Went looking for that old ‘kids today don’t memorize’ quote and found an old argument against writing:

[…] They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. […]

One thing we’re not doing as effectively today as we’ve done in the past is to learn lessons by heart. If you don’t know things with perfect recall, how can you expect to apply them?

Socrates goes on to compare a written text to a painting:

You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive. But if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words. They seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say from a desire to be instructed they go on telling just the same thing forever.

That last bit especially, “if you ask them anything… they go on telling just the same thing forever.” This all sounds exactly like how we’re talking about genies today, and… we’re probably going to be fine.

Simon Sinek on AI and the value of struggle, via Arjit:

People keep telling us life is not about the destination. Life is about the journey. But when we think about AI, we only think about the destination. And it’s remarkable ability to write the book, paint the painting, solve the problem, but we forget the importance of doing the work yourself.

And I think in our modern day and age, we have underrepresented the value of struggle. I am smarter, better at problem solving, more resourceful, not because a book exists with my ideas in it, but because I wrote it. That excruciating journey is what made me grow.

But it’s the same for love, friendships, conflict. And I think that we forget that we give up certain skills or abilities because of technology.

The struggle is the point. More people can generate a mediocre painting or write perfect English now, but they won’t understand the beauty behind either without doing the work. And it’s our prerogative to decide which struggles matter to us or if we just wanted something nice to hang in the toilet.

Justin Searls asks which of your colleagues are screwed?

I’ve been writing about how AI is likely to affect white-collar (or no-collar or hoodie-wearing) computer programmers […] Think about a random colleague you don’t feel particularly strongly about as you read the following pithy and reductive bullet points. […] They’re going to be screwed if they exhibit:

• Curiosity without skepticism
• Strategy without experiments
• Ability without understanding
• Productivity without urgency
• Creativity without taste
• Certainty without evidence

I recently said that I think curiosity is what makes a good software engineer, and gave examples of when/how they should be curious, but never pointed out that it has to come with a balancing function.

I can’t think of anything done 100% full-throttle that isn’t detrimental without something to balance it, but it’s tacit and not something I often think about immediately. For example, if you live your life 100% in service it will be limiting, a bit of selfishness is required, see Doug Forcett from The Good Place.

Becoming More by Martijn Faassen:

I want to admit that this AI/human me, this centaur me – my human understanding is on occasion limited. I lean on the AI quite a bit. Perhaps it isn’t genuine understanding. A tricky question in epistemology. Let’s not even talk about the AI understanding something, or not.

I do know this. I’ve always leaned on other people’s understanding - I’ve reused computers, programming languages, software libraries, implemented algorithms from books and wikipedia. I’ve used search engines. This is more broad than software development. I am limited and don’t understand everything about the world as it’s far, far too much. I stand on the shoulders of giants.

And that’s okay. I’m still empowered.

Let this empowerment sink in. Have you realized what this means? Have you realized what you can do now as a software developer?

I can use AI to do more. Not be more productive, that’s boring and that’s debatable.

Amen Martijn. I saw someone saying that if the AI tools worked really well, then employers would be forbidding them because people would be using them in order to work less. Because if you have an expectation of what could get done, then if you find a way of getting it done faster so you can go home, isn’t that okay? But for some group of employers that’d be tantamount to stealing!!1one

Now, there is a counter to this argument, Steve Yegge says in The AI Vampire:

Now let’s look at Scenario B. You decide instead that you will only work for an hour a day, and aim to keep up with your peers using AI. On that heavily reduced workload, you manage to scrape by, and nobody notices.

In this scenario, you capture 100% of the value from your adopting AI.

In this scenario, your company goes out of business. I’m sorry, but your victory over The Man will be pyrrhic, because The Man is about to be kicked in The Balls, since with everyone slacking off, a competitor will take them out pretty fast.

I don’t know, maybe? I think there are certain types of jobs that will absolutely end up folding if they keep at current levels of work done without change. History shows sitting on an advantage without adjusting is not optimal for survival. And to be fair, Yegge’s post is against the grind culture and about finding a balance augmented by AI and to not become a hollow shell that commands the genie.

At the same time, I’ve started my own company, and I’m doing my best to not grind like I did working for others. I do have some runway from that work, but I hope there’ll be enough work coming in (or products built that makes money) that I’ll make do.

Instead, I have some work that helps me stay afloat, and it has given me time where I can play and explore. Maybe I can leverage it soon, maybe it becomes a rusty tool in the toolbox, or the cornerstone for something new.

Either way, I’m becoming more, as Martijn said.