I had a flight delayed (or cancelled, can't remember) once in LAX. They lead us to a lounge area nearby that had cabinets filled with cots. I was given a cot and a blanket and slept OK. Had no idea this was a thing.
While I remember $5 Ubers fondly, I think this situation is significantly more complex:
- Models will get cheaper, maybe way cheaper
- Model harnesses will get more complex, maybe way more complex
- Local models may become competitive
- Capital-backed access to more tokens may become absurdly advantaged, or not
The only thing I think you can count on is that more money buys more tokens, so the more money you have, the more power you will have ... as always.
But whether some version of the current subsidy, which levels the playing field, will persist seems really hard to model.
All I can say is, the bad scenarios I can imagine are pretty bad indeed—much worse than that it's now cheaper for me to own a car, while it wasn't 10 years ago.
If the electric grid cannot keep up with the additional demand, inference may not get cheaper. The cost of electricity would go up for LLM providers, and VCs would have to subsidize them more until the price of electricity goes down, which may take longer than they can wait, if they have been expecting LLM's to replace many more workers within the next few years.
I've recently become interested in using LLMs for things that are actually beyond human comprehension by using kind of insane prompts and then consistently having the model create i.e. "a coherent mathematical model" of the conceptual space we're in at the moment.
I'm very curious to see if we start to see things like this as a new skill, requiring a different cognitive style that's not measured in studies like this.
There are basic principles of design -- of balance, emphasis, color, weight, etc. -- that are very much part of a general "design theory". That aren't dependent on any particular school of thought.
I feel like this is actually quite a bold claim. Just within this thread there is wild disagreement. The term “design” is so insanely broad. There are Dieter Rams-style principles of functional objects that have sort of “won out”, but with graphical design, it’s essentially art, it’s all so subjective.
I don't think so. Nobody disagrees that a brighter color draws more attention than a subdued one, or that the eye is drawn to a heavier weight before a lighter one. Nobody disagrees that it looks more balanced to have the round parts of letters like "O" and S" extend slightly beyond the baseline and cap line, beyond where the bottom and top os "E" and "B" are. These, and 200 (?) other things, are the basic principles that everyone learns and plays with -- that graphic designers are taught. It's the vocabulary of design, and is universal. "Design theory" is one way of referring to it -- theory of color, shape, etc. The things that make things clear or confusing. It's really quite objective, in the sense of what looks pleasing and balanced to the eye. It doesn't appear to be cultural.
Schools of design have more to do with values and purpose, and following fads and trends and all that. Maybe that's what you're referring to? They can have their own "theories". But when people talk about "design theory" they're usually talking about the basic principles/vocabulary of design.
> Nobody disagrees that a brighter color draws more attention than a subdued one, or that the eye is drawn to a heavier weight before a lighter one.
But they disagree on which of those is "good design" in which context. For example, some want bold colors loudly distinguishing app icons, some want a consistent minimal theme (idk the state of desktop customization today but it was pretty wild in the early 2000s).
> Nobody disagrees that it looks more balanced to have the round parts of letters like "O" and S" extend slightly beyond the baseline and cap line, beyond where the bottom and top os "E" and "B" are.
I'm not totally sure what this means but it sounds incredibly dubious to state as fact and there are no doubt heavily used fonts that don't do it.
For virtually any "universal" graphic design "rule" there will be successful examples of things that did not follow it. There will be a camp that disagrees with it. They also change and drift, they're relative to time and place, nothing is really static. There can be inherent value in explicitly doing something as a counterpoint or juxtaposition to a dominant trend.
I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't learn the vocabulary and the body of accumulated experience, but there's no way you're going to make a universally right and objectively correct decision.
> But they disagree on which of those is "good design" in which context.
Which is why I literally said there are different schools of design.
> I'm not totally sure what this means but it sounds incredibly dubious to state as fact and there are no doubt heavily used fonts that don't do it.
If you don't know one of the most elemental rules of typography, then maybe you should look it up rather than doubt it.
> I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't learn the vocabulary and the body of accumulated experience, but there's no way you're going to make a universally right and objectively correct decision.
You're missing the distinction I made between basic principles of design, and schools of design. Nowhere did I claim that there are "correct" "decisions". But there are principles of design that are, in fact, universal.
The reason is that the underlying technology evolves, and software itself goes through cycles of innovation. Software stays just flexible enough to adapt to the changes and absorb the innovations. It finds this balance "by itself" because software exists in a competitive market, and one where an equivalent of "economies of scale" dominate. Really, it's "economies of attention." All the tools that most people use today are in-use because they were able to (1) adapt to many use-cases while also (2) adapting to changes in their environment and (3) absorb new ideas.
The market learned a long time ago that "high level" text-based languages with libraries are the sweet spot, and many other things about how they are.
People are constantly trying to crystallize higher-level ideas—build some version IKEA or lego, or whatever. It may be that one day this will work. Certainly we see consolidation around strategies as time goes on. But so far, higher-level systems cannot adapt to enough use cases while also adopting to changes in technology and absorbing innovations.
The type of IKEA the author speaks about is Web2.0 software. I was around when we invented all that, and it wasn't that long ago.
Now we're already living through another radical change that software will adapt to—agentic software. If we all used IKEA software, much of it would be thrown out the window in the transition, and we'd lose the value accrued in those systems.
Instead, systems that have been adapting for decades are adapting like they always have. Python, the language of engineering just adds libraries. C/C++/Rust, the anti-IKEA, have new uses. GPU stuff is repurposed for ends never imagined. Nobody uses JQuery anymore.
While I have no doubt that this is a liberating practice for you, for anyone else reading, you can also actually become a real shaman in pretty much any shamanic tradition, and I know many people who who have done that.
This is, in fact, an excellent way to fill your life with meaning and connection if it's something you're called to.
I agree. This was my path which came out of about 20 years of research and experience. It is usual to get an initiation from others, be part of a lineage, etc. My route was the hard way, I spent my time in the wilderness and paid my dues in my own way.
I’ve seen the numbers, but honestly it’s pretty wild for me to read this thread. Many people’s stories paint a picture in my mind of lives that feel devoid of richness, almost like watching an advertisement or a sitcom.
Sadly, I come across this rarely in my everyday life. It would be a richer experience for me to have a more balanced sense of how people are doing.
I was mercifully spared from aloneness by having a powerful and outgoing best friend as a child, and by a nature that ruthlessly seeks “where the action is.” That said, I used to often feel alone when I was with people, specifically. I now call this “feeling unseen,” and it took me a long time to learn that, though sometimes I was just with the wrong people, much of the time it was because I wasn’t expressing myself authentically.
I’ve long since moved to the Bay Area, which, while an odd place, does offer many ladders out of the predicament of disconnection. There are many ways to actively learn the skills of connection here—through therapy, community practice, and structured relational work—and I practiced enough that I can now teach. Many people also learn and deepen their own skills by interacting with the community I’m part of.
The question of whether there’s a solution ... well, when one becomes acquainted with the field of learning the underlying skills that can address loneliness—which goes by many names and has many purported aims—it turns out that the path is well-mapped from pretty much every perspective, and in ways tailored for most types of people. Some of the best books are international best-sellers, and you can just go buy them and read them.
I don’t think the solution, per se, is unknown. The issue seems to be that people don’t know they can help themselves, or don’t believe they can, or perhaps in some cases lack the resources or support to get help.
Most people, I think, are afraid. And if I had to guess at why this seems more common than it once was, it’s probably because many people are no longer being forced by circumstance to confront their fears in the way previous generations often were.
It also seems to me that this is an inevitable result of our urban planning and the rising effective cost of housing since the ’70s.
If you’re such a person reading this who finds themselves alone, the main thing I have to say is: far more is possible than it probably feels like right now. I’ve seen many miracles happen, and correspondingly very few failures among those I’ve seen genuinely try. Paths to wholeness are innumerable—and what worked for me probably won’t work for you—but if you keep trying, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself somewhere adjacent to where I find myself now: with more love and connection in my life than I know what to do with.
The path begins with acknowledging your fear, and learning to feel and see it as a guide. This doesn’t mean leaping off a cliff; it often starts very small. Go toward what feels terrifying, what feels cringe, what you dismiss or push away. Investigate those things and find out for yourself what’s really there. Once you begin doing this, the path becomes obvious ... it’s right in front of you.
I should add, a very specific thing about the Bay Area that had an outsized contribution to my life was the group house culture. There are hundreds (or thousands?) of micro-communities sharing dwellings in the Bay in a way that's unlike anywhere else in the world, to my knowledge.
I've lived with men in their 60s in these contexts, but primarily this is an option for young people at the start of their careers, which I highly, highly recommend.
Any easy way to work on this problem is to simply lower the barriers to co-habitation. This could look like working to change zoning (I think Oregon has been a pioneer here), building businesses around the concept (many have tried, from small things you haven't heard of all the way up to WeWork), to experimental projects like: https://neighborhoodsf.com/Neighborhood+Notes/Published/The+....
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