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burnt-resistor 3 hours ago

The Unabomber had semi-correct problem identification, but completely worthless prescription like else anyone unable to separate reality from fiction basing their ideas on a Hollywood revenge movie or becoming a crazy terrorist with a cause that maybe valid seeing themselves as "good guy freedom-fighters" but alienates and harms many. People might've been interested in helping to counteract the effects or sources of a problem if a change advocate approached them in a manner that was constructive, achievable, rational, and considerate. Instead, evil, lazy actions make the cause a pariah and its supporters enemies to most.

He had infinite options he failed to exercise, like getting involved in the humanities (sociology, philosophy, law) and/or community building to do the groundwork necessary to contribute positive change rather than illusionary shortcuts to fruitless impact, needless suffering, and self-destruction.

AGI is a canard. Too much money in electricity, servers, land, and technological advances would be needed to build and operate sufficiently capable digital reasoning. Domain-specific pseudo-intelligence task automation will continue here and there with LLMs, deep learning, and such, but no one is building just one "brain" for less than $5T and it probably wouldn't be very performant.

Current AI is totally incapable of replacing expert human judgment for almost everything because they lack constraints, predictability, and reliability. Also, most models hallucinate worthless, incorrect answers so often that they should be relegated to glorified creative, entertainment, and task-acceleration work for the foreseeable future and not be given wildly-inappropriate power like giving a toddler a nuke. Furthermore, the appeal to LLM authority fallacy is a dangerous trend of unthinking, laziness of people failing to think skeptically and find sources for themselves. Finally, too many laypeople and wild-eyed techbros are projecting and imagining AI capabilities that aren't really there and may never exist, but then making much bigger mistakes of irrational, risky bets on their preconceived conclusions, and telling us we should worship the billionaires, accept layoffs, accept panopticon surveillance, accept their loud, polluting data centers in our literal backyards.. for what good?

bs439 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Its already replacing human experts. Watch the bond market self off currently happening in US. Driven by hordes of AI agents doing thousands of things faster than experts can blink. The experts at the Treasury tried to react at traditional human speed. Within a day the agentic horde detected the moves and counter reacted. Its like watching chimps throwing stones at a hurricane. The chimp troupe is quite unconcious about the randomness and surprises ahead.

donkey_brains 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

High frequency trading has been a reality for decades. What’s different now?

dist-epoch an hour ago | parent [-]

HFT strategies are simple. They are also static (they can re-fit, but fundamentally remain the same).

Putting LLMs in the loop now gives you reactive strategies. The agents can see the reaction of the market and adjust or change direction.

This creates complex feedback loops that can't be understood at human speed.

burnt-resistor 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Replacing people willy-nilly with AI is a stupid fad that won't work the way they think it will in most instances. AI doesn't impart judgment, constraints, reasoning, or correctness so far the way a human can and likely never will because AGI is a fantasy. Owners and managers will only learn this lesson after they suffer failure from their own stupidity and recklessness.

Another angle is excuses for mass layoffs are continuation of the Powell memo neoliberalism agenda of suppressing wages by keep workers desperate and partly a consequence of rising interest rates since there's no more free money.

Workers need to stop depending on megacorps for stability and form worker-owned co-ops that compete with and supplant unstable, mercurial megacorps.

paganel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> o fruitless impact,

His impact has not been fruitless, to the contrary and case in point, we're now discussing about him in here and in other similar places. Had he chosen the lame road of becoming a humanities thingie nothing of his legacy would have remained.

applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> People might've been interested in helping to counteract the effects or sources of a problem if a change advocate approached them in a manner that was constructive, achievable, rational, and considerate.

I mean this is just obviously and flagrantly untrue, eg. Greta Thunberg became a culture war boogeyman for half of the political spectrum over significantly more moderate views expressed in exactly the way you describe. If anything, acting like a bitch just emboldens the type who cause problems to cause more problems when they see these signs of weakness and zero will to resist them, as we see happening with acts of complete irrationality like Trump making a war against fucking wind turbines a top priority of the US government's agenda.

When you tell people they're protesting the wrong way, you're really just saying "I don't want to hear your complaints. Make them in a way that doesn't bother me so I can ignore them".

donkey_brains 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I generally agree with you, but I do think that terrorism is objectively the wrong way to protest. I’d say the Unabomber’s victims and their families were slightly more than “bothered”.

superze 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He said you can change the world by becoming a lawyer. This is such a funny take.

burnt-resistor 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Becoming a lawyer or getting a polisci degree is typically a stepping stone to becoming an elected official by understanding how the system of laws operates in order to change them. Bernie Sanders, for example. People like Darline Graham who don't know anything about anything and are there for feelings of nepotism shouldn't hold office... and I sure hope neither Hunter Biden nor Trump kids ever win office either. Elected office needs competency and requisite experience for the job first.

burnt-resistor 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're cherrypicking polarization as a counterexample against trying to be better. No one figure is going to appeal to all people, but actively pushing away a sizable fraction with negativity is the surest way to carry water for being divided-and-conquered.

If people aren't willing to listen to constructive feedback that maybe they are protesting or evangelizing a cause less effectively than they could be, then that's their ego and stupidity. Sensible people may have mentors and can evaluate feedback from all sources to pick through it for useful bits.

> acting like a bitch

Chill out and take your culture war flame bait elsewhere. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html