The implication that is NOT said is that suddenly 20% of people were sitting around without any work to do because AI was making everyone so efficient and productive. This does not, however, seem to be the reality, based on conversations within the company. It appears we have yet another case of economic downturn disguised as increasing velocity.

As an English enthusiast, I'm getting very frustrated at how the language is consistently abused in executive communications to write words without saying anything.

The implication that is NOT said is that suddenly 20% of people were sitting around without any work to do because AI was making everyone so efficient and productive. This does not, however, seem to be the reality, based on conversations within the company. It appears we have yet another case of economic downturn disguised as increasing velocity.

Big llm smells: 'Not "AI helps you autocomplete a function." Not "AI explains a stack trace." I mean the full-on narrative:'

'Sure, it's a weird language. It looks archaic. Sometimes it's hostile. Sometimes it's beautiful.

But still—if you know what you're doing—you can sit down with a keyboard and turn words into:

a product a workflow an automated business process a system that makes money while you sleep a tool that saves a team thousands of hours That's real power. It's leverage.'

'Not because we're lazy. Not because we're gatekeeping. Because building real systems is hard, and the number of people who can reliably do it is limited.'

Sometimes I think we get too caught up on what chatgpt will do to the economy, software, and businesses, and forget the most insidious aspect of this type of technology - we will no longer know how to write and all human text communication will confirm to a specific pattern.

A few weeks ago, I read a 1300 page fantasy book. A few weeks before that, I read a 400 page nonfiction book on a subject I'm interested in. I've also read philosophy, wrote in a journal, watched tv shows and movies, browsed TikTok for hours, and took many walks around the park. I really can't say I find any of these experiences any more meaningful than the others. Anti-consumptive behavior has its place when a life is out of balance, but we're all going to die, so does it really matter in the end?

I dread interviewing and will almost always just ask my network or coworkers for referrals because posting positions online seems such a terrible way to source candidates these days.

I personally believe this phenomenon is the cause of a great many of the current problems we have today. Excessive greed and hoarding is a fear response. Rabid political polarization either to try to fix the problems we face or ignore them and protect our mental health. There is a large shortage of faith in the future, and there's a lot of realization that technological advancements of the past have created some of the overwhelming problems we face today.

Distraction and nostalgia are the best selling items in the modern world. Depression and suicide are the highest they've ever been. The social fabric is unwinding, and communities are dying, and an article like this comes along that makes me wonder just how it would feel to struggle and strive in a world in which the future had so much potential.

Who knows though? Maybe this feeling is something that was pervasive in these times.

1. The author posits the idea that we will become boring or unlikeable, even if we were not this way before. I personally don't see that take place in my surroundings. People's personalities don't tend to change too much, and barring some radical illness such as dementia (which the author mentions), I find it hard to believe that someone generally found as interesting would become boring after a certain amount of time.

2. The author points out the dichotomy between people wanting independence from community for most of their lives, while also wanting care when they are in need, but from my experience, people who desire independence strongly also desire it in times of weakness. I know many people in my extended family who have been independent and they continue to ask for nothing and want nothing even as their bodies fail.

I'm also a little confused as to the notion of people desiring independence from community. While I know many people that desired independence from local community microcosms, such as church, small rural towns, or disagreeable family, many of those people still want community. I really am not seeing the issue that this author refers to in the article of people essentially wanting to be independent and optional from all communities in order to maintain wealth. In my experience the main issue people are having is that we don't have ready made replacements to traditional communities and online communities are not fulfilling the social requirements of being a human.

My own observations compared to my depression free childhood, which was not a happy one, is simply one of exposure. When I was young I had both online and offline communities, but the point is that they were my age, and my culture. I had no idea what was going on in the greater world, the scandals of the 90s being mere background noise to my Pokemon and Zelda and WWE. I could never remember who was president even in high school, and kids were more concerned with social drama rather than being socially correct.

Kids these days grow up in the adult world. You can blame social media or the Internet but the result is the same- kids share their space with adults, they have opinions on politics, they joke about economics and social issues, they bemoan capitalism without having ever participated in the system.

I think children operate best when adult life is a mystery, some intangible and incredible future that will happen but is not understood, and unfortunately the society we have constructed post 2000 has destroyed the ability for any young kid to be ignorant.