I don’t think we’re going to fix things in any meaningful way. I think we’re watching a big collapse. Not the end of humanity like some want to predict, but very rough times ahead.

I am with you that we should help each other out, and there’s ways to do that. We can feed and shelter people now, and we should, but much more than that becomes infeasible quickly. And I think it will become even less feasible as things get worse.

I think what the other person was saying is… If there’s a way to fix things, to make things better or at least lessen the harm, it’s going to take a lot of people doing a lot of things. Things that aren’t always profitable right away, but pay off later. Better public transit systems, more renewable energy, huge programs replacing the old but crucial infrastructure that brings us clean drinking water, turning useless land into productive fields, and so much more. If we had the political will, we could offer everyone the ability to work on these programs and in return have a better quality of life, while also building a better future.

And to be clear, this isn’t all manual labor. Probably most of it isn’t really manual labor. It’s math, it’s planning, it’s machine operation, it’s coordinating and transporting, it’s organizing and communicating. To solve our problems will require a lot of people with a lot of skills, and if we can encourage the right people to be in the right place, we could solve so many problems and make so many things better.

We won’t, though. But we could.

I agree but I feel like you’ll almost never get honest feedback, and companies never seem to do anything with the feedback they get. I mean if you’re firing someone, you’ll probably get a list of grievances that are exaggerated because they’re upset. If someone is quitting, they might hold back to not burn the bridge so to speak. The only time I had an exit interview was also the worst job I ever had, and I doubt they did anything as a result of me telling them, “Hey, when you tell someone they can’t take their legally mandated break, and then write them up for not taking that break, it’s kind of a demoralizing dick move.”

This has happened before. GUI tools were going to mean less developers with less cost, but it didn’t materialize. Higher level languages were going to cause mass layoffs but it didn’t really materialize. Tools like WordPress were going to put web developers out of business, but it didn’t really. Sitebuilders like Wix were going to do it, too, but they really haven’t.

These tools perform well at the starter end, but terribly at the larger or enterprise end. Current AI is like that. It can help better than I think people on here give it credit for, but it can’t replace. At best, it simply produces things with bugs, or that doesn’t quite work. At worst, it appears to work but is riddled with problems.

I genuinely believe AI isn’t over hyped in the long run. We’re going to need solutions to fix our current way of work. But I feel confident it’s still further away than the people investing in it think it is, and they’re going to be paying big for that mistake.

The bar is kind of low these days, so the fact that he doesn’t go lower still somehow makes him better than a large chunk of famous people.

One time I was at a restaurant and I noted that it didn’t have a changing station. Sure enough, during the meal my kid needed to be changed. I asked my wife if her restroom had a changing station, and she told me it did.

So I took my kid up to the host stand and asked to talk to the manager. I politely explained that I needed to change a diaper but there wasn’t a changing station in the restroom so asked which table I could use, or if I should just use the bench in the waiting area. Manager got flustered and had a waitress check if the women’s room was empty and then stood outside the door while I changed the diaper.

About a year later I happened to go back, and I did notice that the men’s room had a changing table. It’s a small thing, but I felt like I won one.