"An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic,
No, that's completely wrong and far too cynical.
It's not even an 'honour code' - it's an expectation that people are not cheaters - and that is not only reasonable, it's a very lower bar.
Tech schools is not representative of most places of higher learning - precisely because they tend to have 'sadistic course loads' which distorts things a bit.
As an Engineer, I was always 'overloaded' - and shocked at how relatively little the Arts Majors had to do in comparison and how vague it was.
'University' - is traditionally centred around those Liberal Arts people, or at least not Engineering.
It was never supposed to be 'sadistically' intense - that's just what some of the very technical majors turned it into - and usually not on purpose.
Mostly due to the fact that certain people think that everyone 'must' have a background in such-and-such to be considered 'well rounded'.
And it's not fair to suggest that people 'have to cheat' to get through, maybe more reasonably, the course load is so crazy, that people have to share / work together to fight hard to make it through the course load.
Purely technical schools often don't represent what institutions of higher learning are in the traditional sense, and do get caught up 'in the course knowledge' as opposed to the higher order premise.
I think this 'too much intensity' is a side effect of culture and a few other things, that just makes more civil things difficult to process.
There's no reason to 'cheat' 100 years ago if you're from a wealthy family just getting your education, whereas the competition is fierce now.
Maybe a bit that - but it's far more the change of elite 'class' institutions - to elite 'competitive' institutions.
'Grades Did Not Matter' 100 years ago so much.
It was where 'the only educated people sent their kids to be educated'.
Or maybe the nouveau riche bourgois did.
Now it's a 'Giant International Competition'.
You can see this where students are competitive with grades elsewhere in the world.
They're competing for jobs at OpenAI among a million others.
I'm shamed to admit I can't remember the quote from someone who lamented the fact that traditionally people 'knew their place' and there was on some level a quietude in that, a zen - but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety, sense of failure for most people who can never live up to being the 'most exceptional at whatever', and the constant stress of 'keeping up with the Jones's'.
See: Instagram - it's not pictures of family and friends - it's almost entirely 'social competition through lifestyle narration' ... which that includes University's as 'brand'.
This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard.
Everyone is in competition now. Everyone has to prove their worth, all the time. It's more egalitarian but it also creates a lot of stress.
To get into a radiation tech program, there are 260 applicants, almost all with all As, for 20 slots at my local community college.
Maybe in the very first instant you’d think it’s merit based. But, EVERYONE is playing the game. Getting homework and tests from friends who already took the class, taking classes at several different schools to get the easier teachers, paying multiple times the tuition cost on tutors and other study aides (eg $2k+ for all the anatomy models), every demographic is using paid ChatGPT. We all know which teachers to take. We spend much of class strategizing like this.
Every single student. It’s just another game to play or you lose.
Real question: If people are that good at grinding (it is a legit skill), why don't they go for something better, like a 4-year university degree in STEM or medicine? They can make much more money.
Also, how do they decide which students to pick? And I would love to know the gender ratio.
Even among trades where you can move up the initial ranks simply by showing up sober and working once you get to the point where you want to level up by striking out on your own it's all the same shit. Instead of paying a tutor you're paying a consultant and/or an accountant to tell you the answer. Instead of the school or licensing board asking you questions where wrong answers will have an opportunity cost of many dollars it's the government.
I'm skeptical that it is really more egalitarian in practice, anyways.
There is still a lot of bias and in -group preferences present in hiring. Not to mention that most places will weight candidates who are recommended by employees higher than unconnected external applicants. That might be a reasonable filter but it unquestionably is not egalitarian
It's vastly more egalitarian than it was before- - that said, it's still a bit closed, but the manner in which it is closed is more related to 'hyper competition' than anything.
Admissions for elite schools is just crazy - they can't go purely by 'scores', they have gender/national/racial issues which are actual quite real, even if it becomes unfair - there is just no way to do it in the ultra egalitarian way in which some would want.
It's a very scarce resource and that's it.
If it were a 'common' thing - like local state college, then it takes a different form. But the acute nature of the situation really brings out some ugly dynamics.
That’s a really good point. I do think the old ruling elite was in some ways more honest within the particular framework of their morality. But maybe that was easier when getting into Harvard meant being smart-ish from a prestigious family, instead of grinding to compete against not only everyone in America, but the biggest grinders and geniuses in India and China too.
It's wonderful that the American elite has broadened as much as it has in the past 70 years or so. With it though there was some load bearing social infrastructure that got demolished.
When it was a little club, you had to think of your family's reputation in the club, and like you say there was a particular framework of their morality.
When the elite franchise was expanded, one problem was that everyone in the elite then had different ideas of morality. When they got into business, the only thing that really united everyone was that they all liked money.
One thing that used to help that we've lost is a moral code in the universities that elites have to attend to get into the club now.
Another thing, after it became illegal to teach the bible in public schools, was "secular bible stories." You had secular saints, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ben Franklin. They each had a characteristic story, like George Washington and the cherry tree, Abraham Lincoln walking 10 miles to return 2 cents, and Ben Franklin flying a kite and discovering that lightning was electricity. Later on, MLK was added to the canon for a whole bunch of stories of courage in defense of justice. All of the stories had a moral lesson about what it meant to be a Good American.
Lately we've cancelled most of our secular saints, and my guess is that the few that are left are on borrowed time. That's not to say that these guys never did anything wrong by any means, but the point of teaching the story wasn't even necessarily even that the story actually happened exactly as it was told, the point was the moral lesson. We've basically just given up on moral education, and all we have left are things like Social Emotional Learning, but it is thin gruel.
>They're competing for jobs at OpenAI among a million others.
Really? Reading the comments here on HN I was left with the impression that everyone would prefer to compete for the gold in butt naked giant porcupine rodeo than to work for any company helmed by Altman, Musk, Zuckeberg or Thiel.
"It's weird to me that the Hacker News community doesn't think that sort of competition is good."
It's not 'competition'.
It's carnivorous, predatory.
Consider shifting gears and seeing all of this through the lens of 'power'.
There is no such thing as open/free markets when there is massive power asymmetry.
Anything that a weaker entity produces, will be 'taken' by a more powerful entity via all sorts of mechanisms.
The 'point' of IP/Open Sources liscencing can be whatever anyone wants it to be ...
but consider this: if the 'game' is on a tilted field, then almost all of the economic value goes into the hands of those with the power to reap the surplus - not the creator.
The 'owner' is who has power.
The Kings didn't rule by arbitrary decree - their money came from owning all the land. It doesn't matter how hard you work, how hard you innovate, how much surplus you create - if the landlord says 'I want all of that' and you have no choice.
Your Rent = All The Value of the Stuff You Create with a bit leftover for you to survive.
That is entirely done through legal ownership - not through some kind of forceful cocercion.
Control of distribution, access to financing, entrenched supplier / buyer relationships, barriers to entry, regulatory capture, economies of scale - all of that makes some systems unassailable without some degree of power.
Purely through the lens of power - Open Source is like 'commoditizing' a tiny little part of the system, where the surpluses will get pulled in by the most powerful entity.
In this case: Amazon.
Anyone writing software and 'making it free' - that Amazon can use - is working for Amazon for free.
Again: if you want to see it way.
If you just like 'making stuff' that's perfectly fine as well.
But - the moment you see this as a 'means to income' - then - it's a 'power dynamic'.
This is why better/smarter IP laws should help smaller players.
The whole point of these things is to try to enable actual competition - which is not 'feed David to Goliath' - its supposed to give David a chance.
The 'changing of license terms' by some small vendors is the result of Amazon suffocating them - it's the power system finding it's 'equilibrium' - where the 'creators' are snuffed out - or 'better yet for Amazon' keep working for free.
And for society as a whole, we are getting to a state where corporations have incredibly large amount of money and gradually, hard power too. OSS is kind of small rebellion that we need to sustain so that we don't that tiny bit of freedom we have.
P.S. I think East India Company's history should be a mandatory lesson for everyone on the ability of a single company to take over a subcontinent. At its peak they had their own army, ruthless efficiency due to a largely meritocratic structure, and was successful in taking over multiple kingdoms.
I used to be with you on that ... but getting of my lazy bum to actually pay for Spotify - and looking past all the fair/unfair issues bad/good corporate stuff ...
The ability to browse music is very powerful.
I lost my 1 Soundgarden CD 20 years ago. Now I can listen to all their albums.
You can do the entire Beatles catalogue <- this is a different form of listening.
Discover artists I would never have otherwise heard of.
It has it's downsides, but I dont think CD was 'better'.
And the biggest part of the money you pay the streaming platform goes to neither Soundgarden, nor the remaining Beatles, nor to those artists you discovered but to Taylor Swift[1]. This is in stark contrast to how CD economics worked.
As someone who spent a lot of his youth carefully avoiding big label acts and trying to support small artists, this is what bothers me the most: there is no way to do that anymore if you use streaming.
There's Bandcamp. I'm sure it's more difficult the more mainstream music is, but in my areas of interest, I'd estimate that at least 80% is available from Bandcamp. And for those who really want to optimise on where their money goes, you can save you cart for Bandcamp Friday where the store forgoes its cut (if I understood it correctly).
Yes, and this is the paradox right at the heart of 'Hacker' in 'Hacker News' aka an arbitrary usurping of established norms - notably without moral impetus.
Institutionalists view the very word 'Hacker' as 'Wrong' because they're essentially 'Rule Breakers'.
But sometimes rules are bad, and need to be broken.
Libertarians view rules as constraints, so why not break them?
More often than not, rules are there fore a reason. (Obviously it's complicated)
There's a huge grey area there but what is not grey ... is the issue of the 'morally neutral' impetus that the author is talking about - the seed of which is right at the root of 'Hacker'.
YC does not say 'build something useful and beneficial' - they say 'build something useful'.
Aka no moral impetus towards the greater good.
'Build a gear that is useful to other gears, without concern for what the gears are actually doing'.
It seems benign when there's no power involved - aka startups.
But it's not benign when there's huge concentration of power.
That system leads to endemic competition - which - at the highest levels is economic warfare, or even actual warfare.
There is no flattening in these systems - those things end up in Feudal Power Structures - everyone 'somewhere on the pyramid'.
If you're 'under Musk' right now - anywhere (and that includes literally almost every VC for whom it's too risky to say anything critical, or so many people in finance tangentially related to $1.5T IPO, or business etc) - you dare not speak out against him.
That's the opposite of 'flat or decentralized' - it's just power without democratic impetus, techno authoritarianism, which is paradoxically the thing they seem to lament.
Hacking in its original sense is not about rule breaking (except maybe implied rules). It’s about finding ways around limitations. This could be finding unusual routes through a campus, as when the term was invented, or altering software to work the way you wanted it to. Often the only limits to using a tool the way you want to use it are in your mind.
Hacking was distinct from phreaking (illegal use of the phone system/theft of services) and cracking (breaking copy protection). It’s only later that people started using “hacking” to be synonymous with these terms as well as attacking systems, stealing passwords, etc.
“Hacking” in its original sense is a good thing. It’s applied creativity, nothing wrong with that.
I think that maybe you understand this because you refer to hacking as breaking norms. The thing is, uncodified norms in a society are often tools of the powerful. “You violated the norm!” while the norm is flexible is a great way to shut down any and all competition. Especially when wielded by those with the resources to shape the media.
Because of this, norms that aren’t codified will eventually be broken in a complex society. They don’t have to be codified by law, many norms in Japan for instance are defined by what it is to “be Japanese”. (But they are an ethnically homogenous society, so they are able to pull this off.) Hackers are just ahead of the curve.
The traditional use of 'hack' was meant to imply 'half baked' or 'not good' and often used as an insult 'that guy is a hack' etc.
'Hack' as in 'tinkering and improvisation' is relatively new - and it came about at roughly the same time as the 'Phreak' version of 'hack'.
Yes - of course norms can simply benefit those with power, I hinted at that, but on the other end:
"Hackers are just ahead of the curve"
... if the dissolution of society is 'ahead of the curve' ...
For every rule that is broken, probably 95 times out of 100, it as broken for selfish or irresponsible or self aggrandizing reasons.
'Little Egos' are just as capable of acting callously as 'Powerful Egos' and usually without any self awareness.
But yes - even in the moments were 'norms should probably be broken' - the 'new norms' can only possibly come about from the 5% which are creating positive new norms, and there underlies the 'Venture Capital' motivation and relationship to 'Hacking'.
And that's exactly the essence of the fallacy of the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not, and that one should aspire to be 'ahead of the curve'.
The only way out of that trap is a consistent application of a 'moral concern'. Obviously, we can argue about what 'moral' is forever, but at very minimum it's a consideration of the 'greater good', which is fundamentally at odds with the egoism at the root of 'breaking the limitations' which are seen to be constraining the desires of a given ego.
> the libertarian creed -the churlish assumption that 'rules are the arbitrary imposition of those with power' and that somehow breaking them is more likely good than not
This is certainly churlish, but it's not at all "the libertarian creed". People who break rules just for the sake of breaking them aren't libertarians, they're idiots. I agree there are lots of those around, and that many, if not most, people who crow about "breaking rules" are doing it for selfish or irresponsible or self-aggrandizing reasons. But those people aren't libertarians.
The libertarian creed is that there are different kinds of rules, and you treat them in different ways. And one key part of that is precisely the "moral concern" that you talk about. Libertarianism includes the non-aggression principle: don't violate other people's rights. (Some, including me, would say that's a bedrock tenet of libertarianism.) If breaking a rule would do that, you don't break the rule. And indeed lots of the rules we have in place in our society are there for that very reason--because breaking them would mean violating someone's rights. That doesn't just include obvious cases like the laws against things like murder. It includes rules about fiduciary responsibility when you're taking care of other people's money (someone mentioned Paypal upthread). And it includes norms that aren't codified into rules, like "don't take your users' data without their consent or even knowledge, and then sell it for profit". Doing it at scale to billions of people, as tech giants do, doesn't change that, and "libertarian creed" isn't a get out of jail free card.
You said it better than I would have. GP has a misunderstanding of libertarianism and perhaps of the concept of liberty.
Libertarians (small-l libertarians, colloquially) don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus. Everyone’s calculus is different, but the usual reasoning would focus on possible infringement of others’ rights when breaking the norm and the seeming validity/grounding of the norm. And perhaps the risk tolerance of the individual and likely consequences.
GP seems to be taking about anarchists (and a particular species of anarchist at that). There is indeed some overlap but libertarians are not allergic to norms. “Rights” themselves are a norm.
"don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus."
No - I didn't suggest 'just because', and Libertarians reject norms not 'on a specific basis' - they reject the nature of the limiting impetus on their expression.
Norms are by by default bad and can only be justified in a narrow sense.
Critically, there is no moral impetus but the expression of one self. There is no 'greater good', 'community good', or even 'greater morality' beyond selfish desire.
Rules and norms are only seen through that lens.
Yes - 'rights' can be viewed as norms under most libertarian thought but only to the extent it supposedly protects individual will.
These ideas are useful tool, especially when concerned with materially oppressive systems (such as those Ayn Rand lived through in Soviet Union) but morally and practically bereft or at least lacking outside of more authoritarian systems.
Is hardly an example of what you're describing. She explicitly supported property rights and the non-aggression principle.
It's interesting, though, that she refused to identify herself as a libertarian because she saw those who did as anarchists. So she apparently had the same kind of misconception about libertarianism that you do.
Not to mention that objectivism and libertarianism are not synonymous. “Libertarian” isn’t even a great label considering that it lumps in everyone from Hoppeans (“libertarian” fascists) to Georgist UBI proponents to minarchists to Tea Partiers to Glenn Greenwald. You’re not going to find a lot of common ground across those demographics except for a desire to maximize some definition of individual liberty, in a general sense, and a shared distaste for government intervention.
"People who break rules just for the sake of breaking them aren't libertarians, they're idiots. "
-> they're not breaking them 'to break them' - they're breaking them because the rule doesn't serve their immediate purpose.
Like 'talking loud on a train'.
People who do that are not doing so 'just for spite' (sometimes) but rather, the social constraint is too much for them in the moment.
They are putting themselves 'above the (social) law'.
Most of the time, people lack the self awareness and are oblivious to their own actions in this regard especially under the veil of an ideology.
In the more ideological sense, Libertarians are often opposed to 'regulations' on the grounds that it 'limits their choice' etc. but those 'choices' have external effects on those around them.
The Ego is the greatest deluder and it's why self awareness is so hard.
I believe this is the 'root' of what the author is getting at. The Egoic aspiration towards supposed 'freedom' is often an ideological guise for trampling on others and just the pursuit of raw, unhindered selfish desire.
But 'without awareness'. Or worse - 'suppressed awareness'.
That's the key factor here: the 'lack of self awareness' and the deep motivation for people to put themselves before others - that drives this.
You see it all the time in callous Executive statements - it's why they seem so 'detached' - in their minds they are not acting 'badly' or 'immorally' - they're just doing what's good for them (often under the guise of 'shareholder' ideology, which is rooted in classic free market liberalism.), without any kind of self awareness.
And why in some competitive systems, a sense of self awareness can be a detriment.
And by the way - this 'tension' is right at the heart of Adam Smith.
Adam Smith was deeply concerned with the moral outcome - he was a (Christian) Ethicist, before he was an Economist. He wrote more about the issues of power than comparative value.
Friedman is like Adam Smith without the 'self consideration'.
> They are putting themselves 'above the (social) law'.
There is no “social law”; not in the US, at least.
We have never been more divided as to what constitutes appropriate behavior in public. We are not an ethnostate (nor should we be), so all social behavior in the public at-large is essentially undertaken on a battleground. Every ideology, sub-ethnicity, and social group has its own competing norms that often conflict. At times, expressing behavior that is normal (for you) can inadvertently become a political statement and a call to conflict.
Talking loud on a train, as you mentioned, may be unacceptable to some and perfectly normal to others based on culture. Not to mention biological aspects such as neurodivergence.
“Regulation” also does not happen in a vacuum. Regulation imposes a particular viewpoint, one that all may not agree with. These days, the majority may even disagree with the imposed viewpoint, as our ruling class is compromised.
“Implicit regulation” through vague norms is even worse, as you are inevitably oppressing some groups based on their cultural characteristics, and not letting them argue against it. Laws can be debated at least, even if they are bad laws.
It may be that multicultural societies are doomed to implode. (I certainly hope not.) If we are to have a chance of keeping them afloat, light-touch governance and permissive norms are probably the only hope. Perhaps this can be coupled with voluntary collective norms that are crafted as a nation. But we can’t object too loudly if some groups don’t hold to these norms, as long as they are not violating fundamental rights (which we must also find a way to agree upon!).
Maybe 'journalism' wasn't the best suggestion by the OP but I have to disagree with the rest of your message. It may be a rant, or less pejoratively it may be a cry for help of someone seeing their industry's future, but I can't accept that it's not well written.
When is the last time you opened an HN comment section and the main comment was that people enjoyed the writing quality? Maybe it says more about what we usually read as a crowd, but to me this was a breath of fresh air, it was engaging but also quite deep at times.
I think the mark of great writing is that it makes an impression on you, on others, in a way casual writing doesn't. At least that's my take on this.
I commented only because I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was.
It's highly personalized and interesting, but I wouldn't call it well written.
As a personal bit of art - 'thumbs up', but anything else is overstated.
But more appropriately, the nihilism on this thread is unhinged.
"seeing their industry's future" ???
I'm seeing people empowered to do the most spectacular things that they have ever done in their lives.
Software hiring on the aggregate is up, job postings are up, people are doing more, non-developers get to tinker.
Speculative money is coming into the industry for people to try wild new things.
The implied reality in the story is totally detached from reality.
Surely - there is a movement of people who lament a sense of loss of control, but that's normal with change.
There are also people in crappy jobs with crappy bosses in crappy companies doing crappy things - but that's not a feature of AI or the industry, in fact, software is a pretty good place, relatively speaking.
As I said, this is a reflection of someone's state of mind, mood, being interpreted as some kind of metaphor, but it just doesn't line up with reality in general. A personal reality sure, but that's not a reflection of the community.
> I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was.
Here is a thought that seems not to have occurred to you.
All these people saying it's good. You commented multiple times to say you disagree and think it is bad.
Maybe that means you do not get it. Maybe the problem here is you and your reading and your lack of comprehension. Maybe the problem is not in the article and the way the article is written.
> I commented only because I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was.
While "well-written" is subjective, the bar for "well-written" is whether people enjoyed reading it and the author managed to deliver his message.
I'm now very curious what bar you personally use for well-written, because it obviously differs from the majority of the people in this thread.
> A personal reality sure, but that's not a reflection of the community.
You say, to the community, as it describes how it relates to the message.
You may not agree with it, but surely this thread among many should show you this view is not fringe or denial, but how a strong segment feels. I concede it's a divisive topic, some people feel optimistic, others less so. I myself don't fully know where I stand. I just don't agree with branding all of this as "unhinged nihilism".
The writing is an expression of a state of mind through an absurdist voice, not any kind of reasonable articulation of reality. It's at least a much about the lens as it is the subject. Which is fine, if we ingest it roughly from that purview.
the writing is a tribute to a 2014 similar article, based on my experiences since. it is absolutely a reasonable articulation of reality, although through a sarcastic or satirical lens. you might have different experiences, that doesn't invalidate mine.
your experiences (and probably mine as well) are not a reflection of the general reality of the industry - that's the root of the problem; the writing is a projection, not a reality. The writing is fine (even good) as a personal story, not in the manner in which people here seem to be interpreting it.
i dunno. i'm happy to read in the comments here (and elsewhere) that my experience is not unique, many others have similar experiences and are going through the same feelings: grief. i think we're allowed to grieve, don't you?
I think you're extrapolating on something that hasn't even happened yet. We're still hiring juniors. They're thriving with LLM coding. They're learning rapidly.
I actually enjoyed your writing (though it does mimic a certain style I see coming out of the US), and I even enjoyed what you wrote. A lot of it definitely resonates, but you could have omitted any mention of AI, written it 20 years ago, and expressed the same sentiment. And I guess that is the main point "greed is to blame, not AI".
it sounds like you should learn a bit more about grief. also, please, for god's sake, read the original. I've linked to it in at the top of the article. As to envious, I'm a Director of Engineering. What exactly do you think is left for me to be envious of? The levels above (VP, SVP, CTO at a non-startup) are outside of my interest.
This is what amorality means to me in the context of socioeconomics. It operates in an area of reduced dimensionality to economic value because no other value can be agreed upon in trade between cultures. It doesn’t care if a piece of art, nature or human invention is genuinely novel, rare, irreplaceable, invaluable, etc. unless it can be converted into materializable economic value that is itself subjective and present oriented so that we can plan for our future selves about resources as a proxy.
yes and yes. a system can fulfill it’s function while simultaneously having massive impacts on society. we are only now experiencing the consequences of social media running rampant.
Progress have massive impacts on society, printing press was running rampant and caused massive issues, protests, civil wars and in the end democracy. Historically giving people more access to information and communication has always been a good thing even if it caused problems short term.
equating social media and the printing press is tempting but reductive. esp with massive profit incentives, social media is often built for retention and conversion rather than for informative purposes. esp within the modern context. it is not a black and white picture. social media can exist responsibly. just because a technology represents "progress" there is much we can and should pay attention to. just blanket dismissing regulation and criticism for the sake of progress is lazy.
I know exactly what the statement means - you seem to be the one blithely missing the point.
The 'system is doing what it is doing' and it's not 'destroying the world' it's improving it for the most part, with some negative externalities.
People on this thread are in such a juvenile nihilist head fog that they can't recognize what is going on around them, nor can they seem to even to be able to apply these metaphors, and when it's spelled out for them, they still don't get it.
There's nothing hugely wrong with 'the industry' even as it 'does what it does'.
Facebook literally heavily contributed or at minimum enabled and amplified at least one genocide (2017 Myanmar). That is the total opposite of "really not causing harm".
Plus they implemented "Organic Reach" where the bands I followed posted the flyers to their shows and Facebook only distributed the posts to ~10% of users subscribed to the band, so over and over again I would see a flyer for a show that happened 2 days ago. Deleterious to culture at large.
You're getting really downvoted, which just proves people don't like hearing views that challenge their narrative.
I agree with you. Human greed has always been a thing, will always be a thing. But most people now would never choose to go back and be born 100 years ago if given the option. They ignore everything positive that technology has done, and massively ramp the negatives.
"Capitalism", leads to a thousand little decisions, that destroy the world. I've seen plenty of middle managers, that when they have to make their quarterly numbers, will dump toxic waste into the river upstream of a kindergarten.
Then "Industry". Look up some of the philosophy around 'e/acc'. They are definitely wanting to destroy the 'humans'. So maybe not the 'world', just all the 'humans'. And since the 'e/acc' comprise a large component of AI companies, and AI is driving the industry. I think there is a fair argument that the "Industry" does want to do harm to 'humans'. But maybe humans doesn't equal the 'world'.
"Do you think you're conversing with a 14 year old, struggling with abstractions?"
Yes, a little bit. You posted a single sentence. How does that convey that you are some industry veteran. Though, I do see you have posted more since then. But not what I saw at that time.
To some of your other posts. Yes, Today is better, and Tech is a big part of that. I don't think that should imply that it is a never ending fountain of good, just ignore any problems. It isn't like Industries can't go downhill. What? We can't talk about it. Could be we are steadily pushing up the mountain until we go over a cliff. Look up Black Swan events.
We need to bring back consumer first design and destroy the incentives to prioritize shareholders over the much larger cohort of ordinary consumers whose lives were affecting.
No, that's completely wrong and far too cynical.
It's not even an 'honour code' - it's an expectation that people are not cheaters - and that is not only reasonable, it's a very lower bar.
Tech schools is not representative of most places of higher learning - precisely because they tend to have 'sadistic course loads' which distorts things a bit.
As an Engineer, I was always 'overloaded' - and shocked at how relatively little the Arts Majors had to do in comparison and how vague it was.
'University' - is traditionally centred around those Liberal Arts people, or at least not Engineering.
It was never supposed to be 'sadistically' intense - that's just what some of the very technical majors turned it into - and usually not on purpose.
Mostly due to the fact that certain people think that everyone 'must' have a background in such-and-such to be considered 'well rounded'.
And it's not fair to suggest that people 'have to cheat' to get through, maybe more reasonably, the course load is so crazy, that people have to share / work together to fight hard to make it through the course load.
Purely technical schools often don't represent what institutions of higher learning are in the traditional sense, and do get caught up 'in the course knowledge' as opposed to the higher order premise.
I think this 'too much intensity' is a side effect of culture and a few other things, that just makes more civil things difficult to process.
There's no reason to 'cheat' 100 years ago if you're from a wealthy family just getting your education, whereas the competition is fierce now.
reply