You may find it easier to function in modern society without having such a strictly literal view of language. Idioms and metaphors do exist.
And now there's evidence that Epstein was behind the prosecution of Swartz. He knew the man was onto something.
The authoritarianism is only more obvious. No one bothers to hide it. The social irresponsibility ramps up and up. Genocide in Burma? The cost of social connection. The cost of freedom.
At some point, it all breaks. No one knows what happens next. Models smooth reality, but reality, at some point, detests smoothness enough to become pointed.
The demand for AI is currently overwhelming. As in, can't build data centers and GPUs melting overwhelming, companies growing 3x in a month while already at multi-billion revenues.
The models get better and better, Chinese open source is falling further and further behind American companies. The productivity gains are, at this point, obvious. The best talent works (or wants to work) in America and get compensated obscene amounts, the most capital flows through America, this is still by far the best place to start a technology business in the world
I think American technology was on the decline for the past few years before LLMs, but for the foreseeable future as long as American companies control the talent flywheel I think the new world of tech is going to be much more American than before.
At some point, though, the balance could tip. It's impossible to say, and it'd be irresponsible to try to predict it, but there isn't any reason English is natively superior, any more than French was 150 years ago, or Latin 600 years ago. But it's a major advantage the US has that isn't acknowledged often enough.
- The culture is, I think, the root of the flywheel. The entrepreneurship and competitive intensity is unlike anywhere else I've lived (not an American). It's okay to go bankrupt. It's okay to fail multiple times and burn millions in VC money, in fact it's encouraged! Take a break and raise another round and go again, VCs like second time founders. In my home country having one business go under is the worst thing imaginable.
- The capital markets, even YC (one of the lower tier accelerators by now) gives you 500k for 7%, sometimes pre-revenue. That is an absurd proposition elsewhere
- Surrounding yourself with top talent raises the ceiling for what you think is possible and accelerates your career really fast. It's inspiring for me to be around so many smart and successful people.
When developers say that LLMs make them more productive, you need to keep in mind that this is what they’re automating: dysfunction, tampering as a design strategy, superstition-driven coding, and software whose quality genuinely doesn’t matter, all in an environment where rigour is completely absent.
They are right. LLMs make work that doesn’t matter easier – it’s all monopolies, subscriptions, VCs, and lock-in anyway – in an industry that doesn’t care, where the only thing that’s measured is some bullshit productivity measure that’s completely disconnected from outcomes.
...
One group thinks this will make the world ten times richer. The other thinks it’ll be a catastrophe.
(from an earlier post, https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-two-worlds-of-progr...)
gegtik•25m ago