Nursie
Then you are not at all like the author, who is specifically decrying the loss of tech-related avenues to meet people, and calls them out as his only ways of meeting people.
You've done some sort of mental back-flip by this point in the thread, and are ignoring what the author wrote about themselves and how they meet people.
But there are many to choose from. “Face like a dropped pie” is another gem.
Nor does it change the fact that the author, who clearly does want to socialise, would benefit from doing something outside of their tech bubble and widening their horizons beyond "things that could conceivably further my career".
All that and the author of this article still needs to get out and touch grass.
Really on top of the particularly narrow viewpoint the OP has on life and human relations, I find the core notion itself absurd - "In the future because of X, Y and Z, why will people bother to socialise?"
Because ... people like socialising.
Firstly, it made no mention of showing off to potential mates, to my reading. But have no fear, regardless of scarcity people will have ways to signal fitness to find mates and build hierarchies out of it, we're very good at that. It might come down to fashion choices, leisure activity choices, really anything.
Secondly, every example of how this person connects with others is to do with technology and career advancement. He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC. He doesn't talk about social groups or sports clubs, he was talking about communities of practice and his professional work. He values learning only for career advancement.
Those ways of building relationships might disappear, but old ladies will still get together to crochet and natter. Middle aged men will still make and drink beer together, or practice woodworking skills. Younger guys and gals will still form sports teams. And people will still learn for the love of learning.
You know, things which already happen away from the screen. Ordinary, everyday human stuff.
tl;dr - touch grass, the article says a lot more about the author's life than our future prospects as humans.
Errr, not so sure that holds up to scrutiny really. Lots of folks enjoy learning in various forms for its own sake, rather than purely to increase their income level.
> As a teenager I ... went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. ... AI disintermediates everyone, so that we no longer need each other. I still have friends, but I’m running off this pre-AI supply of friends I met through communities of practice.
Maybe learn to connect to other humans in circumstances outside of the professional/technological?
I think this is a very bleak take by someone whose experiences aren't really that in tune with how other humans exist. I can get better beer at the bottle shop, I can get cheaper beer at the bottle shop compared to the cost of all the equipment I need. Why then do I persist in home-brewing?
It's because I find it fulfilling, and I find the understanding and practice of the art satisfying.
I can only think that the UK must need the reactor products for something defence related, because little else makes sense.
For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.
I remember him touting a substance he called “chaperon”, about ten years back, as an alcohol alternative. But it wasn’t a benzo, it was somewhere in the phenethlyamine superfamily IIRC (the internet tells me it was MEAI, a substituted, cyclized PEA).
He now has a company selling non-alcoholic spirit substitutes based on herbal ingredients, called Sentia, and is trying to get approval for something called “alcarelle” but I have no idea what class of substance that is and it hasn’t yet made it to market so saying it didn’t catch on seems a touch premature.
I don’t agree with the characterisation of him as naive, in fact I think his book delves into the societal and social effects of drugs quite well. The only way he could be considered naive IMHO is that he seems to have expected politicians to listen to reason.
America has recently done a huge amount to undermine faith in its own democracy, and that has been gleefully spread around the world. Absent any evidence. It's gross.
You know, I don't give a shit about that, that's fine. Recommend me some stuff to watch, I'm here to watch stuff, I might even like what you're punting and give it a go. I might have forgotten there's a new season of whatever it is. I even quite like some of the inline recommendation stuff.
What made me switch to App-only mode was that ads started appearing for general consumer products. So this writeup is interesting, if/when they make app-only mode advertise shampoo at me I'll probably have a go with that launcher.
Yeah, for five minutes you needed to use a specific style, very specific language patterns and what have you, in order to get results that were a cut above. But then the models and the harnesses got better and that moment passed.
Congrats on the weight loss (genuinely), but it’s very unlikely seed oils are any sort of factor in themselves.
Oh dear, someone gets their health advice from streamers and podcasters rather than actual health professionals.
The seed oil thing is nonsense.
> Eating clean proper ruminant meat will not be bad for you
Eating too much beef is bad for you in a variety of ways, it's associated with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
It's frickin' delicious, but it's not some panacea superfood, quite the opposite.
I first read it a long time ago, and it's looking more and more prescient. Not the specific tech, in fact it probably feels prescient because it doesn't talk about any particular tech, but the direction of travel feels very familiar.
Incidentally I now live in Australia...
If one doesn't have to watch ones spouse, friends and family grow old and die, because it is available widely, that removes some of your objections.
Personally I don't subscribe to the idea that things lose meaning in a longer life, I find it a 'just so' story of self comfort in the face of the inevitable.
Programmers are a mixed bag, some hate it, some love it. Even those that hate it see that they're going to be outcompeted if they don't embrace it.
Programming can be art, I truly agree. But we're not being paid to create art, we're being paid to produce a result. If someone else can do it faster or better using AI, they'll get the contract.
We can still create art in our own time.
> Slop is slop, no matter the medium.
Claude produces better code than my juniors used to (actually a non-trivial number of alleged 'seniors' too), now their contributions are better because they use claude. How we ensure they understand what they're doing and grow is an open question, but 'slop' it unfortunately is not.
It’s not free for the business either. Businesses doing cash discounts are quite likely not reporting all of their sales IMHO, so it’s better for them because they can dodge taxes.
Would have taken permanent BST in a heartbeat. There's little so depressing as getting out of work into the dark for months at a time, IMHO.
I remember being vaguely on board with the a radical proposal that did the rounds about 20 years ago there - Single winter, Double summer. Keep changing the clocks but shift the whole thing an hour later so we got lighter evenings.
Obviously there would be some retraining and a period as an apprentice, and honestly I’m not sure I could afford that, but if we downsized the house maybe.
But mostly I’m posting here because this article is a pile of crap.
It uses pre-AI figures to try to assure us that post-AI the trades will still pay less than jobs for college graduates. That’s the whole point, duh, that things are changing.
Massive protectionism.
Maybe it was just something about the South of England though eh?
I get great review results (as good or better than colleagues using superpowers or even adversarial review skills) just by asking Claude to review a PR and spit out results in order of severity.
It's a bit old-web now (on flickr! ancient history!) but they have a lot of good ones - https://www.flickr.com/groups/facesinplaces/pool/
And even put out a book a while back.
I like this horrified house - https://www.flickr.com/photos/chelsea_steve/55448046101/in/p...
Only if they travel to ICC jurisdiction countries will anything actually occur.
Bush, Obama and Biden wanted to keep the US out of it. Trump wants to destroy it.
The US isn't subject to it, as it didn't sign up, but he's probably also worried that Americans who are accused of war crimes and then travel to countries which are signatories may find themselves arrested and tried.