facundo @facundoc

Ideology is a series of disappointments: realizing that anarchism doesn’t make any sense, that socialism is awful at almost everything, that getting hooked on super-meth would actually be boring, that Nazism would actually be pretty stifling, that niche “-isms” are larp/cope, etc

how it started how it's going

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“Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.” - G. Doyle

Every month a new guy discovers LLMs; discovers a skill the current LLMs require to get good results; and writes about the future jobs that will always be available for smart people like HIM, that are SKILLED in using LLMs. The next generation of AIs doesn't need his fancy prompt. The image model goes from needing to type in just the right set of weird words and cryptic sorcerous invocations, to most people being able to type in English what they want and get a pretty good result. There are still tasks that require careful invocation. But they are a much smaller fraction of all the tasks people are trying to do, or you can get a bleh result without the elaborate invocation to get it really good. And to improve on the bleh result you need to be substantially more of an expert than back when the Guy was memorizing a rule about adding "trending on Artstation" to the image prompts, as would always require a human paid to do that. Another generation of AIs comes out. The next generation of Clever Skills is obsolete. Image models just obey the instructions for compositing panels without mixing them up, and you don't need to be an expert to get them to do it right. Another human value-add is gone. A wider set of tasks require no human expert. Now a new Guy notices LLMs have become useful in his field for the first time. He discovers they require SKILL to use CORRECTLY. He posts about how there will always be jobs for humans who are SKILLED in using LLMs like HIM. But it is not an infinite cycle. It is not the same each time it repeats. Now the Guy is a highly paid programmer or a career mathematician in 2026, instead of a graphic artist in 2023. In six months the models will no longer require his vaunted Skills. And by then there will be another Guy. But the process doesn't continue forever. The Guys are coming from fields that were harder and harder for AIs. The brief centaur eras are shorter and shorter. Today it is writers who are laughing at how bad the LLMs are at their job, and who will perhaps soon be posting about how it takes Skill to get an LLM to do their job Correctly. But the models are coming faster, and the eras of kinds of human value-add in each field are shortening. There is a point when you run out of Guys, either because the centaur eras are too short for people to develop SKILLs and post to Twitter about them; or because there are not lands left for AIs to conquer; or because ordinary people are not reassured by some Nobel laureate proclaiming there will always be jobs for Nobel laureates with the SKILLS to prompt robotized biology labs Correctly. But we'll never run out of amateur economists who assert entirely *without* a brief contemporary example that there will always be jobs for humans skilled at operating AIs! We'll run out of professional economists saying it when nobody is paid for that work anymore. I guess we'll also run out of amateur economists when they're dead.

It’s the era of the polymathic individual contributor.

I don't remember where I found this, but its spot on.

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

This ignores all other taxes. The top 1% has 20.1% of income and pays 23.9% of all taxes. Our overall tax system is only slightly more progressive than a flat tax.

Clay Travis @ClayTravis

2 months ago

Happy Tax Day. The top 1% pays 40% of all income taxes, the top 10% pays 72% and the top 25% pays 87% of all income taxes. Meanwhile the bottom 50% pays ZERO income taxes. For all of you actually paying taxes, do you think your tax dollars are being spent well?

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In a world of David Tennants. Be a Richard Dreyfuss.

My ancestors buried half their children. All mine are alive. My ancestors' house had a dirt floor. Mine is wood. I have indoor plumbing, I have hot water, I have never in my life hauled a full bucket half a mile and I probably never will. Do you know how rare it is, in human history, for small children to wear shoes? Mine have multiple pairs. I can speak to my relatives who live thousands of miles away, for free, at any time. Video, if we want video. With machine translation, if we speak different languages. The original Library of Congress had 740 books in it. I have more than that. If I run out of books in my home my local public library has 350,000. If I want to take a hundred books with me on vacation, they all fit on a device that fits in my purse. I have heat in the winter and AC in the summer and a washing machine and I have never, ever, ever had to scrub a dress clean by hand in the stream. I can look up recipes from more than a hundred different countries and I've tried dozens of them. I ride a clean and modern train across my city for $4, or take a robot taxi if I'm out too late for the train. I donate $40,000 every year to the cause of getting healthcare to the world's poorest people and even after the donations I never have to think about whether I can afford a book, or a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee. There is a great deal more to fight for, of course. I hope that our descendants will look back on our lives and list a thousand ways they're richer. Maybe we ourselves will do that, if some of the crazier stuff comes true. But the abundance is all around you and to a significant degree you aren't feeling it only because fish don't notice water.

It's always the product's fault. Everything in your company exists because the product is not good enough: - If you need 10 minutes to explain it, it's a UI problem. - If you need 10 sales calls, it's a value-prop problem. - If you need a customer support team, it's a UX problem. The ideal product would not need anything around it. All business departments are patches for deficiencies: - Ops are required when customers fail to get the value out of the product. - A help center is needed when the interface fails to be self-explanatory. - An onboarding process when value is not delivered automatically. Nothing will save you from having a bad product. Even if you're a great salesperson and manage to sell it over and over again, you'll experience churn. And it's customer retention that makes a business sustainable. Why would someone eat at a restaurant whose food they hated the first time? A company dies when it runs out of cash. That’s the last stop. Getting there means your business failed to do what a business is intended to do. Earning a profit is proof of service; proof that you are solving a problem for customers in the best way offered. And if you're not ultimately making a profit, it means the product is not good enough.

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.” ―Ernest Hemingway

we are well past the peak of 'striverism' whatever that means. everything related to social class and traditional status competition looks pretty murky going forward. stay weird and stay nimble

Bertrand Russell’s timeless message to future generations

kierkegaard only wrote bangers

A reminder, since we've practically forgotten, of what real confidence looks like.

Barack Obama @BarackObama

6 months ago

I couldn’t leave Chicago without getting a cut from my old barber, Zariff!

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@rdarder just get tired already and come do real work <3

@rdarder super cool. but how about we get back to work, muffin? <3

@Patticus achilles absent is achilles still