Comment by xpe
5 days ago
Almost by definition, one should be skeptical about hype. So we’re all trying to sort out what is being sold to us.
Different people have different weird tendencies in different directions. Some people irrationally assume that things aren’t going to change much. Others see a trend and irrationally assume that it will continue on a trend line.
Synthesis is hard.
Understanding causality is even harder.
Savvy people know that we’re just operating with a bag of models and trying to choose the right combination for the right situation.
This misunderstanding is one reason why doomers, accelerations, and “normies” talk past each other or (worse) look down on each other. (I’m not trying to claim epistemic equivalence here; some perspectives are based on better information, some are better calibrated than others! I’m just not laying out my personal claims at this point. Instead, I’m focusing on how we talk to each other.)
Another big source of misunderstanding is about differing loci of control. People in positions of influence are naturally inclined to think about what they can do, who they know, and where they want to be. People farther removed feel relatively powerless and tend to hold onto their notions of stability, such as the status quo or their deepest values.
Historically, programmers have been quite willing to learn new technologies, but now we’re seeing widespread examples where people’s plasticity has limits. Many developers cannot (or are unwilling to) wrap their minds around the changing world. So instead of confronting the reality they find ways to deny it, consciously or subconsciously. Our perception itself is shaped by our beliefs, and some people won’t even perceive the threat because it is too strange or disconcerting. Such is human nature: we all do it. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to admit it.
I think "the reality", at least as something involving a new paradigm, has yet to be established. I'll note that I heard plenty of similar talk about how developers just couldn't adapt six months or more ago. Promoters now can admit those tools were in fact pretty bad, because they now have something else to promote, but at the time those not rawdogging LLMs were dinosaurs under a big meteor.
I do of course agree that some people are just refusing to "wrap their minds around the changing world". But anybody with enough experience in tech can count a lot more instances of "the world is about to change" than "the world really changed". The most recent obvious example being cryptocurrencies, but there are plenty of others. [1] So I think there's plenty of room here for legitimate skepticism. And for just waiting until things settle down to see where we ended up.
[1] E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
Fair points.
Generally speaking, I find it suspect when someone points to failed predictions of disruptive changes without acknowledging successful predictions. That is selection bias. Many predicted disruptive changes do occur.
Most importantly, if one wants to be intellectually honest, one has to engage against a set of plausible arguments and scenarios. Debunking one particular company’s hyperbolic vision for the future might be easy, but it probably doesn’t generalize.
It is telling to see how many predictions can seem obvious in retrospect from the right frame of reference. In a sense (or more than that under certain views of physics), the future already exists, the patterns already exist. We just have to find the patterns — find the lens or model that will help the messy world make sense to us.
I do my best to put the hype to the side. I try to pay attention to the fundamentals such as scaling laws, performance over time, etc while noting how people keep moving the goalposts.
Also wrt the cognitive bias aspect: Cryptocurrencies didn’t threaten to apply significant (if any) downward pressure on the software development labor market.
Also, even cryptocurrency proponents knew deep down that it was a chicken and the egg problem: boosters might have said adoption was happening and maybe even inevitable, but the assumption was right out there in the open. It also had the warning signs of obvious financial fraud, money laundering, currency speculation, and ponzi scheming.
Adoption of artificial intelligence is different in many notable ways. Most saliently, it is not a chicken and egg problem: it does not require collective action. Anyone who does it well has a competitive advantage. It is a race.
(Like Max Tegmark and others, I view racing towards superintelligence as a suicide race, not an arms race. This is a predictive claim that can be debated by assessing scenarios, understanding human nature, and assigning probabilities.)
> Generally speaking, I find it suspect when someone points to failed predictions of disruptive changes without acknowledging successful predictions.
I specifically said: "But anybody with enough experience in tech can count a lot more instances of 'the world is about to change' than 'the world really changed'. I pretty clearly understand that sometimes the world does change.
Funnily, I find it suspect when people accuse me of failing to do things I did in the very post they're responding to. So I think this is a fine time for us both to find better ways to spend our time.
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> Promoters now can admit those tools were in fact pretty bad
Relative to what came after, which noone could predict would be guaranteed?
The Model T was in fact pretty bad relative to what came after...
> because they now have something else to promote
something else which is better?
i don't understand the inherent cynicism here.