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Comment by bonoboTP | Hacker News Reader

The ones who get more productive are either the very incompetent who get pulled up to the AI-floor level, or the very competent who know when and how to use it and for what. The midwits are too proud to use it and instead placate themselves that their precious skill is more special and immune to mechanization than it really is.

Many many people have jobs where their contribution is granting access to deliberately undocumented things, like knowing where the config files are and some such. They hate the idea of AI. For my non IT friends its great for diagnosing wifi issues. It's also great for competent network engineers. It's not great for those who gain a salary due to having memorized some actions or settings that they don't even understand much. Note that this group has also already resisted traditional script automation, just like US dock workers who resist automation.

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I would bet real cash money that many many people, including your coworkers, think that anyone who unironically uses the term "midwit" is completely and totally obnoxious.

Recently saw a podcast about the rise of "AI midwits". The guy's point was that it's good to become a midwit, because it's a stage between knowing nothing and knowing a lot, but an AI midwit just has the aesthetics of a midwit and none of the actual knowledge and is stuck there.

But I don't remember how he defined a midwit, because podcasts are a terrible way to convey knowledge. It might've been something like someone who acts like they know everything.

Mweh, I'm not a native English speaker. It's a definitely existing archetype, though, just like "Spießbürger" points at a thing in German.

If you use it in a work context (or any normal social context really) then yes, that is obnoxious. That doesn't mean it's not a real phenomenon.

Is he wrong though?

More cringe than obnoxious, but yeah.

People who uses the word "obnoxious" are also obnoxious. There are many unpleasant words, you have to use some of them and people don't like any of them.

The word “obnoxious” does not carry the connotation of smug superiority that “midwit” does.

Would you refer to someone as a midwit in a typical office environment and expect your professional reputation to remain intact? If you were to do this on an ongoing basis for whatever reason, how long before you're asked to have a little chat with the folks in HR? Would you then attempt to explain it away as one of those unpleasant words that you just had to use? I want to be there for that conversation.

Engaging in direct open conflict in a sanitized environment like an office is shooting yourself in the foot. Different norms for different rooms.

Corporate offices are low trust environments where people do not really openly speak directly in any negative way (for basically the reason you've illustrated), so I wouldn't use them as any kind of standard for normal social interaction.

> I wouldn't use them as any kind of standard for normal social interaction

Workplaces are where many of us spend a large percentage of our waking lives. So, it is "normal," unfortunately. This is why HR language and norms have broken containment into the non-work world. (Whether that's a good thing is another question.)

Different context, different politeness rules. I bet you're fun at parties. An online forum is a relaxed space, like a town pub. HR isn't breathing down our necks here. Personal attacks are a different sort of thing. Using a word to describe in a comment some abstract situations and kinds of characters you see at the office is not a personal attack.

There is not one single discourse norm to rule them all and calling out every little thing as too offensive is just annoying. Yeah, yeah there are no midwits, everyone is a unique little genius flower, yeah.

> very competent who know when and how to use it and for what.

More productive? Sure, to an extent.

Being merely more productive is a tame claim for what some people unashamedly post here

People apparently can get a very different picture of the same site. Anti-AI people think this site's commenters are mostly pro-AI and vice versa. I'm generally pro-using-AI-in-proper-ways, and mostly have the impression that people on here tend to complain and grumble about AI mostly and are generally skeptical and dismissive of everything which is right in the HN tradition (the famous Dropbox comment etc).

Karpathy, Carmack, Terence Tao, Simon Willison etc. are all smart people and manage to use AI effectively and productively because it doesn't hurt their ego.

Except I am not anti-AI.

You can see my comment history.

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