That efficiency is an absolute good.

If we had invented touchscreens first, we would consider physical buttons an improvement.

Lots of people worry that computers will become intelligent enough to exploit a vulnerability in the human race and take over.

I worry that we’re already so ignorant of our own vulnerabilities that we’ll gladly hand control to an overclocked See-n-Say.

“Where” is a question that applies to the physical world. The dream people are constituted of something more fundamental than matter.

Predictably, MMT catches immediate heat in the top comment, but two good replies stepped up:

The MMT folks think this is business as usual

MMT folks generally advocate that inflation is the way to measure if the spending is “too much” and argue that spending should generally aim to improve productivity (i.e. increase gdp) to minimize this issue (e.g. spending to build infrastructure so people can get to work is productive vs spending so people stay home is inflationary).

There is this pervasive idea that MMT promotes limitless spending and I’m not sure where it comes from, what they actually preach feels like a reasonable way to evaluate government spending to me.

and

MMT is descriptive, not prescriptive - the economy follows MMT whether you agree it does or not. Separate from MMT, are the ways you would expect would be good ways to run an economy if you believe the economy follows MMT (which it does).

IMO, we’re basically screwed either way but austerity is the worse option. We should burn hot on green infrastructure, and offset with wealth tax.

We have no actual productivity gains at the moment, just financial speculation that’s likely to collapse. Inequality is making inflation and living standards worse, and slowing down the gains we could have.

Green infra is basically the golden ticket. If we didn’t have a massive fossil fuel sized hole in the economy, with a cheap and easy solution available, we’d have no chance in hell of getting out of this death spiral.

The author addresses that claim.

We document everything. Site Books, SDDs, RVS reports, boilerplate modules with full coverage. It works today, because the people reading those docs have the engineering expertise to act on them. What happens when they don’t? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe AI in five years is good enough that it won’t matter. Maybe the problem stays manageable. I can’t predict the capabilities of models in 2031.

But crises don’t send calendar invites. Nobody expected a full-scale land war in Europe in 2022. The defense industry had thirty years to prepare and didn’t. Even Fogbank had records. They weren’t enough without the people who understood what they meant.

Virtana says AI isn’t working out

I agree, we gotta cool it on the AI stuff

Virtana is responding by launching a new AI product

…goddammit

Just gonna uncritically repeat what the DRAM cartel says, eh Verge?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY

Who can even say? The developer said he’s never seen the code.

Technically, nowhere. Every US dollar is spent into existence and taxed out of existence.

Science fiction’s superpower isn’t thinking up new technologies – it’s thinking up new social arrangements for technology. What the gadget does is nowhere near as important as who the gadget does it for and who it does it to. Your car can use a cutting-edge computer vision system to alert you when you’re drifting out of your lane – or it can use that same system to narc you out to your insurer so they can raise your premiums by $10 that month to punish you for inattentive driving. Same gadget, different social arrangement.

https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/

Most moral army

Well… There are problems with AI that will persist regardless of whether it’s deployed within an economic class system. But yes, the most urgent problems are due to capitalism.

Some people genuinely have a problem with it.

But I’m convinced that the majority of it is just: It’s embarrassing (and therefore costs social capital) to defend it.

So therefore: If you attach it to something else you want to attack, you just gave yourself a strategic advantage.

.git-blame-ignore-revs

When I was a teen or young adult, I had to get into a deeply philosophical mood before I would think to myself “Wow… what are we even doing? Why are we like this?”

Now, I just glance at headlines or business ideas and I’m quickly overcome with revulsion.

I’m not sure if I’ve gotten more critical, or if the world has just devolved so thoroughly.

Soooo, programming?

1. Full English so you understand and trust the output
2. Terse English to increase bandwidth <- you are here
3. A “native language” optimized for LLMs, similar to the language of the whispering earring

A lot of it probably isn’t legal, but who’s gonna prosecute them?

Wow, it sure would suck if someone used Github to copy all of your code with no regard for the licensing and use it to try to disconnect you from the people who use your projects. I can’t imagine what that would feel like.