> Every time I go to the grocery store to buy something and don’t have to worry about my card being declined, it feels like magic. Even years later.

So this is universal!

I'm almost 30 years from anything resembling precarity and I still subtly cross myself almost every time I swipe a card at the grocery store.

the real question is how many backups do your carry in case the first one doesn't work, and I'm not asking about credit card point games

Just did this a minute ago!

I doubt God carries much sway with the credit card companies. Maybe try the other guy.

He didn’t specify a directionality.

Removing this anxiety was one of the most unexpectedly powerful changes in my life. And then in a moment of hubris I signed up for an American Express card and now have to relive it every time because a good portion of vendors in the UK don’t take it.

Not having to keep a running tally of items going in the cart to make sure you don’t overdraft is amazing.

Knowing that whatever you put in, you’ve definitely got enough for it, is such a relief (once you break the habit). Maybe favor things on sale, sure, but no going “oh I can’t get a second package of chicken”.

Impressive! You should give yourself more credit as it takes more than just internet and patience to teach yourself enough to get into college.

I am also excited for society. However I am worried as well. While an AI tutor who is able to understand the child's current knowledge and gear the lessons toward what will make the most sense will be very powerful, it could also be used for brainwashing, propaganda, misinformation, etc. While we've invented a better way to transfer knowledge, we haven't removed the human desire to control information.

We live in a world where wealth is increasingly being concentrated at the top, social mobility for the average person is trending downwards, suicide rates in the US are at all-time highs, drug abuse rising, general deaths of despair rising, mental illness rising, climate and ecological catastrophes mounting by unchecked greed and all of this AI crap is mostly in the hands of the powerful who will use it to solidify the trends of the things I've mentioned above. Which begs the question, what kind of society is this to be excited about? Great if you live in a bubble unaffected by the above, but for the rest of us, the society sucks.

The average person has a higher standard of living and more wealth than ever before. Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression. Drug abuse is down too, but newer drugs are more potent. Mental illness is a hard stat to compare over time since it is very sensitive to the collection mechanisms. The growth of carbon-free technologies has been exponential over the last few decades. Open(source?) AI models trail the leading closed models by 6-12 months, it's hard to say they are only in the hands of the most powerful. The world is better than ever before, but it could be even better. The internet is filled with too many doomerist takes.

when you visit or live among people or parts of society that that essentially never "modernized" in any meaningful way, the only thing they really need is better healthcare.

the rest is a load of crap that is just solving problems created by industrialization and modernization

Are you talking about lost Amazon tribes? Most places I have visited people have seen real quality of life improvements by having clean water, refrigeration, sewage systems and access to the internet.

thank you for reminding me why I don't comment on Hacker News much.

1. Completely misrepresent someone else's perspective

2. Always use an industrialized western perspective as a synonym for what is unequivocally good, without any inspection or consideration. Disregard anything else.

3. Worship at the altar of the information technology industry

> Always use an industrialized western perspective

Who do you think has driven modern medicine and how do you get advanced healthcare without industrialization?

Yeah yeah, but it’s so romantic that they use bamboo sticks for hunting and killing each other with poisoned arrows while dying of worm infections and shit

b-b-but ... 2000 lb bombs, ar-15s, drones, guided missiles, f-15s, heavy artillery are more romantic!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle

next up, a total lovefest, icbms firing thermonuclear bombs?

Civilization, I'll stay right here

Call Gandhi.

google Gandhi Western civilization good idea

This is a good point. And, most of those require civil engineers to accomplish. It's very hard to do that if you don't have a writing system, and, hence, literacy. Pre-literate societies struggle to build up scientific and mathematical knowledge because all knowledge transfer is oral.

Industrialization is like the 1800s-1900s. Not "pre-literacy".

That might be true outside the US; I believe that the standard of living has gone down in the US, due in large part to the pandemic, followed by rampant inflation.

The shift away from manufacturing jobs to service jobs also played a role, along with the population boom in major cities.

The cities/countries with the highest standards of living all seemingly exist in Europe.

EDIT To Add: look at the revolting against McDonald's to see my point. Taking your family to mcdonalds used to be something you didn't really need to think about. Not anymore.

This kind of comparison always neglects to consider the fact that any given European country is much smaller and much more homogeneous than the US. Which US state are you comparing to?

Using the Human Development Index (HDI) as a passable proxy for standard of living:

Mississippi has an HDI of 0.866, about the same as Portugal and somewhat higher than Bulgaria (the lowest HDI in the EU) at 0.799.

Massachusetts has an HDI of 0.949, which is about the same as Germany and only a tiny bit lower than #1 Switzerland's 0.967.

In other words: both Europe and the US span a wide range of HDI scores, but the European Union has a wider range in both directions. Europe is both better and worse than the US, depending on where in Europe and where in the US you're talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

> This kind of comparison always neglects to consider the fact that any given European country is much smaller and much more homogeneous than the US. Which US state are you comparing to?

I'm aware of the criticism of Apples to Oranges. I assume given such a basic level of criticism on any comparison between the US and Europe that it's no longer remotely relevant because to any study ranking would clearly account for that.

Oxford Economics just released their 1000 cities index, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-21/new-york-...

The US dominated in the economic advantage, and europe dominated in the quality of life index.

HDI in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are also very high. Tokyo is crazy high -- on the same level as Switzerland.

Europe also experienced a pandemic, has even worse inflation and worse unemployment. It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live.

> It could just be cultural attitudes make European cities a more pleasant place to live.

Cultural attitudes certainly, particularly around work vs leisure. Also mass transit systems, and social supports for people working in the service industry.

The criticisms for europe are that it takes a lot of tax revenue to support those things, bureaucracy, strikes, etc.

Im not saying one system is better than the other--just that in the US, despite our massive economic might, our standard of living sucks.

Mass transits and more pleasant places to live are probably correlated with more tax efficient policies.

It's just that the USA has accumulated a number of unfair advantages.

Did it really? When I was a kid in the 90s we went to McDonalds once a year for my birthday.

> Suicide rates are not at all-time highs, they were much higher during the World Wars and Great Depression.

Nah we already exceeded WW2.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/cdc-data-finds-...

> but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II.

>U.S. suicides steadily rose from the early 2000s until 2018, when the national rate hit its highest level since 1941.

I guess we still haven't exceeded the Great Depression rates but it's really not that hard of a target

Suicide rates during WW1 were hovering around 20 per 100k. During the Great Depression it peaked at 22 per 100k [0]. That's around 50% higher than the 2022 number you cite (14.3 per 100k), which is hard to describe as "really not that far off".

EDIT: The comment I replied to has been edited in multiple ways since I replied, so the text in quotes above is no longer present. The comment previously indicated that we had already exceeded "the world wars" (not just WW2) and that we were "really not that far off" from the rates of the Great Depression.

Slight meta tangent: OP, in general it's considered good form to reply to people who reply to you rather than just modifying your comment. Calling out edits explicitly (like I've done here) after you've received replies is also considered good form.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/11/29/2022-suic...

I edit a lot so I set the delay in my profile to give me 10 minutes to do so.

If you edited within ten minutes then something isn't working, because your comment changed multiple times after I replied to it. The delay is supposed to prevent me from seeing it at all until the period is up.

I’m not OP.

Ah, my bad.

I am not discounting what you said about wealth concentration and upward mobility, but the top post that started this thread is surely a counter example for what you are saying? Yes, the makers of openai/gemini/whatever could power such ai tutors, and make more money, but there are legit cases where this will be an enormous boost that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

What’s this? DC comics?

Open source models will give a lot of people lots of chances. Period.

Other things we’ll see, doomers were never quite right - so far

Nah, we live in a great world where most people recognize that absolute life quality matters more than relative life quality. Online commenters all go to therapy and are miserable, and their bosses are idiots, and everyone is spying on them, and so on and so on.

But most people are better off than their parents and knowing this, they’re generally happy.

I see your point. Obviously, the first paragraph is sarcasm, but the second paragraph raises an interesting point. In my family, my two older siblings are not better off than my parents. It is a bit sad.

I'm actually being entirely sincere.

A lot of that is just land use policies. When you look at the average American household budget, it makes sense. The #1 and #2 are housing and transportation followed by taxes. Climate change and ecological catastrophes, mental illness are really land use policies in disguise or at least can be explained partly.

Yep, we have so much freaking money that we've decided to bury it all in illiquid assets built on artificial scarcity - which we then endeavor to increase the value of by further constraining supply.

It's probably one of the dumbest things we do as a society, although that might be a fairly California centric perspective.

“Wealth” is becoming a tricky term. Bill Gates is approximately a million times richer than I am, but for many things he can’t get anything like a million times the value I can. He can spend 1000x what I do on clothes, but I won’t be appreciably colder or less comfortable than he is. His house might cost 100x what my apartment would go for, but again, it isn’t 100x nicer. He can eat steak and lobster for every meal, but I don’t go hungry. I’m not trying to portray myself as being the other end of the wealth spectrum from Bill Gates. There are people far below me economically, and wealth inequality is definitely a thing. But AI tutors and teachers will serve to reduce the gap, not increase it. Notably, Bill Gates and I use equivalent phones and computers to within a factor of 2.

The other issues are of course critically important, but are caused by more than the wealth gap.

> He can spend 1000x what I do on clothes, but I won’t be appreciably colder or less comfortable than he is.

This misses the point of expensive clothing entirely.

Many people would disagree that his house is not 100 times nicer than yours.

He doesn’t use computers and phones like you do. He uses people who use technology that is 100kx your computer and phone.

You’re talking about the essential function of an object. When things become expensive they take on additional functions that your items lack entirely.

I think the point about clothes is exactly the point I was trying to make: everything you are alluding to that gives "value" to expensive clothes is an artificial construct. A fashionable jacket is fashionable because people agree that it is stylish. That doesn't make it "better" at being a jacket. More to the point, I can only feel a disparity between Mr. Gates and myself by convincing myself that style matters.

His house is bigger. He can only occupy one room at a time. I know where his house is: I lived across Lake Washington from him. I've seen the houses across the lake from his, with the exact same view, and they are worth 1/30th of his house because they are 1/30th as big. But again: he can only be in one room at a time. I'm not saying there's no difference; I'm saying there's nothing like 30x difference.

I'm not sure I comprehend your point about hiring people to do work. 100,000 people using 100,000 iPhones are not 100,000 times as capable of doing most things.

In short, no: expensive things don't take on (many) additional functions. That was exactly my point, and I don't think you've disproven it.

Don’t look too closely or you might realize that your value system is not universal, and that it is an artificial construct and depends on all sorts of other artificial constructs such as a market system.

You can’t seriously believe that you can outperform 100,000 people, but that wasn’t my point. He has teams of people using among other things HPC to perform calculations that are both conceptually and computationally beyond an individual’s reach.

Just because you haven’t witnessed it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and doesn’t easily 100x your own value.

Bill Gates can have other billionaires over to his house. That is not true for your house. That in itself is worth many multiples of your functional viewpoint.

Oh goodness. I didn’t say that I could outperform 100,000 people. I said there are tasks where 100,000 people can’t make 100,000 times the result. Maybe an example would help?

When Bill Gates wants to have pizza for dinner, 100,000 people can’t deliver it in a fraction of a second. HA! Now, having typed that, I’m thinking of Bill Gates having… let’s say 1,000 chefs, who each night cook 1,000 meals, all so that there is a high probability that whatever he asks for will be ready the moment he asks for it.

To your point, of course there are tasks where 100k people can make a difference. But again, I didn’t say that wasn’t true.

I’m not sure why you think I can’t have billionaires over to my house? I’m pretty sure Warren Buffett has had Bill Gates over to his house, and Warren Buffett’s house is (comparatively) extremely modest.

Finally, of course I understand that my value system is unique. So is everyone’s. How does that change the fact that for the vast majority of people, if you ask them how well their smart phone works for them, they will not reply, “Well, my phone is okay I guess, but have you seen Bill Gates’s phone? That thing is amazing!”

Your specific point you seem to be hanging onto is why do the billionaires not have phones whose technology absolutely crushes your personal phone? I don’t understand why the question is interesting, but here is why they don’t:

What would they do with it that other people cannot do for them, faster and more cost effectively?

The limitation on personal productivity is not the pocket computer, it is access to computing resources. Right now the closest thing we have to a competent human, which can be easily had for $50k/year or $2M/working life, costs around 500 times that, lasts 1/10th as long, doesn’t work unless I’m talking to it, and isn’t nearly as capable.

You are talking about point of diminishing return . Personally I think beyond an income of 1 million dollars a year , one's quality of life does not change significantly.

Gini coefficient tell less valuable information than say total poverty rate, but a high gini coefficient can be an indicator of concentration of power in the "elites"

All your premises are wrong, even if they're grammatical and coherent (what does "general deaths of despair" or "climate and ecological catastrophes mounting by unchecked greed " even mean?

> all of this AI crap is mostly in the hands of the powerful

too funny when the subject of the article is the Khan Academy which is hardly a hate-target.

> While we've invented a better way to transfer knowledge, we haven't removed the human desire to control information.

that is a huge problem; but it's not one solved by technology

this is already an objection, that most of the LLMs are aligned to a certain kind of California thinking; Open AI, Anthropic, xAI, and Facebook, among others, being from there.

A very powerful story! thanks for sharing

I have significant concern about this—that it is a story.

I don’t doubt that it’s true in OC’s case. But I don’t think it’s representative of the impact of technology. It’s the example that will get Bill Gates’ attention and end up on the stage at TED, but it might not be representative of 90% of how people are affected by technology. It might, and the story of how videos will change how people relate to each other (what made Chris Anderson buy TED, what Salman Khan has built, what Grant Sanderson a.k.a, 3blue1brown has done). It is true, anecdotally. It is a fantastic, compelling, clear story. I love that story: video is the easiest way to share any practice; people watch, learn, practice, and get good at something no one in their village knew was possible. Hurray.

But when I trained as a statistician, i.e., epistemologically someone working for the state, I was told I was the opposite of a journalist: my job is not to tell stories that explain what a problem is. My job is to tell the boss how common that story really is. A story tells all the details to pull your emotions, and journalists (at the time, at least) were telling fact-check, double-verified stories. “Truth” wasn’t our goal. It is too easy to get numbers that argue for any position. Representative was what we were told we should be aiming for—so that the government makes the right decision.

I’m not seeing a lot of “representative” here.

> I have significant concern about this—that it is a story.

Your concerns are very correct but while you are willing to give him/her the benefit of the doubt, I am very very skeptical of their story; it sounds "too pat" and made up. If you look at their other replies there are too many incongruities and "movie plot tropes".

I have a better chance of winning the lottery than "learning mathematics starting from long division and progressing to a good job in the current hot market of AI/ML while working at Home Depot, sleeping on a air mattress, with almost no money and a dysfunctional family, studying at coffee shops and rising through a bunch of roles starting from lowly corporate IT into high-paying data science/ML and leading teams". It is all just a bit too much and beggars belief.

I genuinely don't know why you have a hard time believing that chain of events. It's really not that uncommon. What "movie tropes" are you talking about that aren't just... extremely common real life things? Sleeping on an air mattress? Working at Home Depot? Teaching yourself a skill and working your way up to a respectable position?

Each event by itself may not be uncommon (but some like learning mathematics from absolute basics to AI/ML requirements via just Khan Academy is well-nigh impossible) but all together happening to one person which led to the claimed outcome is very very highly improbable. Real life doesn't work that way; time, energy(i.e. effort), money are all finite and wax/wane with context/environment and defines success/failure.

Also speaking from my own experience, early in my career for about 3-4 years i lived alone, working a software engineer job by day and attending a computer science course/labs in evening/weekends. The lack of proper sleep/rest/nutrition, constant stress due to work and studies almost broke me. Thankfully i managed to get through that (mainly due to my robust health) but it made me realize that if you don't have a supporting family, proper nutrition/sleep and some sort of support system (i.e. family/friends) to encourage/emphathize/push/pull you as needed there is no way for an average person to overcome all hurdles particularly when they come at you all at once. There is a reason it is impossible to get out of poverty just based on your own efforts without somebody external actively lending you a helping hand via money/opportunity etc.

As the saying goes; "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_e...

Lots of people have done it.

I went to college but I resent the implication that the only way to make it into one of these fields is through college. It is incredibly difficult to learn advanced math outside of an academic setting, but it is absolutely possible.

Where I work we have invested in programs that take people just like me and give them an opportunity to go through a pretty rigorous 6 month program that teaches them how to develop software, work in a corporate environment, etc.

There are people FAR more impressive than me who have done more with less, and when they have come out of that program many have been able to go toe to toe with our college grads.

We’ve got a LOT of people who have similar stories, and we’re doing the same thing in accounting now. And it works.

> Lots of people have done it.

This is just a generic platitude and means nothing. Lots of people have overcome hurdles yes but not a whole lot of hurdles all at the same and over long periods of time which is what i gathered from your posts. Also as i point out it is quite hard to overcome all hurdles just by one's own efforts but you generally need some outside help whether intentional or luck.

> I went to college but I resent the implication that the only way to make it into one of these fields is through college.

You had mentioned that you were a high-school dropout earlier but are here stating that you went to college? That is a huge discrepancy and if true proves my point.

>It is incredibly difficult to learn advanced math outside of an academic setting, but it is absolutely possible.

That depends on where you are starting from, your support environment and your definition of "advanced math". For some levels you have to go to academia and study. Not everything is possible in the real world.

> Where I work we have invested in programs that take people just like me and give them an opportunity to go through a pretty rigorous 6 month program that teaches them how to develop software, work in a corporate environment, etc.

This just proves my point that you generally need outside support/help/luck to overcome really difficult hurdles. You are providing them with a break.

> There are people FAR more impressive than me who have done more with less, and when they have come out of that program many have been able to go toe to toe with our college grads.

That depends on the nature of the work itself. If it is just a matter of simple programming then maybe so but if the work needs advanced mathematics/statistical knowledge there is no way this can happen. There is a reason Colleges/Universities exist.

In the first I clearly stated that I used Khan Academy as a high school drop out and it helped me get into college.

You didn’t bother to read it before commenting because you were too busy dumping on something that didn’t match your bias, which is wrong and incredibly depressing, by the way.

And of course you need outside help/luck/support, but you’re pretending their is some binary threshold and then cherry picking from an imaginary slate of deceptions that you’ve accused me of, to imply I was too lucky or received too much encouragement. Those factors are a continuum and I received more than some and less than others; of course I’m lucky.

I’m sorry that you do not have faith in people to succeed, but I have plenty of examples. I am sitting across from an architect I work with who is also a dropout (who finds this amusing) and work with plenty of others who made the leap. I’m also sorry that you feel you have to try and tear others down to reaffirm your depressing world view.

The really annoying part is, your story really isn't that uncommon, or even that crazy - not to belittle your struggles, of course, but I've heard far wilder stories of people struggling to success.

Anyway I wouldn't waste your time too much with GP. They won't believe anything you say without you actually providing physical proof of some sort - and even then I'm sure they'd try and poke holes in it.

Oh well. I for one am glad to hear how much better things are for you, and wish you luck in the future :)

I agree, I know so many people who have done similar and more challenging things. GP probably does too, but they would be smart not to open up about it.

I actually went and got my college transcripts and requested my highschool ones but it’s not worth it. I’ll probably just use them if I make a blog post or something.

I sincerely appreciate your encouragement and wish you luck as well!

> In the first I clearly stated that I used Khan Academy as a high school drop out and it helped me get into college.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40462419

> You didn’t bother to read it before commenting because you were too busy dumping on something that didn’t match your bias, which is wrong and incredibly depressing, by the way.

I don't have a depressing world view but a realistic one because of overcoming some hurdles in my own life and coming from a country where people overcoming hurdles is rather common (India with its huge population, economic mobility necessity etc.). But in every case (including mine) there is always one or more factors which made or broke them. Thus for example, a poor farmer's child becomes a ceo/doctor/engineer/etc. because the family sold the land to fund the child's education while the father/mother became daily wage labourers to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. The child's achievement while impressive would be impossible without the family's sacrifice. Should he/she omit it from the narrative of their achievements?

> And of course you need outside help/luck/support, but you’re pretending their is some binary threshold and then cherry picking from an imaginary slate of deceptions that you’ve accused me of, to imply I was too lucky or received too much encouragement. Those factors are a continuum and I received more than some and less than others; of course I’m lucky.

No man makes opportunity or luck or can overcome all adverse circumstances. The best he can do is be well prepared by his own efforts (and with some external help) to recognize opportunity when it comes and grab it with both hands. While opportunity can be binary sometimes you can backtrack and get a second-chance. There are plenty of people who never got the opportunity and hence could never make it. The external factor is not an addon, it is essential to success/failure and should never be discounted.

> Im sorry that you do not have faith in people to succeed, but I have plenty of examples. I am sitting across from an architect I work with who is also a dropout (who finds this amusing) and work with plenty of others who made the leap. I’m also sorry that you feel you have to try and tear others down to reaffirm your depressing world view.

You started this conversation with me and hence i am defending my views and not trying to tear you down or anybody else. I just dislike "toxic positivity"/"false advertisements" which is rampant in our society to the detriment of helping deserving people. In the context of this thread, your posts came across as "i did Khan Academy while overcoming a lot of hurdles by myself which led me to what i am today" which is of course untenable IMO.

> You had mentioned that you were a high-school dropout earlier but are here stating that you went to college? That is a huge discrepancy and if true proves my point.

What exactly is the discrepancy here? One can drop out of highschool, then years later, take the necessary tests, then go to college. Again, many people have done that. Is that really so hard for you to believe?

> One can drop out of highschool, then years later, take the necessary tests, then go to college.

You have conveniently glossed over events in those missing years. Did they get proper stable environment to live in, did they get enough food to eat, did they have somebody encouraging them to go to college etc. Events in those intervening years are what breaks you down or builds you up enabling you to go to college or not. In a sequence of events you cannot omit some and highlight some according to your disposition. That is called "false advertisement".

I didn't conveniently gloss over anything you didn't in the comment I was replying to.

Out of curiosity, what "evidence" would you request of GP to convince you of their story?

I’m curious too. I kind of get it too though, sometimes it’s surprising for me too.

I may post my transcripts and khan academy badges to twitter later. My LinkedIn is pretty easy to find. I’ve still got my Home Depot aprons too.

Maybe if they believe this is possible they will believe it is worth spending time investing in others. My story is not unique.

Sadly, I threw away the air mattress long ago, so won’t be able to post that.

One for each of the claims they have made; At the minimum they may have embellished a lot of the hardships they claim they faced (eg. at one place they claim high-school dropout while in another they went to college). There is a reason experts in education/psychology and policy makers declare that family/neighbourhood environment (stable/nurturing or not) and economic conditions (proper nutrition and other basic needs for shelter/safety/education) are the main predictors of whether one can get out of the ghetto/poverty and govts. spend huge amounts of money to help them out.

My info is in my profile, it’s not hard to figure out who I am.

In my perspective it is more believable to get into AI as a young guy without higher education than someone like me: a middle-aged person with higher education with a family and a reasonable corporate software engineering job. For me to get into AI research, I guess I would have to work for less money for a while than my current boring Software Engineering job, so the golden handcuff prevents me from doing it. While for a young guy there is nothing to lose, they can shoot for the most interesting thing right away. When I was young, I graduated from university with an AI specialization, but no one cared, especially not in Eastern Europe where I live. So I got into reasonably-paying slightly boring software engineering.

To be fair, I am not in AI research either. Sorry if I implied that. I am on the applied side building products using GenAI, we also do some more traditional ML development but I do not spend much time there.

100% what you said about being young with nothing to lose. I had been part of a "start up" so I had equity on paper, but debt in real life. That equity ended up being worth exactly what I had paid for it ($0). I worked at Home Depot (which was a great company) and basically anything was better than making $15/hr and treading water.

For what it is worth, at the time I (24) felt really old because I saw so many 21 year olds who would come in to the store and had houses and everything that I didn't. I felt like I had missed the boat. It's been over 10 years and I realize how young I was, and frankly still am.

My point is that it's never too late to try something different, especially if you are starting from a position of strength (a good career in a field that requires strong problem solving skills, like software engineering).

I am not arguing about whether a "young guy without higher education" can make it. It is "young guy without higher education and a whole lot more fundamental and severe hurdles makes it on his own without outside help/luck" that i am skeptical about.

You must have had a very comfy life growing up.

Not at all. It is precisely because i have faced a few hurdles and overcome them that i know how difficult a whole lot more severe hurdles all at the same time are difficult to overcome without outside help/support/luck.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what your point is with this comment. I don't think GP was presenting their story in the context of providing statistics or objective truth about the impact of technology. They were just sharing their experience with the topic of the article.

Khan Academy is a treasure of a service. Probably my favorite non-profit out there. High quality information with low barrier to entry. It got me through Calculus, Calc 2, and Linear Algebra.

I tell basically every parent I meet about it with the enthusiasm of Tom cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch.

So does my wife; she's a high-school guidance counselor.

Love to see this - a miracle! We used it to partially homeschool a kid in math, then he graduated to SAT prep for himself, etc. Totally free. What a gift to the world.

> Now I work in AI

So it goes.

Have you written that story to Khan academy?

I started to, but then never completed it. Typical dropout behavior ;)

That’s pretty impressive. Any chance you can shed light on the feasibility of this for a standard high school dropout? Did you have certain luxuries from family or otherwise that made this possible?

I’m mostly asking to learn how the US system (assuming you’re in the US) supports folks taking this path.

I definitely had advantages in that I knew tools like Khan Academy existed, was not battling depression, and also had talked to people who I admired and saw they were not so different than me. I also had a mother who loved me and a step-father who came into my life a bit later who cared, but they were dealing with some pretty big challenges of their own, including mental health, bad relationships, debt, children who were in and out of jail, and everything that comes with that. I do not like to spend too much time focused on race, but I am a white male, which was also an advantage.

At the time I was leveraging Khan Academy I was around 24, had distanced myself from the people I had grown up with who were not on a positive track. I also don't know how, but somehow I got it in my head that finance was the universal language and that learning more about finance was the key to understanding more about the world. So I was very focused on that. I had no clue what economics was at the time, but once I learned about that, I was addicted. Finding topics like that deeply interesting is a HUGE advantage.

At that time, I was living on my own and had a stable job managing a department at Home Depot. I slept on an air mattress and didn't have any money to speak of, but I had enough time on my hands that I could spend time at a coffee shop after work and on my days off working my way through the knowledge map on KA, starting with long division (which was humiliating) and learning how to do everything by hand, and then progressing from topic to topic. My goal was to not have to take a remedial math class at the local junior college (2 year colleges in the US). I spent months mastering basic math and worked my way to more advanced topics (1 million energy points on KA, not sure if that's a lot but I'm still proud of it).

One last advantage I had was that I genuinely enjoyed learning and talking to people, and it showed. And I was young. So people were willing to take the risk. Many people were willing to give me a chance, encouragement, and their time as I was making my way through school. If I had a question or was interested in a career or topic, I would just ask someone if I could call them or shadow them, and most the time they would say yes. I had nothing to lose by asking, and was always amazed how often it worked.

I try to share this with others who were in my position so they know it is possible.

Thank you for asking.

Thanks for all the detail, it’s inspiring! How did the learning lead to your first job in tech/AI?

I got into a job in corporate IT at a good company and then moved through a bunch of roles, including putting together one of our first data science/ML teams. A couple years later when I was doing product work, gpt 2 came out, so I had started working with it for fun and writing Points of View for our company about how we could leverage these technologies and what the market dynamics would looks like and implications, etc. (I am basically a dollar store version of Ben Thompson.)

It was mostly dismissed at the time, because Alexa and Siri were what people thought of, but when ChatGPT got released I was in a great position and was able to quickly ship. Now I lead that capability for one of our relatively large subsidiaries.

For me, what lead me here was mostly a fascination with the decreasing marginal cost of knowledge work. There is something about building these types of products that is just very fun and feels like cheating, I love it.

Was the lack of formal education a big problem getting started with that good company? I'm pleasantly surprised your resume made it past the first line of throwing-it-out

No, but I work for a company with a very unique perspective on education and merit. They are a large privately held firm that does not care about degrees (for 95% of things).

When I was a year in to my career I sat down with one of our senior execs and asked if I should get an MBA, and he said “don’t waste your time, you are already in a university and we will teach you everything you need to know”. And that has been true.

Make no mistake, it is definitely a disadvantage but I got lucky.

Thanks for the detailed reply, great story.

Wow, this is a personal Top 100 post on this board for me. What a great story. This part was really touching: <<starting with long division (which was humiliating)>>

Keep it up. We are cheering for you.

Thank you! I would literally make sure my back was to a corner so no one could see what was on my screen haha.

Needless to say, I spend a lot of time on math with my oldest (who just turned four!). She does not need to be great, she just needs to not be intimidated and understand she can learn anything.

> Every time I go to the grocery store to buy something and don’t have to worry about my card being declined, it feels like magic. Even years later.

100% with you here! Grew up in poverty, fought for myself and clawed my way out into a wonderful career as a software engineer.

This one still hits every time, even for me, over a decade later.

The other one for me is petty cash. I looked in my wallet the other day and I had $100 in it. That is still wild to me to walk around with $100 dollars without even really consciously realizing its there. I use to rush to put all unused cash into my bank account to make sure my balance was always as high as it could be just in case. Went through a can collection phase too. Sometimes it was the only way I'd eat.

Here's to better life circumstances! And may it continue for us from here on out.

It wasn't that ago when I has figured out how to mix/max overdraft checking because I was so damn broke. I'd over draw my account by $980, the overdraft fee was $20, and my account would be -$1000. Then 29 days later, I'd get a cash advance on my credit card, pay bring the checking account up to $0, and then make a payment to the credit card company for $980. I was slowly digging myself deeper into a hole just so I could hang onto having a bank account.

you'll enjoy this Louis CK bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_-1l_SlA7c

I used to have a site up that yielded about $100 a month from AdSense. That enabled me to make my house payment more than a few times.

Growing up, I had a strong aptitude for both math and literature. I loved writing and reading. Also loved doing math, especially algebra.

But I grew up before YouTube or even broadband, and I had very limited access to quality math resources. Otoh, we had a pretty nicely stocked library at home and I could read all the literature I ever wanted to read.

I ended up majoring in English. Although I now work in the tech field, I’m not deeply technical and my math knowledge is effectively stuck at freshmen college level.

I wonder what my life trajectory would have been like if I had access to teachers like Sal Khan - or even YouTube - back then.

Young people today are blessed. They can learn from the best, often for free.

I do not think people understand or appreciate what a truly fundamental shift that access to zero marginal cost instruction has been (including YouTube, etc.). It is a tool that humanity still has not figured out how to take advantage of at scale, we’re in the early days and it will take time.

> It is a tool that humanity still has not figured out how to take advantage of at scale

I blame shitty recommendation system of Youtube for not making it easily available. They have high engagement sections like Gaming etc but not Education. Just goes on to show their priorities.

They could reccomend calculus videos all day long, people will ignore them and watch the stuff they find entertaining. Its not YouTube's job to rush behaviours down users throats. If they want to learn calculus, its there.

Well if there can be a dedicated google scholar, why not the same for education. In the mobile, when one clicks on the compass icon, I get suggestions for gaming but not the same education. This is hypocrisy.

> Every time I go to the grocery store to buy something and don’t have to worry about my card being declined, it feels like magic. Even years later.

Pay cash: it's much more privacy-conscious - and you don't have to worry about your card being declined. :-)

Card was declined because they had no cash :)

Not so fast: my daughter could not afford Khan’s tutoring service at a crucial time in her development. I was out of work, had depleted our savings supporting the family, and couldn’t afford it. I pleaded for a waiver. The answer was no and basically “go eff myself.” My daughter lost all confidence in her math aptitude. Her teachers never alerted us as parents about her progress. We’ve been repairing the damage ever since.

They have actual tutors that you pay??

GP may be referring to Khan Academy affiliated but offline Khan Lab School.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Lab_School

I had the same thing, I relearned all my mathematics from grade school to calculus when I was in my 30s so I could go get a degree. Khan literally changed my life for the better.

I also think his take is the correct one. AI's future in custom education is beyond anything else. It can teach it to you using the concepts you have available.

Fam! Love it! I hope life is treating you well.

Well, that's great.

Now in Europe, we fund the government through taxes so that the public education system can do for EVERYONE what Sal Khan did for YOU

So then you no longer have to worry about what your children can do in their lives

What does this mean? OP went to high school, but dropped out. How does how education is paid affect this?

meanwhile also in Europe, we fund public education systems that do not do for everyone what Sal Khan does for everyone

The EU has a system that allows people to get an education, at their own pace, even after they have been adults for some time?

My situation was not a failure of our education system. I was just not in a situation that was stable and conducive to learning when I was young. Part of that was my parent’s fault, but they were doing the best they could; part of that was my fault, there are many things I could’ve approached differently.

Although we were poor by US standards at the time, I actually was on the edge of a great school district for most of my early education.

A school system was not going to fix the problems, both situational and self inflicted, that lead to my situation.

And there is no equivalent to what Khan Academy is doing that I am aware of. Part of the value is it has zero marginal cost, so anyone can use it. That’s actually the point. You don’t have to be in the EU to get a great education. You can be in Mauritania, as long as you have internet, you have a shot at receiving an education.

I love such stories. Thanks for sharing. I'd be super glad to read about your process, your note-taking techniques, etc if you ever write a blog post about it!

I should do that. Will post it to my twitter (in my profile) if I do.

Honestly i wrote as many notes as I could in a way that someone else could pick up and understand and the main thing I stuck to was never using a calculator until I absolutely had to, even if it was slower, so I could build a stronger foundation. I’m not sure I ever looked at the notes though.

And then I was just very disciplined about spending a few hours a day, every day, for a few months, drilling course by course, and didn’t skip anything in the knowledge map (at the time).

I still make time every weekend to learn something new or work on a challenging project for a couple hours a day while my little girls are napping.

Love the work ethic, thanks!

I think we can be damn proud that Software Engineering is still open to anyone who can do the job, whether they have a formal degree or not!

Almost all other high paying professions are locked away.

I think this is mostly true. IT/Software in general are a lot less focused on proxies for success than other fields, I think that is largely because it is much easier for individuals to learn skills outside of a professional setting, it is also much easier to validate knowledge and competency than in other fields; and, of course, there are many other factors such as a more progressive workforce, etc.

I was very lucky to have a professor who pulled me aside and steered toward IS. Once I got my first post-degree job, the company I worked for was happy to help me develop technical competency.

Things have definitely changed for the worse in the past few years. You won't hear anybody with a similar story coming into the field today.