Counter-Tech

If the Amish approach to technology is radical in its application, it recognizes something plain and true: Although technology does not have values of its own, its adoption can create values, even in the absence of a coordinated effort.

Even a mid-range Macbook can do 10x or 100x more transactions per second on its SSD than a supposedly fast cloud local disk, because cloud providers sell that disk to 10 or 100 people at once while charging you full price. Why would you pay exorbitant fees instead of hosting your mission-critical website on your super fast Macbook?

The computer scientist François Chollet has proposed the following distinction: skill is how well you perform at a task, while intelligence is how efficiently you gain new skills.

We are entering an era where someone might use a large language model to generate a document out of a bulleted list, and send it to a person who will use a large language model to condense that document into a bulleted list. Can anyone seriously argue that this is an improvement?

The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as “money laundering for copyrighted data,” which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copyi... See more

Let me offer another generalization: any writing that deserves your attention as a reader is the result of effort expended by the person who wrote it

Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.

Listen, I would just be some random dude in India if I swapped places with some of my cousins, so I'm going to choose to take that personally and point out that using the word AI as some roundabout way to sell the labor of people that look like me to foreign governments is fucked up, you're an unethical monster, and that if you continue to try { th... See more

How to be a -10x Engineer

+10x engineers may be mythical, but -10x engineers exist.

To become a -10x engineer, simply waste 400 engineering hours per week. Combine the following strategies:

Nullify the output of 10 engineers.

Change requirements as far into development as possible. To avoid blame, obfuscate requirements from the start.

Create 400 hour... See more