165 karma · joined August 15, 2025
The first reason it’s not more common is that wealth isn’t so static. Landlords have to collect rents, oligarchs have to skim off the top of their corrupt enterprises etc. A guard who kills the landlord, then manages to organize rent collection for the benefit of other guards, has essentially become the new landlord.
The second reason is that a guard doesn’t just have to kill the landlord, a guard potentially has to kill all the other guards who want all the landlord’s wealth for themselves.
Since rent has to be collected anyway, and an individual guard has a low chance of surviving against all other guards, remaining a guard is a lower risk option.
It’s a Pyrrhic victory given the negative impacts of LLMs on open source projects.
Everybody’s closed source applications can be reverse-engineered, but due to 10,000 line “contributions” from LLMs people won’t want to create the free/open source communities that used to exist.
So what’s the point of keeping the source open? Stallman’s original problem of fixing a printer driver would be resolved today by getting an LLM to read the binaries.
The LLMs can make the binaries human-readable, but also make human readability a secondary concern. The phrases “closed source” and “open source” have lost meaning.
In the context of browsers the domination of one or two companies is already complete, and being able to generate new browsers with AI would hopefully allow people to escape the stranglehold of Chrome/Blink.
That said, I doubt a new,competitive browser could be created that way. The (possibly AI) developers of web apps won’t want to test on somebody’s bespoke AI-generated browser.
ChatGPT: Hallucigenia
Claude: Haikouichthys
????: Anomalocaris
Hand-written code: Ediacaran biota :(
Then let me provide a stronger and more detailed version of my claim.
The article said:
> There are zero examples of any intelligent species which is vastly more capable than another species, yet surrenders decision-making control over its own future to the less-capable species.
In order for this claim to make any sense, there must be TWO “intelligent” species. One species capable of taking over another species’ future, and a second species which is even more capable than the first species but willingly surrenders control.
But there is only one species which can take such roles: humans. Every other species is not even capable of controlling another species fate AND every other species does not look out for their species-wide future.
Some people might point to whales, elephants, cats, non-Sapiens hominids, or even those ants that harvest aphids. But the whales, elephants and cats lack the capacity to control entire other species, even if they can manipulate individuals of other species. The non-Sapiens hominids are not available for comment: we’ll get to them later. And the ants do not think of their future.
So even though there are a massive number of species on earth, none have the prerequisites to even apply to the above statement.
> The absence of such relationships given here are so many species is exactly the point being made by the author
If we lived in a world where there were a vast array of species capable of controlling other species and capable of thinking of their future, all of whom fiercely defended their own autonomy, your point would be correct. But most species are not capable of either, even if would be a good idea. Therefore we cannot conclude that such a surrender of control would be a good idea or bad idea based on the statement. The statement is moot.
We might as well say the author’s observation is correct because sand doesn’t control volcanoes. In terms of the ability to control other species, other species on earth are no better than sand or volcanoes.
> there is no data to show that it would be safe, let along good, for us to surrender decision making to some more intelligent entity.
There is no evidence against either because the observation lacks any examples other than humans and AI.
Truth be told, I agree with the conclusion. But we have to be honest with each other in arguing for our survival and autonomy, even if it means admitting that we are scared and irrational, instead of trying to fake objectivity and universality. The article starts with a bad argument in favour of a conclusion I agree with.
If I were to write an article about the risks of super-intelligence, I would not even attempt to construct such a “universal” rule - it would have very little bearing on the current situation. I would simply point to the bones of the rest of the Homo genus, and say “we’re next”.
I don’t believe the problem is purely innumeracy on the consumer’s part.
If companies clearly stated “A(B + C)” as a price, even people with poor math skills would understand that the price is not “B”.
But it’s more like the price is advertised as “B” and “A(B+C)” only appears in fine print or seconds before payment.
Your comment says you can “hide a business opportunity”. I would instead call that “being dishonest”.
> given n species and the n * (n - 1) binary combinations possible, there are no examples of the said observation
I would expect that in the vast majority of combinations, those n species are not intelligent enough to make decisions for another species, making the statement nearly useless.
Does the set of intelligent species only have one member? I cannot treat this observation as a general rule if there is literally one example of an intelligent species to theorize about.
> let the votes speak for that.
The comment you are replying to got a fair number of votes too… Having somebody run a Pangram check saves n people the trouble of doing the same.
> Most people do not, in fact, want to read raw prompts.
I wonder if this is really true, and if it will remain true for long. Have you observed someone read another person’s raw prompt? Or observed someone submit both their prompts and their LLM output for review?
Personally I’d be curious about the prompts for a lot of top HN articles which are LLM-generated. It would say a lot more about the human operator’s intent and thinking process compared to the LLM output.
A coworker who spoke English as a second language once screen shared their Claude session during a code review, and it was interesting that their prompts were all in their native language. The guy wasn’t writing an article, and I didn’t understand the prompt anyway, but I still found it interesting as a glimpse into how he uses LLMs.
For this particular article, if the prompt was initially a series of bullet points that wouldn’t be so bad. If there were multiple prompts spent editing and rearranging the article that would be an unusual work by pre-LLM standards. However I’d suggest that instead of dismissing the idea, we could embrace “raw prompts” as a kind of new medium, to cross the divide between pro-LLM and anti-LLM readers.
But is the improvement truly exponential??
Are the improvements we have seen from September 2025 to September 2026 really as significant as the improvements from September 2024 to September 2025?
I’m genuinely asking. I can’t answer myself because I haven’t been pushing the latest models to the limit with every new release.
If you view a regime as fascistic, you still need to be able to do all the above.
Nazi Germany was defeated by an alliance of communists and capitalists who immediately started a Cold War when the Nazis were defeated. That required compromise, propaganda, and all the other distasteful things I called “all politics”.
Dealing with existential risk will require collaboration on a similar scale.
This is how all politics is, and frankly the existential risk crowd needs to learn how to play the game instead of complaining about it.
And what exactly is the benefit to you to having a data centre specifically in the area you live? Seems to me that far from “irrational hordes”, the protestors are standing up for their interests above the interests of the AI companies.
In 2024, if Ed Zitron presented all his analysis of AI companies without the specific “model capabilities have peaked this year” style statements that Dan Luu scrutinized, that would be more honest and provide the value you are looking for.
Similarly for the RIM example nobody would have to claim that RIM would fail in a particular year, or that “RIM is cooked”, they could present their data about the present without any projection.
Fair enough, I didn’t.
> most big decisions aren't that sensitive to small timing changes
That makes sense for a single year at least.
In the case of the 2008 crisis, specific knowledge of the timing could matter for buying or selling a house.
In the case of technological predictions, specific knowledge of the timing could affect whether you want to take a university program in a given field or join a certain company.
If a predictor can’t help with picking stocks or making big decisions, then what are these predictions for, entertainment? Actually an HN comment on Dan Luu’s post about futurists really did suggest that futurists are practically entertainers.
If Patrick Boyle, Aswath Damodaran, and Daron Acemoglu have more accurate reporting and predictions about the upcoming decline of the AI industry, maybe those are voices who should be elevated over Zitron.
> Claiming it's a fail for being 1 second late is not a rational position and not at all in the spirit the predictions were made.
I would keep to the level of precision the predictor themselves claimed. If the predictor said an event would occur at “23:59:59 UTC” it would be fair to criticize them for being a second late. If the predictor claimed an event would occur on a day, fair to criticize them for being a day late, and so on for all units of time.
If a predictor says an event will occur in 2019 but it occurs in 2020, yes that is incorrect, the predictor could have hedged by a year if they wanted to. Why is it the observer’s job to do the hedging rather than the predictor’s job?
> Someone says computers will be in everything. You can say "there's no computer's in fruit!, FAIL!"
While I disagree about the timing, I agree slightly that there is some nuance regarding phrases like “everything”, “everywhere”, “popular” and so on.
However there is a way out for the predictor: use a more specific phrase like “used by over 20% of the US population” instead of “popular”.
Once again (and this applies to the entire page of comments not just yours): why is it the observer’s job to do the hedging rather than the predictor?
On to the specific predictions…
> 2009 * Most books will be read on screens rather than paper. The charitable interpretation is that most reading happens on screens, not paper. This is true today.
I disagree with the charitable interpretation, there has been plenty of writing outside of books for decades and a person like Kurzweil getting their books published would know that. If the prediction says “books” instead of “writing” it should be judged for that choice.
> * Intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use, mostly on highways. False in 2009, False in 2026 but directionally true.
Even if the prediction were true in 2026, 15 years is a long time to be off. A person who decided not to get a driving license thinking that driverless cars are right around the corner would be disappointed. That’s a silly way to behave mainly because when making a decision like that, people have other sources to turn to than Kurzweil.
And where are the “intelligent roads”?
> * Computers can recognize their owner's face from a picture or video.
> Face ID shipped in 2017. Is that to far off?
Compared to 2009? Yeah that’s absolutely too far.
Wrong enough that the utility is seriously diminished. Predicting a specific quantity dropping to a specific level at a specific date is a lot more valuable than saying “those guys are cooked”.
And even if some minuscule utility existed: why should predictors be so coddled by their observers? We should be demanding more rigour from predictors rather than looking for new and creative ways to forgive them for their folly.
Dan Luu's analysis of Kurzweil is in this article: https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/
In the "Appendix: detailed information on predictions" he lists the predictions, and their truth or lack thereof. He was using a list on Wikipedia: https://web.archive.org/web/20170225013846/https://en.wikipe...
For example Kurzweil apparently predicted in 2019 that:
> Blind people wear special glasses that interpret the real world for them through speech. Sighted people also use these glasses to amplify their own abilities. Retinal and neural implants also exist, but are in limited use because they are less useful.
> No
Note that if Kurzweil makes a prediction that an event will occur before year X, and it happens in year X + 1, that still counts as a wrong prediction.
Can you get your un-named source to provide a detailed list of these predictions as Dan Luu did?
> BTW, a funny thing about Gemini hitting 500M users being "so unrealistic that someone at Google should have been fired, and that someone is Sundar Pichai" is that Zitron has also (incorrectly) said that Google doesn't know how to grow, and that as a result they're shoving AI everywhere. Dennis Snell pointed out that, if Zitron takes his own statement seriously, Google can make Gemini's user numbers go to any number it wants by doing the exact thing Zitron said they would do, sticking AI everywhere.
> You can't actually take Zitron's statement about Google's lack of growth leading to AI desperation seriously and also take it seriously when he says that Sundar is committing some kind of gross malpractice by naming a number like 500M users.
Other than the Gemini usage numbers, which are the marketing numbers being taken at face value?
I believe there is a societal problem here, not specific to your particular actions. The expectation that communications should be “cleaned up” and “professional” in the first place comes from a bygone era. In the 2010s and earlier removing all typos, fixing wording, formatting the text and adding images were all signals that someone put extra care into sending their message. But in the present that just indicates use of AI.
You mentioned in another comment that your hand-drawn images would be “far worse”. Leaving aside whether any images were needed at all, a hand-drawn scribble in the 2010s might be unprofessional but in the present day there’s an AI generated image on every visible surface. A hand-drawn image, even a bad one, would actually make you stand out.
Even if you want to present the cleaned up version, you could also provide the original audio.
This is not entirely accurate if we consider agentic loops.
> Asking it requires skill.
Considering the realm of writing a blog post instead of programming, what is the skill? I suspect there is extremely little. But I could be wrong, tell me what skill you think went into this.
> and give me any LLM and I couldn’t have written this piece.
Prompt your LLM of choice to generate 100 articles about different aspects of joining a new role, then you won’t need to provide the insights into the specific situations the author described. All you need to do is pay for the tokens.
> Does the conceit come from the idea of “some LLM wrote this, so anyone could”?
Yes.
> Well, you didn’t.
Do you know that? What’s stopping someone from asking an LLM to generate an entire HN front page worth of articles, and reading that list instead of HN?
This really is a problem with the health of the site in my opinion. If there are a flood of AI generated articles in the top spot, the value proposition of HN as a site is diminished.
> Can't understand why they put up with it
To see which (rare) sites don’t put up a million ads and actually care about the reading experience.
A lot of the top-listed sites on HN are small blogs without ads (or in the case of danluu.com or lwn.net - without almost any formatting).
daringfireball.net is notable for actually having small, non-intrusive ads that I wouldn’t ever feel the need to block (unless you consider the entire site an ad for Apple but that’s a seperate concern).
> do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?
It is integral to the business models of the sites putting up those ads. And if those sites don’t make money then they’ll also be unable to pay writers. Much like herd immunity or financial speculation there will always be “somebody else” to watch the ads and essentially subsidize the ad-blocking audience, but I’d rather not be one of those people, I want my usage to be worth the while for the writers.
I am sometimes (rarely) willing to pay for an ad-free experience if I’m a repeat visitor. But more often I’d rather not visit at all if a site is too annoying. Another unfortunate situation is that even if you pay for a subscription, some sites have no ad-free option, such as the New York Times.
The big exception is YouTube, where I visit often, am bombarded with ads but also don’t want to pay Google.