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▲ alsetmusic 3 hours ago

The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room.

The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after taking on debt to get an education and then this is the job market.

▲lokar an hour ago | parent | next [-]

A bit off topic, but about commencement speeches...

Marvin Minsky spoke at my graduation. It was around the time when it seemed like genetic therapies might solve all kinds of problems, and there was a big debate, moral objections, etc.

Most of the talk was a rambling rant against religion holding us back from scientific improvements to life. It did not go over in the mostly christian crowd. I loved it.

▲kakacik an hour ago | parent [-]

Its not a rambling but sad fact of life, one of the failures of mankind so far.

And we don't need to talk about some backwater 3rd world country (actually we do) - US has big issues allowing basic science to be taught to kids, because of some set of stories and anecdotes from various people gathered over centuries together about some potential events around one mason who started yet another sect 2k years ago, and they guard it with fanatical zeal to the last word, regardless how misguided and contradictory some of it is.

When society fails to deliver even basic known and proven truths to its most vulnerable, then don't be surprised that same people are later trivially manipulated into believing into many simply untrue things and behave accordingly ie in voting, to their own direct detriment.

▲prewett 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Religion is a lot broader than Christian fundamentalism and zealots. It's sort of like applied philosophy: how do you live a flourishing life in relationship to other people and to the god(s). Modernity has an implicit materialist worldview (matter is all that is) and an explicit rejection of the divine. However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the world. (And if we cannot flourish with materialist consequences, that is some evidence that the materialist assumption is incorrect.) So religion is not just some silly, backwater thing, and Marx was absolutely wrong.

The Christian fundamentalism you decry is the shriveled remains of a branch of Christianity that failed to protect itself from drying out in the heat of modernity. Fundamentalism is actually a reaction against modernity, but the East/West split cut off part of the philosophical richness, and the Protestant reformation cut off most of the rest of the philosophical richness, as well as the pathway to the mystical/transcendent. The Fundamentalists couldn't separate the indisputable truths of materialist analysis (Science) from the assumptions necessary for that analysis (materialism), and so they just rejected both. (Except, not really; they live as functional materialists with an exception for God.)

▲amanaplanacanal 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I just yesterday watched a scathing video about why the US has always had a major strain of anti-intellectualism, starting from the very first colonists:

https://youtu.be/j9MubNsh3rs?si=wpG1YLDz_Y9cOECQ

▲lokar 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Rambling in the sense of not being well prepared, like he had an idea and some points to hit, but not a script. The content was good, for me.

▲StilesCrisis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I saw him give a graduation speech over twenty years ago, and to be honest, he was not a great public speaker then--he rambled and lost the plot. But twenty years is a long time, so he may be amazing now! I love the quote.

▲kevinsync 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anecdata, but of the clips I've seen going around from Woz's speech, there were quite a few comments from people who claimed to have been there for the whole ceremony, most of which said that he was rambling and all over the place lol. Not bad necessarily, just that they felt like he wasn't really all that engaging, they were bored out of their minds, and some barely even knew who he was. Again, internet comments, so take that for what it is, just tossing my own pointless internet comment into the mix!

▲blanched 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've only been to the low tens of graduations, but in my experience this is pretty common for a speaker. A couple highlights and otherwise a little boring :)

Now of course, there are exemplary speakers who keep you engaged the whole time, but they're rare.

▲StilesCrisis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

In my case, I was not even graduating, I just heard that Woz was speaking and decided to attend. I don't regret attending, as I managed to get a picture with Woz after the ceremony and thank him for his amazing work, but the speech itself was extremely forgettable.

▲beej71 27 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Same, except not at a graduation speech. He was just all over the place, but I loved every second of it. :) As a nerd of the 80s, I'd take that over the sterile CEO BS any day.

▲hirvi74 5 minutes ago | parent [-]

> He was just all over the place

I feel like that is a trait necessary to do what Woz did throughout his life.

▲Waterluvian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I also saw video of some school president being booed so badly that he never actually gave the speech, while some other admin had to come hold his hand and yell at the tuition paying students.

Ah, here it is. It was CalArts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0vTVWyY47s

▲dyauspitr an hour ago | parent [-]

What did he do to deserve this, there’s no context?

▲HumblyTossed 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

the students were:

> ... protesting recent staff layoffs, severe program cuts, a mounting structural deficit, and the administration's controversial push for generative AI adoption through corporate tech partnerships

▲oulipo2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not that hard to "read the room" when you're a humanist, and not a sociopathic tech CEO... you just speak your mind, and you realize that your fellow humans are onboard with you

▲joe_mamba 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would you prefer the harsh unpopular truth of Erich Schmidt, or a sweet (unintentional)lie of Wozniak?

Because a lot of resentment people have later in life for career choices and failures in their adulthood are based on advice from their youth given from out of touch councilors and boomers who told them them sweet lies like "you can be anything you want to be if you just work hard and apply yourselves, the world is your oyster, etc", which turned out to be BS once their rubber hits the brutal road of the present day competitive jobs market, and the way the government backed system rewards asset ownership over labor, meaning a wrong choice here makes the difference between a homeowner or not.

The housing and tech jobs market today isn't the one Woz had in the 1970s in the bay area. There's a big chance his way of thinking that got him to be the cofounder and CTO of Apple back then would get him chewed out and spit out in the jobs market of today, just like how famous FOSS devs of tools that Google use internally couldn't even get past the resume screen at Google to get an interview. Same how I love my parents and they love me, but their out of touch career and life advice did more harm than good to me, even if that's not what they intended. Just like Woz, they're not malicious, but the world is much harsher today and moves faster than what older people who had it easier in their day can comprehend, so you have to take their advice with a generous portion of salt.

Ultimately just like councilors and boomers, it costs Woz nothing to BS young people with speeches filled with idealistic hopes and dreams that sound good and get cheers, since his set for life financially, only doing computing today as a hobby for fun, but he's not gonna be the one sending resumes looking for jobs based on his own advice, dealing with 7 stage interviews, and then wondering why he's getting rejections and how he's gonna afford rent.

As a Embedded programmer and HW tinkerer, I hate Schmidt and I like Woz, as people I mean, but I'd rather base my important life choices that affect my ability to get a job and pay rent on harsh truths from successful business sharks that I hate, rather than nice sounding but broken fallacies from people I respect. I'm old enough to have lived through this once, and if I were to have the chance to go back and try again, I definitely would pick the other side this time simply based on the fact that the people who did pick the ugly pragmatic side rather than the idealistic side, pulled out ahead, and they always will because that's what the world rewards.

▲romaniv 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Would you prefer the harsh unpopular truth of Erich Schmidt, or a sweet lie of Wozniak?

What Erich Schmidt is doing is not about describing hard reality. He is trying to make a particular version of the future come true by painting it as inevitable. It's literally a propaganda technique.

▲abirch 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed."

AI has made my life so much easier. If I need to change non-standard lightbulbs (e.g., G9, MR11, A19), I'm taking a picture and asking my AI what kind are they. If I need to create the first pass of test scripts, I ask my AI. It's reduced technical debt and let me focus on the things I care about.

▲ihumanable 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

For the last 15 years you could take a picture of a lightbulb and pop it in google search and it would tell you what kind it was.

I know because I bought a house in 2013 where the builder delighted in using a dozen weird fixtures and the cheapest bulbs they could find and I spent a lot of 2015 doing just that.

There are lots of things that LLMs are genuinely good at, searching by image isn't something we need LLMs for. I asked Google's LLM when google image search launched and it reported

> Google officially launched its "Search by Image" feature—allowing users to upload a picture or image URL to find related content—in 2011

▲dingaling 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's reduced technical debt

I think that's a misunderstanding of the phrase.

AI may have reduced your immediate technical burden.

However AI, if not carefully used, increases technical debt because it builds up a vast heap of code and business logic that nobody understands. The agent that created it forgets about it once it's out of its context window, the programmer that scripted it just knows it passed some tests.

In two, five, ten years from now trying to maintain that vibe-coded slop will be a battle between various agents making conflicting changes and some poor human trying to get it into a shippable state.

▲abirch 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You are completely right that AI can be misused/abused. If done right it can fix things like code bases that were created by multiple people and groups each with their own conventions. Before I had to know which group did what to know the variables. Claude fixed that.

There used to be pushback to have 100% test coverage. If you don't have that, then you can't merge. AI can write the tests but a programmer must own them.

▲mekoka an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I imagine how you intended your comment to come across and I get it to some level. But I can't help feeling that there's something a bit dystopian in a world where all friction is removed just to more quickly get to the juicy bits.

▲_factor an hour ago | parent [-]

You’re still free to walk to your destination instead of driving, it would just be a lot of time friction.

Funny how reducing the friction with technology eventually increased the friction of the older transportation methods.

▲kakacik 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are some of us who still prefer actually learning stuff, even about light bulbs.

AI is mental comfort zone so deep it will be extremely hard to ever get out of it, basically back to beginning of rat race. Maybe not applicable to you in your blissful ignorance, but sure as hell I won't put literally all my eggs into one tiny foreign-owned basket.

▲butlike an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nitpick, but it's not <your> AI. Would be nice if that were true, but it's not

▲wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been making some good use of this stuff, but identifying light bulbs, really? That wasn't exactly difficult in the Before Times.

▲abirch 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The G9 was completely new to me. Sure I could try to figure it, but I'd rather be focusing on the things I care about. This is the thing that I'd historically procrastinate.

To quote Adam Grant, "Procrastination is an emotional management problem not a time management problem"

▲brendoelfrendo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

As the old joke goes, "How many output tokens does it take to change a lightbulb?"

▲oulipo2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"AI has had a limited improvement over my life, so I'm happy fucking over the rest of the world by polluting water, using huge amounts of energy, and reinforcing class hierarchies, just so that I can change a lightbulb a bit easier" is peak tech-bro

▲dfxm12 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Additionally, Schmidt is not just opining that this future is inevitable, he represents people in a position of power to actually impose this future upon the grads (as opposed to something more mutually beneficial).

▲bko 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree Woz is a sweet lie how everyone is unique and a snowflake. But regarding "you can be anything you want to be if you just work hard and apply yourselves, the world is your oyster, etc", I think the problem is the work hard part.

Plenty of people have the wrong dreams, like being an influencer, but how many actually work hard. Like spend 60 hours a week analyzing youtube videos to find the perfect thumbnail or spend time learning every aspect of production from design, lighting, pacing and everything in between. Probably not a lot. And chances are if you do spend the time (on even a vapid dream like being an influencer), you'd do pretty well and learn a very valuable set of skills.

My experience is the bar is pretty low. It's hard enough to find someone that's competent in their field of expertise and is easy to work with. A lot of people are just missing the basics. They don't put in the work or are willing to take instruction.

▲zamadatix 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A lot of people work extremely hard towards their dream to fail. Which is fine, but when you start out life being told if you just keep trying and it'll happen then it can quickly destroy the golden years of your career/life. This is often varying per goals too. Just because you love football does not mean you're going to be able to be a pro player just because you spent every hour on it. You're probably better off e joying football, doing enough to get a scholarship, and finding something else to build your life goals around.

If you want to take yourself from where you are to the best chances at your dream, work as hard as you can towards it. But it's also more than fine if you don't want to take that risk, you can often have a perfectly good life without working yourself to death on the promise it'll make your dreams come true if you do.

▲aerodexis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲jmathai 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Truth is the wrong word for a future outcome. But…

Weren’t Schmidt’s comments on AI the harsh “truth” from the perspective of someone who directly benefits from the wealth extraction capabilities of AI?

It’s not the only possible truth. And definitely not the one I’m rooting for personally. That’s what you are hearing from the audience of graduates who are probably quite fearful of their future and also prefer another possible truth.

▲BearOso 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Weren’t Schmidt’s comments on AI the harsh “truth” from the perspective of someone who directly benefits from the wealth extraction capabilities of AI?

There are no wealth extraction capabilities yet. It's a money pit. They're certainly hoping it'll surpass some breakpoint and become profitable by brute-forcing compute power, but that's very optimistic. The propaganda Schmidt is pushing envisions that future in hopes of raising current stock prices so they can afford the brute-forcing that's very unlikely to succeed.

My prediction is that we'll keep the tools we've acquired, probably refined a bit, but the LLM path is eventually a dead-end. After this, if they still try to monetize, remote models will be extremely expensive.

▲LargeWu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not only benefits from it, but the very one causing it to happen.

▲lr4444lr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can't upvote this enough. As has been attributed to the Roman stoic Seneca: “An enemy is a bad witness to your merits, but a good one to your defects.”

▲butlike an hour ago | parent [-]

Doesn't that just mean that the merits will be unspoken and implied by what the enemy is saying as they speak to your deficits?

If I'm short with a bad temper, then implicitly I'm NOT a bad enough public speaker, or that would have been mentioned top of mind.

▲lanyard-textile 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The graduation speech is a spiritual ceremony.

It is meant to be a loftier take of the world around you. It is prescriptive: A call to action to make the world a different place than it is today, armed with your discipline and knowledge.

In lieu of this, Eric Schmidt walked on stage and gave an advertisement.

▲tmp10423288442 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> how famous FOSS devs of tools that Google use internally couldn't even get past the resume screen at Google to get an interview

As a former Googler, Homebrew was not ever officially supported at Google, or even particularly recommended, particularly because you were not allowed to store source code on your laptop anyway. Homebrew was definitely not used in any production-critical workflow. It's more accurate to say that some Googlers used Homebrew (I myself used Macports and never encountered any additional friction). Homebrew at that time was also unsuited to anything like Google's scale, so it's no surprise the author didn't get any brownie points for it.

▲leonidasrup 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As much as it costs Woz nothing to be AI sceptic, Erich Schmidt has to loose much if AI investments don't deliver.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/eric-schmidts-family-office-...

▲ericd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Only correcting this because I’ve seen three people make the mistake now - it’s Eric, not Erich.

▲sda2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

more like Erlich ;)

▲kolinko 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which, one might argue, shows he believes it.

He's putting money where his mouth is.

▲al_borland 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Up until the reality of the technology doesn’t align to the expectations and promises. That’s when true belief shifts to hype and lies in an effort to salvage the investment. I think that’s where we’re at now.

▲naravara 2 hours ago | parent [-]

For people like Schmidt I think the hype is a true belief. You can see it in his posture and tone while being booed by the entire crowd. I’ve only seen that kind of self-satisfied smugness from evangelical religious nuts right before they tell someone they clearly regard with disgust that they’ll “pray for them.”

Their view of what AI promises is some kind of secular eschatological fantasy that’s only partly rooted in anything the technology or methods do.

▲ryandrake an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yea, it's the smug grins from these guys that I can't stand. It's not enough that they won and they know they won, but they have to rub everyone else's noses in it, too.

▲gnerd00 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

agree but it is military thinking that makes him smug like that

▲ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
▲foltik 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More like his mouth goes wherever the money is.

Obvious to the grads he’s yet another “visionary” corporate hack waxing to them about how they’d better not miss the AI rocket ship.

▲GuinansEyebrows 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

i don't think you appreciate the degree of cynicism required to become a billionaire.

▲Shalomboy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Eric Schmidt has no clearer a crystal ball than Woz has; to say one is telling the truth while the other is lying is not particularly objective of you.

▲baxtr 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How can you be sure Eric Schmidt is telling “the truth” and Wozniak is lying?

What’s your rationale and on the basis for such a claim?

▲itsalwaysgood 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The economy

▲lukecarr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And famously, the economy never changes course. Something, something, stocks always go up.

▲itsalwaysgood 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you think AI will go away and suddenly businesses will start hiring people back?

Or that a competitive startup won't lean on AI to get ahead?

Doesn't matter how much stock prices move up and down...AI is here to stay and no amount of booing changes our desires to compete.

The world doesn't hold hands with anyone, there is no global consensus, no policy.

I recall all the bemoaning when IT jobs started going overseas... businesses always go with the cheapest labor.

The world is dog eat dog, and those that prepare for the future are better equipped to deal.

▲ryandrake an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It's a massive long shot pipe dream, but we might somehow end up with legislators who have backbones and actually represent the people, and they'll enact regulation to reign in the applications of AI, provide a safety net for the millions who will be affected by it, and/or at least find a way to spread the prosperity that comes from AI across the population rather than into the hands of the few. I'm not betting on it, but it theoretically could happen.

▲itsalwaysgood 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

I doubt it. There is so little care for monopoly or copyright because AI is a race, as much as it is a tool. And nobody wants to restrict the race. Policy may pass that limits the use of AI for the general public, but the 'whatever it takes' race to 'superintelligence' goes on.

▲watwut an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Or that a competitive startup won't lean on AI to get ahead?

Specifically, with the way both economy and politics is structured, everything will be about big corporations with centralized power. A competitive startup leaning on AI getting ahead will be either destroyed or bought.

>The world doesn't hold hands with anyone, there is no global consensus, no policy.

It is totally holding hands and helping out - to Schmidts, Trumps, Musks, Epsteins. Just not to poorer people.

> Do you think AI will go away and suddenly businesses will start hiring people back?

In fact, with well run economy that systematically prevents monopolies, yes it tends to hire people no matter what technological level. Currents state where few super powerful companies are able to push themselves into everything and create monopolies via dumping prices, even as they are not profitable and can count on their friends in administration to bail them out once if all goes pop is the ineffective economy.

▲itsalwaysgood 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

I agree with most of your points except the last one.

Probably easier to ask a question than argue a point: How eager are you to use Government services?

Businesses are only well-run if they make profit: hiring the cheapest labor to produce something people will actually spend money on. And the more frictionless that process, the more our economy advances it. AI fits in there very well.

I also want to point out: startups are usually happy to be bought up by the bigger guys.

▲al_borland 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The economy looked really good before the dotcom crash too. The crash didn’t make the internet go away, but it damped the hype and blind, unchecked optimism that was leading to some rather short-sighted decisions.

Right now so many companies are trying to use AI just to use AI, rather than using it when and where it actually makes sense. This is the big thing that drives me, and I think many others, a bit crazy. I don’t expect a bubble pop to make us go back in time to 2022, but I expect it will put an end these the AI mandates, token maxing, and other foolish behavior.

▲itsalwaysgood 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A lot of businesses depend on the Internet.

AI will be the same in the future. Not sure what to say about the ups and downs of stock price, or hype cycles.

▲skinfaxi 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The crash didn’t make the internet go away, but it damped the hype and blind, unchecked optimism that was leading to some rather short-sighted decisions.

The crash did not make the internet go away. I don't foresee a world where we will go back to the pre-AI times either. In the same way that post dotcom crash, you would be a fool to not have your business online, I think we will find similar things to be the case around AI. Even if the bubble bursts AI is here to stay and that will have major consequences for labor.

▲itsalwaysgood an hour ago | parent [-]

The irony of the dotcom crash is that a lot of 'dark fiber' service started rolling out decades later. Fiber that was laid during the dotcom era.

There are lots of datacenters going up in similar fashion. I don't know if they'd have the same utility decades later (very unlikely), but it's interesting.

▲joe_mamba 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Economic, market and product results.

Schmidt took Google to the moon financially, speareding projects like Chrome and Android that cemented Google as THE tech titan(couch monopoly cough), whereas Woz was a top HW engineer of his time, but Apple would have quickly failed if he was at the helm calling the shots, instead of Jobs.

From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek who was a one trick pony with the Apple computer but hasn't been in touch with the tech economy and jobs market for decades?

▲crispyambulance 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek [?]

The nice hacker geek? By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors", and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them.

In any case, that's a false dichotomy and actually the wrong question entirely.

▲tmp10423288442 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Woz should have a lot more money than that for being such a large early shareholder of Apple, so that actually speaks poorly to his reputation as a "successful entrepreneur/investor". Some of the reason why his net worth is below expectations is noble (giving $10m of shares to early employees), but most of it is not - 4 marriages as opposed to Steve Jobs' 1 marriage, an impractical attitude in general, and never having any success after Apple, even as an investor.

▲coldpie an hour ago | parent [-]

No one should have more than $140MM. That is a ludicrous amount of money.

▲jjulius an hour ago | parent [-]

Additionally, it's kinda funny to see someone arguing that an individual who's famous for talking about how uncomfortable he is with massive wealth, including his own, should be more wealthy than he is.

▲joe_mamba 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors",

So are a lot of people who invested(gambled) early in Bitcoin and Tesla, that doesn't mean people should take career advice from them just because they managed to make a lot of money.

But if you design and developed several successful tech products in your career, I think people should at least listen because it's a pattern rather than just luck.

>and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them

So is Taylor Swift, that doesn't mean people should take career advice from her.

When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver successful products repeatedly, like Erich Schmidt or Steve Jobs, not one trick ponies like Woz who managed to get lucky once in a completely different era, then coast the next 50+ years on past glory giving speeches.

Again, I really like Woz as a person, he's my spirit animal, but that doesn't mean he's correct and in tune on the status of the tech market, the challenges people and entrepreneurs will face today. His experience being a HW tinkerer in his garage in the 1970's isn't relevant anymore today. The world has changed massively since then.

A more modern day woz would be Palmer Luckey of Anduril. Love him or hate him he's more up to date on what the industry rewards today if you want to be a garage tinkerer made billionaire entrepreneur founder than Woz.

▲crispyambulance 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  > When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver repeatedly...
That's fine, I guess, if your idea of "success" is apple-scale product home-runs (good luck with that).

For those of us with more modest aspirations, listening to a cool person talk about cool stuff is a far better of use of time and attention.

▲jjulius 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Right? OP asked a very subjective question on a public forum and is bristling that other's worldviews/desires/goals are different from his.

▲itsalwaysgood 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is a topic about predicting and preparing for the future.

If you want to be snarky: this is hackernews, not reddit. Bring some logic into the discussion and stop fishing for points.

▲jjulius 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

>This is a topic about predicting and preparing for the future.

This is a discussion that started about preparing for the future and has spawned multiple[2], fluid threads[3] of conversation[4] that aren't quite in line with "predicting and preparing for the future", some even with their own throwaway responses unrelated to "the topic"[5]. Should we lambast the person who posted the Lisp joke, too?

This particular conversation chain is about how one measures success, which I've discussed with logic in a separate[0] response. Future success looks different for all of us, and there are a wide variety of ways for us to get wherever those goals are.

>If you want to be snarky: this is hackernews, not reddit.

Oh, no snark was intended. OP asked a question on a public forum and started getting snarky themselves[1] towards people who shared their subjective response, and my intent was to point out that it's OK for us all to view success differently.

>... stop fishing for points

Is this not snark based on your own assumption that I care about meaningless internet upvotes?

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235299

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235315

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234258

[3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234631

[4]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234238

[5]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48234819

▲stavros 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

The only people I see bristling are the ones who don't want to hear an uncomfortable viewpoint.

"When it comes to jobs, I'd rather listen to a business wizard from 2011 than a technical wizard from 1981" is hardly contentious, but if people liked hearing "AI has changed the world and you're all fucked", the students wouldn't have been booing in the first place.

Honestly, if you don't like what Eric Schmidt was saying, you should have a long hard think about whether unchecked capitalism is really as great as advertised.

▲naravara 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Funny thing about Steve Jobs is that he actually didn’t deliver a single home run until his return to Apple late in his career.

The Apple II was Woz, the Mac was okay but mostly got shepherded into what it was by the other Apple leadership, the Lisa was a flop, Pixar he was an investor but was mostly Lasseter’s baby, NeXt went nowhere until the Apple acquisition.

The guy had somehow managed to make a successful career out of shipping very opinionated, interesting, and cool products that were commercial failures. If you were going purely by commercial performance you would not have picked him, you’d be picking him based on that ineffable reality distortion field of his that makes you BELIEVE everything he’s doing will change the world.

▲StilesCrisis an hour ago | parent [-]

Did you forget Pixar? Jobs transformed the company with his extremely bold bet on Toy Story. They were doomed to obscurity without this big bet and now all children's movies are made this way.

▲LargeWu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I want advice from the one questioning whether we should, not just whether we can.

▲joe_mamba 2 hours ago | parent [-]

OK, and who's stopping you? Take your advice from whoever you want.

History tends to shows the pragmatists wiping out the luddites out of the gene pool/business market, but you are free to make your choice the way you see fit, nobody is forcing you to follow anyone.

▲ 2 hours ago | parent [-]
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▲jjulius 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wozniak, every time. Gigantic financial success at the expense of everything Google has negatively impacted isn't something I would be proud of.

Everyone defines success differently, and Schmidt's "success" is, frankly, unappealing and gross to myself and, I'm sure, many others.

There's a lot more to life and the world than the economy and massive financial gains. Focusing on "economic, market and product results" yet mentioning nothing about the impact to people and customers is how Zuckerberg sleeps at night, and that's ugly to me.

▲wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm fairly allergic to advice in general, but if I were to take some, I'd take it from the happy extremely rich guy over the ridiculous ultra rich guy.

▲watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Google turned from company that at least pretends to not do evil ... into one who does it without care.

I think that taking advice from a sociopath able to amass a lot of money is usually bad idea. Their advice is designed to make you make him a lot of money. His advice is not about what is good for you - he does not care. And if you succeed you are his competitor.

▲HumblyTossed 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> ... unpopular truth...

It is only a "truth" if we allow the oligarchs to make it a truth. This is capitalism run amuck. Late stage capitalism if you will.

The serious question that keeps getting kicked aside, is when the majority have no jobs (or low wage jobs at best) and can't afford your freaking "tokens" and trinkets, what then? But nobody cares because that isn't what's happening this quarter.

▲ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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▲rowanG077 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

TBH this is also how I feel. There is no way to put the AI genie back in the bottle. There will be sweeping changes in society because of it. Fighting against it is seems like a fools errand imo.

▲watwut 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Trying to limit harm of something that is likely to happen 100% makes sense.

▲rowanG077 an hour ago | parent [-]

I agree, this is why you need to tell students a realistic outlook. And of these two I believe Wozniak is in fantasy land and Schmidt is closer to reality.

▲kakacik 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You should step out of SV bubble for a while, check how rest of humanity fares compared to our ultra comfy extremely well paid jobs and maybe be a bit more humble, not expecting whole world to roll exactly as per your expectations, whatever they are.

To me, with my rather rich life experience, his words are generally true. There is some ceiling for each of us but its insanely higher than we ever achieve to reach. I've tested mine couple of times, and happy with the results.

And of course, if given society doesn't work for you, move to a better place. High quality of life can be achieved without massive effort if one is smart about it and a bit disciplined.

▲gyanchawdhary 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲stellamariesays an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

▲bko 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Where's a link to the actual speech? There's no link in the article. Surely you saw the speech to comment how strong of a public speaker he is, and it wasn't based off this one line right?

I'm sorry but that one-liner is reddit level cringe. I want to see the actual speech and more of what he said rather than one line.