Price of human intelligence is also falling rapidly. I suspect looking pretty is going to go up in value more rapidly.

In my career I've worked with people with PHDs in Physics. People with advanced degrees in fluid dynamics and turbine engineering, people with chemistry and ChemE degrees, postdocs in Geology.

All were working alongside me, a self-taught programmer making websites.

I've long thought that there's an oversupply of smart people in the world but for the field of software development, which was hiding that fact by soaking all of them up.

If SDE is collapsing as a field, a whole bunch of people who thought their intelligence and credentials guaranteed them a comfortable life are in for a shock.

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mrdependable 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is really looking at the problem from the wrong angle. It’s not that we don’t need all those degrees. The problem is that tech companies are making so much money that it makes other industries practically irrelevant when it comes to return on investment. It has thrown the economy completely off balance.

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jordanb 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I was talking to the turbine engineer at lunch one day and the way he put it is this:

There are about five companies who hire people with his background. They all go through boom and bust cycles together. When he graduated they were in a bust cycle and nobody was hiring new graduates, so he found a job in software. He was glad because the pay and working conditions are better, and at the time (a few years ago) it seemed like software engineering was a safe career with lots of employers, which turbine engineering was not.

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deepfriedchokes 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Strongly agree. Perhaps an economy shouldn’t be organized around money.

	▲	ericmay 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		How would you propose an economy not be organized around money? Any examples you could think of that have worked well? I would also ask that in doing so if you can consider how these changes would work with today's nation states and the scale of 8 billion people or so too.

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margalabargala 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> If SDE is collapsing as a field, a whole bunch of people who thought their intelligence and credentials guaranteed them a comfortable life are in for a shock.

Even if we accept your precondition as true, that SWEs contain multitudes of smart people who will jump to other industries, I don't think the conclusion holds.

In the US at least, SWEs are among the most entrepreneurial industry members. They'll bring that attitude to whatever their new industry is. I think there will be an explosion of new startups in different areas, and we'll Jevons Paradox our way forwards.

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

Price of human intelligence is going up actually, because there's ever-decreasing amount of it, and we've invented a cheap substitute that makes people even stupider.

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silverFork 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

In schools there are massive changes. I was told that kids are more relaxed and care less about education and that the value of the smart kids, the know it all kids, is going down as more students can access Ai and they are not as helpless as they were when failing to tune in while in the class. The dynamics are changing and students are less suicidal too apparently because the pressure to deliver scholastically is going down because no one knows what the future holds and what will be valued.

	▲	inanutshellus 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'd expect this to be temporary while the educational system figures out how to manage LLM-bolstered students. The intern I worked with last year said her graduating class all felt like they were the last "real" graduates. Meaning: the class after her had less credibility in her eyes, having been presumed to have used AI to get past the "pons asinorum"/"bridge of asses".

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bryanrasmussen an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you prove to me that the price of human intelligence is going up? At best it is as it always has been, intelligence in some fields is going up.

It's generally true that the rarer something is the more valuable that is, but only if there are enough potential buyers of the thing that can recognize it. If there is an ever-decreasing amount of intelligence there is probably an ever-increasing amount of stupidity - so will the stupid be smart enough to reward the intelligent with high paid positions?

What I suppose is actually that human intelligence will become more monetizable, by allowing those with it to better take advantage of their unrecognizable ability. But only if the interlocking systems of humanity do not fall apart and destroy the world due to there not being enough intelligent people left to make things work, as per various works of science fiction on the subject.

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ryeats an hour ago | parent [-]

Group think is highly unlikely to provide new discoveries.

	▲	bilbo0s an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Well, I mean, neither is non-group think. That's the issue. No one can really systematize "discovery". How many "group thinkers", "creatives", "non-group thinkers", "nihilists", "anarchists", "contemplatives" in the last - say, 500 years, 5000 years, whatever - have been occasioned by the fall of an Apple? Or the fall of a branch? Or a leaf? Or what have you? Why did it spark a new flame in the mind of Newton? Science can't explain. If we could, we'd teach everyone to be that sort of contemplative.

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mrshadowgoose an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I frequently have speculative conversations about what (good-leaning) post-AGI societies might look like.

When asked about how one might attain social mobility in such a society, where the intrinsic value of our intelligence and ability to do labor is gone, I unironically respond with "be hot".

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IAmGraydon 2 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If human intelligence stops being the trait that propels one up the socioeconomic ladder, it will not be good looks that takes its place. The ability to project physical force will become currency. This is why AI could cause civilized societies to completely unwind.

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0c3ca83 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Talking pretty, too -- which takes some intelligence, but not too much. The era of the awkward nerd is over. The world is returning to its natural order, with the slimy salesman in the lead.

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iAMkenough an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don’t have to look pretty to become an oligarch these days. Have you seen those guys?

	▲	silverFork 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Have you seen their wives with lip and cheek injections lately? I am not saying that they are pretty by old standards; to each their own.. it is a new standard of beauty in the age of Ai I suppose; mass transformation of beauty standards is a thing..

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lirolero 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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