weakfish

The problem with this assertion is cost. You say that if tokens cost a lot of money, you will _have_ to reduce team size. This is a questionable premise and a trap that companies are falling into.

I don't have hard data on it, but if someone is spending $1.5k a month on Claude (the limit of some folks I know) that shakes out to $18k a year. In my experience, I'd MUCH rather use the $18k of a few developer's Claude budget to hire another dev instead of trying to get a robot to do stuff.

AI is useful, but it's can't f*cking learn like a human can and improve at something.

And, honestly, if your job can be replaced by AI, then your job was more susceptible to offshoring/layoffs/any other for m of cost cutting already.

Did AI replace their job, or did the cost of having AI skyrocket so the companies did layoffs to make budget? There’s a difference.

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I mean, it is a community that self-selects for builders and startup-types.

Copying and pasting my reply elsewhere in the thread that summarizes my thoughts here as well:

I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my vague thoughts (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_)

I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.

Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse.

I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.

I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my rambling thoughts that follow (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_)

I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.

Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse. Not as in the outcomes are worse immediately than Soviet Russia etc. but for the long-term trajectory of human society.

I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.

I don't think the OP disagrees, considering they wrote

> "my favorite, seems the least likely to lead to police state"

... do you? I have 500mpbs and both my partner and I WFH with no problems.

It appears you're inferring a _lot_ that was not said. I think both posters in this thread are misunderstanding eachother.

I've noticed that these comments (which are common) never seem to get a reply.. wonder why :)

Especially because Markdown --> code is _non-deterministic_

Not really? I mean, the original study says this, in essence:

1. Developers _self_ report a 1.5-2x increase in productivity 2. Empirical measurements show 20% slowdown

Now, that study is from 2025, so it may be outdated.

The study you linked and claim contradicts the 20% slowdown is only _self reported_ data, which the original study proves is unreliable and overestimates productivity.

In fact, the study _you linked_ says this:

> In 2 of these 7 cases we were able to view public outputs from the work completed using AI. We are confident that in both cases the participants are overstating their change in value produced as we understand it; at least, the enormously more valuable work is not externally visible.

> In 2 other cases, we are somewhat suspicious of large changes in the value of work produced because qualitative claims do not match our intuitive sense of agent capabilities.

> There is 1 instance where our best sense is that the respondent does indeed have agents doing an impressive quantity of productive work, although we suspect that this work is better captured by improved speed or quantity of output, not improved value of output.

> In the remaining 2 cases we lack sufficient qualitative information to meaningfully interpret.

(edits for formatting)

No it doesn't - that data is self-reported, and the 2025 study explicitly compares _against_ self-reported data.

Granted, I agree models have improved since then, but still.

> Importantly, survey results are not necessarily grounded in reality. There are reasons to be skeptical of people’s responses to counterfactual questions such as about AI’s effect on productivity — for instance, our study in early 2025 found that people overestimated AI’s effect on their time spent on tasks by 40 percentage points on average.

- your linked study

I am not exaggerating when I say reading the post made me concerned for the author’s mental health.

? I never said I agreed with the theories presented in the article. I just believe in free speech :)

Since you can just counter anything I say with calling it “anti-knowledge,” I’ll leave you with a profound quote: “That’s just like, your opinion, man”

A) that’s a very biased view of it that you clearly are emotionally invested in B) an encyclopedia should describe all things factually. It’d be one thing if it described it as truth, but describing it truthfully is far different

An article about a topic doesn’t mean it’s endorsed - are you seriously suggesting that Wikipedia shouldn’t host an article that describes a theory if you don’t like the theory?

All of this is true only if you’re unaffected by the policies of ICE/transgender/etc

Disagreement != low quality, and that explanation is incredibly naive and simplistic

That explains the spaghetti ball that is CC

…it definitely is true, I spun up a cluster at home to learn it for a new job and felt comfortable with the basics within a few days.

Why does this _always_ happen in agentic coding convos?

> I don't find $MODEL useful

> CLEARLY you're doing it wrong

It's so dumb.

(I write code w/ agents btw, I'm just also skeptical)

Are you asking, essentially, to move past the data and evidence and get anecdotes? That seems the opposite of useful, and tbh LLM coding has wayyyy too much anecdotal 'evidence' going on.

Written by an LLM.

+100 to pulumi, I love it with TypeScript

:) just trying to share a little kindness!

lol you might work for my company re: point 4

This is anecdotal and purely vibes based so YMMV but my view is that it’s a lot worse looking if you’re restricting yourself to just Big Tech like all of the programming subreddits do. There’s tons of companies outside that sphere who need engineers, but too many programmers thing it’s MAANG or bust.

Email in my bio, I’m in the triangle and would love to connect. I know some cyber folks who I can link you up with.