thomascountz

On the one hand, it has crashed into a lot of somethings—like cosmic radiation and micrometeorites. On the other hand, there is a lot of space in space, and the chances of Voyager crashing into something of the same or larger scale as itself is infinitesimal.

   We're heading towards the end of the year and I still do not see how these copy-machines with "super intelligence" inside are going to replace humans. What they have done is convince those with money to spend differently on their fellow humans.

Whether LLMs can successfully replace certain functions is a question of speculation and conjecture. Whether LLMs should replace human roles is both an economic and moral question. When the incentives are what they are, there's little room for objectivity. Both those who stand to—or believe they stand to—benefit most and those who stand to be most harmed by copy-machines replacing humans will be inclined to think of "when it will" happen. Only one of those groups seem to be able to actively participate in asking "whether it should" happen.

I don't generally think of myself as cynical, but yeah; this is what people in our industry seem to be asking.

This post resonates a lot with me and my approach to counter the idea that an LLM (as amazing as a tool it is) gives programmers permission to stop engineering. To me, executing a decision in the face of trade-offs is what the job is all about.

So, I want to keep pulling the thread: is it worth reading—meaning, understanding—the code in order to prevent p95 latency from skyrocketing, avoid OOM death, and keep our apps reliable for customers?

The cost of understanding the code is ostensibly very high relative to just using a clanker (citation needed), so does paying that cost translate to value—what is it worth? Concretely, if vibe coding increases bugs and enshittification, but decreases spending without decreasing revenue (read: customers suffer, but they don't leave), do we still need to pay the cost of reading code? Is it better to invest in stickiness, lobbying, and market capture?

This comment shouldn't be read as advocating for this; it's a thought experiment about pragmatism and trade-offs, and reflects what I'm witnessing companies (and "programmers") asking themselves. I personally care a lot about understanding systems and code, and I believe I'm paid to do exactly that (I very much enjoy understanding code and nobody is paying me to run a business, so I may be biased in this). In everyday SaaS-land—not talking about critical safety systems—we've seen production databases destroyed, personal data leaked, platforms unwittingly exploited, and UX bugs creep into our operating systems, and yet the companies involved keep on keeping on.

Is thinking, meaning taking the time to actually understand what our systems are doing, going to increase their shareholder value?

I have qualms and disagreements with the whole "software factory" concept, but your math doesn't help the argument. The cost of human labor is more than salary—or even hourly rate, if you're thinking of paying a contractor.

Hey! I use your shell script after seeing it on HN awhile ago. It's very handy (I find myself reaching for it as if it's a built-in) and I appreciate its design (I learned a few things reading it)!

I don't get it. Why would you ask if an adult daycare leads to a business or new discoveries? Daycares are for nurturing curiosity and fostering development in a socially engaging environment—much like the Recurse Center—not for publishing papers.

As an interviewer, it's my role to get the information I need to help inform a decision that I will not make alone. If I have a concern about some unknown, I have to navigate that; it's on me. I expect an interviewee to be prepared to share relevant information, but interviews are stressful and if I only want to hire good interviewers, I'm going to have a considerably smaller pool.

Furthermore, as an interviewer, my job is to be a candidate. Why should this person choose my team/company to work at? It's a privilege that anyone show up to join, and I ought to be as prepared to give answers as they are.

That said, any "feedback" I would give would be arbitrary. I am not this person's mentor and I shouldn't—after only 40 minutes—assume I know enough to give them feedback. Saying that I have concerns about not getting enough information, and that somehow being their "feedback," is bad framing. Try:

  Before moving on, I really want to make sure I get a full picture of your time at Acme working with the Foobar team. Would you say that you led project X? Who ultimately decided when it shipped and set deadlines? Was that part of your responsibilities?

I'd recommend avoiding giving anything framed as feedback altogether. End interviews by saying "We're all finished with this part of the interview. Thank you for taking the time to go through your work history with us. You should be hearing from [Hiring Person] about the next steps."

I know TFA mentioned similar things about also being a candidate and that the "feedback" is to spur discussion, but the framing of giving "highly opinionated" thoughts about someone's capabilities as a way to ask questions is unnecessarily adversarial is an already power-imbalanced situation. I think it's better to try to tilt the power imbalance in the other direction—giving the candidate a feeling that you, the interviewer, are also auditioning for them. Doing that shows humility and, in my experience, gives a better opportunity to get to honest answers about being a good fit for each other.

Why are people using petrol-powered lawnmowers in 2035...

But anyway, these scenarios assume the agent's actions are accurately observable and logged. Something I wouldn't put much faith in based on what we've been seeing so far.

There's an analogous (albeit, far less existential) problem in software development. If the answer to, "what should we build next?" is simply, "yes" (so to speak), then the real value is in the discernment of "what is most valuable, useful, sustainable, and/or meaningful thing to build next".

I am pivoting from the literal "extinct," taken as meaning the eradication of the human species, to the concept of "the collapse of civilization," as I find the step from one to the other insignificant compared to the leap from where we are today to societal collapse, and the potential for societal collapse due to our abuse and misuse of technology is made apparent by the fact that humans have inflicted genocide because of words in books.

Not to be completely pedantic, but the fact that one, and only one, individual in the United States of America can deploy any of their 5000+ nuclear weapons undermines this argument. Furthermore, LLMs (as they are today) which pose the treats mentioned in TFA, are expressly not available to individuals (for the time being). However, my point was never about individuals, but rather of systematic incentive structures which actively make pathways to specific harms possible—if not probable.