What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?

I know a lot of people - serious, thoughtful people with impressive careers behind them - who are having the time of their lives right now.

I've spoken to multiple people who have come out of retirement because the challenges and opportunities of this new space are irresistible to them.

All those side project ideas from the past few decades have suddenly become much more feasible. There's so much new to explore and build.

We get to reinvent how software is written. The field is wide open - anyone can be the first to find a new pattern that works, or figure out a new way to apply this tech to real world problems.

There are a thousand reasons to be negative about the implications of this technology, and many of them are legitimate. Don't let that distract you entirely from the parts of this that are genuinely inspiring, enabling and fun.

People who doomscroll rarely recognize it as doomscrolling because they only think of the term as something that happens to other people. They see their own consumption as accurate and important. They don’t see their sources as doomerism, they think they have identified the real truth that others don’t see yet.

They have a short memory for the gross inaccuracies of their doom bubble, such as when everyone thought the AI2027 project had accurately predicted the arrival of evil AGI next year. Remember when that was everywhere and the doomers cited it in every topic until suddenly it became useless to their cause and disappeared?

Much has been written about doomscrolling and you can find some good sources for help. Conceptually it’s simple: You need to greatly reduce your consumption of these sources and, very importantly, replace time spent doomscrolling with something healthier for you. Try reading a book, visiting the gym, going outside and walking, or even playing video games or watching movies.

Seriously. I've been through too many hype cycles to count. In a few years we will look back on this and see three things:

* Both the downsides and upsides were exaggerated

* A lot of VCs lost money and many of the trillion dollar buildouts didn't happen

* after the hype died down we figured out what AI was actually good for, and what it wasn't.

Then, maybe when I'm on the verge of death due to old age, the entire society will adapt around using their creative juices in proompting the next big LLM model version, while schools teach about the years where people talented were allowed to study and make a living out of their talent.

Seriously, turn off the screen, go into the real world and try to mingle with humans you like.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn0nrSd4xjjaSLBSzmno-...

Yes, there is a lot of hype, wailing, gnashing of teeth, but if it is good enough to be a worry, it is also good enough to empower the individual to survive it.

Ultimately, if it is all hype, it will soon crumble; if it is not then productivity will increase by leaps and bounds. The only key issue is to make sure that all the gains aren't taken by a small group of people (whether the current rich and powerful, or those that displace them using new paradigms).

I suggest getting comfortable with the idea of a UBI.

I'm going to start raising cattle since I effectively burnt out of having a career, and AI was the finishing move.

The thing is, if you enjoy making things, then this is a great time. I'm currently teaching the machine how to code the language I invented, and it is surprisingly working. Coding is... a bit of a meta skill.

Can you provide examples of this? As far as I can tell, they have long pushed past any moral quandaries and are speeding towards implementing their visions while pushing off any problems of societal upheaval onto our politicians.

Can Claude replace you? Have LLMs altered the software developer productivity equation?

In 1987, Fred Brooks wrote [1]:

"But, as we look to the horizon of a decade hence, we see no silver bullet. There is no single development, in either technology or in management technique, that by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity."

Most companies do not measure software developer productivity. I have never been part of an organization that does.

Will it collapse the economy? The last innovation to collapse the economy was credit default swaps. This says more about the economic systems we have built than technology or progress.

No one knows what is going to happen. But humans are still necessary for every stage of labor, and software developers are still necessary for making software.

[1] https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/Outreach/pc204/NoSilverBullet.html

Did it for me.

"Oh, that's all it is? OK, cool, that'll be nice to have around once the hype-morons move on to the next thing."

im hoping to see over the top of the haze / level the curves by building a platform for everyone to climb

they definitely are not.

Perhaps the gravy train will come to an end. I might have to wake up to an alarm, commute to an office and tighten my belt a bit. Or perhaps I can spend less time building things, and more time understanding the people I build them for. My business always hinged on empathy, not technical prowess.

Besides, no matter how bad things get, I will still enjoy riding my bicycle, having tea on my balcony, tending to my garden and painting watercolours.

Even if the online spaces I once inhabited are drowned out by AI noise, we can still grill and have potlucks. We can retreat to the cozyweb, or just log off entirely.[0] There's this whole big world I know zero percent off. I might have to go check it out.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my coping mechanism is to go touch grass.

[0] https://maggieappleton.com/cozy-web, https://www.fortressofdoors.com/ai-markets-for-lemons-and-th...

Don’t let the things you cannot control upset you. Manage risk by increasing your optionally across important dimensions like finances, citizenship, friends, etc.

Don’t try to save the world.

Enjoy simple things in your day to day.

if it's not over in a year or so I'm finding an alternative career, or retiring early

You’ll see they’re not a panacea. You’ll find Anthropic started pursuing an IPO right when the hype cycle took off. You’ll discover Shumer is a known liar and grifter.

LLMs are here to stay, but we’re in a trillion dollar hype cycle right now.

The more broad your skillset, the more you will be able to transform your role in your company.

I have been having lots of fun with Claude Code but recently got in to Cursor too. Vibe coding with frameworks and languages I am already familiar with is wild. However, I want to vibe code with languages I don't know next!

Anyone who works with technology knows that it is inherently transformative. It's true that we need tech-worker Unions, UBI and AI regulations.. and without those the future is potentially very dark.

I like my scifi dark but I don't want to live in a dystopian Cyberpunk future. I think it is possible to both be an AI-optimist AND an AI-doomer at the same time. In fact, it is important to see both these sides.

Being forced to work is not much different from slavery, I would rather roll the dice than keep the status quo.

""" Always look on the bright side of life...

Life's a piece of shit

When you look at it

Life's a laugh and death's the joke, it's true

You'll see it's all a show

Keep 'em laughin' as you go

Just remember that the last laugh is on you """

I'm optimistic that AI will fix some of the shittiness, and something like uploading may fix the last laugh on you bit.

Anyway no harm looking on the bright side...

Remember all that? Yeah none of it happened, humanity didn’t end. They stopped embarrassing themselves eventually when they realised their imagined fictional futures were false.

Same thing. Cope by not imagining fictional futures.

> Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.

I do believe that our materialist reductionist culture has neglected the mystical, spiritual nature of human existence to our own detriment, and re-engaging with those factors that no one can take from you is a powerful way to weather a new kind of storm.

I don't think you can just decide to become spiritual though. Opening up to the long neglected forces within yourself and the world is a delicate and vulnerable motion. You're not really searching for "faith" in this arrangement, you're looking for surrender. It's wu-wei, or kenosis, or equanimity, or whatever you want to call it.

Feel free to email me, I've gone on quite a journey myself over the past couple years spiritually, and as a tech person would love to share. Here's a general list of moving works or ideas that have opened me up over the past couple years:

- Singing lessons: I never expected it, but singing opened me wide open. I'd find myself crying during songs I love, feeling a whole different appreciation for life and beauty through my voice.

- James Hillman: Hillman (I think) coined the term "soulmaking," (special shoutout for Burbea's Soulmaking Dharma too: https://hermesamara.org/teachings/soulmaking-dharma) and sees the symptoms and the hurt as expressions of the soul, as parts to be discovered and expressed.

- King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: about the male archetypes that make up the generative male https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/91781.King_Warrior_Magic...

- Jacob Needleman's "Money and the Meaning of Life"

- I also wrote about my experiences with meditation and explorations into esoteric Christianity after burning out on many years of westernized meditation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919809

I was a pilot before I got into this tech stuff. For literally ALL of my life all I wanted to do was operate flying vehicles. I built my life around it. I got a summer job in school and paid for my first lessons by washing airplanes. I solo'd at 16, and got debt immediately out of HS to learn to fly. I lived flying, I thought about flying, I dreamt about flying. The only thing I wanted to do was keep flying (particularly smaller single pilot airplanes) and bop around Alaska and the world doing strange technical flying work. My college education? Based on leveraging my flying experience into eventually (you know, probably one day) flying in space doing the same thing - highly technical stuff with a tight crew. By the way, I didn't take a few years off flying to do it, I did it RIGHT alongside my flying career. I had to take time off to go take my last test for my first Bachelors and fly from my base to a place where I could get that last proctored. I was somewhat obsessed with aviation.

And for a long time I did that lifestyle and loved it. I met my wife, we started a family, and still flying was the main thing I thought about other than them. Sometimes that was surely to their detriment but thankfully my wife is a saint and could look past my hyperfixation. Along the way I had some other hobbies and passions too, but none of them came close. I mean, I liked computers, so I built some toy apps and learned some stuff, but it was never my passion. Then one day, I got sick and it eventually resulted in blindness. I recovered much of my sight - I can use a computer, etc. but barring borderline miraculous technical and medical advances, I'll likely never operate a flying vehicle again.

It wrecked me - ruined me even. I was a disaster for a couple of years. I didn't do anything wrong and yet the universe punished me anyway! I lost my identity completely, almost all of my friends were pilots - gone. Almost all of my technical skills were part of this one niche domain and suddenly they were worthless. Almost all of my life had been built into this and it was over now. And worse, there was nothing I could do to get it back. I was quite suddenly obsolete and unnecessary. Nobody cared about me anymore either - I was a has-been, a flight-less bird, etc. I very suddenly went from being "the promising guy in his late-20s early 30s with a bright future ahead of him" to "unusable burden." Not only was I physically battling illness and quite unwell, but mentally and emotionally the loss of identity because of my loss of my career had left me completely broken.

But... I somehow did crawl back from that. From the ashes I rose up and began again. I learned that I had kind of been an idiot before - I mean, I was good at flying, really good even, but so what? Now it was over! And I hyperoptimized a lot of stuff that didn't matter! I hadn't been caring for myself along the way, I hadn't been being a good husband and father. And a sort of key revelation I got out of this became clear: "someday" will come. Someday, you'll take your last X. Someday, all this will be over and it'll be done." That's how the universe works. Someday, you'll do your favorite thing for the last time. I flew medevac during my pilot career and I'd seen people die in fiery airport wreckage. Sometimes entropy wins. You need to make sure you enjoy the things you like doing along the way, because someday you won't be able to do them anymore, and it might not be through any fault of your own. You need to enjoy it while it lasts and enjoy your life! You have no idea when it might disappear.

So, I went to gradschool and pivoted into AI stuff. I really enjoyed it! My undergrad was in math and it was so fun to work on these projects! It was great even and gave me some modicum of the satisfaction I got from being a pilot. I studied computer vision because maybe I could get the robots to see for me; even with my vision messed up I could still use my mind. And I fought this terrible ailment! I underwent treatment every month during grad school. I spoke at the engineering department's graduation ceremony. I DID IT! I got a new career! I made it. Despite adversity and pain and suffering, I WAS ON TOP AGAIN! LOOK at ME and bask in my glory! "Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!"

But something was amiss, chatGPT came out while I was in grad school and despite people telling me I was a fool for thinking these things were worth anything, I had already had a life I'd lived where automation is prevalent. I already knew how to think about automation. I could tell from the moment it came out that it was going to be big. I remember a heated argument with a friend about this, "dude, I think we're kind of in the singularity, this thing is going to change everything!" "WTF are you talking about it can't even run a decent DND campaign for me? How is it going to figure out how to write code decently?!" And now here we are. At my thesis defense, I talked about how important these tools were going to be in the near future and how they were going to change everything. It was met with mixed emotions and incredulity. But in retrospect I was right. Not that it makes it better for people losing their identity now.

It turns out that like 13 years in an industry that heavily uses automation gave me some context that other people didn't have. And I'm watching people deal with the shock of this now. I'm watching people deal with losing their identities in real time, and I am sitting here like the meme of the man about to be hanged, "first time huh?"

And after school, I went to work and was almost immediately miserable. I could not stand the bullshit meetings. I could not stand the incessant and bureaucratic grind of working for a large 15k employee org. I couldn't get anything actually done. It took me months to do stuff that should have been an email. Not only that, here I am pointing at this tsunami that's rapidly rushing towards us and people shrug it off or call me an idiot. I get on the AI steering committee and even there, with the other AI people, the ramifications of this are not clear. The very clear end-state seems too fantastical to them and they don't really want to hear "you guys are all going to lose your jobs." So I quit after a couple of years.

I started my own business doing consulting and building tools for small businesses around the local area. And I'm much happier though this is much more volatile. But here's the thing you should know: all of this is transient. All of this is ephemeral. It'll all evaporate one day, wealth, youth and beauty won't last forever. I had to learn about impermanence in my early 30s, most people aren't forced to learn it until they're in their 40s or 50s. Things won't last forever, so enjoy it right now, and the things you think you want? Stability and a fat paycheck, etc. are kind of illusions. Your family and your health and satisfaction and enjoyment in your life are much much more important.

The bright side of this is while we will mostly all be unemployed in a decade or so (probably in practically every industry), we'll be able to actually spend some time enjoying life. Try to start that now. You're not going to outrun, out optimize, out perform the autopilot. You have to steer it. Give up some control and learn to ride the wave, you'll enjoy it much more.

Another part of it is that these AI companies push a vision of the future that is attractive to people. Curing cancer, releasing people from the need to work, the world at your fingertips. They need the public's permission to keep doing what they are doing until they reach the point that public opinion doesn't matter anymore.

It is honestly scary watching people willingly be led to the slaughter. A lot of people have been too comfortable for too long and don't realize how bad things can get. If the Renaissance was about humanism, we are entering an anti-Renaissance period. My answer is don't cope, do something about it. There are already enough people around trying to cope when we need organized action.

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

- Matthew 6:25-34