Killing copyright would essentially do the same - and if you think clickbait is bad now, removal of copyright would destroy the economic incentive to investing any effort into content.

The only purpose of the written word is to be read.

I don't quite understand the desire to have these verbose summaries that you have to read from LLMs. You'll notice anomalies if you just categorize each of your expenses every so often (easy with Tiller).

E.g. I'm friends with so-and-so and I don't want to be a jerk and schedule a 4:30PM Friday meeting (regardless of whether this is sensible, it's the reality). Or, I see continuous blocks of meetings on someone's calendar with only one open slot, presumably where they'll eat lunch; I shouldn't take that slot. Except for that one guy who I know doesn't eat lunch. Alternatively, I'm getting on a flight at 3PM and working the last 2 hours from a plane; I haven't actually blocked by calendar (people are lazy), so I can't actually do meetings then. Or, I know there's a conflict but someone told me to book over it.

You can go on with the "hidden context". Perhaps this works in some industries where calendars can be trusted, but I've always found the "hidden preferences" to make scheduling optimization essentially impossible. How do you know, for example, when it's okay to reschedule a meeting? How do you say, well, if X person can't be there but Y can, it's okay, but ideally they'd both be there, but not if we have to move it further than a week out from today, then it's fine; but I'll check with X and Y anyway on that?

Another way of phrasing what you've said is that we should prevent companies from building products that people really like and want to use. No one is forcing anyone to use Facebook.

There isn't good data in either direction, and I doubt there will be, ever - but that's a poor reason to not be opinionated about something. There's limited and conflicting data on whether static vs. dynamic programming languages are more productive, but plenty of people on this site have very strong opinions on that. Remote work is no different.

It is time to stop complaining one way or the other and let people and markets vote with their feet and dollars.

I'm certain CEOs of FAANG are looking at stats to make these decisions. And what many WFH diehards miss is that your (or my) individual productivity is irrelevant, because all that matters is the output of the company as a whole. I can work really efficiently on the wrong thing and/or not spend time helping others in a way that my overall output for the company, not myself, is worse vs. in-office.

I do believe remote work can "work" - so can four day work weeks (probably even three day) and many other arrangements. Companies and individuals can do it and not go bankrupt.

But I think to reach your fullest potential as a team/company/unit, you simply need to spend a lot of time together. If you don't want to reach your full potential, then that's a choice you can make.

People can also live closer to work, or use other methods (biking, running, etc.) to combine exercise + commute. Many studies have indicate that people overestimate the happiness of a larger house and underestimate the daily happiness toll of a long commute

If you simply want to minimize time working, which is an unknown but certainly non-zero amount of employees, it's definitely easier and more fun to do that at home vs. in an office.

There won't be hard evidence for a long time, if ever, on which is better - but the optionality argument makes the decision pretty obvious to me.

I agree, the end game for remote work for non-specialists isn't an obvious positive for those in HCOL countries

It's really unfortunate that it seems so many people are in the "you can pry remote work from my cold dead hands" camp that it's hard to even have a conversation that doesn't devolve into "I feel more productive remote, so you shouldn't care where I work".

Lots of people live to 100 smoking cigarettes their whole life, but that doesn't make it ideal.