Oh, well. I guess, I'll have to translate my original Telegram comment.
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I agree with the connections that you make in this post. I like it.
But I disagree that purely-technical discussions around LLMs are "meaningless" and "miss the point". I think, appealing to reason through "it will make your own work more pleasant and productive" (for example, if you don't try to vibecode an app that you'll need to maintain later) is an activity that has a global positive effect too.
Why? Because the industry has plenty of cargo cults that don't benefit you, even at someone else's expense! This pisses me off the most. Irrationality. Selfishness is at least something that I can understand.
I'll throw in the idea that cultivating rationatily helps cultivate a compassionate society. No matter how you look at it, most people have compassion in them. You don't even need to "activate" it. But I feel like, due to their misunderstanding of a situation, or due to logical fallacies, people's compassion often manifests as actions that only make everything worse. The problem isn't that people don't try to help the others. A lot of people try, but do that wrong :(
A simple example: most of the politically-active people with a position that's opposite to yours. (The "yours" in this example is relative and applicable to anyone, I don't mean the author specifically)
In general, you should fight the temptation to percieve people around you as (even temporarily) ill-intentioned egoists. Most of the time, that's not the case. "Giving the benefit of the doubt" is a wonderful rule of thumb. Assume ignorance and circumstances, rather than selfishness. And try to give people tools and opportunities, instead of trying to influence their moral framework.
I'll also throw in another idea. If a problem has an (ethical) selfish solution, we should choose that. Why? Because it doesn't require any sacrifices. This drastically lowers the friction. Sacrifices are a last resort. Sacrifices don't scale well. Try to think more objectively whether that's the most efficient solution to the injustice that bothers you. Sacrifices allow to put yourself on a moral pedestal, but they don't always lead to the most humane outcomes. It's not a zero-sum game.
Comments
Oh, well. I guess, I'll have to translate my original Telegram comment.
---
I agree with the connections that you make in this post. I like it.
But I disagree that purely-technical discussions around LLMs are "meaningless" and "miss the point". I think, appealing to reason through "it will make your own work more pleasant and productive" (for example, if you don't try to vibecode an app that you'll need to maintain later) is an activity that has a global positive effect too.
Why? Because the industry has plenty of cargo cults that don't benefit you, even at someone else's expense! This pisses me off the most. Irrationality. Selfishness is at least something that I can understand.
I'll throw in the idea that cultivating rationatily helps cultivate a compassionate society. No matter how you look at it, most people have compassion in them. You don't even need to "activate" it. But I feel like, due to their misunderstanding of a situation, or due to logical fallacies, people's compassion often manifests as actions that only make everything worse. The problem isn't that people don't try to help the others. A lot of people try, but do that wrong :(
A simple example: most of the politically-active people with a position that's opposite to yours. (The "yours" in this example is relative and applicable to anyone, I don't mean the author specifically)
In general, you should fight the temptation to percieve people around you as (even temporarily) ill-intentioned egoists. Most of the time, that's not the case. "Giving the benefit of the doubt" is a wonderful rule of thumb. Assume ignorance and circumstances, rather than selfishness. And try to give people tools and opportunities, instead of trying to influence their moral framework.
I'll also throw in another idea. If a problem has an (ethical) selfish solution, we should choose that. Why? Because it doesn't require any sacrifices. This drastically lowers the friction. Sacrifices are a last resort. Sacrifices don't scale well. Try to think more objectively whether that's the most efficient solution to the injustice that bothers you. Sacrifices allow to put yourself on a moral pedestal, but they don't always lead to the most humane outcomes. It's not a zero-sum game.