jaschop, jaschop@awful.systems

You’re argument seems like Suresh’s to me, in that making working software is just laughably easy for a competent engineer.

This begs the question why noone is exploiting this market gap. But there’s a couple explanations…

It can be a coordination problem, in that there are just barely any competent software organisations with enough engineers. The problem can also lie in how software is bought, since customers seem completely unable to determine the competence of vendors. Perceptions on what kind of software is a safe, respectable choice may even be anti-helpful in this regard.

I don’t think you have to be hypercritical of that part. Sure, rose-colored glasses could play into it but he calls the bad stuff bad and doesn’t justify it via the good stuff.

Also the stuff he describes seems plausibly achievable through buddhist spiritial practice:

In many ways MAPLE delivered: life-long friendships, freedom from past addictions and limiting self-narratives, strengthened character, and, for many of us, profound spiritual openings and realizations.

This Soryu figure seems fairly well accredited in that department. He just also happens to be a megalomaniacal control freak.

(Also, why does he have to share a name with Asoka? I’m dying a little.)

edit: I knew I spelt megalomaniacal wrong…

Of course there’s a class element to this, but you give them too much credit.

This isn’t poor people being exposed to stupid AI so rich people can reap the benefits of actual AI. This is poor people being subjected to stupid AI so AI company shareholders can pretend that their stupid AI is worth anything for another quarter.

I once listened to a talk by a guy from german OSHA that hit a lot of the good points. Perceived productivity opposed to actual productivity from the METR studies. Mental load of alien code review. (This was a company-internal IT-expert exchange thingy.)

A question in Q&A (submitted anonymously on slido like a sniveling coward) was deadass “Have you ever coded with a frontier model?”

If you could get a ukranian drone unit to spray paint “TRANS RIGHTS” with the trans colors on a Flamingo FP-5 before they send it to blow up a refinery, that would make a good post.

This gives me strong Belter drinking bulb vibes.

Yeh, I’ve been complaining about noncritical german news for a while. DW is not much better on tech issues.

Although sometimes, a critical piece slips through. E.g. on the fact that chatbots are turning brains to mush in a measurable fashion and that a lot of businesses and professionals are telling whoever is asking that this shit just doesn’t work.

Still, the big-tech-press-piece-to-reputable-news-story pipeline is going strong.

Oh, I just got a lovely nah-uh in my inbox: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/21448556

But please let’s be discreet and not upset the critters further.

You can be an anarchist and poke fun at naive interpretations of anarchism. I don’t think you have to read “all anarchists are like these hypothetical human pets” into that joke.

equates it with anarcho primitivism

Hey, it specifies solarpunk. The fellas have at least solar panels in there. And they know how to use pharamaceuticals.

I’ll grant that gathering medication in the bushes is a little on the nose.

It’s paternalistic, all right, but that’s something different. I have a toddler, I should know.

Disagree, I think there’s something there.

Something about baby anarchists who get the spiritual lessons but stubbornly refuse to engage with the complexity of the world and try to naively derive practices straight from theory which end up laughably ineffective. In contrast, once it truly sinks in how fucked and complicated the world is and how powerless your faction is your political practice starts looking more “normal” ™️, but you harbor no ill will against the enthusiastic baby anarchists and sort of envy their lifestyle.

Might be wrong, can’t read OPs mind. But somehow it doesn’t feel mean-spirited.

Never got into the silent call for work thing, but probably I’m just too antisocial. This all tracks, I do/did most of the other stuff.

Getting into meditation is also something I can recommend, just for the practice it gives you with wrangling your internal cacophony.