Hacker News Reader

Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

This post is so sad it makes me wonder how many suicide notes Amodei and Altman had on their doormats, or will in the future.

View on HN

It's a price they're willing to pay.

Or they tell themselves the usual stuff - if they didn't do it then someone else would, technological progress is inevitable, etc.

>> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Pretty sure they're not the ones paying the price.

It is a Shrek meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNlgIY9QKw

Thanks. I didn't know this one.

How is that even possible? It's a great movie (ah well watched in the period), done by people who were outcast to work on it - similar to the folks sent to the terrace in "Silicon Valley"

There have been six Shrek movies, and it's been 25 years. Shrek hit theaters before the planes hit the towers - and people can be well into their career having been born after both.

We're gettin' old, xxs. Waves cane and yells "Get off my LLM!"

That's the joke.

It's à joke. Shrek reference: https://youtu.be/hiKuxfcSrEU?si=anKoBVyhRIegW_X4

And they're doing it for your own good!

No, for the world! You're thinking way too small, these guys are on a mission to save the planet and in order to do so they are 'just' going to have to tear up the whole stratum that has been built so far. But they have your best interest at heart so you just have to trust them through the slight bit of turbulence that is coming your way.

"just accept that bad things will happen to you peasant"

Well, it's the rest of us paying the price, they're reaping the rewards.

To quote the wise Lord Farquaad: "some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

I think it was the brave captain Zapp Brannigan who said it first, but might be mistaken here.

Zapp's quote was "Soon you'll all be fighting for your planet. Many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be forced through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They'll be the luckiest of all."

Unless you're thinking of something else, but I can't find anything that comes close to the sentiment other than the above.

You're probably right. I was quoted this as something Zapp said by someone recently, and I didn't go verify if it really was so.

This has happened to many times to other careers over the last decades and there wasn't empathy from SWE's then, in fact all you got was "Software is the future, learn to code etc". Now the shoe is on the other foot people are taking suicide, seems a bit self seeking.

Are you accusing the OP specifically of gloating over other people being laid off, or is this a guilt by association thing?

No, not the OP but many engineers didn't give a hoot if their work lead to layoffs for others.

Not more than those of farmers who "lost their jobs" to tractors, switchboard operators to switching systems, brokers or postmen (and countless other jobs) to the Internet, etc. And why do we blame the innovators and not the government for not making up useless jobs to keep these people employed? It is just as responsible.

It would have happened even without them specifically. There's no shortage of greedy bastards.

> Won't someone stop the future, and consider mentally ill strangers who signal boost with suicide!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com