7 ms·

Yeah he has zero credentials and authority and an agenda to push. Not to mention most of his articles are financially and technically illiterate and full of mis

Yeah he has zero credentials and authority and an agenda to push. Not to mention most of his articles are financially and technically illiterate and full of mistakes and inaccuracies. No idea why his shit keeps getting submitted.

simianwords 4mo ago
I think there's some fundamental thing in his writing that speaks to people -- they want AI to fail and they want a prophet to give them reasons to think so.
- dogleash 4mo ago
  It's simpler than that, some people just like sardonic writing. I don't know if I believe Ed any more than some AI cheerleader. But his writing is proper relaxing compared to hype rants that I wouldn't blame someone for suspecting to be coke-fueled.
dgellow 4mo ago
Genuine question, do you have examples of inaccuracies and mistakes? If you ignore his caustic tone and predictions what I’ve seen reported by Ed Zitron has been accurate.
- jgalt212 4mo ago
  I concur. His tone greatly undermines the value of the facts he reports. Sometimes / oftentimes his analysis is off the mark, but I have not found him to be reporting falsehoods or inaccuracies.
  - simianwords 4mo ago
    It’s very very easy to find inaccuracies. In fact it’s hard to find any prediction he got right. Here’s a compilation of things he got wrong. It’s not small things btw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549
    - jgalt212 4mo ago
      I don't think reasoning and agentic is an improvement over what came before. It's like going back to batch processing once you've had access to an interactive terminal.
      - simianwords 4mo ago
        > I don't think reasoning and agentic is an improvement over what came before. Respectfully, it shows that you haven't been using agentic models or reasoning models. I would advice you to go and use them and make an opinion afterwards. If you have come to this conclusion after extensively using these models then I don't know what to say. I guess you are the audience for Ed Zitron.
        jgalt212 4mo ago
        So the Ed Zitron audience like the REPL and the hypesters like the compiler?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- simianwords 4mo ago
  Here’s a small list https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549
  - dgellow 4mo ago
    That's really not convincing. I personally don't care much about predictions, nobody is an oracle who can predict the future. If someone looks at SpaceX, talk about the financial engineering that went in the stock, then predict incorrectly that the price will go down, the meaningful information isn't the prediction, it's the analysis. The price might never go down due to how insane and detached from reality the stock market is when it comes to Elon Musk. The facts I've seen in his reports seem to reflect reality as far as I can tell, he is correct that software companies switched from very low Capex to be extremely Capex heavy. And that announced datacenter aren't getting built. And that AI labs do not have a business model. And we've been since a few years in a financial bubble. And companies shifting to full agentic didn't take pricing into account until the switch from subscriptions to API pricing. And that nobody can say how much the use of agents cost beforehand (because both output tokens and the amount of tokens required for a given task cannot be predicted in advance). Etc.
    - simianwords 4mo ago
      > I personally don't care much about predictions I don't know what to say other than I now know the audience Ed Zitron writes for.
      - dgellow 4mo ago
        Are you aware he's not an investor or stock analyst? His short term predictions of the market and the industry are irrelevant and doesn't invalidate the general thesis or his reported data. Have you seen mistakes and inaccuracies that aren't related to predictions? As a side note I do personally have a thing for caustic writing, even if I wouldn't agree with his analysis I would still be happy reading some of his articles. Reminds me of blog writers from 2010
      - 4mo ago

simianwords 4mo ago

I think there's some fundamental thing in his writing that speaks to people -- they want AI to fail and they want a prophet to give them reasons to think so.

dogleash 4mo ago
It's simpler than that, some people just like sardonic writing. I don't know if I believe Ed any more than some AI cheerleader. But his writing is proper relaxing compared to hype rants that I wouldn't blame someone for suspecting to be coke-fueled.

dgellow 4mo ago

Genuine question, do you have examples of inaccuracies and mistakes? If you ignore his caustic tone and predictions what I’ve seen reported by Ed Zitron has been accurate.

jgalt212 4mo ago
I concur. His tone greatly undermines the value of the facts he reports. Sometimes / oftentimes his analysis is off the mark, but I have not found him to be reporting falsehoods or inaccuracies.
- simianwords 4mo ago
  It’s very very easy to find inaccuracies. In fact it’s hard to find any prediction he got right. Here’s a compilation of things he got wrong. It’s not small things btw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549
  - jgalt212 4mo ago
    I don't think reasoning and agentic is an improvement over what came before. It's like going back to batch processing once you've had access to an interactive terminal.
    - simianwords 4mo ago
      > I don't think reasoning and agentic is an improvement over what came before. Respectfully, it shows that you haven't been using agentic models or reasoning models. I would advice you to go and use them and make an opinion afterwards. If you have come to this conclusion after extensively using these models then I don't know what to say. I guess you are the audience for Ed Zitron.
      - jgalt212 4mo ago
        So the Ed Zitron audience like the REPL and the hypesters like the compiler?
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
simianwords 4mo ago
Here’s a small list https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447549
- dgellow 4mo ago
  That's really not convincing. I personally don't care much about predictions, nobody is an oracle who can predict the future. If someone looks at SpaceX, talk about the financial engineering that went in the stock, then predict incorrectly that the price will go down, the meaningful information isn't the prediction, it's the analysis. The price might never go down due to how insane and detached from reality the stock market is when it comes to Elon Musk. The facts I've seen in his reports seem to reflect reality as far as I can tell, he is correct that software companies switched from very low Capex to be extremely Capex heavy. And that announced datacenter aren't getting built. And that AI labs do not have a business model. And we've been since a few years in a financial bubble. And companies shifting to full agentic didn't take pricing into account until the switch from subscriptions to API pricing. And that nobody can say how much the use of agents cost beforehand (because both output tokens and the amount of tokens required for a given task cannot be predicted in advance). Etc.
  - simianwords 4mo ago
    > I personally don't care much about predictions I don't know what to say other than I now know the audience Ed Zitron writes for.
    - dgellow 4mo ago
      Are you aware he's not an investor or stock analyst? His short term predictions of the market and the industry are irrelevant and doesn't invalidate the general thesis or his reported data. Have you seen mistakes and inaccuracies that aren't related to predictions? As a side note I do personally have a thing for caustic writing, even if I wouldn't agree with his analysis I would still be happy reading some of his articles. Reminds me of blog writers from 2010
    - 4mo ago