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Comment by jayd16

14 hours ago

All machines are for laziness.

Not exactly. A drawing program could just create a new "blank slate" that substitutes some old skill requirements for new skills. The key point is that SOME machines create a sufficient mass of "blank slate"-like environments for active creativity and others (like AI) only diminish that room for creatvity to flourish. The danger is creating and using machines of the latter type.

This is totally wrong.

Some machines are capability amplifiers.

Other machines are shit puking buck passing time sinks.

I think you are confusing machines with motors. Many machines do things that simply are not possible without. A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking, but it enables you to go faster than you can run. Menually operated sewing machines produce stitches that would be infeasible by hand.

Motorising any of those machines could be considered lazy, though.

  • > A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking

    Of course it is, at equivalent distance.

    • I did not say anything about distance. I said cycling enables you to go faster than you could possibly travel without it (ie. faster than you can sprint). What you do with that speed is up to you, but most use it to get to places in less time or get further in the same amount of time. The point is it's not about laziness, it's about unlocking new capabilities.

      If cycling were just about laziness then you'd see people cycling at walking speed everywhere, which you never see.

      Since we're kinda talking about LLMs too, it's interesting to note that while cycling really does enable you to go faster than you can run, LLMs do not enable you to type at 1000 words per minute. LLMs are more like a teleport that only lets you describe your desired destination, you cannot simply enter a coordinate to get exactly where you want to go.

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  • But you could still arrive if you walk instead of using the bicycle. And I am sure you can do the same stitches by hand, it just takes forever.

    Same with coding agents. I could do it by hand. It just would take much longer. Often so long that it would be impractical.

    • You cannot walk 100 miles in a day, but anyone with a bit of training can cycle that in an afternoon. It's not a matter of effort or laziness, it's simply not possible.

      The stitching comment is just pedantic. People don't hand stitch like a machine not because they are lazy, it's because it's ineffective and impractical. It's not impossible to drive screws directly into softwood by hand, but you'd never get anything done that way. It's not lazy to choose another method, it's just being an effective worker.

      As for coding agents, it's clearly effective to write software without them because we have been doing it for decades so far. It still remains to be seen whether they are laziness (ie. it's just a motor) or if they are actually enabling new possibilities (ie. we get software that really wouldn't have been possible before).

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  • > A bicycle, for example, is not at any less work than walking

    What? Have you, uh, ridden a bicycle before...?

    • Thousands of miles on foot and tens of thousands on bicycle. Walking is essentially zero effort, so I don't see how cycling can really be easier, unless you are going downhill. People cycle because it's faster, not because it's easier. People drive because it's easier (many people still drive even if it takes longer than cycling).

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