Comment by vouaobrasil
4 days ago
It's possible it's because some people care about the consequences of what we're doing as a society beyond the mindless satiation of curiosity. Nothing wrong with curiosity in my books by the way, but I do think isolating it the way we've done in the technical fields is a dangerous and irresponsible attitude.
As I understand it HN is a community for hackers to discuss interesting and curious topics.
Pessimistic opinions on the labor market, views about society and politics that border on the dystopian, as well as exaggerated concerns about datacenter environmental impacts, all seem like a poor fit for this website.
It would be a very uninformed world view and naive to say that the people who build and implement cutting-edge technology shouldn't be thinking about its societal implications and dangers. Or even considering more basic things like making sure it doesn't hurt anyone. Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you always should do a thing.
Anyone ever taken a CS course that includes extensive discussion of the Therac-25?
My issue with comments around the impact of AI is that often they are just not interesting.
What substance is there beyond "I don't like it, and I think it is a negative for society", typically delivered with what I perceive as a self-righteous attitude?
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I bet you even Windows built-in Pinball game hurt somebody and had social implications.
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It is precisely those people who have abdicated such concerns who most need the discussion. You can not compartmentalize reality, even if you can compartmentalize your own mind. These discussions lead one closer to a relationship with reality as-it-is than as your mind would like it to be.
You must expand the view to: members here form a community of people with aggregage special skills (which the "intellectual curiosity" part itself suggests) and are operators in a real world, which we assess and discuss.
There are urgent matters, important matters, and nice matters - all relevant to us.
There are less things to talk about on HN today than ever before!
I disagree.
We live in a time where artificial intelligence begins to rival humans in some areas.
We can now really automate things.
How interesting is that? There is so much to talk about.
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