Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
surgical_fire | on: Don't be a meat proxy
Maybe that's how you get people in HN claiming to be infinitely more productive now thanks to AI.
kooi | parent | next
Infinitely, that's a stretch.

Over the past year maybe 1.5x to 2.0x for me. As in: I can work on two projects at the same time with reduced amount of context switch. But that's it for me.

Maybe I don't have the brains for 1000x terminal agent coding, but 2 parallel projects seems like my saturation point.

q3k | parent | next
I do believe there's a tiny subset of people who are more productive with AI, in the same way that Erdős was more productive with amphetamine.

But most who keep on going about their 10x productivity gain are indistinguishable from that one obnoxious guy at a party who won't shut up about his Ayahuasca retreat last spring. And they think they're Erdős.

ratelimitsteve | root | parent
this is a great metaphor precisely because (outside those with paradoxical stimulant response) everyone thinks they're more productive on amphetamines and there's some naive evidence to that effect. the number of things you've actually done is significantly higher. the change in value created, as measured by the decrease in distance between where you are and the the goal you're shooting for, is unpredictable at best and slowly degrades as reliance increases.

AI is like having a junior dev with an adderall addiction and an encyclopedic knowledge of coding syntax at your beck and call.

bonoboTP | parent
The ones who get more productive are either the very incompetent who get pulled up to the AI-floor level, or the very competent who know when and how to use it and for what. The midwits are too proud to use it and instead placate themselves that their precious skill is more special and immune to mechanization than it really is.

Many many people have jobs where their contribution is granting access to deliberately undocumented things, like knowing where the config files are and some such. They hate the idea of AI. For my non IT friends its great for diagnosing wifi issues. It's also great for competent network engineers. It's not great for those who gain a salary due to having memorized some actions or settings that they don't even understand much. Note that this group has also already resisted traditional script automation, just like US dock workers who resist automation.

nmeagent | root | parent | next
I would bet real cash money that many many people, including your coworkers, think that anyone who unironically uses the term "midwit" is completely and totally obnoxious.
projectazorian | root | parent | next
If you use it in a work context (or any normal social context really) then yes, that is obnoxious. That doesn't mean it's not a real phenomenon.
bonoboTP | root | parent | next
Mweh, I'm not a native English speaker. It's a definitely existing archetype, though, just like "Spießbürger" points at a thing in German.
delian66 | root | parent | next
Is he wrong though?
vehemenz | root | parent | next
More cringe than obnoxious, but yeah.
Jensson | root | parent
People who uses the word "obnoxious" are also obnoxious. There are many unpleasant words, you have to use some of them and people don't like any of them.
dml2135 | root | parent | next
The word “obnoxious” does not carry the connotation of smug superiority that “midwit” does.
nmeagent | root | parent
Would you refer to someone as a midwit in a typical office environment and expect your professional reputation to remain intact? If you were to do this on an ongoing basis for whatever reason, how long before you're asked to have a little chat with the folks in HR? Would you then attempt to explain it away as one of those unpleasant words that you just had to use? I want to be there for that conversation.
vovavili | root | parent | next
Engaging in direct open conflict in a sanitized environment like an office is shooting yourself in the foot. Different norms for different rooms.
ndriscoll | root | parent | next
Corporate offices are low trust environments where people do not really openly speak directly in any negative way (for basically the reason you've illustrated), so I wouldn't use them as any kind of standard for normal social interaction.
loading story #49158635
bonoboTP | root | parent | next
Different context, different politeness rules. I bet you're fun at parties. An online forum is a relaxed space, like a town pub. HR isn't breathing down our necks here. Personal attacks are a different sort of thing. Using a word to describe in a comment some abstract situations and kinds of characters you see at the office is not a personal attack.

There is not one single discourse norm to rule them all and calling out every little thing as too offensive is just annoying. Yeah, yeah there are no midwits, everyone is a unique little genius flower, yeah.

surgical_fire | root | parent
> very competent who know when and how to use it and for what.

More productive? Sure, to an extent.

Being merely more productive is a tame claim for what some people unashamedly post here

bonoboTP | root | parent
People apparently can get a very different picture of the same site. Anti-AI people think this site's commenters are mostly pro-AI and vice versa. I'm generally pro-using-AI-in-proper-ways, and mostly have the impression that people on here tend to complain and grumble about AI mostly and are generally skeptical and dismissive of everything which is right in the HN tradition (the famous Dropbox comment etc).

Karpathy, Carmack, Terence Tao, Simon Willison etc. are all smart people and manage to use AI effectively and productively because it doesn't hurt their ego.

loading story #49155033