You can say this kind of thing all you want, but the fact of the matter is we've never had so much discussion about "human pursuits" in the history of humanity.

This topic has historically been reserved for those fortunate enough to be so leisurely with their time. Haven't you ever considered that you're seeing the beginning instead of the end? Why else would there be so much debate? It's a big change to the status quo.

If you're so convinced you've got this whole greedy game plan figured out, then why isn't it working?

The short staccato phrasing is exhausting to read regardless of who or what writes that slop.

It's always been considered bad writing, and strongly reminds me of a elementary student trying to hit their word quota for an essay.

> The short staccato phrasing [...] has always been considered bad writing

No, it hasn't. It's a distinctive style that some writers use. Like everything in life, it can be used wrongly, but staccato phrasing isn't "always considered bad writing". Consider this:

---

“What’s yours?” George asked them.

“I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat, Al?”

“I don’t know,” said Al. “I don’t know what I want to eat.”

Outside it was getting dark. The street-light came on outside the window. The two men at the counter read the menu. From the other end of the counter Nick Adams watched them. He had been talking to George when they came in.

“I’ll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potato,” the first man said.

“It isn’t ready yet.”

“What the hell do you put it on the card for?”

“That’s the dinner,” George explained. “You can get that at six o’clock.”

George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter.

“It’s five o’clock.”

“The clock says twenty minutes past five,” the second man said.

“It’s twenty minutes fast.”

“Oh, to hell with the clock,” the first man said. “What have you got to eat?”

---

As an aside, I link badly written student homework with purple prose and elaborate sentences that lead nowhere, rather than with punchy staccato style.

I don't know how to describe but this example to me is fundamentally completely different and I don't think it is bad writing (though obviously I have no context outside the style). The dialogue especially helps.

I agree that short staccato phrasing is not inherently bad. I think it's just how it is used, and that when AI chooses to write in that style it is often "bad" in some sort of way I have trouble defining precisely.

AI put a massive spotlight on all the required but unspoken decision making and coordination that must occur with stakeholders outside their own teams during the development process.

Dysfunctional middle management has always traditionally neglected it or actively undermined it, blaming others when things go wrong and taking credit when things go right.

Naive developers are always more than happy to do what they think is "picking up the slack" not realizing it's a trap.

Perhaps most organizations are just now more wise to the fact that using AI to "accelerate the process" is like arming the monkeys with machine guns?

Is there a reputable summary that explains the cheaper sales price? I'm having a hard time believing it all boils down to politics, but there's way too much noise in the way.

Why BYD is cheap? They're heavily vertically integrated, they're ruthless about cutting production costs, they operate in an environment with more manufacturing talent than anywhere else, and they're a young company without many legacy costs.

for example: https://x.com/maxiaoalex/status/2062910018840854722 ( https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/741394 )

This is business as normal for most large automakers -- segmenting different parts of their product lineup for different regulatory markets.

For example, the original VW Beetle from 1938 was sold in Mexico up until 2003.

And even models that are sold in different regions may lack some safety features in other regions: e.g. https://www.latinncap.com/en/result/44/chevrolet-spark-no-ai...

This has very little to do with technology. Like a lot of these articles lately, it doesn't belong on HN. Every legacy tabloid like Wired has been pumping out stories that are 90% social and 10% technology. Simply involving computers is not enough to keep it on HN anymore.

There's nothing to discuss here, but I'll try anyway...

I don't think we've ever burned down a city and "started over" just because of obnoxious salespeople harassing and soliciting, antisocial loitering, open air drug problems, homelessness, or even the unregulated food carts making people sick. It's extremely easy to see that these problems are as old as civilization and the parallels with social media, ecommerce, advertising, etc.

We solve them by ousting the old and bringing regulation. Tough shit if you don't like it. It's not a question of "if", but "when". It happens when people get fed up enough. We're not quite there since it's still mostly unproductive whining.

Is your premise really true?

I'm sure they can just fire half and double up work or outsource. That's the traditional way and it definitely works. The worst that ever happens is a few will reneg on payroll. Everyone who still chooses to work there is happy enough.

The worst that can happen with AI... well...

> This is an impossible psychological barrier to pass for me. Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence" cannot dissolve into any movie's soundtrack for me when used unironically because I consider it a meme song.

The last time I felt this way, I was still in school and disillusioned. Do you not consume unironic media anymore (or ever)?

I think a specific song becoming irreversibly memeified is different from a person lacking the ability to engage unironically. I don't know if you're from my generation, but if you are, I imagine what they are experiencing is similar to how we would feel if we watched an old movie with Never Gonna Give You Up played completely straight at a key emotional moment. (But worse, because The Sound of Silence is a very delicate and emotional song, whereas Never Gonna Give You Up is inherently a bit cheesy and fun, so the contrast between the original intent and our experience wouldn't be so extreme.)

There's no such thing as "irreversibly memeified". Just look at all the old pop songs that seemed to be "ruined" until they got a re-release on youtube in the last 8 years or so. They sound totally fresh, especially if you've never seen their music video before. That latter part gets at the root of the problem. It's not really the song, but the presentation. That's how art works. If you stop looking at memes, they stop working. If you start thinking for yourself, the disillusion goes away and is replaced by your own more confident subjectivity.

I can unironically watch American Psycho, for example. It's not that hard.

The Rick Astley meme was always weird guerilla marketing. Unless you've deliberately engaged with the meme, that effect doesn't work. The people who are stuck in that mindset have done that damage to themselves. People used to even joke about actually watching the "for N hours" format to mask their mental health issues, but I'm certain some people actually did it.

I think, without trying to disparage GP at all, that unironic watching is very hard for the generations that came after the 90s. Some gems shone through, like the LoTR movies, which managed to be unironic and good, but the fresh air of “Joss Whedon dialogue”, pointing out storytelling conceits as they were happening live on your screen, let everyone feel smart right when “smart” became the only thing worth being.

AI destroying, at alarming speeds, all the bastions of “smart” I think will lead back to a less ironic mood. “I’m so smart” does not impress people who can reproduce your brilliance by asking Claude for “insights, no mistakes.”

Joss Whedon, the Simpsons, Letterman, Tarantino, etc. came at a particular time for film and TV too, where everybody watched a ton of formulaic shows and movies which had been influencing each other for decades.

Unrelated to AI, that’s just not true anymore. But also, it’s probably not a coincidence that alongside the parodies and genre-referential humor came a whole range of new types of programming that didn’t fit old genre conventions and arguably displaced them: reality TV, prestige serials, oddball comedy, primetime political talk shows, and later short form and vertical video.

> “I’m so smart” does not impress people who can reproduce your brilliance by asking Claude for “insights, no mistakes.”

I'm not convinced. I'm old enough to remember when people said similar about previous waves of tech (search engines, smartphones, etc.) replacing everything from books and handwriting to thinking. People were talking about "the wisdom of the crowd" and living a "quantified life" as recently as a decade ago.

Being "smart" is not only highly dependent on context beyond what computers can sense or reasonably "live in" (even when you're not querying), but also timing and deeper insight. AI has a very very long way to go if we're even keeping that as a goal for it.

I think it's more often the case that anyone trying to be "smart" can't hide how dumb they are. You're right that nobody is impressed by ego-fragile defensive snark or try-hard quotes. I don't think they ever were though?

They weren’t enough to impress others, but I think they were enough to feel impressive, which is almost as pleasant psychologically.