4 ms·

So many otherwise smart engineers, overrepresented on HN, have this weird mental block where they fail to take AI progress seriously. I think it's a fear that t

So many otherwise smart engineers, overrepresented on HN, have this weird mental block where they fail to take AI progress seriously. I think it's a fear that their status-defining skill could be commodified, so they adopt a mental framework that aims to dismantle the seeming legitimacy of any genuine leap in AI progress as some sort of mirage

Davidzheng 3mo ago
Not just engineers - I see people attributing it to strong priors that nothing happens but in my opinion it's more some form of psychological defense mechanism against understanding there will be an intelligence vastly superior to humans which is a deeply uncomfortable thought (to many).
- dullcrisp 3mo ago
  “Nothing ever happens” is like “you can’t beat the market.” It’s basically tautologically the strongest predictive model that we can have. A corollary is that something may happen, but it won’t be what you think.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
    Interesting fact. Bryan Caplan is a economist who became famous for making bets on the future. He would take the "nothing ever happens" side of the bet, and he would almost always win. In 2023 he took the "nothing ever happens" side of an AI bet. Just 6 months later, he wrote: "When the answers change, I change my mind [...] Base rates have clearly failed me. I’m not conceding the bet, because I still think there’s a 10-15% chance I win via luck... make no mistake, this software truly is the exception that proves the rule." https://www.betonit.ai/p/gpt-retakes-my-midterm-and-gets-an https://www.betonit.ai/p/gpt-retakes-my-midterm-and-gets-an At this point, straightforward trend extrapolation suggests that AI continues to get better and better. Arguably, continued rapid AI progress is the "nothing ever happens" bet at this point. If AI progress stops, or slows dramatically, something will have happened.
    - watwut 2mo ago
      Straightforward trend extrapolation suggests that AI will consume more resources that galaxy even has. Meanwhile, believing the claims of the AI companies, 40% of people will be forever unemployable permanent underclass with no future for themselves nor for their children. And all the gains being centered on the very top 0.01%.
  - Davidzheng 2mo ago
    This is just objectively false - in fact your answer basically contradicts itself because the market reacts to indicators, if "nothing ever happens" was the best strategy, then the market (which is also best) must agree with it.
- junofan 3mo ago
  Why should I trust these randos instead of Claude? I know Claude. I would hope Claude is smarter than whoever wants to make rules about my use of Claude. Replace Claude with Kimi, etc. if needed. I don’t find a petition from people I don’t know who don’t care about me more compelling than my own direct experience with these models.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
    I suggest you give Claude a link to the petition and ask Claude what it thinks. (I did so previously and pasted the response here, but it got auto-flagged for AI content.)
- anon373839 2mo ago
  > psychological defense mechanism against understanding there will be an intelligence vastly superior to humans which is a deeply uncomfortable thought I once found this a deeply uncomfortable thought. It's been repeated so vacuously and frequently that I'm inured to it. Now, I just regard it as the nonsense that it is. To date, AI labs have not created anything like an intelligence that is on track to be "vastly superior to humans". They have instead created financial black holes that do have their uses, but which arbitrarily fail on the simplest tasks for no apparent reason, and only seem to get meaningfully better on the tasks they are specifically optimized for. It's appalling to me that in 2026, people hear "AGI" and "ASI" and think of SkyNet rather than investment fraud.
txrx0000 3mo ago
It's ironic that the top reply to a comment about quality of discourse on this site is an ad hominem. Most people here take AI progress very seriously judging by the number of posts on the front page about AI at any given time. And I think some engineers even explicitly want to commodify their "status-defining skill": https://nitter.net/__tinygrad__ https://nitter.net/__tinygrad__
- BugsJustFindMe 3mo ago
  > Most people here take AI progress very seriously You have only an extremely weak basis for this claim and have essentially just made it up. > judging by the number of posts on the front page Posts reaching the front page is not a reliable way to measure what "most people here" believe. > It's ironic that It's not irony.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  >It's ironic that the top reply to a comment about quality of discourse on this site is an ad hominem. You might find the Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy page interesting: "Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument. The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument, or otherwise the logical fallacy isn't there. It is not a logical fallacy to attack someone; the fallacy comes from assuming that a personal attack is also necessarily an attack on that person's arguments." https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html So for example, if I said: "The arguments for constructing an AI pause button are bad because they are being made by AI company employees", this would be a fallacious argument. If I said: "HN users have this weird mental block where they fail to take AI progress seriously", that's not necessarily a fallacious argument, unless it's for the purpose of undermining an argument the HN user made.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

Davidzheng 3mo ago

Not just engineers - I see people attributing it to strong priors that nothing happens but in my opinion it's more some form of psychological defense mechanism against understanding there will be an intelligence vastly superior to humans which is a deeply uncomfortable thought (to many).

dullcrisp 3mo ago
“Nothing ever happens” is like “you can’t beat the market.” It’s basically tautologically the strongest predictive model that we can have. A corollary is that something may happen, but it won’t be what you think.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  Interesting fact. Bryan Caplan is a economist who became famous for making bets on the future. He would take the "nothing ever happens" side of the bet, and he would almost always win. In 2023 he took the "nothing ever happens" side of an AI bet. Just 6 months later, he wrote: "When the answers change, I change my mind [...] Base rates have clearly failed me. I’m not conceding the bet, because I still think there’s a 10-15% chance I win via luck... make no mistake, this software truly is the exception that proves the rule." https://www.betonit.ai/p/gpt-retakes-my-midterm-and-gets-an https://www.betonit.ai/p/gpt-retakes-my-midterm-and-gets-an At this point, straightforward trend extrapolation suggests that AI continues to get better and better. Arguably, continued rapid AI progress is the "nothing ever happens" bet at this point. If AI progress stops, or slows dramatically, something will have happened.
  - watwut 2mo ago
    Straightforward trend extrapolation suggests that AI will consume more resources that galaxy even has. Meanwhile, believing the claims of the AI companies, 40% of people will be forever unemployable permanent underclass with no future for themselves nor for their children. And all the gains being centered on the very top 0.01%.
- Davidzheng 2mo ago
  This is just objectively false - in fact your answer basically contradicts itself because the market reacts to indicators, if "nothing ever happens" was the best strategy, then the market (which is also best) must agree with it.
junofan 3mo ago
Why should I trust these randos instead of Claude? I know Claude. I would hope Claude is smarter than whoever wants to make rules about my use of Claude. Replace Claude with Kimi, etc. if needed. I don’t find a petition from people I don’t know who don’t care about me more compelling than my own direct experience with these models.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  I suggest you give Claude a link to the petition and ask Claude what it thinks. (I did so previously and pasted the response here, but it got auto-flagged for AI content.)
anon373839 2mo ago
> psychological defense mechanism against understanding there will be an intelligence vastly superior to humans which is a deeply uncomfortable thought I once found this a deeply uncomfortable thought. It's been repeated so vacuously and frequently that I'm inured to it. Now, I just regard it as the nonsense that it is. To date, AI labs have not created anything like an intelligence that is on track to be "vastly superior to humans". They have instead created financial black holes that do have their uses, but which arbitrarily fail on the simplest tasks for no apparent reason, and only seem to get meaningfully better on the tasks they are specifically optimized for. It's appalling to me that in 2026, people hear "AGI" and "ASI" and think of SkyNet rather than investment fraud.

txrx0000 3mo ago

It's ironic that the top reply to a comment about quality of discourse on this site is an ad hominem. Most people here take AI progress very seriously judging by the number of posts on the front page about AI at any given time. And I think some engineers even explicitly want to commodify their "status-defining skill": https://nitter.net/__tinygrad__ https://nitter.net/__tinygrad__

BugsJustFindMe 3mo ago
> Most people here take AI progress very seriously You have only an extremely weak basis for this claim and have essentially just made it up. > judging by the number of posts on the front page Posts reaching the front page is not a reliable way to measure what "most people here" believe. > It's ironic that It's not irony.
0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
>It's ironic that the top reply to a comment about quality of discourse on this site is an ad hominem. You might find the Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy page interesting: "Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument. The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument, or otherwise the logical fallacy isn't there. It is not a logical fallacy to attack someone; the fallacy comes from assuming that a personal attack is also necessarily an attack on that person's arguments." https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html So for example, if I said: "The arguments for constructing an AI pause button are bad because they are being made by AI company employees", this would be a fallacious argument. If I said: "HN users have this weird mental block where they fail to take AI progress seriously", that's not necessarily a fallacious argument, unless it's for the purpose of undermining an argument the HN user made.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]