ipsod

Yeah, wherever there's curiosity, dive in. I feel like curiosity-driven education is probably the best kind. Well, curiosity, or necessity.

"If I should really WANT to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer ANY question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men about me who can supply any knowledge I require?"

- Henry Ford

This is roughly my point. The moment the AI was able to do things for me, those things which it could do became trivia. I never had a taste for trivia. I still fill my days with learning and knowledge... the things I must learn and know to do my work and run my business well. I am growing faster with AI than I could without - it's allowed me to expand my purview while narrowing my focus. No less learning, just a different shape of it.

So, to me, the argument that "AI doesn't help you learn" completely misses the point. AI can help you learn, if you use it to and apply yourself, but also, AI can allow you to accomplish without filling your mind with "general knowledge" - not the high value stuff that is your business, but the low level stuff that was incidental.

I looked (*asked AI), and AI data centers are projected to hit 850-920 TWh by 2027, if you count the energy required to produce all of the buildings and equipment. This is about 3% of global electricity consumption, or 0.5% of global energy (counting fuels, etc., outside of electricity).

So, yeah, that's a lot.

Also, there are at least a few data centers popping up around me (11 GW Fermi, > 1 GW Crusoe). I live in a desert, and water is scarce, and what's used is mostly non-renewable (pumped from an aquifer), and these data centers evaporate water at an alarming rate.

So... yeah, that's pretty significant... much more so locally than globally, but globally, too.

Global electricity consumption is up about 600% since 1970. So, that 2027 projection of 3% of global in 2027 is equivalent to about 20% of all electricity consumed in 1970. A fair amount, for sure.

IDK if it's worth 3% of global electricity consumption. I know I'd be happy to spend that percentage of my own home's electricity on it, for what it does for me, and I think the world would be better for it. The alternative is accomplishing far less... easily halving my productive output (10x is my honest estimation of productivity boost from AI). I do not believe in the value of my labor, I believe in the value of the product thereof. So, IDK... hopefully it's not a zero sum game, and AI (or motivated people with AI) can help it all pan out.

For me, the primary mechanism for learning is doing projects.

And, doing projects in domains I'm unfamiliar with (and those I am) is massively sped up by AI.

I learn to do these projects with AI - it's different than learning to do it without AI, and I don't learn some steps I otherwise would, because AI can do those.

But, I start and finish and use and polish so many more projects in so many more domains, with AI, than I could without.

And, starting and finishing projects is the point for me, not learning obscure stuff that doesn't help there, so, I don't feel like I've missed out on much. You might look down on it, but, if I have AI and you don't, I will bet on me to finish a project before you, better than you, in almost any field where we have similar levels of experience.

IDK about frontier-pushing-pursuits, though. I've written algorithms by hand that I doubt AI ever would have, in its current state... but, then, at least a few of those I'd given up on, for lack of time, and when AI came along, I was able to go back and have it finish them. But, for me, the work wasn't the goal, or even my own accomplishment therein - I just wanted the result. If your motivations differ, you might not find AI as fucking awesome as I do.

It does, though. Whether or not they take advantage of it... "You can lead a horse to water..."

You've got to admit, it feels different when you think it's grass roots, but was funded.

But then, even if it's them in their own skin, you think it's the algorithm showing that for you, when it's showing stuff for them to you.

It's weasels all the way down.

Never tried them, myself, beyond being handed a few over the years. Had a pipe for long enough to go through a few bags of tobacco. I've got an addictive personality, so I appreciated that there was a lengthy ritual just to get started. Also, I liked the feeling of the warmth in my hand, and that it smelled amazing. I don't get that from cigars, they smell terrible.

Apparently, though, you can figure out pipes well enough to just have no trouble. I've known a few old men that always seemed to have one going.

Is it any more surprising than other forms of marketing, like commercials that force themselves in between you and what you actually want to watch?

Easy. Both would be protected* from mean words under this law, if they were in same jurisdiction.

* not that you couldn't say them, but you could get fined if you do

Honestly, a lot of people could stand to be a lot more informed about what they're getting into. People could use a lot more skepticism when interacting with AI, social media, news feeds, and basically every other form of media, especially those originating at the top of some pyramid or another.

I don't tend to like controls or regulations, though. Not that they aren't needed, but I don't trust the people responsible for writing and enforcing them. More often than not, they are just the top of the pyramid squashing everything beneath it.

Same.

Reminds me of this cartoon: https://imgur.com/life-before-google-q0eP1Rg

__

"Life Before Google: A Short Story"

dog: I just thought of something I'd like to know more about.

rabbit: That's a damn shame.

THE END

Do data centers compare to the human population going from 2 billion to 8 billion over the past 100 years? Or, are they just a drop in the ocean?

> It has literally contributed to suicide and murders

So have many pharmaceuticals that are generally regarded as beneficial. Suicide is a side effect of more than a few, but doctors disregard that, believing that the results are worth the risk.

It gave my grandmother strokes. She never smoked again, and was still around, but never quite the same. She told me once, "I miss smoking every day. I loved it so much."

Pipes?

Doesn't strike me as Randian. She idolized builders and doers, not exploiters.

So... Musk, perhaps... but not this PE enshittification.

It's moot, because it will never happen. The apprentice system worked because they could perform actual useful work, if only sweeping the floor and such. An apprentice would only slow me down. A Keurig and a Roomba would be far more useful.

> you can't buy a $200 sub anymore

Are you sure?

> It's about code reviews, QA, debugging, discovery, and maintenance; much more than the "writing" part.

AI can do all of that quite well. If you take your hands off of the wheel, lean into it, start building systems for it, start figuring out where it goes wrong on your codebase and building systems to prevent that... you might get 10x more done. I do, and the results are generally better than anything I'd have coded by hand, because there was never enough time.

I don't look at or try to grok all changes, though. I couldn't get near as much done, otherwise, and I'm not convinced that 1 hr of me looking over it is better than 4 hrs of AI looking over it, and the AI is far cheaper. I look over the code, occasionally, to look for code that's objectively terrible, but I don't fix it directly - I use it as a test-case for improving my AI stack, to make it able to find and fix or prevent that class of terrible.

I probably spend 9 out of 10 credits on review and refinement, not writing fresh code. In spite of that, I'm still producing things way faster than I ever did by hand, with only a single $200/mo Codex plan.

I still keep my JetBrains' subscription, so that agents can use the MCP. I probably spend <5h per month in an IDE myself, though.

I use their MCP to give agents reliable refactor/rename, find usages, etc.

Agreed.

Even if you aren't coding, you really need to double check its answers. Flash 3.8 hallucinated a Keyence camera's max operating temperature for me, last week, and backed it up with "references".

It's still my favorite model for most non-coding stuff, though.

I'm pretty sure that it'd be easy for anyone of above-average intelligence to realize that Newton was on another level.

So... network effects... same way most people get jobs, these days.

Art got patrons, too - what practical use is it?

> Anthropic: 17 USD (pro), 100 USD (max) GLM: 80 USD (pro), 168 USD (max) -> with "limited-time event" discount this is 56 USD and 117.6 USD

GLM's "Max" plan is (was?) equivalent to 3x Claude's 20x ($200) plan.

Look at how China does it. They'll happily sell us everything we want - more than enough of it, cheap enough, to put all of our own manufacturers out of business.

Seems to work for them.

AI isn't worried about killing itself and the whole world, if something especially nasty escapes the lab.

It kind of breaks the "mutually assured destruction" implicit in a super-ebola outbreak.

Sure, undoubtedly. But, also... you don't have to make a ton of money to pay more than 3% of your income.

To be clear, I don't pretend to have preferences. I'm idealistically libertarian, but I think that nukes have ruined the right to bear arms, propaganda has ruined free speech, and central banks have ruined currency. I'm a demoralist, I guess, to coin a term.

Do they?

The 2021 ProPublica tax leak showed the 25 richest Americans paid a "true tax rate" of roughly 3.4% on their $401 billion in wealth growth between 2014 and 2018, because their wealth grew without triggering realization events.

Still seems like the same driving force of curiosity behind both, but one wants to know and one wants to do. It's like yin and yang, like two sides of the same coin.

I'm into engineering because I want to create what's never existed.

Science is more about discovering what already exists.

if curiosity > pain avoidance: engineer

I don't get that experience at all. LLM's both relieve burden and improve speed. The only trouble I have with AI is when I run out.

That, and I miss coding... but... this new thing is its own puzzle, and I still do lots of pseudo-code and such, to talk to the AI, which kind of scratches the itch.