Comment by bionaut
11 hours ago
Or it just really is AI.
Maybe Dario Amodei saying this tsunami is coming and people are arguing it is not a tsunami and just a trick of the light are wrong.
We have had a giant bubble in white collar bullshit jobs the last 15 years and AI is going to pop that bubble incredible fast.
That doesn't mean the brilliant programmer is going to be replaced by Claude Code. The brilliant programmer type + AI what is going to do the popping, put more people out of work and massively gain from it financially themselves.
In other words, an extension of the same process that has been going on for the last 30 years.
There’s definitely going to be a shift over time. But it’s clearly not here just yet. So why preemptively lay off anyone? Isn’t that inefficient?
> But it’s clearly not here just yet.
That's not clear to me, and apparently not to Block.
> There’s definitely going to be a shift over time.
Yep, and as the transition happens, it'll probably be bell-shaped. Someone will be on the left side of the bell, and someone will be on the right side. Block has chosen to be on the left side.
> We have had a giant bubble in white collar bullshit jobs the last 15 years and AI is going to pop that bubble incredible fast.
Even if they are "bullshit jobs," they are what keeps food on the table for many people.
So the question is, what's bullshit about them? Are they bullshit because the capitalists could keep more money to themselves? Or are they bullshit because there are more socially beneficial jobs those people could be doing?
At some point, with increasing automation, "bullshit jobs" are going to be increasingly necessary, without radical changes in social or economic structure. Without them, you might as well just start sending the unemployed workers to death camps to be culled (though capitalism isn't so kind, and prefers to cull workers through slow deaths of neglect).
The despising drug addicts and welfare moms being supported by 'productive people' has now spread to despising working people making six figures. The thought seems to be there are elites/productive types that deserve it all, and the rest are just parasites and fuck 'em.
> The thought seems to be there are elites/productive types that deserve it all, and the rest are just parasites and fuck 'em.
Yeah, the misanthropic individualism is really getting out of hand.
Also, the irony is a lot of people who imagine themselves as "elites/productive types" are going to find out too late that they actually aren't.
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