Apolitical Tech, is the goal we give machines that gets rid of humanity. That's the only way you make anything apolitical. Where there are two people, there is a struggle for a balance of power.
Where any two people are reasonable, I would posit that you have classical anarchy. Only a combination of unwillingness to cooperate and open hostility results in a power struggle. In my experience, the absence of preexisting tribal prejudice tends to generally have people start off favorably since people like to be liked.
Do you have any evidence for that? From what I understand, the corn to ethanol pipeline was created to keep corn prices from dropping below what the farm bill would pay for.
My guess is that this is going to be everything other technology that's democratized. You see a flood of low quality output because you have a lot of new non-technical devs. Some of these are good enough to crowd out some of the prexisting tools. The volume creates noise which also makes the good stuff harder to find. Eventually an ecosystem starts forming around these low hanging products which fill the gaps between pros and amatures (think of what happened to video editing and Apple). Eventually you have more people creating a better product in the long run. There is a bit of a feedback loop here as AI gets better, it makes the products it outputs better, which inturn can benefit AI as it learns from improvements.
I love how myopic the knee-jerk reactions to these pleas of modesty and decency tend to be.
"If AI replaces all jobs, none of us will have to work!" Alright, let's extrapolate a bit.
Society is currently organized around working to survive. AI suddenly replaces all work. How do people survive?
"Well everything will just be free now" Will it? Will the Capitalists who built these systems and replaced that labor now suddenly just give away product? Housing? Food? Care?
"Well, we'll just have to reconfigure society!" I mean, yeah, sure, obviously that'll have to happen. Will the Capitalists who empower the current systems of governance now cede said power when work is no longer available but still necessary to survive?
"Oh, well, people need to cooperate then, speak up for themselves, take action now." I don't disagree, and I think these sorts of Op-Eds, the "AI Doomers" making pleas for decency and civility in comments sections, the artisans demanding compensation for the theft of their work, and the myriad of folks who recognize the pace we're on will get people killed - nevermind the folks highlighting AI's disproportionate use in mass surveillance, genocide, and inflicting harm on "undesirables - are doing exactly that: speaking up, taking action, and attempting proactive reform.
"But they're hindering AI!" That's the fucking point you colossal numpty. The point is to slow it down so we have time to adapt.
Like...jesus, I expected more/better from folks who digest mathematical proofs and Arxiv papers for funsies, yet so many people here just cannot think critically about complex issues that involve people other than themselves.
Unfortunately there is no way to slow down technological progress. The plea for mercy in the face of rapid change is heard, and now it's time to adjust instead of asking for pause.
The Guardian opinion piece is sad to me, in that the view of humanity freed from work is seen as a problem. I prefer to think that we could adjust our economic goals from 'high employment' to more wholesome metrics about mental health and happiness.
Some people seem to think that the capital owning class is somehow going to grow a conscious and start sharing their wealth with the common folks. Let's be real that has never happened willingly only by force and bloodshed have the working people ever gotten anything.
Moreover it's possible to use military power to lock things down so hard that the people don't even have a chance to revolt. For example North Korea, or any other despotic regime in the world.
If you think the musks and zuckerbergs are going to ever give anyone anything think again!
The post scarcity post work future means complete poverty for the majority of the worlds people. (So in fact the complete opposite, lots of work and lots of scarcity)
I mean, also yes, but barring that I'd still like some time to avoid having the Civilizational Tesla slam into the concrete barrier on auto-drive. Y'know, just to try.
>Like...jesus, I expected more/better from folks who digest mathematical proofs and Arxiv papers for funsies, yet so many people here just cannot think critically about complex issues that involve people other than themselves.
People who LARP about digesting mathematical proofs and Arxiv papers for funsies.
This exactly hits in on the head. You're trying create a forum absent of politics. In fact, you're just enabling one political view over another. This hides social issues and in the end comes back to undermine your pure "technical view". It's not apolitical, it's disassociation from reality.
Exactly. Declaring that there must be no discussion when confronted with situations in which one party is doing harm to others, is an implicit endorsement of the harms being perpetuated.
Thank you all in this thread! I couldn't have put it better. I cannot stand "no politics rules". Politics divides and it is personal. But it shouldn't be either of those. We should be attacking policy and not people. No politics rules just deny reality because software doesn't exist in a vacuum without policy and money. Heck most people want to use software to get money which is a product of policy.
HN isn't even absent of politics, just the front page is really.
Everything we do is political. When we are making software and publishing it, whether or a company or ourselves, for sale or for free, there are political implications to those actions.
Ozempic is another quick fix. You're going to be thin, but if you don't put in the work lifting weights and eating protien you're just a younger old person with advanced sarcopenia. One fall and your hip shatters. It won't address any other inactivity related illnesses and comes with its own issues. Ex. Bladder not being able to handle bile etc. I get it for advance stage diabetics who have enough nerve issues to be at risk for sepsis and amputation, I don't think it's great for average joe who just wants an easy way to lose weight.
Why are you writing off eliminating obesity as something purely cosmetic? Obesity itself is the most costly affliction by far in the west. It increases all cause mortality, increases healthcare cost, and reduces outcomes for surgeries and rehabilitation after accidents. It reduces work efficiency, reduces lifespan, increases public infrastructure cost by requiring design for things like seatbelt extenders, large corridors for parking mobility scooters etc etc. It promotes food waste, increases energy usage... I could go on and on, but the general idea is that bigger people = bigger costs for everything.
Im not sure why theres such a diataste for just letting fat people take a pill/injection to lose weight. The current advice of telling them "lose weight fatty" is clearly not working on a societal level. When GLPs and naltrexone therapies become ubiquitous we are looking at vastly reduced healthcare costs.
There is also a good possibility that GLPs will kill the fast food industry, which means less fat kids, which means less fat adults.
I wouldn’t say people are writing off “eliminating obesity as something purely cosmetic”. Being obese is way worse than just a cosmetic issue.
But a world where literally millions of people are on a “lifetime drug” to reduce their bodyweight seems to be exactly what the big pharmaceutical companies are hoping for. They will make tens of billions of dollars every year if this is the case. Hell, there are endless commercials where middlemen (e.g., Ro) are hyping these drugs, telling you they can get you prescriptions, etc. If there wasn’t HUGE money in it, this wouldn’t be the case.
Yes, there are some people who have medical conditions that make weight loss very difficult. And these drugs can be a literal lifesaver for them. But for every one of them, there are dozens and dozens (or more) who simply make bad choices about food and exercise. Things that, if changed, would lead to a lifetime of improved health without any of the concerns or side effects of taking a drug forever. Our culture seems to be evolving to where it’s perfectly acceptable to translate “this is not easy” to “I can’t possibly be expected to do this, no matter how good it would be for me."
I’ve been accused of “hating fat people” for this take, but it’s the furthest thing from the truth. I encourage people to actually change their lives in a sustainable, healthy way, because I care about them. It’s not about shaming them.
Can you be “healthi-ER” taking these drugs than if you don’t exercise and eat too much and too many awful foods? Sure. But I’d prefer to see them EVEN healthier by treating their bodies better in every single case where that’s possible.
> But a world where literally millions of people are on a “lifetime drug” to reduce their bodyweight seems to be exactly what the big pharmaceutical companies are hoping for. They will make tens of billions of dollars every year if this is the case.
They (and other elements of our healthcare industry) already make a lot more than that on treating the side effects of widespread obesity.
>They (and other elements of our healthcare industry) already make a lot more than that on treating the side effects of widespread obesity.
This raises a thought I hadn't considered before: given how much money gets made off of obese people, it wouldn't be surprising if there would be significant commercial interests that would want to try to actively hamper anything that'd systematically reduce the overall population percentage of obesity. We've seen plenty of examples in the past (and ongoing) of perverse incentives. In turn, I wonder if it's actually a small silver lining that the drugs are so wildly profitable for the short term, in that the producers are incentivized to lobby against any efforts to legally hobble them. And then in the longer term it will all go off patent.
You also have to remember that not everything is a conspiracy.
Just because someone is making a boatload on a problem existing doesn't mean someone else doesn't want to make a truckload undercutting that business, even if the first business might try to stop it, well, sometimes a different set of bad guys wins.
In happyland im sure everyone would eat lean high protein meals and squat their bodyweight 3x a week, but that isnt reality.
The amount of mental and physical effort required to lose and maintain weighloss is absolutely not commensurate with what the average non-obese person needs to feel and do. Anyone that has lost considerable amount of weight will tell you this. In addition to that, the long term efficacy of lifestyle adjustments w.r.t weight loss hovers around 20%. Once you have had the fat in your body, your hormonal profile is forever changed. Those fat cells sit and make "FEED ME" hormones until they are lysed, which can take between 2 and 10 years.
That's the worst attitude I've ever heard. I feel like you work for a pharma. If I google your name will I find that you do. It's weird unbalanced position you take. You put words into people's arguments. Your account was recently created. This sounds like pharma PR.
"Obesity itself is the most costly affliction by far in the west"
But if people stopped killing themselves in their 60s and 70s, we'd have gobs of people living until their 80s and the cost for dementia and Cancer Care would be ginormous.
Where did I say it was cosmetic? At best you'll lose weight on it, but without forming good habits and lifting weights you're a candidate for muscle loss and related injuries (Example. Falling in tub and shattering hip). Once you're off ozempic, if you didn't form good habits, the weight gain is significant. You'll also put back on a lot of weight with a lower muscle mass. Again, I'm not sure where i said it was cosmetic.
The west = the western hemisphere, the new world, the Americas, from the Northwest Territories to Patagonia
But why trouble yourself to distinguish anyway? 30% of the Irish are obese, 28% of the UK, nearly a quarter of Belgians and Germans. If over a fifth of your population is sick, does it really bolster your national ego so much that some other place is sicker?
Its faster to type "the west" than "the developed world except france, bennelux, and nordics" everywhere else has obesity rates approaching or above 20%, which is a systemic catastrophe
Sure it's not a cure-all, but for the overwhelming majority of people who are obese, being thin and not lifting weights would be an improvement health-wise.
If the alternative to using Ozempic is eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, then sure, the latter is better, but the target population for it is people who have spent many years not eating healthy or exercising and who are unlikely to start in the near future.
Even if you're active, body fat is still a contest between food drive and will power, which vary widely between people based on genetics and upbringing. Realistically, people with very high food drive and easy access to junk food are going to struggle to maintain a healthy level of body fat even with an active lifestyle.
I know several people who lift weights three times a week, run for at least thirty minutes three times a week, and were still consistently 20-40 pounds overweight before Ozempic and similar drugs.
Exercise all you want, but for most people, if you eat garbage food in large quantities, you will be overweight.
I am exactly the same, btw. Most of my family was overweight when I was growing up. I was a fat kid, all the way through high school. Since then, I have been exercising consistently for 40+ years. Lifting weights, bicycling, walking every day, etc. But I still need to not just eat everything I want or I will gain weight. I try to avoid junk food, fast food, eating out, MOST days. Personally, I do one “cheat day” per week (see Tim Ferris’ Slow Carb diet for roughly the idea, although I’m not militant about the foods he says are ok, etc.).
I’m around 20% bodyfat at 5’10” in my early 60s, so I could use to drop 5-10 pounds of fat. What boggles my mind is that everyone says I’m crazy to think I need to lose ANY weight. I’ve got clearly visible fat around my middle and other areas, even if I’m not “technically obese”. I don’t look great in most clothes. But compared to the typical person (my age or not), people think I’m in great shape.
I wouldn’t say what I do is incredibly hard. But it’s also not just “do whatever you want all the time”.
> I wouldn’t say what I do is incredibly hard. But it’s also not just “do whatever you want all the time”.
I think the difficulty varies from person to person a lot more than people realize. We all end up making decisions between what we want to eat and what we think we should eat, but the level of deprivation people feel when they forego the tasty option for the healthy option seems to vary.
I think we eat similarly, and it's not incredibly hard for me, but I think it's much harder for some people.
In general I agree. However I know someone who, since they have gone on GLP-1 burp, hiccup and do this strange 'gasp' with regularity. Probably related to the delayed gastric emptying. Adjusting dose hasn't helped. To them its a good trade because they had always struggled with weight loss. When I observe them sure they look better but now it seems like they are in a different type of constant discomfort.
You dont need to weight lift and eat some kind of huge amount of protein to be healthy. Do not be ridiculous. The bulky aesthetic is just that, men liking when men are bulky. And if your goal is to be thin, you should pick different sport then weight lifting.
There's a valid point buried in there, though; that being skinny won't make you fit / healthy by itself. You don't have to lift weights, but you do have to be a little active in some way.
There's more and more research that says you do need to do some sort of resistance/strength training to minimize morbidity and mortality. It doesn't have to be weight lifting, but if you're only doing cardio you're missing something.
I don't minmax life for the same reason I don't minmax games. We had healthy people before the recent weight lifting craze; my strength training is rock climbing.
> We had healthy people before the recent weight lifting craze
Most people did manual labor. Even if they didn't, everyone walked more, or rode horses, chopped wood, drew water from wells, and did a hundred other things that required using their muscles in a way that's just not necessary today.
> my strength training is rock climbing
That's weight lifting too. Bodyweight is still weight.
To have a higher quality of life in old age, you need to build strength in your youth. The shift to sedentary lifestyles has happened in the last 50 to 70 years, and that also coincided with an increase in life expectancy.
The comment you responded to about not "min maxing" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499625 only advocated resistance and strength training, not "weight training" specifically. It's hard to dispute that having a stronger body is better for living a healthy life.
> Even if they didn't, everyone walked more, or rode horses, chopped wood, drew water from wells, and did a hundred other things that required using their muscles in a way that's just not necessary today.
None of that will bulk you like weight lifting nor is similar to weight lifting. Those guys were smaller. By our standards, they would do a lot of low resistance repetition, basically.
> That's weight lifting too. Bodyweight is still weight.
I mean, you are stretching the definition of weight lifting to unrecognizable. Climbing is not weight lifting anymore then walking is running.
> None of that will bulk you like weight lifting nor is similar to weight lifting
Even weight lifting won't bulk you unless you actively try to bulk. Seriously, appearing muscular or bulky when you're fully dressed is actually quite hard to accomplish for most people (practically all females and maybe half the males). It takes years and years of gym work and diet that most people won't ever put in.
Rock climbing is probably going to be just as good at weight lifting. My understanding of the mental model here is:
Up until around age 60, your body adjusts your muscle mass based on usage. Somewhere around 60, you start losing muscle mass. If you have just enough muscle for day to day activities in a sedentary life at that point, then over time daily tasks like carrying groceries or standing up out of a chair are going to become prohibitively difficult. You need to do something that encourages your body to grow more muscle than you need for day to day life so that you can afford to lose some of it.
You are missing even more when you do just weight lifting. The weight lifting part is the less important part. Being bulky is easthetic preference, lifting is pleasant hobby for quite a lot of people (actually including me), but it is nothing necessary for health.
you basically do, especially older people and women. it helps significantly with bone density, balance, and other markers for long-term health. the idea that weight lifting is just for men (or that bulking up is something you can do by accident) is an idea that should (and is) dying quickly.
You have to go quite heavy and do it very frequently to actually look bulky, or even visibly muscular, when fully dressed.
The effects of moderate weight lifting - defined loosely by me as squatting at most your body weight on a barbell - are barely visible. But you will feel much better on a day-to-day basis and all your health numbers will improve massively.
e.g. being aerobically trained and overweight may be more or less equivalent to being at a healthy weight but not training. obviously the best case scenario is to be at a healthy weight and trained. additionally, aerobic training is much more achievable and sustainable for most people long term than weight loss.
The most absurd thing I have read regarding this topic is people asking for advice on life style changes they can do in order to reduce the Ozempic side effects...
Is it: AI builds product faster but with more bugs in production (Adds overall time to acceptable production)
or
Is is: Al helps us build faster, enough though we have to fix more bugs before production. (over all less time to acceptable production, but specifically fixing bugs takes longer)
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