Embrace absurdism. There is no other way

No, there’s not.

This is not a Ted talk or a Wendy’s, this is an entirely related post on social media. This is an appropriate place to bring up these ideas

Ok…I did. That’s what I just did. You were there for it

What now? I pointed out the problem, I can tell you the answer at the end of the conversation. The answer is third places.

How do we get there?

That’s the problem… When is it time to talk about men’s issues? Specifically, in a group that doesn’t listen to Peterson and Andrew Tate

I agree with what you said, but I think the solution is to talk about everyone’s issues instead of men’s issues. Men’s issues aren’t about the men, they’re about how men relate to others.

Women’s issues should have their place, but men don’t need the same thing… Instead they need everyone to show up and talk about their own issues

I think that’s fair.

I don’t have AI integration in my ide, mostly by choice -if I pushed for it I could make it happen, but I just don’t think that’s a good idea at this point

AI can be a crutch . One that limits you to the level of a baby developer. If you can’t effortlessly understand what it gives you, frankly you shouldn’t be using it.

Bounce ideas of chat gpt. It sounds like you’ve got the right idea - your reaction sounds correct to me, you should never ever trust it… You must only use it, and that’s the tone I get from your post.

It is a tool, you are a programmer. You exploit tools, you do not trust any tool. You are the one who turns ideas into actions, never forget that and you can use this new tool anywhere it makes your life easier

In fairness, about 50% of my code by lines is written by AI these days, and I don’t have it linked into my code base. That claim isn’t ridiculous

Now, of that 50% is 88% long repetitive crap that I could easily write but find mentally draining, the other 10% is something simple that I would normally copy paste from elsewhere because I forgot the exact syntax (and don’t exactly remember where I used it last) and me giving it a shot with things I don’t want to do, like restyling a page. The last 2% is me giving it a shot with business logic for shits and giggles, occasionally I’ll try to coach it through the solution but usually I just grab bits and pieces and rewrite it myself

Granted, this is the easiest and most simple and repetitive code, but it’s still a godsend. Now can AI write the other 50%? With a proper setup where it ingests the code base into a vector store it might get up to 75%, if I was willing to coach it through my tasks carefully (taking more time than the task would take me) I could probably get it up to 85% or 90%, but that last 10%? It just can’t, it’s not even close

It’s not taking my job without a paradigm shifting breakthrough or two on the scale of “all you need is attention”. Even then, it only works if you write your prompts like code… If you don’t understand how to use it and understand the code well enough to communicate the goal explicitly and unambiguously, you’re not going to be able to drive it where you want it to go

To put it another way, you can build 90% of the system in 10% of the time it takes to complete the last 10%

Can confirm. My phone got kicked off when they started sunsetting 3G. They called me (on said phone with no service lol) and said I needed a new phone. I said “no I don’t, put me back on the network”. We went back and forth, then they forwarded me to the tech department

The tech says “you need a new phone”. I said “no I don’t, I have all but one of the new bands and others with my phone have already gone through this process with you guys”. He said “you can’t believe everything you read online”, I said “be that as it may, I looked at the specs for both my phone and your network, and it meets the requirements”

He starts telling me there’s nothing he can do on his end, I say he just has to find an override to stop blocking my phone. He says he doesn’t have any options like that, I promise him it’s there

After getting tired of going in circles, I say if he doesn’t know how to do it he needs to ask someone or pass me to a higher tier. Surprise surprise, my phone instantly shows bars and he tries to gloss over the whole thing

Pretty often, but then you can just refactor the code so you can use it for more situations

What LLMs are good at are the opposite - when the thing you want to do is almost exactly the same, but nearly all the details need to be changed

Say you want a page to edit account details, and another page to edit community details. And the API paths to do this will be even more similar - but because they’re different things, you’d have to get fancy with the design to make code that works for both… It’s possible, but there will be trade-offs

LLMs are great at it though… Pass in the account page, give it the object definition for the community details, and it’ll spit it out for you

I’m not saying it’s necessary for everyone… Even if most people don’t need it, some do. I do, despite what everyone has told me from childhood

Anecdotes aren’t good science, but they can point out bad science

People say that… And yet, in middle school they did a hearing screening, and said I had reduced hearing. I told my mom “that’s crazy, my hearing is incredible, I just had earwax in my ears”. We went to the doctor anyways, the PA said she couldn’t see any earwax even though I could hear it moving around when she put the scope in my ear

I was adamant I just needed to clean my ears, so my mom grabbed some qtips from the exam room when the PA left, I cleaned my ears, and I passed the test perfectly

In my 30s I can still hear those “teen repellants” that whine at a pitch most lose in their early 20s. People look at me weird when I say I heard someone’s voice on the wind, and yet I can pinpoint individuals talking normally within a half a mile in a forest

I don’t use qtips anymore, I use a metal loop to clean my ears, but for me it’s most certainly necessary to clean them somehow

For me it was a mix of that, plus “great, so you’re going to close everything maybe was using, sometimes restart some of it, and everything is going to be on the wrong screen and virtual desktop. Now that I’ve spent several minutes getting back to where I was yesterday, let’s see what garbage I don’t want that you’ve added”

Linux has its own inconveniences, but I don’t regret the switch… It gets better every day while windows gets worse

No, they’re not people. They’re royalty

So the CEO gets less than half their salary for the year?

Sounds like a great deal for the company. Until, you know, the whole thing collapses because they laid off the workers who kept the whole thing running

Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. Why are they here? If it’s to troll, don’t give them what they want. If it’s for social interaction… Why are they venturing out of their echo chamber?

Every interaction with a community pulls you slightly closer to the group consensus. You can fight it to some extent, but we’re wired to fit in with the tribe

Social rejection is wired similar to pain in our brains - it’s far more salient, far more memorable and impactful, than normal interactions.

The highest form of this is rejection by the community - it hurts most when everyone’s attention is on you and they all reject you. Even a single person quietly reaching out afterwards is like a lifeline - it stands out to you. It takes hundreds or thousands of “normal” interactions to counteract one extreme negative one

A supportive community back home doesn’t counteract the impacts from an away game. Don’t go to their turf, let them come to ours. Do not feed them - we have better content, they’ll lose members to us, and if we do it right they’ll shrink until their echo chambers can no longer sustain themselves

I just pass the create table statements after the instructions. It does pretty good up to 2 or 3 tables, but it will start to make mistakes when things get complicated

On the plus side, it’ll generate tedious code very well - double checking it is less draining than writing it yourself. Especially because I make more typos than it does - I often use it to get a starting point, then write the business logic myself

What do you mean? It works the same way, the opinion of the community will pull you closer to the group consensus. Too much exposure will have horrible things you don’t really believe spilling out of your mouth

Don’t go there, don’t spread word about it, don’t feed it in any way. It’s like flood water - pull others out of it if you can, but minimize your exposure

As to shutting them down if you have the ability? Shutting down a cesspool is good - it fragments the echo chamber, and some members won’t make the migration. The only question is if I trust the one making that decision to remain impartial

Therapy is also about fit. It takes something like 5 tries to get a good match - both the kid and the parent need to be on board, or the whole thing will end up as a bad experience for everyone involved

On one hand, I kinda get it. Corporations do things, and if they get killed over small oversights there will be very real effects for many people

On the other hand, holy fuck, look around. Everything is going to shit, the planet is literally dying and we’re not even living it up anymore

How about the opposite? A decentralized system, avoiding concentrating power in any one place, and focusing on building platforms for coordination to act on larger scales

No, the community needs to cyber bully them off the platform. They need to feel rejection for their words, not censorship. Censorship lets them frame themselves as the victim as they seek out a smaller echo chamber on the fringes. They need to learn their words will turn the community against them

We still have to live with them. We can’t ignore them or silence them - we have to correct them