I disagree. Not charging a rich person enough to incentivize them to change means that the punishment doesn't fit the crime for them. Similarly, charging people a fine proportionate to their wealth is much more just than a fine that is devistating for the poor but insignificant for the rich.
I mean, luddites have consistently been correct. Technological advancements have consistently been used to benefit the rich at the expense of regular people.
The early Industrial Revolution that the original Luddites objected to resulted in horrible working conditions and a power shift from artisans to factory workers.
Dadism was a reaction to WWI where the aristocracy's greed and petty squabbling led to 17 million deaths.
I don't disagree with that, just that there's anything that can be done about it. Which technology did we successfully roll back? Nukes are the closest I think you can get and those are very hard to make and still exist in abundance, we just somewhat controlled who can have them
Quite a few come to mind: chemical and biological weapons, beanie babies, NFTs, garbage pail kids... Some take real effort to eradicate, some die out when people get bored and move on.
Today's version of "AI," i.e. large language models for emitting code, is on the level of fast fashion. It's novel and surprising that you can get a shirt for $5, then you realize that it's made in a sweatshop, and it falls apart after a few washings. There will always be a market for low-quality clothes, but they aren't "disrupting non-nudity."
So are beanie babies, NFTs and garbage pail kids -- Things that have fallen out of fashion isn't the same thing as eradicating a technology. I think that's part of the difficulty, how could you roll back knowledge without some Khmer Rouge generational trauma?
I think about the original use of steam engines and the industrial revolution -- Steam engines were so inefficient, their use didn't make sense outside of pulling its own fuel out of the ground -- Many people said haha look how silly and inefficient this robot labor is. We can see how that all turned out.[2]
> Things that have fallen out of fashion isn't the same thing as eradicating a technology.
That's true. Ruby still exists, for example, though it's sitting down below COBOL on the Tiobe index. There's probably a community trading garbage pail kids on Facebook Marketplace as well. Ideas rarely die completely.
Burning fossil fuels to turn heat into kinetic energy is genuinely better than using draft animals or human slaves. Creating worse code (or worse clothing) for less money is a tradeoff that only works for some situations.
What worries me is how AI impacts neurodivergent programmers. I have ADHD and it simply doesn't work for me to constantly be switching context between the code I'm writing and the AI chat. I am terrified that I will be forced out of the industry if I can't keep up with people who are able to use AI.
Fellow diagnosed ADHD here. And I know every ADHD is different and people are different.
What helps me is:
- Prefer faster models like VSCode's Copilot Raptor Mini which, despite the name, is like 80% capable of what Sonnet 4.5 is. And is much faster. It is a fine tunned GPT 5 mini.
- Start writting the next prompt while LLMs work or keep pondering about the current problem at hand. This helps our chaotic brain to keep focused.
I find that any additional overhead caused by the separate AI chat is saved 20x over by basically never having to use a browser to look at documentation and S/O while coding.
That makes sense. I do use AI for questions like "what's the best way to flatten a list of lists in Python" or "what is the interface for this library function". I just don't use it the way I see some people do where they have it write the rough draft of their code or identify where a bug is.
I suspect that the reason might be that the Industrial Revolution happened over 200 years ago. That provides a lot of time for 97% of jobs to progressively disappear without disrupting society too much (except for all the revolutions and world wars). That would be quite different than if AI caused any significant percentage of jobs to disappear in a much shorter period of time.
I'm not sure that's actually all that relevant. Political power and social class are much more determined by the wealth distribution within a society than they are by the worldwide wealth distribution.
It is and it isn't. Relative wealth within society has consequences regardless of absolute wealth. But globally power is absolutely shaped by wealth distribution as well, as wealth distribution is influenced by power relations too.
If that's the case, then why do we live in this late capitalist hell hole? Any technology that gets developed will be used for its worst, most dehumanizing purpose possible. That's just the reality of the shity society we live in.
Do you know that there are groups of people around the world who feel similar to you and choose to go and live in smaller communities abstaining from the trappings of the modern world? They live in self built houses, have wells/streams for their own water, grow their own food. I don't believe they're entirely self sufficient or insulated from the outside world, but they're close.
I don't understand why people who seem to hate the modern world so much continue to live in it, and complain on the internet, when they have the option to live differently.
All it takes for evil to persevere is good people to sit by and do nothing. Don't like the situation you're in, do something about it. Preferably other than doomscrolling, but hey, you do you.
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