I don't know what's happening exactly, but I am genuinely astonished how little people seem to care about people losing something real, dismissing it as "bruised egos", using petty terms like "whining" and "crying", or calling them some insult for the crime of being angry or sad for having a big chunk of their life pulled out from under them. I'm referring to the big picture of common talking points, not just this case.

I guess I'm not astonished that people are so bad to each other in general, but more that in the case of genAI it's so prevalent in places that seemed more elevated previously.

Part of me wonders if this is actually a form of self-defense. The misery of others can provoke sympathy or the opposite: Angry pushback to protect oneself from dwelling on their misery.

Similarly, I got into software because I like working with computers and solving problems for others. I see TONS of similar sentiment where people are almost joyously exclaiming “Software is solved! Sorry!!! It’s been a long time coming, you all deserved it, get fucked!”

And I can’t imagine feeling the same about any group of people. It’s been odd, to me. I’m just trying to support myself and the people in my life, and now there’s a looming fear that I can’t do that anymore… business owners are drooling over that, and other sectors are laughing.

Hard times, I guess.

I saw something similar on Twitter responding to 45yo software engineers making comments of depair in that HN thread about the increased suicide rate of middle-aged men.

For some reason I'm stuck in a real depressing, doomer algorithm / homepage on Twitter. But everyone on my homepage seems to have a take on the HNer comments along the lines of "see, this is why you don't make your job into your identity".

But that's such an antihuman response. The only reason you can put decades into a field to grind and build expertise is because you have an identity-level interest in a subject.

It's also not a good thing if the optimal way to live going forward is to have no passion for anything lest it changes so that we won't feel bad. I don't think that's possible unless you remove the human part of our brains or make life so horrible that we're happy just to survive another day.

Lots of people have lost their jobs and had to overhaul their lives due to layoffs or technological advances or political choices or factories moving overseas or whatever.

They are showing as much care for mathematicians as they received themselves, which is not much.

i think a big part of the backlash isn't about math per se and it's about what 'work' or 'a job' are supposed to be.

when mathematicians complaining about losing the part of the job that they love, people think "if you love doing it, why is anybody paying you? you're describing a hobby."

Because we don’t see it as something for them to be legitimately upset about, except that it’s going to disturb their ivory tower unserious profession.

If AI got significantly better at performing surgery overnight and doctors started crying about how they were going to be replaced, what do you think the public response would be? Non-doctors want the best possible care; they aren’t interested in protecting an industry. The same will be said for pilots and lawyers, too.

People dislike self-serving whingeing, end of story, but that’s doubly true when it comes out of a profession (theoretical mathematics) that is mostly practically useless.