from Hacker News

The World Is Ending. Welcome to the Spooner Revolution

by ethn on 4/21/25, 2:23 PM with 34 comments

• by tacitusarc on 4/24/25, 3:41 AM

  It would be better if the author could write plain English.

• by bix6 on 4/24/25, 4:32 AM

  Fascinating read, very unique writing style. I’m not sure I agree that it will make people more entrepreneurial. People desire the stability a wage provides; it is incredibly difficult to set out on your own. Most people don’t have financial security to start one company so just because they can trial 20 in the same time now doesn’t change that. I do think it enables rapid prototyping via fast access to experts or code generation. But if you’re starting a biotech you probably still need a lab which is expensive or tied to an institution so AI can only provide so much there.

  I’m not sure I understand your argument for early stage venture going away? There’s more proven before funding with AI so the round has to be bigger since it’s inherently later stage by the time it reaches VC?

• by bitwize on 4/24/25, 3:58 AM

  This reads like an example from Orwell's "Politics and the English Language". Which on its face leads me to wonder what sort of semantic shell game the author is up to.

• by 4b11b4 on 4/24/25, 4:11 AM

  Despite the criticisms I do see the self-enterprising case... or maybe merely hope for

• by imtringued on 4/22/25, 12:27 PM

  >Even with that, there are obvious limitations described by Amdahl's law, which states there is a logarithmic maximum potential improvement by increasing hardware provisions.

  I don't know why so many people are obsessed with Amdahl's law as some universal argument. The quoted section is not only 100% incorrect, it sweeps the blatantly obvious energy problem under the rug.

  Imagine going to a local forest and pointing at a crow and shouting "penguin!", while there are squirrels running around.

  What Amdahl's law says is that given a fixed problem size and infinite processors, the parallel section will cease to be a bottleneck. This is irrelevant for AI, because people throw more hardware at bigger problems. It's also irrelevant for a whole bunch of other problems. Self driving cars aren't all connected to a supercomputer. They have local processors that don't even communicate with each other.

  >The latest innovations go far beyond logarithmic gains: there is now GPT-based software which replaces much of the work of CAD Designers, Illustrators, Video Editors, Electrical Engineers, Software Engineers, Financial Analysts, and Radiologists, to name a few.

  >And yet these perinatal automatons are totally eviscerating all knowledge based work as the relaxation of the original hysterics arrives.

  These two sentences contradict each other. You can't eviscerate something and only mostly "replace" it.

  This is a very disappointing blog post that focuses on wankery over substance.

• by smitty1e on 4/24/25, 10:09 AM

  "Tautologically

  negentropic" verbiage makes

  The world go 'round, no?

  #Haiku

• by jzellis on 4/24/25, 10:03 AM

  A bit of unsolicited advice: there's a reason we use the pyramid structure in essay writing: begin with your point and expand upon it. If someone (like me) is coming to this with no idea of who you are, who Spooner is in this context, or what the actual point of the piece is, it's a big ask to get them to read a lot of extremely dense prose to figure out what the hell you're actually discussing here. I mean, yeah, bonus points for using "negentropic" in a sentence without actually being a Charlie Stross character taking the piss, but tell us where you're going so we can follow you, you dig?

  That might be why people assume this is AI writing and frankly the same thing occurred to me about eight paragraphs in.

  And your stated experience of working at FAANG and starting a multi-billion dollar company is so widespread you might actually be able to fill an entire boutique hotel with people who share it. As stego-tech says, you might wanna investigate the labor experience of people who, I dunno, have country or folk songs written about their jobs.

  I mean, you're obviously a bright cat, but unfortunately merely being bright isn't the key to good communications. It's wanting other people to care about what you're saying and learning how to make them care.

• by Blackthorn on 4/24/25, 3:43 AM

  > The latest innovations go far beyond logarithmic gains: there is now GPT-based software which replaces much of the work of CAD Designers, Illustrators, Video Editors, Electrical Engineers, Software Engineers, Financial Analysts, and Radiologists, to name a few

  "Replaces". Uh-huh.