> If there ever was a tool suited just perfectly for mass manipulation, it’s an LLM-written collection of all human knowledge, controlled by a clever, cynical, and misanthropic asshole with a god complex.
It’s painful to watch how many people (a critical mass) don’t understand this — and how dangerous it is. When you combine that potential, if not likely, outcome with the fact that people are trained or manipulated into an “us vs. them” way of thinking, any sensible discussion point that lies somewhere in between, or any perspective that isn’t “I’m cheering for my own team no matter what,” gets absorbed into that same destructive thought process and style of discourse.
In the end, this leads nowhere — which is extremely dangerous. It creates nothing but “useful idiot”–style implicit compliance, hidden behind a self-perceived sense of “deep thinking” or “seeing the truth that the idiots on the other side just don’t get.” That mindset is the perfect mechanism — one that feeds the perfect enemy: the human ego — to make followers obey and keep following “leaders” who are merely pushing their own interests and agendas, even as people inflict damage on themselves.
This dynamic ties into other psychological mechanisms beyond the ego trap (e.g., the sunk cost fallacy), easily keeping people stuck indefinitely on the same self-destructive path — endangering societies and the future itself.
Maybe, eventually, humanity will figure out how to deal with this — with the overwhelming information overload, the rise of efficient bots, and other powerful, scalable manipulation tools now available to both good and bad actors across governments and the private sector. We are built for survival — but that doesn’t make the situation any less concerning.
I feel people/hypers keep rumbling about many things and way too often seem they have no real life experience.
The biggest problem I’ve seen over 20 years long career is people and the games they play (on different levels of leadership and management within an org) and their inability to agree to and then verbalise what on Earth they want. No matter is it a greenfield or some digital transformation project, they a plagued by fear and self-interest (of various kind).
And even if/when they identify a problem (e.g. games players) it becomes a risky cutting the cord since the one needs to identify who to rely on to clean the mess and their confidence caves in (often) while resolving to “let’s layoff x number of ‘leaf’ employees” is safe scared-with-no-vision leader move and it looks good on the stock market.
Software engineers (generally) kept delivering despite all that for years across the board (generally). And, generally, kept their values and principles and that bothers this managerial class a lot it seems and they (in a way) can’t wait to stop paying “those nerds” big salaries and that’s why those often low values and unprincipled people can’t wait to see our backs and are getting hyped about this “AI will replace SD/SE” mantra.
All this above is obviously generally speaking but yeah we people tend way to often to misplace our focus and solve lesser priority problems, and this “ai replacing engineers” is one of them to a good degree.
And for the majority of software developers there is nothing to worry about. The sheer keep-knowledge-up-to-date demand this industry put on us primed us to be by far the most able professional group to jump into a career change in no time.
Which other group in huge numbers can just sit down and learn and work for 10 hours a day 7 days a week and not complain or get emotionally disturbed (too much) and get the thing but us.
So in the worst case scenario we will be fine, others should be scared if we in numbers pick their industry to move into.
Bigger ones, metric system increments are clear and can’t hide bs behind quarter pounder (marketing terms) etc. 113grams of meat is a baby size. 150g or 200g and we are starting to discuss things/meals seriously.
Keep uplifting your skills. You'll generally benefit from more practice, no matter when you get the first gig.
Follow these steps:
- Go and find an open-source project on GitHub that you find appealing and that makes you motivated
- Learn how to contribute to it (read its contribution guide, project setup guide, etc.; dissect its code quality settings); this is important; you want to be a good and respectful citizen and not waste anyone's time with super subpar contribution attempts. An added benefit for doing things that way is that when someone is genuine and honest with their work and contributions, people can feel it and will be more likely to provide you support beyond regular, e.g. more thorough peer review feedback that you will learn from a lot.
- Find a small task you can do in the project. Usually, the readme suggests where to start.
- Once you start with the open source contributions, just keep contributing to open source permanently.
- Look for a job. You don't have to wait to start looking for the first job.
It’s painful to watch how many people (a critical mass) don’t understand this — and how dangerous it is. When you combine that potential, if not likely, outcome with the fact that people are trained or manipulated into an “us vs. them” way of thinking, any sensible discussion point that lies somewhere in between, or any perspective that isn’t “I’m cheering for my own team no matter what,” gets absorbed into that same destructive thought process and style of discourse.
In the end, this leads nowhere — which is extremely dangerous. It creates nothing but “useful idiot”–style implicit compliance, hidden behind a self-perceived sense of “deep thinking” or “seeing the truth that the idiots on the other side just don’t get.” That mindset is the perfect mechanism — one that feeds the perfect enemy: the human ego — to make followers obey and keep following “leaders” who are merely pushing their own interests and agendas, even as people inflict damage on themselves.
This dynamic ties into other psychological mechanisms beyond the ego trap (e.g., the sunk cost fallacy), easily keeping people stuck indefinitely on the same self-destructive path — endangering societies and the future itself.
Maybe, eventually, humanity will figure out how to deal with this — with the overwhelming information overload, the rise of efficient bots, and other powerful, scalable manipulation tools now available to both good and bad actors across governments and the private sector. We are built for survival — but that doesn’t make the situation any less concerning.