizing the delight of eating these products (increasing the odds of overeating just because it's pleasurable and frictionless). The transition from "abundance" to "abundance multiplied by advertising and product optimization" drove obesity more than simple availability of calories, IMO. I see a parallel with digital information. There was more than enough information on the Web to spend all day looking at it even before social networks were common. But that "home cooked" experience wasn't engineered for engagement time, so companies that optimized products for engagement were, in practice, a lot better at getting people to look at digital information for many hours per day.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    People also smoked cigarettes in the 70s Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant. Easier to control your calorie intake if you aren't feeling hunger pangs often
scandox 1y ago
Not all the time and not across all populations. Even many poor people had adequate nourishment a lot of their lives. The real problem they faced was the precarity of their situation, since I think we can agree that even a short period without adequate nourishment is a critical problem.
nsxwolf 1y ago
Famine, war rationing, economic depression and the widespread use of tobacco and methamphetamine diet pills was why Americans were historically skinny.

khamidou 1y ago

> The privileged few among us (I am not one of them) don't struggle with avoiding these addictions. Counterpoint, the richest man in the world is clearly addicted to being on twitter and posts at all hours of the day. More generally I don't see why the richest wouldn't be addicted to social media like the rest of us – after all they have a lot more free time and disposable income

reaperducer 1y ago
A single data point doesn't change the bell curve. The richest people in SV send their children to schools that are deliberately devoid of, or carefully restrictive of, technology. This is do they can learn to think, not follow.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  [citation needed] As far as I can tell, rich kids are just as addicted to phones/etc as anyone else.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    [citation needed] Six seconds of DuckDuckGo: https://parkervillesteiner.wa.edu.au/2022/08/08/hello-world/ https://parkervillesteiner.wa.edu.au/2022/08/08/hello-world/ https://archive.ph/mzxtZ https://archive.ph/mzxtZ
- khamidou 1y ago
  Just because they send them to a school without cell phones doesn't mean they're not hopelessly addicted to them
everdrive 1y ago
Agreed, and I think Musk is an outlier. I think a bigger counterpoint for me would be "to what degree does wealth intersect with impulse control." I'd be shocked if there wee not a strong association, but it's also not going to be strictly linear. The might be diminishing returns at the poles, as well. The very low ends of impulse control look like "this guy blew grass clippings at my car so I shot him."

mattgreenrocks 1y ago

Consumer tech tilts toward those with poor impulse control because that ensures survival for the creators of said tech. Eventually, it becomes less of a means to an end, and more of an end in and of itself. This is a problem because it reinforces addiction. I'd argue the iPhone crossed that line at some point within the past five years, though, admittedly, it is the iPhone + social media services working together. I doubt Jobs would have approved the gaudy, Myspace-aesthetic-level Messages backgrounds that iOS 26 was proud to launch with.