3 ms·

Eh, this has been a disappointing series to read from the person that wrote all those Jepsen write-ups and the technical interview series. All articles are most

by keeda 6mo ago

Eh, this has been a disappointing series to read from the person that wrote all those Jepsen write-ups and the technical interview series. All articles are mostly a regurgitation of all the negativity that gets aired here all the time (a lot of it already fixed or debunked) and 0 discussion of utility. This is more befitting Zitron than aphyr. Where's the sharp incisive wit and deep insights? At least he realizes this technology is unlikely to slow down. With international relations as they are, it's MAD all over again, only the "D" is a fuzzy, hypothetical thing nobody can name, so even that bit of deterrence is lost. Yet finally he ends with the most uninspired advice of all: "we should try, unsuccessfully, to stop it." Everyone must understand: for all of history, progress and productivity and value creation overall could only scale with people. Now it can scale with power and compute. This is a tremendous economic force, akin to a force of nature, that is nigh impossible to stop. (I always did think the Butlerian Jihad was the biggest plot hole in Dune.) My advice is this: we have no choice but to adapt. We must realize that, by a stroke of luck, this is a power available to us more than the capital class. If they can scale without people, so can we. But because harnessing AI effectively requires hard skills -- at least for now -- that the capital class don't have and used to pay us for, we might even scale better than them! Carpe diem.

simoncion 6mo ago
> All articles are mostly a regurgitation of all the negativity that gets aired here all the time (a lot of it already fixed or debunked) and 0 discussion of utility. There are multiple sections that talk directly about utility. Here's one of them: [0] But, sure. I'll bite. Here's the third paragraph of the first part of the essay [1]: This is *bullshit* about *bullshit machines*, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play. I'd say that the specific sort of "utility" discussion that you're probably looking for would be classified as "boosterism". [2] > Now it can scale with power and compute. Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3]. [0] <https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess#models-are-smart https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...> [1] <https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...> [2] Due to their nearly-universally breathless nature, I know that's how I classify the overwhelming majority of such discussions. [3] <https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/ https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/>
- keeda 6mo ago
  [0] is a throwaway paragraph that handwaves at second-hand accounts of generic things LLMs can do, with no further discussion, apparently because he (surprisingly!) has almost no first-hand experience with them. Then there are 10 pages of negativity with dozens of links to stuff that has been discussed to death here and in media. The "negative spaces" he's filling are already overflowing. His lack of personal experience with LLMs was the most disappointing aspect, because he does not really know what we're dealing with. He's just going off what he's read / heard. So again, where's the incisive insight? Now, here's a concrete example of what I mean by utility: a single person being able to rewrite an entire open source project from scratch in a few days just so it could be relicensed. Is that good or bad? I don't know! Is it a stupefying example of what's possible? Yes! Is that "breathless boosterism?" Only if you ignore the infinite nuances involved. > Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3]. Hadn't come across this one before, but there's not much in there I hadn't seen and even discussed in past comments. As an example, it still mentions the METR study from 2025 without mentioning the very pertinent follow-up from just a couple of months back... which is not very surprising to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145601 ;-) It does mention (and then gloss over) the real finding of the DORA and related reports, which is pertinent to my original point: LLMs are simply an amplifier of your existing software discipline. Teams with strong software discipline see amazing speedups, those with poor discipline sees increased outages. And, to my original point, who knows what good software discipline looks like? Hint: it's not the capital class.
  - simoncion 6mo ago
    > His lack of personal experience with LLMs... You missed the part where he is consistently unimpressed by the failure of LLMs to do the task he hands to them, it seems. Go re-read Section 1.5 "Models are Idiots". Make sure to read the footnotes. They're sure to address most of the counterarguments you might make. > Is that "breathless boosterism?" How you phrased it? Yes. It ignores the "infinite nuances involved" such as maintainability, infosec soundness of the work product, the completely untested legality of "license washing" to name a few. Also, you missed the part where I said Due to their nearly-universally breathless nature, I know that's how I classify the overwhelming majority of such discussions. > Hadn't come across this one before, but there's not much in there I hadn't seen and even discussed in past comments. ... It does mention (and then gloss over) the real finding of the DORA and related reports... Yeah, I figured that you would be unable (or unwilling) to understand this one. Here's the summary, straight from the author's keyboard: * Fred Brooks' No Silver Bullet was correct. * No Silver Bullet applies to LLMs the way it applied to other things, and empirical evidence on LLM coding impact sure seems to agree. * You'll get better returns from working on strong software development fundamentals than from forcing all your programmers to use Claude for everything, and that's a repeated message in basically all the major literature. * If LLMs do turn into a revolutionary world-changing silver bullet giving everyone coding superpowers, you'll be able to just adopt them fully when that happens.

by keeda 6mo ago

simoncion 6mo ago

> All articles are mostly a regurgitation of all the negativity that gets aired here all the time (a lot of it already fixed or debunked) and 0 discussion of utility. There are multiple sections that talk directly about utility. Here's one of them: [0] But, sure. I'll bite. Here's the third paragraph of the first part of the essay [1]: This is *bullshit* about *bullshit machines*, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play. I'd say that the specific sort of "utility" discussion that you're probably looking for would be classified as "boosterism". [2] > Now it can scale with power and compute. Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3]. [0] <https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess#models-are-smart https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...> [1] <https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...> [2] Due to their nearly-universally breathless nature, I know that's how I classify the overwhelming majority of such discussions. [3] <https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/ https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/>

keeda 6mo ago
[0] is a throwaway paragraph that handwaves at second-hand accounts of generic things LLMs can do, with no further discussion, apparently because he (surprisingly!) has almost no first-hand experience with them. Then there are 10 pages of negativity with dozens of links to stuff that has been discussed to death here and in media. The "negative spaces" he's filling are already overflowing. His lack of personal experience with LLMs was the most disappointing aspect, because he does not really know what we're dealing with. He's just going off what he's read / heard. So again, where's the incisive insight? Now, here's a concrete example of what I mean by utility: a single person being able to rewrite an entire open source project from scratch in a few days just so it could be relicensed. Is that good or bad? I don't know! Is it a stupefying example of what's possible? Yes! Is that "breathless boosterism?" Only if you ignore the infinite nuances involved. > Eh. Carefully read through and consider [3]. Hadn't come across this one before, but there's not much in there I hadn't seen and even discussed in past comments. As an example, it still mentions the METR study from 2025 without mentioning the very pertinent follow-up from just a couple of months back... which is not very surprising to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145601 ;-) It does mention (and then gloss over) the real finding of the DORA and related reports, which is pertinent to my original point: LLMs are simply an amplifier of your existing software discipline. Teams with strong software discipline see amazing speedups, those with poor discipline sees increased outages. And, to my original point, who knows what good software discipline looks like? Hint: it's not the capital class.
- simoncion 6mo ago
  > His lack of personal experience with LLMs... You missed the part where he is consistently unimpressed by the failure of LLMs to do the task he hands to them, it seems. Go re-read Section 1.5 "Models are Idiots". Make sure to read the footnotes. They're sure to address most of the counterarguments you might make. > Is that "breathless boosterism?" How you phrased it? Yes. It ignores the "infinite nuances involved" such as maintainability, infosec soundness of the work product, the completely untested legality of "license washing" to name a few. Also, you missed the part where I said Due to their nearly-universally breathless nature, I know that's how I classify the overwhelming majority of such discussions. > Hadn't come across this one before, but there's not much in there I hadn't seen and even discussed in past comments. ... It does mention (and then gloss over) the real finding of the DORA and related reports... Yeah, I figured that you would be unable (or unwilling) to understand this one. Here's the summary, straight from the author's keyboard: * Fred Brooks' No Silver Bullet was correct. * No Silver Bullet applies to LLMs the way it applied to other things, and empirical evidence on LLM coding impact sure seems to agree. * You'll get better returns from working on strong software development fundamentals than from forcing all your programmers to use Claude for everything, and that's a repeated message in basically all the major literature. * If LLMs do turn into a revolutionary world-changing silver bullet giving everyone coding superpowers, you'll be able to just adopt them fully when that happens.