prohobo

We already had large societies that worked in a similar way during feudalism, but economies still relied on human labor. Today, there are countries where the majority of wealth is not reliant on citizens producing/consuming anything: Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE primarily sell resources to other states.

No one knows exactly what happens if you scale that up to the entire planet, but my view: the owners will be the ones who trade because of the resources available on their territory - or technology they own. You get a few powerful rentier states, where citizens get stuff for free so they don't revolt. Everyone outside of those states becomes part of a stagnant periphery.

That's possible, but it'd still probably hit those limits faster than any person or team could. Then maybe there'd be human-led work to find some kind of breakthrough that unlocks research up to the next plateau.

At some point though, I'd assume the AI would start finding breakthroughs itself.

An economy can keep running even if most people are cut out of it. Production would just reorient to who owns capital, the state, and other AI systems buying from each other.

But, if I get the insinuation, this would still require a huge social change to absorb once broad consumer demand falls off.

As for pursuing math for fun: that would turn most disciplines into something akin to speedrunning, chess, or mountaineering. People would add constraints to make it harder for themselves and compete against each other, and that does motivate some - but not all. A lot of people want to be "on the frontier." If discovery gets automated, the remaining frontier may be physical, actually going places no one has been, and that might pull those people toward space as it opens up.

There are quite a few problems with this video, IMO:

- Grant is a highly respected and popular YouTuber. He has a strong network, personal connections, access, and his income comes from an audience, not from output he’s measured on. He's perfectly positioned in this AI revolution to end up near the top of whatever human pile gets constructed, so he will not have the kinds of fears and anxieties that most people do.

- AI RSI is being actively developed and is likely to arrive within 1-2 years. I wouldn't consider this a fringe scenario; it's the main bet. Even if models stay weaker at theory building than humans, organizations will spin up 100k agents and the fire-hose of generated ideas will probably compound far faster than anyone can keep up.

- His remaining arguments are basically training people to problem-solve, and joy. For the next few years, I can see his particular niche doing quite well as infotainment, and he will probably make a lot of money. However, I don't really see people being able to join and partake in his industry 10-20 years from now. Also, if we project a realistic and grounded understanding of our current world onto the next couple of decades, what would give anyone the idea that political and economic systems would have any incentive to train people to problem-solve if AI becomes the real work-horse? Teaching will likely be defunded and turned into a consumption good (which it arguably already is becoming with these YouTube channels.)

- So, for me his entire argument boils down to... joy?

Others have already commented that this feels like unprincipled optimism, and I agree. I also think that because this is something made to generate revenue through a social media platform, it's inherently performative and on-brand. His incentives pull toward keeping his audience happy.

Unfortunately, outcomes follow incentives, not optimism. If our economy comes to rely on RSI-enabled AI, most people will simply have no place in any industry it touches.

I would say it's more like an interface for the model to interact with the world. If you give the model access to filesystem and bash that technically unlocks all computer use, so how are you going to control that? By trying to regex match against the commands the AI uses? All you have is auth or containment, and AI can hack auth and people will not stop connecting AIs to the internet. It's a ridiculous premise that just because the harness is "normal code" that means we can control the AI.

The world's institutions, systems, and industries are all rapidly digitizing. So while I'd concede the point that, yeah, there's no way a rogue AI can just take over some powerplant and blow it up because of analogue systems the AI can't access, that isn't necessarily true for some powerplants already, and more and more powerplants will be connected to networks and controlled by software systems in the future. The more we digitize our systems the more potential for AI to exploit vulnerabilities and affect the real world.

AFAIK there isn't that much stopping anyone from spawning an AI swarm and telling it to "spread and go hack everything for the lulz."

Design a virus that is perfect for transmission and killing the host slowly, and seed it in a few hot spots? I don't really understand why you can't wrap your head around that, it doesn't even require a lot from the AI:

1. Control over some automated bio research lab (be given access, or hack in)

2. Access to drones that can deliver the payload (or manipulate humans into delivering it themselves)

On the intelligence side, you just need an AI agent/swarm capable enough to design viruses better than we can and evade detection for long enough (already plausible.)

I agree that this "AI will kill us all" narrative is some kind of fantasy horror fiction, but I can't deny that given the right amount of access, AI can do a lot of damage.

>>> "You presume to objectively know the inner workings of Musk"

Unfalsifiable and hypocritical, considering you're trying to do the same thing. You're inferring his intent from what you saw.

>>> "If Musk had apologized and clarified that it was not meant to be a Nazi salute"

He did clarify it was not meant to be a Nazi salute (https://people.com/elon-musk-says-he-didnt-do-nazi-salute-at...), but did not apologize. You have to realize that at that moment in time, a large part of the online culture decided that you should never apologize for controversies because people will attack you for the apology as well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25NYjVgpJ50), which is the policy that Musk supported and took. Additionally, he didn't feel he even did anything wrong, and he considered the claims to be a dirty attack on his character.

>>> "Instead he publicly responded with Nazi- and Holocaust-related puns."

How does that make him guilty, as opposed to mocking the people who made the claim?

>>> "This is already enough to reasonably conclude that it was no accident"

In what way? His reaction to the online attacks prove that his gesture was premeditated? I see nothing anywhere that suggests he wanted this reaction and was ready for it, nor any explanation of what he'd even gain from that. Evidence please.

>>> "it's really a total coincidence that the guy with nationalist views"

Nationalism isn't fascism (see: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism)

>>> "who is also pumping millions upon millions into propping up extremist-right movements across the globe"

You're probably talking about the Afd in Germany, Reform/Restore in the UK, and the Fdl in Italy - among others. There's no evidence Elon Musk poured any money into these European parties. He has voiced support for these parties online, on his own platform. He supports the European parties with the rationalization that the neoliberals in Europe are losing their minds and populism is better than the status quo. That would make him a populist, and he likes some bad political parties.

>>> "and whose AI just happened to start spewing white supremacy propaganda"

Interesting, that happened in 2025 - over a year later. And the white supremacy propaganda was: "white genocide" (talking about the ongoing murders of the Boer in South Africa at the time - by driveby posting links to this video in X threads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMD_7DwuQDY), and... Grok calling itself "MechaHitler" (not gonna bother with this one, lol)

This is a pointless argument and I feel stupid for even engaging with it, and I blame you for pretending that you don't know - or seemingly failing to know. Like I said, we've both had plenty of time (2 years) to figure out this specific issue. But I'm hoping the meta-argument here actually gets across to literally anyone else.

I think we both know that we've had plenty of time to figure out the situation, understand the context, address our own biases, and come to a sincere conclusion about this issue. We also both know that one of us is obviously, insanely wrong - so either someone isn't engaging in that process, or there's something deeply wrong with sense-making in general.

You're not going to convince me, and I'm not going to convince you. All I can say is: good luck.

But Elon Musk didn't do a Nazi salute nor is he a fascist? You can call him a techno-feudalist, technocrat, billionaire asshole, scammer, scum, narcissist, idiot, nationalist, chauvinist, thief, political meddler, etc. etc. and I may or may not entirely agree, but when you just make extreme things up to align with a particular political ideology it makes me angry, and I won't flag it but I understand why others do.

I understand that a lot of people are motivated to think he did a Nazi salute, but he didn't. He just accidentally made a major social faux-pas as nerds tend to do.

So, please go ahead and attack him and Trump and all the other avatars of "the other side" using the abundant real rhetorical ammunition they give you. I draw the line when delusional takes are supposed to be taken seriously though, because it makes an ass out of you and me.

As for your "personal favorite" comment that got flagged: I agree, that one probably should be allowed. People attack Microsoft, Meta, and Google all the time in threads related to their products.

It works for smoking, but I don't think it does as well for vaping? You just can't rationalize the addiction the same way because you don't stink, you probably won't get cancer from it, you do enjoy it to some extent, etc.

People don't understand that cigarettes are self-limiting because they literally hurt your throat and lungs. Most people simply can't chain smoke and they need about an hour break in between smokes.

With vaping that limit is completely gone. A vaping addiction can keep escalating until you want a puff every 30 seconds, especially once you start breaking down mental barriers like "no vaping indoors" or "no vaping while on the computer", etc.

So in terms of pure addiction I would 100% argue that cigarettes are better than vaping.

Some anecdata:

- It's extremely verbose and often incomprehensible when doing even basic tasks. Like it'll write a giant jargon-filled essay then end it by asking for a judgement call on something that references its own convoluted jargon.

- You can ask it to do research on a topic, and it'll just straight up be lazy, pretending it's really digging deep to find stuff when actually it's just grabbing cached SEO snippets off a search engine.

Both of your comments are illuminating :p

So, we could technically debug a prompt's output? I get that there are too many steps to actually step thru, but what if there were checkpoints? At least you could isolate behaviors to specific sections of a neural network?

Well it's a transitional methodology during the early stages of a major shift in software engineering. Just look at what almost everyone is complaining about with AI coding, and then the inadequacy of their proposed solutions - this is just begging for new tooling that we'll probably consider obvious in a few years.

It's clear to me now that the lack of benchmarks for competence in this space means everyone thinks they're geniuses who don't need a better process, because apparently their workflow "works for them."

Not sure what to say to any of this, because it's not even really related to the article except to say the assumption is supposedly completely wrong. That doesn't make sense to me, because as soon as AWS or something important goes down everyone immediately blames vibe coding.

So which is it? Is process completely solved here ("just get gud"), or is coding with agents causing problems?

I agree, I tend to give a high-level concept for what I want done first, and then break it into smaller tasks. That said, there's almost always a misunderstanding within the smaller tasks anyway, which I have to test to find out about, then ask the agent to fix.

Thanks, yeah I just went with the most controversial term as the catch-all which just means: you prompt an agent as your core workflow.

For me as well, I do projects for clients that would have taken me months, and I deliver them in a fraction of the time. It's amazing and totally helped cure my burnout (which I had for over a year before I found Claude Code.)

I'm making the case that we should make tools for the higher abstraction, not a lower one. You said it yourself: why should we read/write binary? We don't, we shouldn't. It might be useful in some cases, but working with assembly is much easier.

Intent is more natural to us than code, for the same reason assembly is more natural than binary.

I never said you have to turn your brain off to feel the limitations.

Actually, for more complex work I think it's pretty common to spend a long time crafting some elaborate prompt, and then arguing with the agent for 10-20 turns, getting a "passable" plan, accepting it then arguing with the agent every step of the way because it's doing it wrong. It's incredibly frustrating, even with models like Fable.

Even after that, I'll often find out during later sessions that some feature that was supposed to be deprecated was actually silently left in "because I wasn't sure you wanted it completely gone" or something.

I agree that exploring a codebase through prompts is actually quite nice! But the mental model you get from that is almost always warped - you have to supplement that with reading the code, where 9 times out of 10 you will find some kind of discrepancy that you're unhappy with.

Why not optimize that process?

The control room in Jurassic Park was honestly beautiful - and something about those shaving cream cans really crystallized the aesthetic for me, weirdly. I had no idea that it was taken so seriously, I just remember thinking "damn, that's actually pretty realistic" when I re-watched the movie a few years ago.

Bringing model-driven development to coding agents with a desktop tool called Scryer:

https://github.com/aklos/scryer

It's still pretty experimental, but I think now that AI can feasibly generate code from intent/specs it's worth doing... especially with how much vibe coding is both a blessing and a curse.

Basically, what if we took those markdown specs everyone likes using and systematized them into a model graph, anchored claims to code, then represented that as a wiki? And what if we surfaced a planned change to a codebase as a diff of the definition of that model? You can then properly keep track of what gets implemented and how, because you're no longer reading an essay from the agent as a plan, you see a complete diff of everything it plans to do.

I've been using it myself for work, but it'd be nice to get some feedback from other people's perspectives.

This is all from the perspective of people who already oppose Farage, though. Supporters will zealously reframe everything as illegitimate attack. Soft skeptics will notice the establishment's overreach.

I agree this might be a normal political tactic on paper, but that's irrelevant when you're dealing with populism. The entire game is tribal framing. To anyone outside the anti-Farage coalition, this just looks like the establishment closing ranks, and that's more recruiting material for him.

What I can see happening here, at best, is maybe Farage stepping away if the pressure gets too much. But then you risk him getting replaced by a more angry figurehead who will use Farage's downfall as evidence of the "hatred and dirty politics" of the establishment.

I lived in London for six years starting just before Brexit, so I watched this exact confidence up close. The British public "knowing" Farage is damaged is not new, it's not justified, and it doesn't do anything except make people feel better on social media.

I'm pretty sure that just like every other backhanded attempt to squash the populists, this will backfire. I can't know that of course, but I'm pattern-matching against years of this kind of stuff happening in like 5-6 different countries in Europe already.

This doesn't make a fool of Farage though! It clarifies to anyone already skeptical of the establishment that when pushed, they'd rather not play than risk losing. This is literally self-defeating!

You claim that this kind of thing "generally harms populists more than anything else," but I can't think of a single time that it actually has at the scale that matters. What would harm populists would be a viable alternative that takes the concerns of the population seriously.

I don't understand why the mainstream is celebrating the total collapse of any meaningful political opposition to populists. This kind of fluffed-up 2010's style optimism campaign is exactly how the establishment lost control in 2016 in both the US and the UK.

I think it's sad that Binface is the only one even attempting to engage in democracy at this point. He's a satire but he's also, seemingly, the only legitimate opposition that populists face. That should be concerning and embarrassing, but no one has learned anything over the past 10 years.

So, what happens when Binface loses? Are they just going to try to put Farage in prison like they're doing with the other populists? That'll surely help.

And if he does somehow win, what then? Doesn't that also prove that populism is the only viable strategy? Either way people are celebrating their own defeat.

RE: Tauri not having cross-compile... There's a GitHub action that compiles for Linux, Windows, and Mac. So practically it does have it, just not out of the box.

Just started watching Widow's Bay, which to me has a similar vibe, but a much better hook: folk horror as the plot driver.

I can't watch Northern Exposure anymore. It's too alienated from the modern world, it feels like an artifact from a different civilization rather than anything I can relate to now, which is sad.

They're in every discussion even remotely related to anything Elon Musk.

Everything Elon does is somehow stupid or evil. Actually, that reminds me of Thunderf00t YouTube streams where he was (or still is?) betting Starship would fail miserably every test flight, and he'd talk about how evil and stupid Elon is for 3 hours with chatters, watch the flight then say something like "it's still bullshit."

I think it's a mixture of cope and a little bit psyop from adversaries like Russia who are being crippled in Ukraine because of Starlink.