12 ms·

Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

• taint6969 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• sudo_cowsay 7mo ago
  Just join the right "communities" or else it might have very different results. A toxic community can exploit you (even if you make more value than you consume).
  • fragmede 7mo ago
    "just"
    • bayindirh 7mo ago
      As you know, you can just just do it. It's just that simple. Fix: Forgot to add /s switch. This comment uses conventional commits.
      • fragmede 7mo ago
        The problem is, it's not. Communities are messy and complicated, and if you take the slightest whiff of toxicity as a sign to leave a community, you're soon going to find yourself without one.
        • bayindirh 7mo ago
          I know, the comment is meant to be ironic, actually. I was part of quite a few, and some rather large ones (~100 people). I don't leave communities easily, but if I decide to do it, I do it for good. However, I'd rather stay there and be myself. What I found is, when you act yourself and if the community is not for you, the community silently ousts you. Then you can just collect your bag and leave. No drama, no fight. However, most of the time, you can at least affect some of the people and motivate them to be better. Some bad people don't know that they are bad and have their hearts at the right place, so it's worth digging them up and let them improve by supporting them.
  • sfink 7mo ago
    True, creating value isn't sufficient. But if you're creating value, you don't need that community; that community needs you. That doesn't mean it'll be easy to leave nor that you won't lose a lot by doing so, but it's better than being a leech. Leeches can only survive by finding another victim to suck blood from, and at some point that merry-go-round is going to run out of horsies. Pardon the mixed metaphors.
    • zelphirkalt 7mo ago
      Philosophically, I agree, but in reality there are so many leeches, who take take take, their whole life, and in the end they are often better off, materialistically than the people, who provided the actual value.
      • tasuki 7mo ago
        Ah but of course leeches are better off materialistically than the people who provide value! It's almost a tautology. But do you think they're happier? For example geohot could be vastly richer than he is if he wanted to. He wisely chooses not to, and advises others to do the same.
• beanshadow 7mo ago
  > it will continue to improve, but it won’t “go recursive” or whatever the claim is. It’s always been recursive. I suspect "going recursive" often colloquially means that AI systems achieve their exponential growth without human software engineers in the mix. This is a moment whose sudden apparent nearness does justify some of the ramping rhetoric, in my opinion.
  • ingatorp 7mo ago
    I mean at this point, for that to happen it definitely isn't a matter of intelligence (it can fix errors later and learn from them), it's only a matter of memory and proper harness. Once memory it's solved for good, then recursive self-improvement is inevitable.
    • KeplerBoy 7mo ago
      Once all the problems are solved we will be there. Sounds a lot like zeno's paradox. We might be closer than ever but still as far from the goal as ever.
• FlyingSnake 7mo ago
  People keep rediscovering the Bhagavad Gita in new ways https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/47/ https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/47/
  • ramblerman 7mo ago
    > You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty. I have a hard time interpreting that as what geohotz is saying. If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system
    • simianwords 7mo ago
      the problem is that there's good stuff in here but expressed in such a compressed way that it can be misused and misread. i completely agree with you and the post you are replying too. both are correct.
    • chunkyguy 7mo ago
      You need to understand the context. The quote in Gita was to motivate the best warrior of the time at the battlefront facing opponents who were mainly his cousins and uncles. In that context the quote is about performing the duties you were born to do without overthinking the consequences.
      • simianwords 7mo ago
        the context makes it even worse. its a strange kind of tribalism that is being promoted here. "do what you are asked to without understanding the real consequences". btw war is actual zero sum usually.
        • sl-1 7mo ago
          War is often times even negative sum game.
• kjgkjhfkjf 7mo ago
  > if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found out This explains the panic. It describes most roles in big tech.
• bob1029 7mo ago
  > The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns. This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time. I have found that the less you care about money the easier it is to acquire. Risk aversion, greed and interpersonal drama will kill a good idea way before anything else. I sometimes like to reframe this one as "100% of $0 is still $0".
  • ramon156 7mo ago
    I care less about receiving the money and more about the implications people have regarding money. For example, when I'd joined a company I did not get any travel expenses. They expected me to pay the 200 euros a month myself. I'd suggested it and they shrugged it off. The company is now firing people and others are leaving. The current company just has a default rate of money you get per km. They don't need to, but they know people want this and will ask about it. Its a small example but it gives you a view of how a company operates
    • mettamage 7mo ago
      I call this an example of a company putting their money where their mouth is. You can pay lipservice all you want but where will you allocate your (scarce) resource(s)? Resource allocation is a pretty reliable communication channel to discern intent of a company, or a manager.
      • coffeebeqn 7mo ago
        It’s the same with things like mental health and burnout prevention. You can either have a good work life balance through the year and good management and all that or you can have some consultant come throw a PowerPoint at your peons and a $5 voucher to some BS “health” app and call it a day. One is hard and effective and the other cheap and useless
  • vasco 7mo ago
• 7777777phil 7mo ago
  Most of what's getting "automated" was never really work, it was headcount that existed because nobody had a good reason to cut it yet. AI gave the reason..
• keyle 7mo ago
  That was my contracting philosophy for 15 years. Create more value than what I cost, otherwise why are you paying me?
  • austin-cheney 7mo ago
    Yes, but I make it more precise into two points: 1. Build tools/libraries that empower superior execution performance. If you can execute faster than others you have more potential free time than them. This is a form of compound interest. I do this for myself but my output is not exclusive to myself. 2. Be operational. Create products that are always more durable than what is trendy, but when something does break return a resolution as rapidly as possible, provided excellent regression testing. Be constantly healthy, healing once injuries are found, and constantly aware of new injuries. I find most people cannot do those two things. Most people cannot measure things and a great many people fear novelty.
• pu_pe 7mo ago
  Even if your goal is to go out and create value for others, your contribution is proportional to what everyone else can offer. If others with AI will deliver that value cheaper, or if what I am good at can be easily automated, it's getting harder and harder to deliver more value than I consume.
  • choeger 7mo ago
    Is it? If "others with AI" deliver what you consume, it should also make it easier to deliver more than you consume because what you consume becomes cheaper. Maybe a part of the anxiety is the realization that much if what was delivered by well-paid people before AI is actually not something the very same people want to consume?
    • Finbel 7mo ago
      Problem is that "others with AI" aren't producing what I consume, i.e food, heat, clothing, housing and health care. They're just producing what I produce, i.e software.
      • deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      • root_user 7mo ago
        That’s fine. New opportunities to provide value will emerge. If software becomes oversupplied, fewer people will enter that field and move to other areas where value is needed. If you only want to add value in the software space, then yes, it may be a problem.
        • zelphirkalt 7mo ago
          If now only everyone who is talented at crafting software (or any other job that might be replaced), but who is out of a job could magically be as talented at something else, and enjoy doing that other work, then we would have no problem. But one issue is, that often significant time goes into becoming good at what one does. Switching has a very high personal cost in terms of time and having no income for a prolonged time.
• minmax2020 7mo ago
  Can anyone explain the rent seeker paragraph? Which companies are playing 0 sum game and which are not? Are all big players not rent seekers?
  • franciscop 7mo ago
    Do you think e.g. the AI/LLM boom is all rent seeking? Do you think there's no positive value for the world on the recently announced e.g. MacBook Neo and that it's purely a monopolistic activity? Those are 2 clear recent examples of big players making massive benefits for the world, and I'm okay if they get X% of that value as company valuation.
    • customname 7mo ago
      Wait what's a new laptop doing to push the needle exactly? Genuinely curious
      • sfink 7mo ago
        In general, it's kind of the difference between having a sharp axe vs a dull axe. Though in the particular case of the MacBook Neo, I'm not sure whether we're talking about sharper or duller. Depends on the metric you're using, I guess.
        • mrguyorama 7mo ago
          It doesn't cut a cake nearly as well as the old Macbook Air so obviously duller.
      • rvrs 7mo ago
        The Neo is supposed to be the budget version. I think MacOS is a decent computing platform for some engineering and creative endeavors -- if one more college kid gets access to it for cheaper I say it's a positive
      • SyneRyder 7mo ago
        It's an 8GB RAM 256GB SSD laptop with a lower spec'd 6-core chip for $599 USD. Seems overhyped to me, PCs have done that for a while, just not as elegantly. Admittedly it probably has far better battery life than a PC, so that's a genuine advantage.
• deleted 7mo ago
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• dzink 7mo ago
  To refer back to the trite business book section - making something new is a Blue Ocean Strategy approach. Fighting for existing market share is a bloodied Red Ocean approach that Thiel called “competition is for losers”. So both benevolent and be greedy approaches recommend the same. Make a new puddle for everyone to swim in and you can focus on empathy instead of defense.
• rvz 7mo ago
  Two things. > If you don’t use this new stupid AI thing you will fall behind. If you haven’t totally updated your workflow you are worth 0. When I see this on any social platform, that is a sign that a VC / investor already invested or likely over-invested in said product and is manipulating emotions to shill their portfolio companies. This is a tired tactic repeated and recycled tens of thousands of times over and over again and the first sense is to ignore them. > That said, if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found out. The days of rent seekers are coming to an end. But not because there will be no more rent seeking, it’s because rent seeking is a 0 sum game and you will lose at it to bigger players. This is why many here are realizing the uncomfortable truth about why complexity over simplicity was celebrated. Of course job security. But it turns out that the low hanging fruit at those companies that added close to no value LLMs were enough to achieve "AGI" internally; (meaning layoffs in this case). The jobs of knowledge workers will still be there, but the big money just went into data centers (and not overpaying for more knowledge workers). The truth is in the middle.
• vintermann 7mo ago
  There are zero-sum games you can't realistically escape. They're really common. Credentials is a zero-sum game. Political power, influence of all sorts, are zero sum games: if you have more of it, someone else has less. Land ownership is basically zero sum, too.
  • energy123 7mo ago
    Most games are either negative-sum or positive-sum. Very few are zero-sum.
    • vintermann 7mo ago
      Well, that's not what I said anyway. I just said that zero sum games are common and there are some important ones you're not escaping.
      • energy123 7mo ago
        I'm saying they're not common. Those games you listed are either negative or positive sum. It's like if you draw a random number from a uniform distribution between [-1,1], you're almost certainly not going to get 0. When people say "zero-sum" they use it as a short-hand for "negative-sum", which is fine for casual speaking I guess, because the intended meaning does get across.
        • vintermann 7mo ago
          What about the important ones you're not escaping? To be a bit specific: if you're currently in education, you almost certainly have to play many zero sum games. Yes, education can be a positive thing in itself, but only one of you is going to be best in class. Only a limited number of you will get your papers into that prestigious congress. And while the knowledge may hopefully be useful in itself, the credentials you got in getting it will be less valuable the more people have them. Then you're off into the housing market. Can more houses be built? Sure. Can we build dikes to claim land from the oceans? Sure. All that is true, but it doesn't help you here and now when you need a place to live - then you're in a game with everyone else who needs a home right now, and if you get one, that's one someone else doesn't get. Then you have your home, and someone is planning to expand the local almost-unused airport to suddenly take a lot of heavy transport air planes. The noise will impact you a lot. You'd like to influence politics, to call off these plans or at least demand some mitigation, but then you're in a game with others who want to influence politics. Sure, maybe there's a happy compromise to be found, but often there's not. If there isn't, then your ability to put pressure on the decision makers to defend your interests, is going to come at the direct expense of the people wanting an expansion of the airport. Or more likely the other way around. My point is that yes, it sucks, but often we can't quit the rat race, and often there are conflicts of interest which can't be papered over. It comes off as too easy to, as this author does, say that we can just choose to play different games.
• simianwords 7mo ago
  > They just say it’s AI cause that makes the stock price go up. slightly naive take when the author recognises that AI will cause productivity increase.
  • ryanjshaw 7mo ago
    You discarded the context within which he made that statement.
    • simianwords 7mo ago
      i read this > If you have a job like that, or work at a company like that, the sooner you quit the better your outcome will be. AI will render your job to be rent seeking. Like self driving cars will automate away truck drivers - do you not think they need to be laid off because of AI?
      • cyh555 7mo ago
        > Like self driving cars will automate away truck drivers - do you not think they need to be laid off because of AI? geohot is talking about AI has its limitation and that it won't truly replace the human yet. Truck drivers and some people who contribute net positive value are not rent seekers at the moment. AI could render our jobs to be rent seeking, we don't know when.
        • simianwords 7mo ago
          We have unions actively opposing self driving cars mainly to protect their own jobs. In fact I think it’s much more common for a company to lay off because of real ai impact than anything else
• bravetraveler 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
• avaer 7mo ago
  It's easy to create value for others and not worry about returns when you have enough money to not worry. Unfortunately for most people, there's plenty of companies willing to take the returns and leave you paycheck to paycheck. That's literally what they are optimized to do. I don't even disagree with the ideal, but I think a prerequisite step to this philosophy is UBI.
  • simianwords 7mo ago
    While I think you are not wrong, these are excuses to continue doing useless things
    • nine_k 7mo ago
      What useless things?
      • simianwords 7mo ago
        Partake in war
        • bratbag 7mo ago
          War against someone who wants my society eradicated provides a lot of value to my people.
          • wartywhoa23 7mo ago
            And much more pain, misery and suffering to people who never wished you anything bad but happen to live on the other side.
          • simianwords 7mo ago
            do you have the intelligence to verify that?
        • mlrtime 7mo ago
          War has existed as long as humans have. If you have any ideas for how to remove fear, aggression and disagreement from humans you might just be a god or a saint.
• kindkang2024 7mo ago
  [dead]
  • duskdozer 7mo ago
    >Take Elon Musk — tremendous positive-sum deals with people everywhere, and all together, that's what got him to the top. Ah yes, "tremendous" positive-sum deals like: >Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it. https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions/ https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...
    • kubb 7mo ago
      When will they learn it’s not about value, but about power and perception of value is just means to that?
    • kindkang2024 7mo ago
      > Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans Sorry, I don't know the full story behind Hyperloop. But I really doubt he is trying to play a zero-sum or negative-sum game as the article hinted. Setting aside all the disputes — the deals he made with people are positive-sum. Nobody is forced to buy a Tesla, or invest in, or work for SpaceX. And in my personal view, all the article brings is deconstructive criticism — which does not fit my tastes. Maybe because I believe the world doesn't owe anyone anything. In fact, to make money, most of the time you have to play a positive-sum game and bring value to others. There is no shame in seeking profit — there is glory in it, if it comes through a positive-sum game. Those who complain — they can always reject the deal and choose something else. And even better, go offer or support better products in the market and help the best one win.
      • borski 7mo ago
        > In fact, to make money, you have to play a positive-sum game and bring value to others. That is simply untrue; the opposite is the literal definition of rent-seeking behavior, which produces gobs of money, but provides no (or very little, at best) new value to others.
• xodn348 7mo ago
  It's better to be a happy optimist than a smart pessimist.
  • wartywhoa23 7mo ago
    Pessimists are still happier in the long run: they are either proved right, or pleasantly surprised.
    • fragmede 7mo ago
      At the cost of being negative and miserable the whole time? If you integrate over time, being proven right or pleasantly surprised at the end doesn't make up for having been in the red for the duration.
  • tonyedgecombe 7mo ago
    That's assuming you get a choice in the matter.
• latenightcoding 7mo ago
  [deleted]
  • nine_k 7mo ago
    People volunteer e.g. playing games for free, spending considerable time and effort. The point is that the process is enjoyable by itself. When it starts to feel like work, it starts to feel like needing wages for it.
  • JSR_FDED 7mo ago
    That's not what he's saying. At a company level he's saying that if they make more profit than they add value they have an indefensible business model and will eventually lose to bigger players. At a personal level you can live your life similarly, add value where you can. You can do that by joining an organization that adds value as well.
  • borski 7mo ago
    You misunderstood. All geohot is saying is the same thing Scott Galloway constantly says - your job is to create surplus value. Provide more value than you take, over your lifetime, not over any specific one period, either. The argument is that if you do that, returns will naturally come your way. The issue is that many people never provide surplus value at all; some can't, and that is obviously completely acceptable (people who are disabled, have medical conditions, or who for some other reason cannot). But those who are able and choose not to provide surplus value are who he's talking about. You may not agree, and that's okay, but that's the argument.
    • zelphirkalt 7mo ago
      I wish that argument was trivially true. Yet we see tons of disadvantaged people working the real tough jobs helping the elderly or sick and they are getting precious little in return. And to a lesser degree, I have been doing nothing but providing value. All my projects are free/libre, yet returns have not come my way at all. In fact people who could make returns come my way, for example by offering me a job that I am clearly well suited for, refuse to take a look at these projects. Perhaps the argument is also about non-financial returns, and things like friendships, but I don't feel especially well connected either, even though I try to help anyone I can help in the areas I am active in. I don't think the argument matches reality, unfortunately.
• deleted 7mo ago
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• nathancroissant 7mo ago
  As others have said, it's a very optimistic view that can be infuriating to read when you are struggling to pay your bills. I'd also argue it's not very effecicient : we are at our best when we have deadlines and clear targets to reach, and making money to pay the bills can be a very motivating one to stop procrastinating !
  • borski 7mo ago
    > we are at our best when we have deadlines and clear targets to reach I'd argue we are at our best when those deadlines and clear targets are intrinsic rather than extrinsic, and that intrinsic motivation of that sort is actually more efficient than extrinsic, as it keeps you going much longer. But yes, that's not always possible and depends greatly on your circumstances. However, it is often much more possible than people allow themselves to think.
  • randomgermanguy 7mo ago
    I think the author might argue, that simply becoming more efficient at creating a rent-seeking mechanism is not beneficial. No matter how well motivated you are to improve your zero-sum game skills, it's still zero-sum. Or something like that.
• burnt-resistor 7mo ago
  The surest recipe to becoming a sucker and being left with nothing is leaving ownership and properly valuing your contributions to chance rather than respecting essential details. Anyone advising others they should just shrug and ignore it is either a moron or trying to play them. Workers should generally aim to unionize and seek to capture more of their value through worker-owned co-ops.
• arisAlexis 7mo ago
  This reads as a typical anti hype article that attracts the people that are fed up with reality. But this framework never works because it's detached from current reality. AI is a big thing and it will eat most jobs weather you call it stupid or you like it.
  • card_zero 7mo ago
    OK, and that reads like hype, and so we have hype and anti-hype. I suppose when they collide they combine in a energy-sucking implosion.
    • arisAlexis 7mo ago
      The hype Is backed by hard data in ai capabilities. The antihype is backed by human emotional fear.
• p697 7mo ago
  The whole world is obsessed with openclaw. Some companies are now even evaluating their employees' built agents, the tokens consumed, and the money spent on AI. It's really gotten out of hand.
  • peepee1982 7mo ago
    The whole world ... Some companies ... What is it, man?
• ray_ 7mo ago
  couldnt agree more with the author! just will try "If you create more value than you consume, you are welcome in any well operating community." to be "equal value"
• CrzyLngPwd 7mo ago
  Non-attachment to outcomes has always been one of the cornerstones of life.
• Aldipower 7mo ago
  "There’s people who built billion dollars companies by orchestrating 37 agents this morning AND YOU JUST SAT THERE AND ATE BREAKFAST LIKE A PLEB!" In Europe we like to sit there and eat breakfast like a pleb. After enjoying that, we build a million Euros company. Maybe or maybe not. Who cares if the breakfast is good.
• MinimalAction 7mo ago
  All these feel good articles are very ideal in nature, I feel. Not to be the doomsayer, but without a solid backup of resources (be it money, power or some such thing), I find it hard to imagine to be this 'careless' towards returns. World indeed feels like a Red Queen race.
  • Archer6621 7mo ago
    A couple of other people have expressed similar sentiments here, and I think it's the truth. You have to be in a position to give before you can sustain it reliably and/or reap the benefits from it. Often though, this position is highly subjective and mental in nature. A homeless man could willingly give his food away, and still somehow be fine with that, if he believes that things will be fine regardless somehow (perhaps he has an alternative source of food, or sincerely doesn't think that skipping food once will set him back forever). At the other hand, someone with a difficult and tedious job that pays well may not feel like they have the time or energy to give without necessarily receiving anything in return, even though they may objectively be in a much better overall position for it. I guess altruism necessarily requires some other essential basic needs to be in abundance first before it can overflow.
• solstice 7mo ago
  > The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns. If you create more value than you consume, you are welcome in any well operating community. Reminds me of Manfred Macx' attitude in the novel Accelerando by Charlie Stross
• wartywhoa23 7mo ago
  The obligatory reality check: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure
  • zozbot234 7mo ago
    Of course, "exposure" and "influence" are mostly zero-sum games of their own. These folks aren't really creating any more value than others, so it makes sense that they aren't 'paid' all that much.
• nubg 7mo ago
  > That said, if you have a job where you create complexity for others, you will be found out. Anybody have examples?
• mihaic 7mo ago
  I've always found something profoundly deceiving about all these "just create value posts", as if absolutely everyone could simply by some hard work actually create significant value for others. The barrier to being able to add any value along the supply chain is shriking daily, meaning that very few people can actually add value. The people that have managed to get on top of the system by these mean rarely aknowledge that their methods don't scale, which is a terribly irresponsible and ultimately narcissistic way to use their ideological influence. If you give advice to a group, it should either scale to most of the group or aknowledge up front it's exceptionalistic.
• evolighting 7mo ago
  > "The trick is not to play zero sum games." To be mean, I’d say no—those zero-sum games are always 'positive' for the players, because the people actually foot pay the bill aren't even at the table. Come on, we live in a globalized reality. Those insulated by the 'Dollar Illusion' don’t even realize that the true costs are being extracted from the rest of the world. These so-called zero-sum games are nothing but a sophisticated machinery of power, meticulously designed to obfuscate the truth. But those words are just too cynical; it doesn't really make any sense.
• locallost 7mo ago
  Great advice if you want to be old and poor. Yes, there's a chance it works out because you're that good, but there's a chance it doesn't. This doesn't mean do the opposite and only worry about your returns, but strike a balance. The world we live in is not in general a bunch of isolated people in a meritocracy, connections and relationships within your workplace play a huge role. Politics exist. I know a lot of asshats that are highly successful even though pretty useless. Don't be that person, but don't be there for everyone and empty handed in the end. Better advice would be stay hungry, stay curious, keep learning.
  • YCpedohaven 7mo ago
    > Great advice if you want to be old and poor. A more conspiracy minded version of myself might suggest there’s an active attempt to break the politically active middle class. Subtle changes in messaging that have been happening over the past few years from business owners and politicians seem to suggest that the future will involve masses of poverty. Gone are the days of “hard work” and “meritocracy” and they have been replaced by beef liver and romanticization of peasantry
    • DickAndBalls 7mo ago
      [dead]
• wartywhoa23 7mo ago
  Well, it must all start with a precise definition of "value" first, and then proceed to propose a method of lossless conversion of different kinds of values. Is a bottle of water less valueable in a desert than a luxury sedan?
• strideashort 7mo ago
  This is exactly what manipulators/value extractors want you to think. Case in point: how many here have heard of Mick Ronson? Few perhaps. However most have heard of David Bowie. See, Ronson was silently creating value for Bowie. Didn’t even get credited although songs like Life On Mars are what they are thanks to his contribution. Mick was creating value while everyone one else was getting rich.
• bananaflag 7mo ago
  > Always has been, and if you paid attention in CS class, you know the limits of those things. I don't remember ever learning a theorem stating that computers cannot surpass humans.
  • georgehotz 7mo ago
    Haha that's not what the post (or the post it links to) says. Every CS student should know there's no free lunch in search and optimization. There's tradeoffs between random search, evolutionary algorithms, and convex optimization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_op... There's an AI "smell" to things that are generated. Why is that? Mode collapse is impossible to see from a small number of samples. Are we mode collapsing society? How would we know if we were? Also, will computers surpass humans has such an implicit bias in it. Have humans surpassed ants? Have ants surpassed rocks? Have jet planes surpassed teletubbies?
    • Obscurity4340 7mo ago
      I know for a fact StanleyNickels™ have surpassed, nay, exceeded SchruteBucks™
    • MadxX79 7mo ago
      I get what you're saying, but I remember watching teletubbies back in the days with my nephew, and all questions of the form: Have ____ surpassed teletubbies? Can always be answered in the affirmative.
    • IanCal 7mo ago
      > Every CS student should know there's no free lunch in search and optimization The no free lunch theorem is so absurdly limited because of the constraints that it's IMO a tautology and fundamentally irrelevant outside of exceptionally tiny areas. You can't have one search algorithm that's better than others on average when searching entirely random things with no structure? 1. Yes, obviously. Nice to have a formulation but it's not exactly a surprise and 2. That's not what we deal with in the real world.
• peepee1982 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • kotaKat 7mo ago
    He never shook the name "Egohot" from the Playstation days and it's just continually reinforced every time he comes back out of the woodwork.
    • red-iron-pine 7mo ago
      cracking stuff is like 50% ego! that's the point
  • aerhardt 7mo ago
    Exactly the same on the other side though. If we believed that Dario Amodei or Sam Altman really knew how The Economy in its entirety worked, which is what they’re constantly pretending to do, then we should give them the central planning keys to the kingdom and declare communism tomorrow. I’m not being entirely facetious.
  • mentalgear 7mo ago
    Sound like a description of Elon and the X fanboys firehose.
    • ap99 7mo ago
      You don't have to be a fanboy to respect outcomes. He's got a winning track record. You may not agree with his politics or his morals but that's separate from his effectiveness. Specifically he's effective at stepping outside the domain he currently operates into create inside another.
      • swiftcoder 7mo ago
        > He's got a winning track record What exactly would that be a winning track record in - as near as I can tell, his actual track record is in buying companies with an already-successful product team, and managing not to run them into the ground for a while?
• 10xDev 7mo ago
  You will get laid off but you won't if you create value and you will create value if you don't care about money and it will go recursive but it won't go recursive because there are limits. It won't change anything but it will change everything. No one knows what he is actually saying (see comments) but at least he managed to compress the entire discourse on AI impact into a blog post.
  • Mtinie 7mo ago
    …and a concise one at that. Which is more impressive given the (general) penchant to say less with more.
  • cyanydeez 7mo ago
    AI is just another realm for corporate rentseeking. Do we really think these billions of debt generatjon is anything else?
  • s_dev 7mo ago
    301.9K Followers 0 posts Is this guy just paying bots to upvote and promote his stuff?
    • titanomachy 7mo ago
      He's kinda famous, he cracked the iPhone and PS3 as a teenager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
    • samtheprogram 7mo ago
      He deletes posts after they are no longer relevant. Given how people dig dirt up on people and take them out of context long after that context is forgotten, more people should do that (or delete social media altogether).
  • YCpedohaven 7mo ago
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• JonChesterfield 7mo ago
  This is a trap for engineers. If you don't worry about the returns, you won't get any. There are circumstances where that is fine. Be sure you're in one of them first.
  • sfn42 7mo ago
    I just do my job to the best of my ability. If I can help a colleague I do. I don't expect to get explicitly credited for everything I do. If my employer can't see or don't care about the value I bring, I simply go to one who values me higher. I refuse to participate in office politics and that kind of BS.
    • auggierose 7mo ago
      If you are employed, by definition you have outsourced the worries about the return on the value you create to your employer.
      • dchftcs 7mo ago
        This. First, the employer has to worry about the returns from which they draw some money to pay you. And for you to even get paid for doing a job, the company has to fear that you won't do it if you don't get paid - in most cases, it's not from the good of heart, but an implicit or explicit threat made by you or on your behalf by other people.
        • tartoran 7mo ago
          The current problem is automating yourself out of the job. You creating value compounds but as soon as you’re no longer needed the fruit of that compounded value is cut off from you.
          • sfn42 7mo ago
            Well if you want to spend your days doing something trivial enough to be automated I guess that might be a concern. I mean I'm not sitting around doing data entry. If I'm automating something it's not my job it's someone else's. Ad a lot of the time that someone else really has other stuff they'd rather do as well.
• globular-toast 7mo ago
  Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other: High and low rest upon each other; Voice and sound harmonize each other; Front and back follow one another. Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking. The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease, Creating, yet not possessing. Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore it lasts forever. -- Tao Te Ching verse 2.
  • civvv 7mo ago
    ChatGPT could never
• tim-projects 7mo ago
  You only have to look at ai slop taking over to see that what most people value is stupid. A better mantra is to create value for yourself and then compound it by sharing it. Then you can't lose, yet can win even more.
• 5o1ecist 7mo ago
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• webdevver 7mo ago
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• danilocesar 7mo ago
  I'd read several other posts and had a similar conclusion.
• humannutsack 7mo ago
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• bschmidt25 7mo ago
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• economistbob 7mo ago
  The world very much is a Red Queen Race if your country has a program to import Indian tech workers. The only way to leave the Red Queen race in such countries is to abandon your career field and work in food service or retail instead.
  • WJW 7mo ago
    Why not become a skilled craftsman and make a much better wage than in food service or retail? Every western country I've ever been in seems to have everlasting shortages of skilled plumbers, electricians and welders and prices have risen to match.
    • varjag 7mo ago
      Putting aside the obvious distinction of labor vs office work, are you sure about this? Like, sure as in you have tried to find a stable, well paying job in any of those trades?
    • keiferski 7mo ago
      The un-politically correct answer is that many college educated people perceive those working in the trades to be socially beneath them. And they often have different opinions on social issues than the typical tradesperson, which is apparently really important if you’re a plumber but not if you work at BigCo.
      • sarchertech 7mo ago
        I think that’s more of an urban/rural divide than anything else. Most of tech workers living in the sticks have plumbers and electricians and contractors in our social circle because that’s who has money in the boonies. But until you get to the very top of those professions, the work environment is worse in every way. You’re working 2x as many hours for 1/4 the pay, you go back to work the day after your kid is born. Your knees are just absolutely fucked. It’s in no way an equivalent job. That’s the primary reason tech workers don’t want to do it.
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• keiferski 7mo ago
  As is often the case, the title is a bit misleading and implies a universality that I don’t think the author intended. He is specifically talking about AI, and saying (in my understanding) that you shouldn’t worry too much about whether your specific thing will be overwritten by AI, as long as you focus on actually creating true, real value with your work. I agree with that completely and can see it happening in my own field (marketing/tech writing.) Yes, theoretically AI can replace every writer and marketer. The functionality is there. No, this isn’t actually happening, because what’s mattered all along isn’t a generic marketing skill set; but the mental effort to actually provide value. No one wants to read a blog post by an AI because it’s boring, and the writers that actually have something of value in their writing are doing just fine.
  • safety1st 7mo ago
    I mean it's a title. Titles are under no obligation to condense the entire content of the article into one sentence. People who want to comment on the article should read it first, and then write in good faith. The problem lies in the HN comments which have taken that title and interpreted it through the lens of unrelated political arguments: class warfare, anti-offshoring, etc. etc. I don't think any title would be immune from these people. They're just angry because the Internet has its hooks in their brain, and they're going to post about it. His points are good and people would be wise to read the article and take them to heart. His key points are: 1) If you're a rent seeker, current trends will probably see you lose out to a bigger and more powerful rent seeker. He's probably right about that. 2) Creating more value than you consume is a great form of self-preservation, when you do this no one wants to get rid of you. None of it's political. It's just good advice for life. I hereby forbid the masses from responding to these points with political rage bait. HN has better moderation than a lot of places but from my vantage point the entire Internet is sinking into this garbage - we're more aware of the problem these days, at least, but everything and everywhere is more consumed by political hot takes than ever before. If there was tech that forced commenters to read the article before they could comment on it - now THAT would be a valuable innovation!
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• Horos 7mo ago
  even thoses replies create common value. Tomorow datasets. Keep publishing !
• neuralkoi 7mo ago
  This post feels a bit ideological in nature. There are recurring processes at organizations to assess someone's fit in a given role. Generally when someone is no longer performing as expected, they're given time to correct their ways or retrain. If the organization has no system in place, then it really falls on the organization. I wonder if the author overestimates the amount of people who really want to be in a role they're not good at.
• skyberrys 7mo ago
  I like reading optimistic posts and I hadn't hear the term Red Queens Race before. Now I understand it comes from Alice In Wonderland while she runs but never moves. The whole website has great little thought snippets. The author is upfront about repeating themselves. That's great, so do I.
• whalesalad 7mo ago
  The rest of the comments here are really not passing the vibe check, but I’m glad to see a post like this. The message is true not just in AI or software dev but across all aspects of life. Give more than you take. Provide value.
• bschmidt97979 7mo ago
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• keybored 7mo ago
  > This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns. No. This is the time to abandon naive dogooderism. The capitalists said that they don’t need labor any more. Fine. Prepare for that potentiality by not giving jack shit away for free. That includes permissively licensed open source software. But it goes way beyond that. In the long term maybe we can get rid of the labor-employee relation so that people who do honest work don’t have to worry about their work becoming automated. Let the ones who engage in dishonest pseudo-work (capital accumulation) worry about their pseudo-productivity becoming null and void.
• capricio_one 7mo ago
  I don’t quite get the amount of supposed subtext that others see in this piece, so the flippant attitudes here are off putting. Geohotz has already commented here that people are putting words into his mouth. I agree with what is being said: AI will consolidate otherwise nonsensical jobs/roles/companies into fewer (probably more profitable?) ones, so if there’s a time to jump ship from one of these (assuming worst case scenarios), do it while you’re employed and you can land somewhere else that’s hopefully more stable. This to me is a fairly no-nonsense piece over all. AI itself and tools like LLM are damn good though, limitations aside. We get to do a lot of things we haven’t had time to do before.
• jeffbee 7mo ago
  Why does HN take this guy seriously? OK, he got pacman running on a PS3. Great. Remember the time he stood up on a stage discussing the path to Level 5 autonomous driving? Comma.ai actually produces a barely-adequate lane keeping system for obsolete cars. Remember fixing Twitter search in 12 weeks? This guy is a total charlatan. On the question of whether Hotz knows what AI can or cannot do, the answer is demonstrably "no".
• jgbuddy 7mo ago
  Lol AI is not search. I will never wrap my head around the pessimism of AI on HN
• greenwallnorway 7mo ago
  Engineers are running 8 instances of Claude Code at once. That doesn't mean they are completing work 8x faster. If you must hold the context for 8 agents in your head at once, your expertise as an engineer is wasted. See https://emsh.cat/one-human-one-agent-one-browser/ https://emsh.cat/one-human-one-agent-one-browser/ - One man + one agent in 72 hours, did better than thousands of agents over weeks. Staying focused on one or two important tasks still works. You won't fall behind.
• scoofy 7mo ago
  I think the idea is that in the future, everyone will need a philosophy degree to go along with whatever business they will work in. It’s no longer going to be about “I know this skill, tell me what you want me to do,” but will be about “I know how we can solve these problems with this skill.” If that stops being the limiting factor, then we’ll be in a post-scarcity world.
• rfwhyte 7mo ago
  This post absolutely reeks with the privilege of wealth. For the vast majority of people on this earth, the "Returns" from their labor matter a lot more to them than some vaunted, abstract ideals, as those ideals won't put food on the table or a roof over their children's heads. The bottom line is that the majority of people alive today have to take whatever deal they are given in a sense, as they absolutely do not have the "Luxury" of not "Playing zero sum games." Must be nice to be rich enough to get to spout philosophical BS and not worry how you're going to pay for groceries, but most people alive these days are a lot closer to being homeless than they are to being millionaires, and quitting a job that pays their bills so they can "Provide value to a community" and not worry about how they are going to get paid just isn't even a remotely viable option.
• mempko 7mo ago
  Literally everyone working for a wage is creating more value for others than they consume. The problem is the rent seekers are capturing that value. This is a crucial part geohot is missing. What people often don't think about and they should is that when you are employed for a wage by someone, you are the creditor and the employer is the debtor. Why? Because you work for say 2 weeks, and THEN they pay you. That whole time working you are crediting the employer and they are in debt to YOU. Think about how crazy this is. You the creditor must do what your debtor tells you. Maybe we don't think about it because it's too painful.
• Setas 7mo ago
  Different scale (I run 8, not 69) but the same fundamental challenge: what happens when one of those agents fails mid-task? I hit this with my multi-agent system — 8 agents sharing a JSONL knowledge graph. Parallel writes caused a race condition: two agents read the same file state, both write back the full graph plus their additions, second write silently obliterates the first. Sometimes the file ends up with a half-written JSON line that breaks every subsequent read. I patched it with an async mutex and atomic writes, but the real lesson was that I was fighting my runtime. On the BEAM, a GenServer processes messages from its mailbox sequentially — there's no concurrent access to serialize because the execution model is already sequential per-process. Supervision trees handle the crash case: child process dies, supervisor restarts it in microseconds, auto-repair runs on init, agents resume with clean state. Each process is ~2KB with its own heap, so you can run thousands with full isolation. At 69 agents the coordination and fault tolerance problems get significantly harder. The BEAM was designed for exactly this — Ericsson ran millions of concurrent processes on telephone switches with nine nines of uptime using these patterns 40 years ago. Wrote up the full story (race condition mechanics, supervision strategies, real code): https://dev.to/setas/why-erlangs-supervision-trees-are-the-missing-piece-for-ai-agents-1mjo https://dev.to/setas/why-erlangs-supervision-trees-are-the-m...
• Setas 7mo ago
  Different scale for me, but the same core problem: what happens when one agent fails mid-task? I hit this with 8 agents sharing a JSONL knowledge graph. Parallel writes caused a race: two agents read the same state, both wrote back a full graph, and the second silently overwrote the first. I patched it with an async mutex and atomic writes, but the real lesson was that I was fighting my runtime. On the BEAM, a GenServer processes its mailbox sequentially, so this class of shared-state bug largely disappears. Supervision trees also give you the part agent demos usually skip: when something crashes at 3am, it comes back clean instead of corrupting the rest of the system. That ended up being the more important property than raw agent count.