“if you didn’t want your computer data to disappear, you should have used paper” gee, I didn’t think of that, I’m glad I had someone to point it out, said no-one, ever.

Exactly. Now that we’re both aligned on having unreconcilable claims to being the one-true-consciousness, we can write competing holy books and argue about promised lands, and all that good jazz.

You see, once we begin playing the game, a whole host of worldly distractions crop up to occupy us. Wait until I show you this game called “having a career”, or “chasing wealth”. Spoiler alert - your body dies at the end, and you get to keep none of it, but it was fun, or at least it was supposed to be.

Don't worry. You're in good company.

> How would this work if, from your perspective, I'm also conscious and not a p-zombie?

It's impossible for me to say that you are conscious. I only watch my own movie. In that movie, others appear to be watching their own movies. Their movies exist only as content in my movie. I cannot say for certain whether or not there really are conscious experiences like mine occurring. All I can say is that I am being given the impression that there are.

> Do I give rise to the world, or do you?

I do. Or at least, something impresses the world upon me. You are a feature of the world that is impressed upon me, and, disappointingly (for me at least), there's no way to confirm it through this movie that I am watching. I am left having to "make up my own mind" about whether or not I choose to believe you are anything but a p-zombie extra, in what is (as far as I can see of the conscious spectrum I am able to perceive), a single screen, single reel movie. But I'm just guessing, hoping, wishing, because that's all I can do from this limited vantage point.

> Do we all collectively create a single world from our consciousness in a "Sandman's Dream of a Thousand Cats" way?

It's a cute idea. Design by committee. Books/predictions of the future seem to have this annoying property of becoming true, lending to this idea. Who knows?

> And if we're all p-zombies except you, why bother arguing with us?

What else am I supposed to do? If you have unimaginable wealth, infinite time and the ability to conjure anything into existence, exactly what are you to do? Perhaps you might dream up what having the opposite of your existence might be, and set about convincing yourself that you are a time-ful, perishable human-being bound by physics and inevitably limited by the finite energy available in the universe, stumped by entropy. Perhaps you even role play as the puppets on the ends of your fingers, while convincing yourself that they're just as real as you are, so you can feel what it's like not to be the majesty of your own lonely empire. What else am I supposed to do, than to go along with it? If we destroy the illusion, we're back to square one - and then what?

To me, that idea seems entirely back-to-front. To me, it appears obvious to me that I am having a conscious experience from which the physical world and all its laws and processes, emerge. What’s even more interesting, is the narrative of that physical world. I am witnessing a physical world that is more often than not, trying to convince me that everything that exists has come from it - perhaps poetically in an attempt to ground (confine) me in it, grounding me in the belief that I am only alive inside the confines of what we call the physical world, where the truth is otherwise.

I simply don’t buy that my consciousness comes from my physical brain, it seems more likely that my brain comes from my consciousness - whatever that is.

I am not impressed with the idea that the conscious experience is special and is in need of explanation. Instead, I propose that the physical world is the more special and more interesting part, that needs an explanation. Not to describe all the physical laws and processes, but to explain why it exists at all. And that is done, not by distracting ourselves with searching the physical corners for answer, but instead by exploring the question of why anything would have given rise to a world like this in the first place.

And that, right there, is the truly difficult question, which is answered by peering over our shoulder into the abyss, from which we all had to run from to arrive here.

But they made their own bed with that one.

  Location: London/UK
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Experienced Generalist / Go / TypeScript / AWS
  Résumé/CV: https://dri.me/C0BM3ArVTLwKv7zVOtAwY1k3tOZGkw
  Eml: luke at lukebarton co uk

The moment your company starts playing a pauper and enshitificating the products I already pay for, is the moment I stop giving you any money at all. Try it. I’m not paying you money so you can try to make more money from me. Either add value and convince me to pay more, or fuck off.

I’m starting to suspect that it’s making it more difficult for me to land a job though. I don’t know. There’s something about it. It’s almost as if businesses aren’t hiring human beings, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Not only do the most popular editors have little-to-no incentive to implement it (they’re more interested in pushing their own first-class implementations, rather than integrating those of others), it’s much more work to integrate the evolving agent experience into the IDE than it would be to provide IDE integration points for the agents themselves.

So, I think this project would have been much more successful if it had been more focussed on keeping the agent and IDE experiences separated but united by the protocol, instead of trying to deeply marry them. But that’s not in line with Zed’s vision and monetization strategy.

It won’t be long before the big players start to release their own cloud-based editors. They’ll be cloud-based because the moat is wider, and they’ll try to move coding to the cloud in the way that Google Workspaces moved docs to the cloud. Probably with huge token discounts to capture people. If you squint, you can already see this starting to happen with Claude Desktop, which runs its agent loop on the cloud (you can tell because skills appear to need to be uploaded).

Notably, Microsoft, with VSCode and GitHub have a web-based editor advantage in this space, but no models.

I’m here for it. Corruption is a problem worth solving, so I’m happy to bother the ycombinator readership with it.

> Go out into the world and behave like the GP. Your apparent mental model of society will collapse quickly.

The problem you’ve got is that I will win. If you permit escalating mouth words to physical violence, I’ll have stabbed you in the face for your mouth words before you’ve gotten very far. Subduing your propensity for physical escalation is in your favour.

Not before we get GTA 6 please.

Someone doesn't understand an example when they see one.

> You're dripping with condescension for everyone who's replied to you so far,

Yes

> Or is your art of talking to people just meant to amuse you and ignore the feelings of others?

Every one of you has failed to see what's wrong with expecting people to act the way _you_ want when in public, and been compelled to tell me how _you_ think I should act to make _you_ happy. I can act the way I want, just like the gorilla on the train can act how he wants, and hark: this is the world. One can laugh at it, or one can get angry. I am laughing. You are, what? Being moved by symbols appearing on a screen, which evoked emotions attached to your lack of control over the way _I_ behave, which makes you feel afraid because I could "invade your privacy" -- what does that even mean? Like seriously, what does that matter what my eyes see? Why am I responsible for averting my eyes from shit you're presenting in public? Why should I not pass comment? Did I hurt your feelings? Because you forgot you're in public and didn't keep your shit private enough? Or did you hurt your own feelings through your own unrealistic expectations and your own failure to keep private what you just bandied around in public?

Because I can explain why you shouldn't turn into an ape and physically attack someone. Because physical violence leads to injuries which cannot be undone.

I am so sorry that I saw your phone in public, and that your feelings were so hurt by what my eyes saw - as a failure to stare firmly at the ground. And I'm sorry that my mouth vibrated some air particles that tickled your eardrum in a way that revealed a truth that made you feel uncomfortable. Beat me, I deserve everything you have for me.

What a troubled world you're trying to enforce.

> By the way, there is a social convention that we refrain from commenting on what's on people's phones even though we can see it.

There's a social convention that you don't go around displaying tits on screens that other people might see. So what? Did I turn into an ape and start fighting him? No.

>It's considered an invasion of privacy if we do.

"Invasion"? I barely moved a muscle. On this basis, his pornography invaded my consciousness. Did I turn into an ape and start fighting him? No.

Forgive me for speaking to all of you, for a brief moment, from a place of condescension, but y'all have a fragile expectation of privacy in public, if y'all are gonna turn into gorillas the moment you become aware of your own failure to conceal what you wish you kept private. Privacy is not in harmony with the properties of the physical world when in close proximity to other human beings - and it's not anyone's job to turn their eyes off, or keep their mouth shut, for your pleasure, just as the sky has no job ensuring the weather is in keeping with your desires. You can either fight or allow the world around you. I'm suggesting to you, that you allow it. The world rains on me all the time, and I play with every drop. If you're fighting, you're choosing to fight, and it's not a good look. If you're being "invaded", you're choosing to have something to defend.

I'm declining your invitation to close my eyes, and I'm letting you know my door is open, so come on in, but please, if you wouldn't mind - take your shoes off.

<3

I’m sure you’ve encountered the phenomenon of noticing something unusual within your line of sight.

If you’re going to engage with such content in public with such disregard that others’ gaze may be drawn to it, then you deserve to receive whatever wisdom or drivel may spill from those onlookers lips.

And you’re right, there is nothing stopping anyone from talking to me. I accept their intrusion into my space as a peril of being in public. If you climb through my window to speak to me, that is a different matter.