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Comment by dchftcs | Hacker News Reader

This is a poor analogy. Magnus Carlsen stays because chess consumers decide to pay for humans even though they are inferior to Stockfish. BigCorp will always pick machine over you if they can.

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Yeah. Coding is not a sport. Even if it is (Leetcode competitions or something), as in chess, it is the top 100 or so that can make money and survive.

I agree, that was a weak analogy. Magnus stays employed because chess fans value watching humans compete, not because engines didn't replace his capabilities.

I've updated the post title to "Train with coding assistants like Magnus Carlsen trains with chess engines" to focus on the main point: the methodology. Magnus uses chess engines as sparring-partners to improve his game after matches. Same can be done by developers who will use coding assistants to level up their skills.

Thanks for calling this out.

Yes, but it’s also a poor analogy in the sense that AI hasn’t replaced one of the best of the best but has easily surpassed the playing capabilities of every fair, average, and above average player out there.

I am not worried about AI replacing the best of the best any time soon, I’m worried about it replacing the fair to middling…relatively soon.

Companies automate the parts that are commodity. On messy product work (drifting specs, integration, liability), human + AI + good process > AI alone. The machine proposes; the human sets goals, constrains risk, writes/reads tests. That combo ships faster and with fewer costly mistakes than letting an ai free-run.

Productivity replaces people, if you get more done from a team of 5 than your old team of 10 you generally fire 5 people.

Programmers have significantly higher unemployment than the general workforce today, but it’s hitting a wide swath of white collar jobs and that’s not going away. The industrial revolution replaced manual labor, so people moved to more mentally challenging jobs but AI can eventually replace anybody from CEO’s on down.

Or you keep your team of 10 and produce more things.

Demand isn’t doubling economy wide any time soon. So you might keep a team of 10 if you’re outcompeting a different team of 10 and getting all of them fired.

Even if you’re keeping your job expect huge downward pressure on wages.

I've never worked at a place where I have any shortage of work to do. Usually the roadmap is several years out.

Meanwhile, I’ve been let go several times for finishing major projects. Steady long roadmaps depend on slow moving projects.

> BigCorp will always pick machine over you if they can.

But, people might not always prefer BigCorp over humans, if they can?

Never underestimate how many people will gladly accept inferior quality for a lower price.

> even though they are inferior to Stockfish

They're not.

With respect to winning a game of chess?

With respect to playing a game of chess.

What do you mean they are not?

Magnus's peak rating was 2882.

Stockfish is currently rated 3644.

Lc0/AlphaZero was estimated to be rated 3800.

Stockfish would destroy Magnus even with queen odds.

Who would you rather play: Magnus or Stockfish?

And what made him inferior again?

Magnus.

With him being human, there's a 0.00000000000000000000000000000001% chance that he might miss something or miscalculate deep into a game.

With Stockfish, those odds are quite literally 0%.

Magnus could make a mistake. Stockfish is literally programmed to not make a mistake.

So you would enjoy playing Magnus more than playing Stockfish. Because it would actually give you a chance. And that's the whole point of playing games: to enjoy them, and to both have a chance at winning, even if that chances is remote. Stockfish takes that joy away. For me, that makes Magnus far superior to Stockfish. If I want to lose a game playing with myself I'll play solitaire. Or better yet, I'll go read a book. But the chance to interact with a human at the peak of their skill would be unbeatable for me in terms of enjoyment, far to be preferred over playing a game with a computer program. Though I can see the satisfaction in programming a computer to be that good, I would not enjoy the game because the other side would not enjoy it either.

>So you would enjoy playing Magnus more than playing Stockfish.

Oh, no, I wouldn't enjoy playing him more. I'd enjoy playing Stockfish infinitely more because I could learn new strategies from it. Knowing you're going to lose allows you to learn from all moves and all mistakes.

Against Magnus, I'd have no chance. I'm barely over a 2000 rating. Magnus could play with queen odds and drunk off his ass while blindfolded and would wipe the floor with me.

Computer ratings are kind of random because there's no meaningful sample of them playing top players. They're obviously much stronger, but specific numbers are kind of meaningless beyond comparing them to other software which they have competed against.

But Stockfish is not going to beat Magnus with queen odds. Nakamura has beaten Lc0 with knight odds in blitz (though he got crushed overall), and queen odds in bullet, all while chatting on stream. And fast time controls favor computers simply because they're practically impossible to flag and will almost never miss a tactical idea.

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