Hacker News Reader

Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

We've refined the human experience to extinction.

In pursuit of that extra 0.1% of growth and extra 0.15 EPS, we've optimised and reoptimised until there isn't really space for being human. We're losing the ability to interact with each other socially, to flirt, now we're making life so stressful people literally want to kill themselves. All in a world (bubble) or abundance, where so much food is made, we literally don't know what to do with it. Or we turn it into ethanol to drive more unnecessarily large cars, paid for by credit card loans we can scarcely afford.

My plan B is to become a shepherd somewhere in the mountains. It will be damn hard work for sure, and stressful in its own way, but I think I'll take that over being a corpo-rat racing for one of the last post-LLM jobs left.

View on HN

You don't need to withdraw from humanity, you only need to withdraw from Big Tech platforms. I'm continually amazed at the difference between the actual human race and the version of the human race that's presented to me online.

The first one is basically great, everywhere I go, when I interact with them they're some mix of pleasant, friendly, hapless, busy, helpful, annoyed, basically just the whole range of things that a person might be, with almost none of them being really awful.

Then I get online and look at Reddit or X or something like that and they're dominated by negativity, anger, bigotry, indignation, victimization, depression, anxiety, really anything awful that's hard to look away from, has been bubbled up to the top and oh yes next to it there are some cat videos.

I don't believe we are seeing some shadow side of all society that people can only show online, the secret darkness of humanity made manifest or something like that. Because I can go read random blogs or hop into some eclectic community like SDF and people in those places are basically pleasant and decent too.

I think it's just a handful of companies who used really toxic algorithms to get fantastically rich and then do a bunch of exclusivity deals and acquire all their competition, and spread ever more filth.

You can just walk away from the "communities" these crime barons have set up. Delete your accounts and don't return to their sites. Everything will immediately start improving in your life and most of the people you deal with outside of them (obviously not all!) turn out to be pretty decent.

The principal survival skill in this strange modern world is meeting new people regularly, being social, enjoying the rich life and multitude of benefits which arise from that, but also disconnecting with extreme rapidity and prejudice if you meet someone who's showing signs of toxic social media brain rot. Fortunately many of those people rarely go outside.

All of this only goes to show how far we've come on our journey to profit optimization. We could optimize away those pesky humans completely if it weren't for the annoying fact that they are the source of all those profits.

Oh, but humans are actually not the source of all profit! This is where phenomena like click fraud become interesting.

Some estimates for 2025: around 20-30% of all ad clicks were bots. Around $200B in ad spend annually lost to click fraud.

So this is where it gets really interesting right, the platforms are filled with bots, maybe a quarter? of the monetizable action occurring on them IS NOT HUMAN but lots of it gets paid for anyway.

It's turtles all the way down. One little hunk of software, serving up bits to another little hunk of software, constitutes perhaps a quarter of what they call "social" media.

We humans aren't the minority player in all this yet, the bots are still only 25%, but how much do you want to bet that those proportions will flip in our lifetimes?

The future of that whole big swathe of the Internet is probably that it will be 75% some weird shell game between algorithms, and 25% people who have completely lost their minds by participating in it and believing it's real.

I have no idea what this all means for the fate of economics and society but I do know that in my day to day life I'm a lot happier if I just steer clear of these weird little paperclip maximizing robots. To reference the original article, getting too involved with them literally makes you go crazy and think more often about suicide.

> Some estimates for 2025: around 20-30% of all ad clicks were bots. Around $200B in ad spend annually lost to click fraud.

I think this is the wrong way to look at it.

Bots lower the cost per click so they should have net zero impact on overall ad spend.

Imagine if the same number of humans were clicking on ads but the numbers of bots increased tenfold. Would total ad spend increase accordingly? No, it would remain the same because budgets don't magically increase. The average value of a click would just go down.

But bots do not spend money (yet?), people do.

Reddit is a really good example of this because it used to be a feed of what you selected yourself. But they couldn’t juice the metrics that way, so they started pushing algorithmic suggestions. And boy, do those get me riled up. It works like a charm, because I spend more time on these threads, defending what seems like common sense.

But at the end I don’t feel a sense of joy like I used to with the old Reddit. Now it feels like a disgusting cesspool that keeps drawing me back with its toxicity.

Edit: this is a skill issue. It’s possible to disable algorithmic suggestions in settings. I’ve done that just now.

Death threats are fairly common on reddit.

Reddit is beoynd toxic, its bordering on violent extremism

I'm a driver and a cyclist. I used to frequent both r/londoncycling and r/CarTalkUK. I liked each sub for its discussion of each topic. Best route from Dalston to Paddington, best family car for motorway mileage, that kind of thing.

Now, because of the algo-juicing home page, both subs are full of each other's people arguing at each other. Cyclists hating drivers, drivers hating cyclists. It's just so awful.

The general level of hatred and anger that they’re stoking is insane. There used to be a reddit taboo against linking to other subReddits to avoid “brigading”. No issues with that now, because the Reddit app will add that thread to your feed. “/r/londoncycling users also enjoy /r/CarTalkUK!” For some weird definition of enjoy I guess.

In my experience, >95% of the people you see online (comments, selfies, posts) seem way worse - more evil, arrogant, or enraging - than even the worst <1% of people I’ve met in real life. And that definitely doesn’t help those of us who are already socially anxious.

Obviously, “are way worse” means I interpret them that way. I regularly notice how I project the worst possible intentions onto random Reddit comments, even when they might be neutral or just uninformed. Sometimes it feels like my brain is wired to get angry at people. It’s a bit like how many people feel when driving: everyone else is evil, incompetent, or out to ruin your day. When in reality, they’re probably in the same situation as you - maybe they had a bad morning, overslept, or are rushing to work because their boss is upset (and maybe he had a bad morning too). They might even have a legitimate reason for driving recklessly, like dealing with an emergency. You never know.

For me, it all comes back to two things:

(1) Leave obnoxious, ad-driven platforms that ~need~ want (I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has to pay for cat food somehow) to make you mad, because that’s the easiest way to keep you engaged.

(2) Try to always see the human behind the usernames, photos, comments, and walking bodies on the street. They’re a person just like you, with their own problems, stresses, and unmet desires. They’re probably trying their best - just like you.

The romantic fallback plan of being a farmer or shepherd. I wonder, do farmers and shepherds also romantize about becoming programmers or accountants when they feel down?

I'm close with a number of people living a relatively hard working life producing food and I've not seen this at all personally, no. It can be very rough but for these people at least it is very fulfilling and the idea of going to be in an office would look like death. People joke about it a bit but no way.

That said there probably are folks who did do that and left to go be in an office, and I don't know them.

Actually I do know one sort of, but he was doing industrial farm work driving and fixing big tractors before the office, which is a different world altogether. Anyway I get the sense he's depressed.

I kinda did both... And I miss the farm constantly. But not breaking myself every single day.

You'd be surprised how technical farming can be. Us software engineers often have a deep desire to make efficient systems, that function well, in a mostly automated fashion, so that we can observe these systems in action and optimize these systems over time.

A farm is just such a system that you can spend a lifetime working on and optimizing. The life you are supporting is "automated", but the process of farming involves an incredible amount of system level thinking. I get tremendous amounts of satisfaction from the technical process of composting, and improving the soil, and optimizing plant layouts and lifecycles to make the perfect syntropic farming setup. That's not even getting into the scientific aspects of balancing soil mixtures and moisture, and acidity, and nutrient levels, and cross pollinating, and seed collecting to find stronger variants with improved yields, etc. Of course the physical labor sucks, but I need the exercise. It's better than sitting at a desk all day long.

Anyway, maybe the farmers and shepherds also want to become software engineers. I just know I'm already well on the way to becoming a farmer (with a homelab setup as an added nerdy SWE bonus).

Humans always fantasize about having a different situationship whenever they are unhappy or anxious.

They do. I’ve been teaching cross-career programming courses in the past, where most of my students had day jobs, some, involving hard physical work. They’d gladly swap all that for the opportunity to feed their families by writing code.

Just comes to show how the grass is always greener when you look on the other side.

That said, I also plan to retire up in the mountains soon, rather than keep feeding the machine.

The man knows he can be happy but he thinks his happiness depends on the outside rather than the inside.

If you have demons they will be there on the farm as well. How you see life is much more important to happiness than which job you have.

Many farmers struggle with alcoholism, beat their wives and hate their life. And many farmers are happy and at peace. Same with the programmers.

The old term for it was to become a “gentleman farmer.” There’s a history to it - George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the same for a part of their lives.

> We're losing the ability to interact with each other socially, to flirt,

Speak for yourself. I live in a city. I talk to my neighbors. I met my ex at a cafe. It’s great

> Speak for yourself. I live in a city. I talk to my neighbors. I met my ex at a cafe. It’s great.

What's the birth rate in the civilized world?

How many men under 30 are virgins or sexless in the last year?

Some of those men could meet someone if they quit Tinder or whatever crap online platform they might be using for dating, and start meeting people in real life.

Worked for me at least. There's simply less competition and more space for genuine social interaction.

> and start meeting people in real life

Do you have real life hobbies or something? I don't understand how this is supposed to work. I only ever go outside for groceries or gym, etc.

I'm not going to say it's 'simple' to have hobbies or find people, but realistically if you don't regularly meet strangers in real life, you'll never date strangers so it's a catch 22.

Unless we all want to set ourselves up for arranged marriages in the future, we need to confront this reality.

Speaking as a pariah for most of his life; I doubts it would ever be so dire.

There's always going to be social circles and people coupling up no matter what. But if anything I wonder if, for people like me who aren't really worthy of intimacy, living in a society has options to live a solitary life while still contributing is actually a net positive overall. For me to self select out of the dating pool would mean less noise for someone else looking for a worthy partner.

There's less chaff that people in said said pool would have to wade though. The people that want to couple and are capable of doing so will continue to so with less distraction. That seems an overall good thing, no?

Real life hobbies, voluntary work, religious organizations if you're into that stuff. Any of these could work, as long as you find some genuine interest in it, and there are enough people that meet your dating profile around.

Of course there's also the possibility of meeting people in online communities centered around some shared interest. IMO that's also probably more effective than dating apps, especially if it leads to meeting in real life later on.

Go to parties.... One of the 5 biggest party days is this Friday, and with it being on a Friday it will be more intense. A solid 3 nights of good parties. That's all you have to do, I do not understand how this is lost on people. Go to parties and have fun and meet people.

> Go to parties.... One of the 5 biggest party days is this Friday, and with it being on a Friday it will be more intense.

You mean Halloween?

> Go to parties and have fun and meet people.

You mean standing with a glass of champagne in hand, smiling, and talking for the sake of talking? I don't understand how this is fun. I tried doing that, albeit without champagne, and that had not yielded anything other than an increased connections count on LinkedIn.

It's fun for many of us due to the combination of music, dancing, alcohol and socialization (in varying proportions: depending on tastes, interests and circumstances, one or two of those aspects can be set to zero and it's still enjoyable).

Of course, it's also perfectly fine not to like it, and then the most reasonable course of action is not to go. Or to go a couple of times until you're sure you don't like it, and not go anymore. I know cases of people who go partying just because they want to find a partner, but don't enjoy it at all (it's relatively common in my country because partying is quite a religion and there's often a lot of social pressure at certain ages), and that's rather sad. There are other ways to socialize, it's not necessary at all to torture oneself.

That said, I have to lecture you on the questioning of "talking for the sake of talking". In the context of finding a partner, talking to other people is exactly what people need... it's not "for the sake of talking", it's for the sake of socializing, meeting new people, building connections, which is the whole point when we're talking about flirting or lack thereof.

> it's not "for the sake of talking", it's for the sake of socializing, meeting new people, building connections, which is the whole point when we're talking about flirting or lack thereof.

In my experience you really have to be constantly spitting nonsense to keep the conversation from ending and to avoid awkward silence. When the other person is talking, even if I didn't hear most of what they said, I keep nodding, because I don't actually care in the slightest about what they were talking about, and so asking to repeat does not make sense, as that would only increase awkwardness. This is why I said "for the sake of talking." The only thing that matters is that you are talking, not the content of the talk.

Err, the only thing that matters is that you get the other person talking and you listen.

Good point, thanks.

Yes, Halloween.

>You mean standing with a glass of champagne in hand, smiling, and talking for the sake of talking?

Bruh, you literally just asked how to meet people. Is that not what "talking for the sake of talking" is? What else are you doing when you "meet" people but talking? Do you want to jump straight into helping them move or change a tire or something, I'm sure that's possible, but it's unconventional.

Also yeah, with out the alcohol, it's not the same. Alcohol is the foundation of society, so yes, I mean champagne sucks, but drink something enjoyable. You don't even have to actually talk to people that much, just go drink and hang out. It's not hard.

But parties aren't fun. They're a chore.

Then you don't want to meet people....

You’re going to the wrong parties

Do you live in a city? Or do you live in a suburb?

Suburbs are great for families and stable relationships, but they are atomizing

Go to a local bar once a week. Volunteer for something. Get a hobby.

>start meeting people in real life.

Depends on the country and person I guess. When I did try approaching women a few times, it was 10% angry looks, 30% awkward, 30% basic polite conversation to fulfill social obligation, and 30% friendly conversation. Unfortunately I'm not keen enough to pursue that 30% of friendly conversations by wading through the rest.

I know right? And tech is such a male-dominated industry, so presence of a female in your proximity is a rare event by itself. But, even if such an event occurs, as you said, interacting with a female is one hell of a minefield. Honestly, at this point, I cannot blame people for choosing to be gay. It is just so much easier to just talk to men, because you don't have to worry about all those mind games.

Did a Ferengi write this post?

What? There’s more to life than approaching women. The best relationships I had were due to friends hooking me up.

Frankly, your entire approach is wrong and kinda sad tbh

If you want to live life on your own terms, and don’t want to interact with people, you’re _not gonna get to interact with people_

Its worth it to practice people skills. Maybe try signing up for public speaking classes or some other form of story telling?

> Some of those men could meet someone if they quit Tinder

Maybe your intentions are good, but remember, unless we legalize polygamy, the "bad/inept/creepy straight-white men" narative should crumble for people in their 30s and 40s when it's the last train for marriage and children.

But we don't have "some of those women..." narrative about single women in their 40s complaining they can't find a husband.

My point is it's an universal problem in the civilized world, spanning vastly different cultures in Asia and Europe and North America, "some of those men" is very hand wavy explanation, and I think it spans from the extremely toxic (I'd say anti-human and demonic) hollywood pop culture.

> How many men under 30 are virgins or sexless in the last year?

Like I said: speak for yourself

This trend and direction has been going a long time and it's becoming increasingly obvious. It is ridiculous and insane.

Go for your plan B.

I followed my similar plan B eight years ago, wild journey but well worth it. There are a lot of ways to live. I'm not saying everyone should get out of the rat race but if you're one, like I was, who has a feeling that the tech world is mostly not right in an insidious kind of way, pay attention to that feeling and see where it leads. Don't need to be brash as I was, but be true to yourself. There's a lot more to life out there.

If you have kids and they depend on an expensive lifestyle, definitely don't be brash. But even that situation can be re-evaluated and shifted for the better if you want to.

What was/is your plan B?

It's been a lot of things but the gist was to get out of the office and city and computer and be mostly outdoors in nature and learn all the practical skills and other things like music. Ironically I've ended up on the computer a fair amount doing conservation work to protect the places I've come to love. But still am off grid and in the woods every day and I love it.

>now we're making life so stressful people literally want to kill themselves

Is this actually the case? Working conditions and health during industrial revolution times doesn't seem that much better. There is a perception that people now are more stressed/tired/miserable than before, but I am not sure that is the case.

In fact I think it's the opposite, we have enough leisure time to reflect upon the misery and just enough agency to see that this doesn't have to be a fact of life, but not enough agency to meaningfully change it. This would also match how birth rates keep declining as countries become more developed.

I'm right behind you on the escape to the mountains idea. I've actually already moved from the US to New Zealand, and the next step is a farm with some goats lol.

That said... I don't necessarily hate what AI is doing to us. If anything, AI is the ultimate expression of humanity.

Throughout history humans have continually searched for another intelligence. We study the apes and other animals, we pray to Gods, we look to the stars and listen to them to see if there are any radio signals from aliens, etc. We keep trying to find something else that understands what it is to be alive.

I would propose that maybe humans innately crave to be known by something other than ourselves. The search for that "other" is so fundamentally human, that building AI and interacting with it is just a natural progression of a quest we've already been on for thousands of years.

Humanity constructing a golden calf is an invariant eventuality, just like softwares expanding until it read emails.

Your comment reminded me of Business Business [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/WO5wpeYSotg?si=hgwzJ5mxJyAZeYoA

I partly agree and partly disagree. Yes, we're more individual and more isolated. But ChatGPT/Gemini can really provide mental relief for people - not everyone can afford or have the time/energy to find a good human therapist close to their home. And this thing lives in your computer or phone and you can talk to it to get mental relief 24 / 7. I don't see it as bleak as you see it, mental help should be accessible and free for everyone. I know, we've had a bad decade with platforms like Meta/TikTok but I'm not convinced as you are the current LLMs will have an adverse effect.

Book recommendation:

Ashley Montagu, On Being Human

It’s from the 1950s, I believe.

I like your plan B. But I would wait until robots are good enough to help with the hard work

if they can do the hard work, they can do the easy work.

This is over the top. With tiny reframe i think the story is different. What is the avg number of google searches about suicid? What is the avg number of weekly openai users? (800m) Is this an increasing trend or just a “shock value” number?

Things are not as bleak as it seems and this number isnt even remotely surprising nor concerning to me.