When I read this, I cannot tell if it's performance art or not, that's how bad this genuinely is.
Judging a large group of people based on what a few write seems very un-scientific at best.
Especially when it comes to things that have been rehashed since I've joined HN (and probably earlier to). Feels like there will always be someone lamenting how HN isn't how it used to be, or how reddit influx ruined HN, or how HN isn't about startups/technical stuff/$whatever anymore.
This comes to mind:
> I don't think it's changed much. I think perceptions of the kind you're describing (HN is turning into reddit, comments are getting worse, etc.) are more a statement about the perceiver than about HN itself, which to me seems same-as-it-ever-was. I don't know, however.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40735225
You can also browse some results for how long dang have been responding to similar complaints to see for how long those complaints have been ongoing:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
There is a voting mechanism on hn as well.
On ne te la fait pas à toi
Though it landed its effect.
Instead, you devoted 2/3 of your comment toward berating the OP as being responsible for your perception of HN's decline.
As for a race to the bottom, it's as simple as embracing and unleashing AI despite its lack of quality or ability to produce a product worth anything. But since it's a force multiplier and cheaper (for the user at least, all these AI companies are operating at a loss, see Goldman and JP Morgan's report on the matter), therefore it is "good" and we need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps; which in this context, I'm not entirely sure what that means.
I understand the criticism: LLMs, on their own, are not going to be able to do anything more. Release in this sense only means this: to fully embrace the means necessary to allow technology to overcome the current conditions of possibility that it is bound under, and LLMs, "AI" or whatever you call it, merely gives us the afterimage of this potentiality. But they are not, in themselves, that potential: the future is required. But its a future that must be created, otherwise we won't have one.
That's, at least, what the other commenters were saying. You ignore the content for the form! Or, as they say, you missed the forest for the trees. I can't stop you from being angry because I used the word "pussy," or even because I addressed the users of HN as directly complicit. I can, however, point out the mediocrity inherent to such a discourse. It is precisely the same mediocrity, the drive towards "politeness," that makes ChatGPT so insufferable, and makes the rest of us so angry. But, go ahead, whine some more. I don't care, you can do what you want.
I disagree with one point, however: it is not a race to the bottom. We're trying to go below it.