Yeah if you write a program and then use it to hack a system, you are liable. Are we supposed to believe they didn’t write these programs? Is that the real argument to have?
It used to be that we only needed so many smart people. What we needed were strong people, and lots of them.
Then only in the very most recent times did being smart become a characteristic that had a near endless market for human expression. Computer programming and the need for more programs was the apex. The rich nerd was familiar to everyone.
It feels like we're nearing the end of that era, at least in it's pure form.
Society has been built on the principle that people can find productive jobs, earn money from those jobs and pay for life's necessities with that pay. Prior to all this we had more subsistence living. It started to change in the medieval era and really took shape with the industrial revolution.
We like to believe the lie that this is a meritocracy. It is not. Most people get jobs because of who they know. Whole industries are dominated by nepotism (eg Hollywood). A sign of the rising waters is that having a wealthy backer or social connections is the only way to advance. This comes up even with becoming a doctor. Having a parent who is a doctor massively increases your chances of getting into med school, getting a good residency (particularly in a competitive specialty), etc. You want a job in investment banking or on a trading desk? Compare your chances as a nobody vs if your father is on a trading desk.
But what happens when, with increasing automation, there aren't enough jobs for everybody? That's the fundamental question of AI (and automation in general). The two extremes for how this can go are:
1. A small group will become increasingly wealthy while large swathes of the population will be permanently unemployed or underemployed. This is where people end up living in shanty towns and slums. Wages are overall low because demand exceeds supply; or
2. Society as a whole enjoys the benefits of automation by having to work less. Basic needs are provided for. People get to live with dignity regardless of whether or not they win the job lottery.
Put another way: AI isn't a technological issue. It's an economic one.
Yeah if they can't handle what they're making then they should be disciplined, if not shut down. It's like defective bombs accidentally exploding in storage. You would be like... hey bomb manufacturer! You cannot make bombs any more! We need bombs that only go off when we say! No more!
I mean, not that AI is like a bomb. That's not what I'm saying. Even though it makes a lot of sense. That's not the point. That it's like a bomb.
Where I live in the US there is a movement to A) Prohibit phones from being used in schools B) use textbooks again instead of digital texts C) use handwriting and notebooks instead of Chromebooks for in-class note taking.
While this might help, and I agree with all these steps, I'm concerned that the root of the problem is simply that the online experience has rewired our kids. Not screens per se, but the feeling of a constantly moving social space which demands their attention.
The kids? I mean sure, they too - but seriously... It's not just the kids that have been affected.
Things have been spiralling out of control ever since social media was introduced.
Ever more extreme positions are being agreed as the norm, and what had previously been the norm is being decried as evil itself.
I'm an atheist myself but I cannot help but think that a lot of our western issues is because we generally no longer see the world from the lens of religion.
Evil has lost its meaning, and people started randomly selecting other behaviors as "evil", and excusing actual evil deeds like rape, murder etc because "reasons".
This has opened up social media to become a echo chamber of ever increasing insanity.
I'm not seeing things get better through initiatives like that. I suspect things are gonna keep spiralling more and more out of control until we end up in a dystopia in which the populus looses a lot of their rights. And not in the too far future either, I'm almost certain I'll witness it before I grow old.
> Things have been spiralling out of control ever since social media was introduced.
Where do you observe things "spiralling out of control"? It isn't everywhere, but it is certainly true of at least one country.
> I'm an atheist myself but I cannot help but think that a lot of our western issues is because we generally no longer see the world from the lens of religion.
The lense that has replaced religion is callous for-profit exploitation.
> the populus looses a lot of their rights
People will certainly lose the rights that they do not exercise.
I’m not sure it’s social media so much as the smartphones. It’s been surprising to me watching my parents become slightly senile in a way that seems related to phones – much less ability to cope when the phones aren’t quite working and a lack of the habits I see in my own generation (eg one should obviously try to avoid having a phone out at the dinner table).
I don’t think I agree with your take around religion or ‘evil’. (Imo two big advantages of religion we are currently or will soon be wanting for society are firstly the social/community component and secondly the idea that one can lead a worthy and fulfilling life through acting virtuously and faithfully, rather than through the worth implied by educational or career achievements, which are often a rough proxy for certain kinds of intelligence, that are neither evenly distributed across the population nor easily changed, and which may become unimportant as machines outcompete us there)
I think if social media required logging into a desktop computer or laptop then it would be a lot less impactful. So I think I still disagree. I think smartphones can be bad even if they are limited to largely non-social media like YouTube or TikTok.
I'm not that doomer about what you are referring to. I think a lot of kids are wising up to the echo chamber.
Nah to me it's more about a loss of connection with the physical world, les slowing down, less being bored. Without that, it's a different reality and I think studying requires that kind of brain. Otherwise you're just flitting this way and that and never really focusing.
> I'm an atheist myself but I cannot help but think that a lot of our western issues is because we generally no longer see the world from the lens of religion.
Yeah it's a fun situation to be in I'm also an atheist but while not perfect the Judeo-Christian moral and legal framework is pretty damn good compared to everything else we've created.
Do some schools really use chromebooks for note taking outside of IT class? I can see the advantages for some types of exercises but using laptops as the default choice seems crazy to me. What is even the problem with textbooks and paper we're trying to solve?
What changed with teachers? As if they were doing same thing as previously you would expect pretty much same result. But clearly something changed somewhere and it might not be the teachers. It might be for example be the tools they have...
Teachers collectively became useless a decade ago? As a cohort? They were fine until then, but then suddenly collectively and globally decided to start sucking?
I disagree with the grandparent comment, but you could imagine a few teacher related causes:
- Maybe the better teachers retired or quit due to burnout/better opportunities (the pando surely increased both of these and I think one could imagine reasons for better teachers to disproportionately stop teaching). One thing we observe is the best decile being a lot less affected than the average or worst, which vaguely lines up with the hypothesis. I didn’t try to look into attrition or retirement rates.
- There could be a new teaching method that is popular with teachers, teachers’ unions, administrators, or governments but which is actually quite ineffective. My weak understanding is that the quality of education research is very poor and that evidence-based decision making for how to teach is extremely rare, so this also feels plausible. I think many HN readers would have seen stories about math teaching in SF public schools, and there’s also the positive case of Mississippi seeing great successes from some teaching methods that are supported by good evidence. In some sense this isn’t really a case of teachers being bad.
There is a concerted attack on the teaching profession, that's why education is terrible.
Teachers at the middle / high school level are not allowed to fail kids anymore. Parents are extremely litigious in America, suing schools over every little thing. Admins don't want to deal with that + their school's funding is tied to attendance / outcomes, so together they pressure the teachers to lower their standards.
Add into this the tech ologopoly trying to get kids hooked on their products young, pushing for chromebooks and google classroom when there have been numerous studies showing handwriting is important for retaining information.
The quality of student (on average) has also decreased thanks to tech. On average, kids are watching brainrot while their parents are trying to make ends meet, instead of reading or educating themselves.
Teaching is a thankless job. You have lots of unpaid hours (teachers need to prep lessons outside of school time, need to grade papers outside of school time, etc). I think a lot of people also severely underestimate the effort needed to keep 30 rambunctious kids on track. It truly drains you.
Given all this, there is no surprise at the outcomes.
I’d honestly argue—in 2026—it’s more important for Americans to understand black history today than the Vietnam war. The idiots who keep propelling Presidents into the Oval who repeat Vietnam’s mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran are folks with a terrible understanding of our racial history and way too much surface knowledge about big guns and materiel.
What currently constitutes these studies seems to be a mix of propaganda and bullshit. But that sort of underlines the point that we have an impoverished set of common facts.
I think it's probably pretty important to teach that the government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Saddam's WMDs, and that the history of the last half century has been the federal government constantly starting wars for no benefit to the American people, often under false pretenses.
While we're at it we can teach how the government conducted a biological attack on San Francisco to see what would happen if there were a biological attack on San Francisco, sold weapons to terrorists, let people's syphilis go untreated intentionally so they could see what happens (to be fair that falls under black history), conducted torture experiments on Americans (possibly accidentally creating the unabomber), was caught spying on all of us, and developed plans that they brought to the president to conduct false flag attacks on Americans to start another war. But they definitely wouldn't still do any of that. And the other things people say are crazy conspiracy theories.
I think Plan mode is very useful when building something that needs step by step validation, but also needs a broad strategy before starting.
For instance, in games where I work, we often need to manually test work out by playing or by using tools in ways that aren't feasible for the AI to do. In that case, getting the human in the loop between steps is an organized process when it's following a staged plan.
It would be awesome if data that a site like Linkedin calls the “profile” could be containerized and encrypted in such a way that each individual user holds a key to a box with every piece of identifiable information, and can revoke the right for any 3rd party to access it.
There are so many other ways to self medicate now! Why be a lonely drunk when you can be a social media trolling energy drink swilling porn addicted sports gambler
People can still just go do stuff, but they don't. They stay inside and watch screens all day because they're poor and sick and depressed and exhausted and addicted to their phones.
Too many people sure, but it’s doomerism to say third places are “dead”. Bar trivia is still packed, there are still pickup games in the park, and your local library still needs volunteers.
I think this online attitude probably causes some people to not even look for third places in the first place.
The idea that anything important is online seems to be ruining in-person activities. Many of those activities you mention are poorly advertised online and easily drowned out by advertising / ragebait / influencer slop. My local food court has a trivia night but the most prominent advertising for it is at the food court itself with posters.
I could be wrong, but I thought the "third place" thing more specifically refers to a pretty local institution such as a tavern or coffee shop where people meet regardless of club/team affiliation(s).
There may be more coffee shops now, but there are a LOT less neighborhood bars - or at least it sure seems that way in my Chicago neighborhood where one can see evidence of long closed bars on every other block.
I've starting thinking that the constant use of "there are no third places anymore!" is more cope and deflection of blame than an actual description of reality, often from people who want to use The Man or The System as a scapegoat for their own lack of socialization. There are still tons of third places, people are choosing to stay home instead of using them.
It's the same with "The Village" when deciding not to have kids. Everyone is allowed to move back to their hometown, or ask family to move closer. It's not always simple to do, but it's a choice people make not to.
I could take a $200,000/annual pay cut to move back to my hometown and live in an area devoid of things to do; but, you're right: I chose to move away and live somewhere that offered my children things I did not have and thus choose not to do that. I am also not sure how I could have my parents make the choice to live in an area that's more egalitarian and diverse; however, you're right, again: they choose not to.
I already pay for the house I no longer live in but my ex-wife does as well as my own with a 7.6% APR. But, them not having a house has nothing to do w/it; they don't want to live somewhere like this.
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