Cameron DutroThere's this Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin's dad says that if we actually wanted more leisure time, we'd invent machines that did things more slowly, and I think about it all the time.
Alex Illustrateur
keoni@camertron wow, I've been thinking that exact thing with this AI stuff. Got more work done fast. But for who? We'll still have to work 9 to 5. We don't get to work less. Crazy that comic is so on point and more so today.
Bornach@keoni @camertron
Once worked for a narcissistic bosshole who told me how the Internet was such a game changer, and implied his bullying of staff to work harder than before was somehow justified.
For similar reasons sociopath bossholes love AI because it justifies pressuring their employees to adopt the "hardcore" work culture.
DJ Sexy Fresh@bornach @keoni @camertron i've long suspected that the main benefit of this LLM craze isnt that it can do our jobs, but that it creates a quasi-credible omnipresent threat that we are all replaceable, without this ever needing to be definitively proven true.
The best way to address this is to call their bluff with a general strike.
"Oh youre gonna replace us with AI? Ok, go ahead and do it."
them#tic
Fluffy Kitty Cat@keoni @camertron the problem is the cost of living is so high we can't work less even if we wanted to
@fluffykittycat @camertron 💯 . Which is the other problem. It's a negative feedback loop (positive for the empires). Cost of living high. People don't have any option BUT to work for Amazon (owns everything) and the cycle continues. And we think if only democracy could solve this problem...
Crissa Kentavr@keoni
What does the ... imply?
The reason we're here is *because* people let authoritarianism happen. Not because of democracy. If you're going to imply we need to employ non-democratic means, you'd netter be prepared to be first on that firing line.
WesDym@Crissa It implies, "I haven't thought this through completely, but I have a whinge." It's extremely common online. People complain all the time, but most don't really have concrete ideas about how to solve anything. You'll hear a lot of vaguaries, such as 'raising awareness' or 'taking to the streets'. Or sometimes unworkable ideas such as 'ban lying'. And, reliably, blaming 'government' as if that's some group of aliens who took over in an armed coup.
kappazeta@camertron so true!
PhosphenesWe're all John Henry now.
Juan A. Zamarripa [E.]& #Thanks 2 #BillWatterson 4 making this (and all the other strips) in the first place!
🖖!
Louis Chartrand@camertron Less efficient, like a LLM? 🤡
Stefan Müller@camertron You can use computers with Microsoft operating systems and software. But I guess you want everybody to be similarly inefficient.
ghostdancer@camertron Watterson was/is a visionary. So many things on C&H were so on point. That's what makes it one of the greatest comic strips of all time.
Robotistry@ghostdancer @camertron So true! This one is the most visceral explanation of why specifying autonomous robot behavior is hard I've ever seen - identifying relevant edge cases in advance is almost impossible.
Jimbo
J. "Henry" Waugh@camertron it is no surprise to me that Bill Watterson not only retired near the top of his game at the "perfect" time to have a good legacy rather than "overstaying in the spotlight"
But then *vanished off the face of the Earth* to some tiny fishing cabin on the ocean and only has e-mail with people he knew from before he was famous with rare exceptions
This is the way
(Source: my memory of when this happened: https://slate.com/culture/2014/06/bill-watterson-does-pearls-before-swine-the-calvin-and-hobbes-creator-emerged-from-retirement-to-work-with-stephan-pastis.html )
@jhwgh1968 it's wild how many times I've thought about leaving tech and driving a bus or something instead.
Óscar Morales Vivó@jhwgh1968 @camertron He's popped around a few times through the years for this and that and been surprisingly normal about all of it.
kasperd
Glenn Seto@kasperd @camertron Teaching IT in adult education and this has to be among the top 5 xkcd comics I reference.
(The undisputed #1 being correct horse battery staple.)
Lorenz Leutgeb@camertron This is Jevons paradox, right?
@lorenzleutgeb absolutely
draNgNon@camertron in tech, there's an xkcd for this concept: https://xkcd.com/303/
Mike Torr@draNgNon @camertron Thank you, I came here to post this but you were here before me :)
I actually have the xkcd tee shirt for this one. "I'm not slacking off, my code's compiling."
Anecdote time. The PDP11-45 at my university took ages to compile my Pascal code, and we were accessing it via a terminal emulator running on BBC micros. I cloned the emulator and tweaked it to play the Hallelujah Chorus when an asterisk appeared (end of compilation) so I could hear it from across the room.
@macronencer @draNgNon that's amazing!!
@camertron @draNgNon Yeah... I miss those heady days when the world was like a new toy that I got to play with for the first time :)
Giles Goat@camertron I like that one where Calvin 'invents a more efficient time use / way to do his homework" by using a kitchen timer and setting times around 1 minute to complete 'tasks' 😂
@gilesgoat @camertron Calvin invented the Pomodoro Technique?
@glennseto @camertron I know there's a strip IIRC where he talks about "ETM" Effective Time Management ..EDIT : THIS STRIP
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRuhlns83PYwoaFZvphxQpmuLGvEXQuGmt1Fg&s
@gilesgoat lol or the one where he procrastinates because he thinks he and his future self are different people. "This is future Calvin's problem!"
Faraiwe@camertron Watterson, American prophet and daydreamer extraordinaire.
Axol Otleon@camertron Our systems are already less efficient. Waiting on computer software becomes a larger part of the day each year, and software becomes more bloathed. Nowadays you cannot even easily find what is the hold up on windows systems, but still things are not moving. Seems we have passed the efficiency marker on this OS a good while ago. Adding more memory, bandwidth and horsepower is not keeping up with it anymore. To think we’ve put people on the moon with much less…
@axol_otleon it's the "growth at all costs" mindset. Things working is incidental to the stock price going up.
@camertron Whoah is this really the original?
cultdev@djsf @camertron that was my first thought too
Nantucket Lit@camertron Is this the reason I am surrounded by fountain pens and typewriters, and why I'm going to go see about a Linotype machine tomorrow?
Anne Pasek@camertron I am increasingly a devotee of Calvin's Dad Thought
Lunar 🛸 ♾@camertron There is *always* a relevant C&H
ThatKomputerKat 
@camertron ngl, one of my favorite things about school computer lab time was when everyone was sending their print jobs to the two networked Apple Image Writer II printers at the back of the room and just sitting there watching the print dialog list off other students’ file names as their documents were printing before mine. Just doing nothing for a number of minutes at the end of class when everyone on one side of the room starts giggling at some naughty word someone used in their file name.
🖨️ 🖨️
@thatKomputerKat hahahaha I love that