4 ms·

If you're time-poor maybe you're not as rich as you think. The richest person I know talks to robots all the time.

dv_dt 7mo ago
The richest people I know talk to a range of people like personal assistants, but really the PA is valued for getting things done reliably and in the real world with any needed resources. Even calling in experts as needed - of course they may indeed talk to an AI too
komali2 7mo ago
> The richest person I know talks to robots all the time. I've noticed this too, but I always thought of it as mostly people fooling themselves. If you're rich (let's say anywhere above 10mil), it's practically guaranteed that you can allocate resources in such a way that more effective engineering, or science, or whatever, is done in less time than if you tried to do it yourself (rather than spending your time allocating capital). I've actually thought of this as a bit of a curse: the value of a rich person's labor output is inverse to their net worth. No matter how smart, you're not smarter than a crack team of Ukrainian/vietnamese/taiwanese/Indian scientists/engineers/whatever, and the more rich you get the more you can stack your crack teams, either paying higher salaries for higher skilled people or building bigger teams. I think there's maybe 100 outliers to this rule in the world, people like John Carmack. I mean I assume he's rich.
- argee 7mo ago
  I don’t think John Carmack likes to tell people what to do, regardless of wealth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052
  - swiftcoder 7mo ago
    I'm not sure that he doesn't like to, so much as that the position he ended up in as a result of the Oculus acquisition had no actual authority attached to it. He was functionally a glorifier adviser, to trot out at trade shows (and reading between the lines, this was a pretty frustrating position to end up in - he'd rather have had a real job, even if it was to build something he didn't fully agree with)
TeMPOraL 7mo ago
Nah, they're right. In fact, "self-service" is one of the biggest value transfers from people to capital owners, a society-wide "fast one" the computing industry pulled over everyone. It's cool that you can do something yourself with a computer, whether it's ordering food or picking clothes or booking a trip. But, market doing market things, that can quickly became a have to, which is much less cool. It's a problem that's hard to see until you're certain age (and therefore easily dismissed as whining of old people yelling at cloud(s)) - it's because most people in the west start with no money and lots of free time to burn, and gradually become extremely time-poor as their start working and accrue responsibilities (and $deity forbid, start a family).
- nandomrumber 7mo ago
  Correct. The smartest people in academia get promoted to positions that used to come with administrative staff. Now they’re expected to do all of that with a computer, which is easy right? So now they spend 30% or more of their time administrationating their position, rather than delegating those duties to their admin staff. That’s less time teaching and innovating. Meanwhile, the increase in administration costs of learning institutions has massively outpaced all other costs as a fraction of total.
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    Same is true in all white-collar work, too. I mean, not to look too far, it's very obvious in our own industry if you look for it. Highly-paid engineers hired for high-skill engineering work, but spending most of their time doing their own task management, calendar management, memo writing, presentations, trip planning, trip expensing, filing HR documents, and such? Heck, even the proliferation of ideas like "devops" or "devsecops" or whatever-ops, lauded as breaking down siloses, is just using buzzwords as cover for another iteration of headcount reduction.
    - danny_codes 7mo ago
      My company won’t backfill product management in timely fashion. Guys this isn’t an optional position. You don’t want your SWEs doing product work. They are not going to do a good job of it when they also need to, you know, do their actual job.
type0 7mo ago
So what, the richest person I know talks to DMT jesters, it doesn't make it good.
jt2190 7mo ago
By choice. Your friend is presumably wealthy enough that they could talk to a human instead, or completely delegate whatever they’re talking to AI about and never talk of it further.
ehnto 7mo ago
Oh I am not speaking from experience here, I'll clear that up. Also the original saying used rich people but I think it better pertains to busy people in general.

dv_dt 7mo ago

The richest people I know talk to a range of people like personal assistants, but really the PA is valued for getting things done reliably and in the real world with any needed resources. Even calling in experts as needed - of course they may indeed talk to an AI too

komali2 7mo ago

> The richest person I know talks to robots all the time. I've noticed this too, but I always thought of it as mostly people fooling themselves. If you're rich (let's say anywhere above 10mil), it's practically guaranteed that you can allocate resources in such a way that more effective engineering, or science, or whatever, is done in less time than if you tried to do it yourself (rather than spending your time allocating capital). I've actually thought of this as a bit of a curse: the value of a rich person's labor output is inverse to their net worth. No matter how smart, you're not smarter than a crack team of Ukrainian/vietnamese/taiwanese/Indian scientists/engineers/whatever, and the more rich you get the more you can stack your crack teams, either paying higher salaries for higher skilled people or building bigger teams. I think there's maybe 100 outliers to this rule in the world, people like John Carmack. I mean I assume he's rich.

argee 7mo ago
I don’t think John Carmack likes to tell people what to do, regardless of wealth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052
- swiftcoder 7mo ago
  I'm not sure that he doesn't like to, so much as that the position he ended up in as a result of the Oculus acquisition had no actual authority attached to it. He was functionally a glorifier adviser, to trot out at trade shows (and reading between the lines, this was a pretty frustrating position to end up in - he'd rather have had a real job, even if it was to build something he didn't fully agree with)

TeMPOraL 7mo ago

Nah, they're right. In fact, "self-service" is one of the biggest value transfers from people to capital owners, a society-wide "fast one" the computing industry pulled over everyone. It's cool that you can do something yourself with a computer, whether it's ordering food or picking clothes or booking a trip. But, market doing market things, that can quickly became a have to, which is much less cool. It's a problem that's hard to see until you're certain age (and therefore easily dismissed as whining of old people yelling at cloud(s)) - it's because most people in the west start with no money and lots of free time to burn, and gradually become extremely time-poor as their start working and accrue responsibilities (and $deity forbid, start a family).

nandomrumber 7mo ago
Correct. The smartest people in academia get promoted to positions that used to come with administrative staff. Now they’re expected to do all of that with a computer, which is easy right? So now they spend 30% or more of their time administrationating their position, rather than delegating those duties to their admin staff. That’s less time teaching and innovating. Meanwhile, the increase in administration costs of learning institutions has massively outpaced all other costs as a fraction of total.
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  Same is true in all white-collar work, too. I mean, not to look too far, it's very obvious in our own industry if you look for it. Highly-paid engineers hired for high-skill engineering work, but spending most of their time doing their own task management, calendar management, memo writing, presentations, trip planning, trip expensing, filing HR documents, and such? Heck, even the proliferation of ideas like "devops" or "devsecops" or whatever-ops, lauded as breaking down siloses, is just using buzzwords as cover for another iteration of headcount reduction.
  - danny_codes 7mo ago
    My company won’t backfill product management in timely fashion. Guys this isn’t an optional position. You don’t want your SWEs doing product work. They are not going to do a good job of it when they also need to, you know, do their actual job.

type0 7mo ago

So what, the richest person I know talks to DMT jesters, it doesn't make it good.

jt2190 7mo ago

By choice. Your friend is presumably wealthy enough that they could talk to a human instead, or completely delegate whatever they’re talking to AI about and never talk of it further.

ehnto 7mo ago

Oh I am not speaking from experience here, I'll clear that up. Also the original saying used rich people but I think it better pertains to busy people in general.