moe091

I agree with the fact that LLM's inherently lack agency and I think it's a pretty subtle distinction but it's an extremely consequential one. AI cannot self-initiate anything, they are only able to produce an output as a response to input. The impetus for their action is always an idea that came from a humans mind, no matter how indirect that is. That much is inarguable imo, the possible point of contention is whether the same can be said about humans, and that's a very philosophical question but I am very convinced it's not the case(I won't get into my own philosophical beliefs here).

Despite the fact that the distinction is very philosophical, I think the implications are very practical. Without it's own initiating energy everything an AI produces will be a response to an input, and it's response will be constrained by the bounds implied by that input. The specific type of dialectic between the programmer and the person giving requirements, which leads to creating the ACTUAL requirements, is impossible to happen with an AI, because a dialectic requires two opposed agents/forces while an AI is incapable of being an opposing force because it is only a derivative or product of whatever force is providing it's input; basically, it is constrained inside a box defined by the input it is given, and precisely what is needed for true synthesis(new ideas/thoughts, as opposed to an analytic breaking down of the already proposed ideas) is a whole separate box to interact with the one defined by the input.

My explanation is extremely abstract and will probably only make sense to someone who almost agrees with me already, but that's the best I could do. I'm sure there is a more down-to-earth way to explain this but I guess my understanding isn't good enough to find it yet. In my defense I do think this particular issue of agency in AI is one of the most subtle and philosophical problems in the world right now that actual has practical implications.

you gotta explain why the analogy is applicable, otherwise I could do the same thing and say "I don't understand why so many people are convinced that hovercars won't replace automobiles one day." Infinite analogies could be made to support any conclusion, they aren't worth anything without reasoning(implied or explicit) for why your analogy is particularly relevant compared to others.

Tbh I am completely unsure about the AI Programmer debate, I don't have the knowledge of the AI landscape to make an informed decision. For that reason I do what I often do and make a meta-judgement based on the types of arguments made by each side.

Who is arguing that AI will replace programmers? People who are invested in AI, or people who want cheaper labor.

Who is arguing against that? Programmers who want to keep their job.

Not much to draw from that angle.

What KIND of arguments is each side making? Programmers: specific points that touch reality directly. AI Programmer supporters: Typically, arguments are abstract and never touch reality directly, and seem to be motivated by hype more than experience. In the past, there has been cases where the abstract dreamer hype crowd has been right, but typically there are many pre-emptive waves who are wrong(as would be expected, unless you assume that people are incapable of expecting a thing to come before it's time, then there will be waves of people who pick up on a thing before it gets here, and they will be pre-emptive).

For this reason, plus the very limited amount of AI-generated code applied to non-trivial projects that I've seen(which doesn't and shouldn't hold much weight, because I'm not super familiar with the latest tech), I'm feeling like AI replacing programmers is at least a decade off.

I also feel like people are thinking about the problem wrong in general. They are jumping from our current state to a state where we have capable AI programmers without imagining the incremental transformations in work-place structure over time. We've been going through a trend where coding language gets closer to human language since the days of punch cards, and programmers will exist as a job until that trend reaches the point where programmers are "squeezed out". By that I mean, a programmers job is to convert the intentions(not words, important distinction) of the product manager into code, from this perspective they can be considered middlemen. Programmers will exist until the day that AI is so good that a middleman is no longer needed, that a product manager can talk directly to an AI and get the desired results. Knowing how bad product managers are at explaining what they ACTUALLY need, on a concrete literal level, I think this problem is more difficult than people assume. Even if we had AI that produced perfect code that did exactly what was asked of it, I'm not sure if that'd be good enough, precisely because it does EXACTLY what is asked of it.

For a second I thought the title was implying that they were giving the "all clear" TO the asteroid, like, "all good, we won't stop you if you wanna destroy us all." And it didn't even stand out to me as an especially crazy headline considering all the other shit I've been seeing lately.

Nobody else likes Moby Dick lol. Or James Joyce.

Plenty of other great choices imo though

My wife has a "Dr Dennis Gross Red Light Mask" that has a setting for 650nm + 850nm red light. Supposed to help with aging or something but the specs match up perfectly.

Probably way too expensive for people to buy for this purpose(probably too expensive for skin care too, it's just a mask with red LED's, if I knew that's what she was buying I probably would've just made one. That's probably why she didn't tell me). Anyway, for anyone out there looking to buy a product, it's worth checking if your wife/gf already has something. Lots of products like this for anti aging as well as for hair growth

the problem is that if this becomes more common your argument won't be an option. It'd be akin to saying "just ignore the company's offers for health insurance" - well now our whole system is designed to account for and expect employer sponsored health insurance and you'll be at a massive disadvantage by not accepting it.

and those towns are guaranteed to stay that way if even housing is controlled by that singular employee

yeah very true. I don't think anyone could disagree with this but somehow many people seem to be missing this perspective entirely

couldn't someone have said the same thing about health insurance when it was new and only a few companies were doing it?

I think people who don't like it are just afraid of where this appears to be heading, and they are just resisting the idea of employers gaining anymore control of other aspects of peoples lives. Of course, the people who do this are technically choosing to give up this control to employers on their own volition, but it's possible to imagine a future where this becomes very normal and difficult to avoid

Gestures widely at the world

The current stage of development of consciousness that the world is going through(and seemingly reaching the end of) is one of competition and individualism. There are good and bad aspects of this, as with all other stages of development, but the level selfishness that comes along with it and motivates individuals to destroy things in order to outdo each other isn't a universal thing, in the grand scheme of the development of human consciousness it's just one of many phases.

That's the main reason why I think there's no legislating or protesting our way out of the big problems(though that doesn't mean those things are useless). The way only way out is through the development and maturation of humanity. Obviously you can't force that on people though, all you can do is focus on your own self-development and give others the respect and dignity required not to impede on their own self-development, regardless of how much you may disagree or dislike them

People aren't going to like this, if most people did then the modern age wouldn't be what it is. I think it's important for people to see things from outside the bias of their current age, the "spirit of the times", before they can do anything other than perpetuate the existing modern biases and blindspots. Which isn't an easy thing to do, even if everyone learned the historical context of the world and learned about the changes in societies and personalities over time, it's very difficult not to view all that context through the filter of modern perspectives and miss the essence of it completely

Just because they don't hypocritically claim they care about their employees and only laid them off because they HAD to, doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize them and (if possible) use our leverage as workers to influence them to make better decisions. Just because we know corporations only value profit, to the detriment of human quality of life in general, doesn't mean we should accept it

I think it's commonly known, maybe not proven, but also it's a case of can they? yes. Would they? yes. As long as you agree with those two premises it's pretty likely

I've had the same experience, and often(when I'm not too lazy from smoking), I'll write down the ideas to read when I'm sober.

Usually they are correct and kind of insightful(by this I simply mean, insightful relative to the level of my normal "sober thoughts") but not as ground breaking as I thought - in fact it's usually something very obviously true and "known" but not "realized", as in the unique aspect wasn't having the thought, but recognizing the significance of the thought.

The easiest parallel I can think of during sobriety, is when you take something you know like "the ocean is filling with plastics", you're always aware that it's true and really messed up, but sometimes you'll think of it and see the thought from a specific angle that really makes you internalize how serious it is and how crazy it is that this is something happening in the world. You didn't realize anything you didn't already know, but it's still a new and useful insight

My wish is that this big tech cycle has been long enough for us to have collectively learned at least some lessons about what’s desirable and what’s not in such vital communication infrastructure.

This is how progress usually works. Advancements are made, there are pitfalls / consequences, we learn from those, then new advancements are made.

The modern age is progressing too quickly though, it's just "advancements are made, people just barely begin recognizing the downsides, new advancements are made way before we adapt to the previous advancements". The life of someone from 1700 vs someone from 1850 is more similar than the life of someone from 1990 to 2020

If the response counts as a comment, then that ratio is impossible to fulfill - although in that interpretation it'd be impossible to fulfill IRL as well, so I don't think we can use comments vs replies as a metric, unless you only count root-level comments as "talking" and sub-root comments as "listening", in which case I feel like the ratio does hold true

yeah I was thinking the same thing as I wrote it actually, but went with that example anyway as it's a typical example for a job that pays more because of a lower supply of people willing to do it. Could've used those ice-road truckers or deep sea fisherman or some other risky job as a more clear-cut example, but I think any example works to demonstrate the point

you're right, I kinda skimmed the article but I see what you mean now.

I am a bit sensitive when articles like this even refer to "the left" or "the right" because I'm so conditioned to think it's another misconstruction intended to create blame and hate instead of awareness and healing/resolution. I should've have commented if I didn't have time to read it all carefully though

I agree with that point, but this article basically just a report of one small piece of a huge issue we've known about for years, that so obviously encompasses both sides of the political spectrum, and tries to use it to make the left look bad. Which I agree, they do suck, for things like this and many others, but so does the right and the center and every other direction you can think of.

This actively harms the progress in general social awareness made by Snowden, by reducing the issue to a single party who is no more responsible than the other party - as if we could fix it by voting out democrats. This article would be so much better if it were merely useless

I mean, have you seen how much pay has gone up in low-skilled jobs? There are signs at all the local businesses in my area offering $15+ an hour for cashiers and fry cooks and whatnot. The same kind of jobs I worked 7-8 years ago for $8 an hour. They are taking advantage of supply and demand to force jobs to pay them a closer-to-fair wage, instead of selling their time for less than it's worth and perpetuating the problem indefinitely.

To be fair, I do agree that on an individual level there are tons of people screwing themselves over and messing up their lives, being a burdon on their parents or whoever ends up supporting them financially, etc. I don't think most of these people are refusing to work out of activism or anything. But from a sociological perspective it's a natural response to a problem(a problem that goes much deeper than low wages imo, but I won't get into that) that acts as a corrective measure to one of the main symptoms of that problem.

In other words: there will always be a bell curve of in terms of competence and work ethic, and from a relative perspective the curve will maintain it's shape throughout time periods/generations among large enough populations. The people on the low end of that curve deserve the same amount of criticism(how much, if any, they deserve, is up for debate) regardless of whether the curve itself shifts towards one side or the other - as movements of the curve in it's entirety can be attributed to social/environment factors. I do think we've seen the curve move towards it's lower end recently, and I have plenty of headcannon about why that may have happened, but I can't see any reason to blame all individuals within an entire generation, and I can't see the point in condemning the low end of the curve for a certain generation over that same portion of the curve from other generations.

If it's such a good deal they should have no problem finding plenty of employees for those jobs. If Gen Z is opposed to those kind of working conditions for some reason, then it's just a matter of supply and demand - like how trash collectors get paid a lot for a relatively low-skilled labor job, because not many people want to deal with trash all day. Whether we share the same aversion Gen Z does for certain types of jobs is irrelevant, nobody gets to be the arbiter of what peoples preferences are

If you choose to reply, I have a few questions just to get an idea of where your at.

In my opinion, all that stuff "healthy"/functioning people say to depressed people is technically correct, but completely missing the point and ignorant of the real problems(through no fault of their own of course, because how could they know?)

e.g. "being happy is a choice", "you just need exercise and sunlight!", "fake it till you make it", "perspective if everything, if you focus on the positives instead of the negatives you won't feel so bad", etc.. I could go on forever with those. If a severely depressed/suicidal person were able to do all of those things, it's true they wouldn't be depressed, but they usually can't, and in the few cases where they do it's often done without the belief and commitment necessary to make it effective. Not doing those things isn't the root problem IMO, the root problem is the thing that makes it impossible to follow all that advice. I think this is especially true for people who are NEETS or who have similar lifestyles to a NEET.

The question I wanted to ask though, is what is your current perspective on this type of advice? Do you do the things they say, do you attempt to, do you believe it could work, have you tried and failed to do those things?

And secondly, what is your outlook on life itself? Do you have meaning in your life, whether spiritual, religious or otherwise(personally I believe there are plenty of ways to find meaning outside of religion and whatnot, if you have something to believe in that's a good starting point though. If not, are you are a non-religious and non-spiritual person with materialistic or very scientific, or even nihilistic perspectives towards life?

I think I can at least somewhat understand your position, despite still being in my 30s myself, and want to try and help despite my inexperience.

First thing, to answer the question in your post title: I know of people who have, I know many people who are in the addiction/recovery scene, and although I have a very pessimistic outlook on the chances of full/real recover for such issues, I do know at least a couple cases of people turning their lives around in their 40s from such problems. These were people who had a long list of criminal charges, absolutely no money, homeless/living on friends/families couches, very deep-rooted trauma and mental health issues, no healthy relationships, etc. People coming off of decades of heroin or alcohol abuse have to start at just about the lowest point possible. A small percent of people in that situation recover(as in getting and staying clean), and an even smaller percent are truly "healed" - to the point where they can prosper and gain inner wellbeing and actually prosper in life, but it does happen.

Even if it's only 2 or 3% of people in such circumstances, I don't think the outlook is as bleak as the numbers make it seem. That just means you have to be in the top couple % of people in how hard you work towards getting better, if you know the numbers then you know your goal - you have to do whatever those top 2-3% do, and then you will accomplish what they accomplished. In your situation, I'm sure the numbers are much better, as you actually have some money, some education and career experience, presumably less deep-rooted trauma and mental health issues, no criminal charges, a place to live, and maybe even some healthy friendships or family relationships (though I'm sure you have some unique problems of your own that complicate things, hopefully it's no so bad to outweigh all those other cons). I say all that to hopefully give you some hope, and also to give you some perspective that'll help you figure out what path you have to take to achieve the results you want.

Another bit of information that might give you some hope, is a quote from renowned psychologist Carl Jung, who famously said "Life begins at 40." He also talked a lot about "mid life" and how it often leads to a mental/spiritual crisis and results in deep depressions and/or intense anxiety. In his view this was part of the transition into the "second half" of life, and overcoming this crisis was a natural part of psychological maturity. I definitely don't have room to go into all of this here, but if you want to look into Jung's work I think it could really help you navigate this state your in(even if this mid-life transition isn't the primary cause, his work of course goes well beyond that and has helped so many people, including myself, recover from a state of suicidal ideation and meaningless existence)

The fact that you mentioned suicidal thoughts makes it clear that the problem is psychological at root - material circumstances can definitely make things worse, but people in a healthy psychological state can bear much more extreme troubles while maintaining a love for life. "A man with a 'why' can endure any 'what'" as another renowned psychologist, and holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl said (I'd also recommend his book, "Mans search for meaning" - ESPECIALLY for someone who considers themselves a NEET). That being said, I think a professional psychologist is indispensable in your situation, even though suicidal people are often the least motivated to seek one out, you have to find a way to make yourself do it anyway, and believe me I know how hard that is in some cases. It doesn't help that finding a good therapist is extremely hard, and extremely crucial, as there are so many practicing therapists out there who either won't click with your or are just plainly not competent enough to help others with serious troubles.

I have a lot of my own ideas, and have studied a lot of psychology from different schools, but I'm in no way a psychologist or a therapist so I don't want to impose my views without a disclaimer. Jung says that people who overcome their own issues, which always seem like the most difficult issues imaginable to the person in question, they come out the other side with an inflated sense of the capabilities and a desire to help others, with the sometimes incorrect assumption that what worked for them will work for others. Personal issues always require a very personal solution, but if you wanted to discuss more I could at least give any advice I have on how to find your own personal solution. I know it may be harder for you than it was for me, as I went through all this at around 28-30 years old and I still had the view that I had plenty of life ahead of me if I did manage to get better, but other than that I think I can relate to what you said in many ways.

Reply to my comment if you want to talk more. And if you have anything specific you want to say feel free to - if not I'd be happy to just spew out a ton of information about my own experience, how it relates to yours, what helped me, and what I think you can expect in the process of getting better and the many ups and downs you'll likely experience on the way; knowing in advance what to expect can help a lot as you'll know what setbacks are coming and when you face them you'll be armed with the knowledge that such setbacks are inevitable and you are that much closer to your next victory, and therefore to your final victory, it can also help to know roughly which rung you are on on the "ladder" towards recovering so that, even if it's still a long and daunting climb ahead of you, you'll be motivated to keep going by the realization that you are one rung higher than you were last week and next week you'll be one rung closer.

The way I see it, the whole "chemical imbalance" thing is just one of many approaches, or ways of interpreting, psychological problems.

You could say "This person is depressed because they don't have enough serotonin" - which seems obvious, of course the unhappy person doesn't have happy chemicals, if they did they'd be happy.

Or you could say "This person is depressed because their avoidant defense mechanisms don't allow them to experience positive emotions in fear of getting hurt" - which of course would also lead to a lack of serotonin.

Though to be fair, the chemical approach can be useful for treating things "top-down": instead of working through past traumas, building new coping mechanisms, etc, you can pharmaceutically bolster the lacking neurochemicals. This isn't ideal but in some cases is the only feasible solution, and in other cases it can help the person get into a functional enough state to address their underlying issues and build up better habits.

That being said, I agree that most psychiatry is "bullshit", at least in a sense. I'd leave the self-medicating for the later stages of healing though, once you've got a grasp on yourself and the world, as giving someone with maladaptive coping mechanisms one of the most convenient and potentially harmful(if used incorrectly - which they will be compelled by negative emotions to do) coping mechanisms is likely to end badly.

And I 100% agree about therapy. It's useful, but often used incorrectly. To be honest I think this comes down to incompetence, it's far to easy to get a psych degree and a therapists license and start "helping" patients without being nearly equipped to understand and navigate and repair the mind of a person with mental illness. This is an insanely complicated task that requires some specific and uncommon talents in my opinion, in addition to a large amount of knowledge and theory. On this front I think psychology/psychiatry has been moving backwards since the days of psychoanalysis - there are still branches of analysis being advanced and improved to this day, but they are the fringe, while the majority of resources and effort is being put into more reductive methods while, while easier to train the average person with a bachelors degree to implement, are never going to lead to the level of understanding necessary to make leaps in progress in the treatment of mental illness

I'm not too attached to my conclusion, in fact I hope it's not true, and have also thought about what you said. But I am convinced that, eventually, humans will be capable of making autonomous AI advanced enough to "replace" them, and I am NOT convinced that humans will choose not to - especially given the fact that over enough time people will slowly allow AI to control more and more of their lives and the world. Then the next generation of people will grow up accustomed to this level of invasiveness and think it normal, and trade off more of their freedom to AI in exchange for more convenience and comfort.

As for the concern about whether there will be enough useful work to keep everyone paid. Eventually the answer is definitely no in my opinion, just a matter of how far out that is, but I don't think whether there will be enough work is a meaningful question in that world. If AI is good enough to replace human work then the work is still being done - in fact MORE work is probably being done, and therefore more goods/resources(post-scarcity as you said). It's a question of whether humans can distribute those resources fairly - this question and problem remains the same whether people need to work or not. We already have more than enough resources to keep everyone in the world fed and comfortable, assuming we don't destroy the planet this will only be more true when the AI work force comes into play.

It's easy to assume that in such a world there will be enough resources for everyone to live very comfortably while the higher class still has extremely excessive control over resources, and as such it's not likely that greed(the main obstacle to a fair outcome) would have to come into play, as the rich and power-hungry can have everything they want without having to allow poor people to starve to death.

Unfortunately I'm not convinced that assumption is valid either though, because of the fact that the psychological factor driving the greed of the ultra-rich isn't the desire for material possessions and wealth in itself, but to have "more" - more stuff, more capital, more power, than others. They don't just intrinsically love 100 million dollar yachts so much that they choose to buy 3 of them instead of, say, saving the lives of millions of starving children. What they love is the inflation of their ego and the feeling of power and superiority. If middle-class person suddenly had 100 million dollar yachts those people wouldn't be satisfied with their own anymore. Because of this, I think the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful, who of course will be the ones in power and who will have the ability to influence how resources are distributed in a post-scarcity world, will be motivated to keep the lower classes "lower", in order to maintain their ego and satisfy their power craving(though they will of course justify it in less crude ways).

To make my point more simply: If Jeff Bezos could snap his fingers right now and magically make every single person on earth exactly as rich as he is, give them all the same resources and material possessions, at no cost to himself, I am quite convinced he would not do it. This is a simpler version of the exact same decisions those in power will have to make over the next centuries - and in their case it will probably be easier to justify to themselves as it won't be so black and white as denying fortune to billions of people at no cost: that will be exactly what they're doing, but over the course of many small decisions that is each justifiable in it's own way, such that they never have to realize that that is exactly what they're doing

Going off your point, even if we aren't quite there yet, there is no reason to suppose that AI won't eventually be massively better at basically ALL things than humans - that's certain the direction we're headed, and very quickly too.

This is just the very beginning of the problem. It's time for people to start thinking about how to live in a world where they are "obsolete". All jobs, or, being conservative, at least the vast, vast majority will eventually be replaced by AI. AI will eventually be able to create art that is more appealing to humans than human-created art. I think there could eventually even be AI "people", who's company many people will prefer to other actual humans, as they will be designed/trained to be as perfect as possible for that task. I hope that most people will still see more value in genuine human interaction, as any person today probably would, but as tech evolves and we get used to it, let it into our lives more, let it control more of our lives and make more of our decisions, then it advances more and we get used to it more, etc. The idea of human connection and the separation between human life and AI "life" might not be as apparent to people as it is to us, and they may allow AI and technology to replace every facet of human existence

That's a great parallel, especially since it supposes a possibility of a good(or at least acceptable) ending to all this, rather than just spiraling into chaos.

I only fear that there won't be enough profit motive for such gatekeeping/curation, which would only happen if very few people were willing to spend more money for human generated content. I can see this potentially not happening, either because the tech advances to quickly for people to even tell the difference, or people do realize but don't care because the AI learns to feed them exactly what they want(exactly what's happening with a lot of BS "news" already). Or maybe a decent group of people do see the value in real content, and pay for it, but the majority still remains oblivious or indifferent, and the effect it has on this majority is still enough to influence the direction of the world negatively enough that even those groups who avoid it will be forced to accept the consequences of living in a world created by AI and the majority of other people

I agree with your point, but also think this trajectory is kind of inevitable in a way. As we can already see, a LOT of people are living deep in a world of BS news stories and made up facts, to the point where they're basically in a different reality.

Ideally, we'd find a way to go backwards from where we are now, maybe future generations will grow up with this flood of false info and learn to navigate it, but I think we reached a point where tech is developing so fast, and the world is changing so fast, that there were always be a large number of people who can't "keep up".

Given that, this may be one of the few scenarios where I'm in favor of a kind of "accelerationism" - increase the problem to a breaking point as soon as possible so that we can deal with the fallout and recover from it now, rather than dealing with this horrible state of things for decades and decades as it slowly gets worse and worse, until we eventually reach a breaking point anyway and likely have an even worse fallout to recover from.