I assume until LLMs are 100% better than humans in all cases, as long as I have to be in the loop there will be a pretty hard upper bound on what I can do and it seems like we’ve roughly hit that limit.

Funny enough, I get this feeling with a lot of modern technology. iPhones, all the modern messaging apps, etc make it much too easy to fragment your attention across a million different things. It’s draining. Much more draining than the old days

Codex is very steerable to a fault, and will gladly "monkey paw" your requests to a fault.

Claude Opus will ignore your instructions and do what it thinks is "right" and just barrel forward.

Both are bad and papering over the actual issue which is these models don't really have the ability to actually selectively choose their behavior per issue (ie ask for followup where needed, ignore users where needed, follow instructions where needed). Behavior is largely global

Whether you like it or not, AI right now is mostly

- high electricity prices - crazy computer part prices - phasing out of a lot of formerly high paying jobs

and the benefits are mostly - slop and chatgpt

Unless OpenAI and co produce the machine god, which genuinely is possible. If most people's interactions with AI are the negative externalities they'll quickly be wondering if ChatGPT is worth this cost.

You used to be able to count on the basics working smoothly, but stuff like the camera and messaging are frequently broken for me

But immigration policy =/= immigration enforcement. I think ICE needs to exist and needs to enforce the laws. Do I think maskless thugs dragging people from their homes is good? No. Screw that. They need to be dressed in uniform and follow laws. But we DO need enforcement and if you’re illegal I think you’ve got to go while simultaneously we need to offer a straightforward avenue beyond the lefts idea of simply abdicating any sort of enforcement

LA is similar unless you never leave your little neighborhood.

DC was similar when I lived there about 4 years ago.

SF is cleaning up, but I’ve regularly walked on streets where it’s just bodies and needles

I was shocked by the Vietnamese area of Seattle. It felt like a zombie land.

I mean, if we’re talking city core yeah this it the average experience. I say this as someone who loves cities, American cities leave a lot to be desired and a lot of that comes from simply refusing to enforce basic laws that the rest of the world (including much more left countries) don’t hesitate to do.

It’s very hard for me to make a case for urban living, and more apartments, and less cars when the average experience in cities in America is rampant drug use, and tons of unenforced quality of life issues.

We’ve basically decided that actually reforming the bureaucratic machine is much too hard, so instead of reform let’s just not enforce anything.

One of Zohrans ads is such an on the nose example of this. He has an ad where he says he’s gonna help out small business by cutting down the fines that they face. Which on the surface sort of sounds nice, but now we basically just get shitty businesses selling shitty things and facing small slaps on the wrist instead of actually going through and removing the onerous laws and enforcing the important ones.

Same thing going on with immigration. The system is so fucked up, that instead of reform we simply won’t enforce immigration laws.

You see the same thing with housing that abundance basically called out. The system has gotten really good at writing more and more complicated laws at the cost of things basically falling apart in the real world

These copper thefts affect millions of people. It regularly happens to the MTA and shuts down the subway. A functional society would make an example of people committing these thefts so that the rest of us can continue to contribute and live their lives without being screwed by antisocial people

We don't build enough housing, so housing becomes a good investment, eventually pricing out everyone except existing investors or people with large assets. We' structured the system so that once you're in you're IN. Leverage, 30yr mortgages, tax deductions all continue to subsidize existing homeowners at the expense of everyone else (who are technically a minority).

If this continues, expect to see more and more radical policy proposals by young people.