Comment by thunky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thunky | Hacker News Reader

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No, it doesn't work, because both analogies (basketball and chess) are entertainment/games. Magnus isn't being paid to produce the best possible chess moves, he's being paid to be the best human chess player and beat other humans. A basketball player is similar. So the act of playing chess, and the act of playing basketball, is what provides the (entertainment) value.

A computer programmer, on the other hand, is paid to produce something. They aren't entertaining anyone (except themselves). The act of producing code doesn't matter to the person that wants a binary. The binary is what matters. So if a computer can out-program a human, then the human is in trouble. So it's different.

But, nothing is stopping a human from programming for entertainment purposes. And nothing is stopping humans from being entertained by watching other humans program, maybe competitively. Like chess, or basketball. Or from getting together and solving programming problems. Then it doesn't matter that a computer can run circles around them, and nobody can tell them to stop doing it.

I get it, though. Younger people in tech should be worried.

But I don't really understand the "grief" by people who say they're losing their hobbies. Like the top comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50158159

We've commoditized programming because it often gives an output that can lead to many beneficial things. But that does not mean that programming itself isn't entertainment.

Making art is often considered entertainment, and it can also be commoditized. The difference between entertainment and work is often thin, dictated by personal enjoyment, not how one is paid. I can be paid for something I find very entertaining. I can also be paid for something I find dull.

If the thing I find entertaining disappears, it's reasonable for me to feel grief. For something I enjoyed is no longer available to me, at least not in full.

There's a community around programming, much like chess and basketball. Seeing that community deteriorate into solely programming for profit, and using AI to do so, is tragic. Programming has been very focused on profit for a long time, but now even those who think it fun are debating on whether or not to offload their work to a machine that does all the work for them.

The “entertainment value to the customer” is the product being produced by the professional game player. That’s what the team owners pay them for. I don’t see much of a difference. The programmer is being paid to use his skill at programming to create business value. The sportsball player is being paid to use his sports skill to create business value.

But I don't really understand the "grief" by people who say they're losing their hobbies

If you don't understand grief then I'm wasting my time. Sounds like I got suckered into arguing with an AI yet again.

> If you don't understand grief

This is not what I said and you're being rude. I'm saying that I don't understand the grief being expressed for the loss of a hobby. Because as I explained, computers can't invalidate hobbies.

> Sounds like I got suckered into arguing with an AI yet again.

Nope. I'm a human and didn't use AI for anything I wrote. But thanks?

The point is that what was once a life's calling is being reduced to a hobby. All these activities were more than hobbies, for example for people like myself solving significant math problems all day or at least for a significant portion of my day was my life's purpose. I felt like I was contributing to something greater than myself. Math can still be done but that feeling is gone now and with it is much of the motivation to do it in the first place.

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