Yeah, it's people like Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday and others who write titles such as "how to think like a Roman emperor" (a terrible title if you know anything about Aurelius or Stoicism in some depth) and other tech bros are to blame. They drummed up excessive hype for Aurelius, he's good marketing material.

Neoplatonists: I tried reading Plotinus, but it didn't resonate with me, afraid. But it was a weak attempt.

On Marcus Aurelius: he's often recommended mindlessly (especially in tech circles). I actually to suggest to read him last. He does have valuable things to say, but he's the most depressive of the Big Three Stoics. You can better appreciate Aurelius if you've already digested some Socratic dialogues and Epictetus. One of the top-most Stoicism scholars (A. A. Long) describes Marcus Aurelius this way: "a melancholy emperor, who was hardly a card-carrying Stoic".

FWIW, here's[1] my recommended reading order and top English translations from five years ago. Cut out the cheap rehashes by people such as Ryan Holiday and stick to the originals. A bonus note[2] on the Roman gem, Cicero, from six years ago.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990579

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638573

I'm sorry, that doesn't sound meaningful. If I don't have the energy, I'd rather shut up than have a stupid "avatar" of me yell on the internet in the name of "bringing my values" or "participate in an online discourse". I'm all for forward-looking thinking, but we must show humility. "Society's issues" are complex and deep. Those who propose internet-based solutions to troubling social ills don't often demonstrate a deep understanding of the nature of the problem. You can't plug it all with "agents"! Socrates would be rolling in his grave.

I know Silicon Valley is in a perpetual rush, but this idea needs more soak-time (3-4 years) to see if it actually holds any water. But this kind of thinking won't you get that sweet VC money.

Are you, though? You will only be "doomed" if your place your value system squarely on "productivity". Then what is to differentiate you from a machine?

    * * *

Edit 2: "the goal of GA is to preserve individual human cognitive liberty and flourishing" — so the proposal is to do that by overlaying a software bot that continuously mimics your "self"?

As usual, this is OpenAI trying to give themselves a backhanded compliment: "look, how dangerous our models are!"

I'll wait for someone more thoughtful than ClosedAI to comment on this complex topic.

I think (physicists in the room, please correct me if I'm making assumptions here) this is a classic "falsification" trap. Just because you can propose a hypothesis / prediction that is "falsiable" doesn't make it a worthwhile one to pursue. "Hypotheses" are dime a dozen. The art and wisdom is in choosing what to pursue.

Your comment above makes me think of Sabine Hossenfelder[1]. I'm sure you must've heard of her. I know she's somewhat of a "polarizing" figure. As a former "insider", do you think her core point stands? (Which is, the particle physics field has largely nothing to show for after spending billions of public money. Some particle physicists have even predicted so-called "unparticles", which almost sounds like trolling!)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder

The point of the article is not to expound on how user-friendly "Ollama" is. It's about exposing the deception and shameful moral low ground they took.

Don't get me wrong, I do know the reality has changed. Even Greg K-H, the Linux stable maintainer, did recently note[1] that it's not funny any more:

"Months ago, we were getting what we called 'AI slop,' AI-generated security reports that were obviously wrong or low quality," he said. "It was kind of funny. It didn't really worry us."

... "Something happened a month ago, and the world switched. Now we have real reports." It's not just Linux, he continued. "All open source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they're good, and they're real." Security teams across major open source projects talk informally and frequently, he noted, and everyone is seeing the same shift. "All open source security teams are hitting this right now."

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I agree that an antidote to the obnoxious hype is to pay attention to the actual capabilities and data. But let's not get too carried away.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/greg_kroahhartman_ai_...

When in the middle of a group text-chat, someone replied with AI-generated blather. It was dead-clear with the usual sterile vocab, structured buzzphrases, and other LLM "tells".

I politely called him out and asked to use his own voice. In public he insisted that it was his voice and that he used AI only for "formatting". But in private he admits that he created a "gem to assist with multicultural comms", which generated the text. He claims he did it because "not everyone can take the native American English well". A load of bovine manure. I nicely told him to cut this crap and just write as it comes to him. (Basic spell- and grammar-check is fine.)

Skrebbel is largely referring to the OSS projects that need people to do consitent grunt work like shipping predictable releases, stable branch maintenance, backporting security fixes, etc. This is the kind of work maintains that the internet's infrastructure.

A bit like the Nebraska guy from the famous XKCD, dependecy: https://xkcd.com/2347/

I see, I don't have a Megrez at my desk, only in the build system. I only have P550 as my "workhorse".

PS: I made a typo above - the P550 I was referring to was the SiFive "HiFive Premier P550". But based on your HN profile text, you must've guessed it as much :)

This rule will atleast partly stem the danger of HN getting turned into what dang calls a "scorched earth" situation.