Reflections

I just read John Gruber's blog post recommending Kagi as a replacement for Google Search when it occurred to me, for the hundredth time in the last year… what the hell happened to anti-spam efforts at Google Search?

I met Matt Cutts once in 2011. He was very kind, and he explained to me that he worked to combat search engine spam at Google. At the time, I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but boy do I understand now. Perhaps that's the best compliment I could have given him; few notice anti-spam efforts when things are going well.

Matt Cutts has since left Google, and now, I get lots of results which provide very little value. What a shame. Apparently, Google needed him more than he needed Google.

#SoftwareDevelopment #Tech

My five-word movie review of Conclave:

Every frame, a gorgeous photo.

#FiveWordMovieReview

I'm an AI maximalist. Over time, I expect AI to become much, much more capable than most people imagine. In time, I expect AI will be able to do anything a human being can do, and much faster. AI will not be able to directly manipulate the physical world, of course, but with some initial support from human beings, it will be able to build robots that can.

That's not to say I'm an accelerationist or optimist. That's another issue entirely, and I don't know exactly how I feel about it. I tend to believe AI will probably do immense harm to humanity in the long run, however, either intentionally or unintentionally. I'm not confident enough in that view to change my behavior in any way, and even if I were, I wouldn't know what to do about it. Superintelligent AI is coming, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.

In any case, I do expect that AI will soon replace almost all human knowledge workers. How soon is “soon”? It's hard to say. We may need a revolution in AI technology, not an evolution, to get there. LLMs may not be enough. Still, if the AI takeover of knowledge work takes 100 years, I would be very surprised. If it takes 5 years or less, I'd be only modestly surprised. I'd guess there's about a 50% chance of it happening before 2050.

My reasoning is straightforward. I don't believe intelligence requires a human brain, computers are much faster than human beings, and the first company to develop a superintelligent AI is going to make a tremendous amount of money. The race is on.

I've heard the argument that AI will only complement human beings, forging partnerships that are greater than the sum of their parts. I consider that wishful thinking. Consider chess.com, which provides an analysis of each game after it's completed, identifying mistakes and suggesting better moves. It's a huge asset to the platform, and it's one reason people pay for premium memberships. Is chess.com tempted to hire human beings to do this work? Of course not. Computers are vastly better at chess, they are incredibly fast, and they are much more cost effective, not needing sleep, health insurance, bathroom breaks, or team-building exercises. Yes, there are some human commentators at highly-publicized matches, but for the millions of other games played on the platform each day? Hell no. The machines do it, and why shouldn't they? It's a “no brainer.”

Get ready for the same thing to happen to software engineering, media production, accounting, and just about everything else that largely involves transforming information.

What happens after that? Only time will tell.

#SoftwareDevelopment #Tech

These days, when someone tells me they “did their own research,” I immediately suspect they have no idea what they're talking about and have no idea how to think critically. We know that Google and practically all other search engines customize their results based on what they know about the user and what most pushes their buttons. For that reason and others, sadly, “doing one's own research” is now code for falling prey to confirmation bias and being manipulated by online platforms and filter bubbles.

#Life #SocialMedia #Tech

The new Ghost album, Skeletá, is pretty good, even if it's not my favorite of theirs. Meliora may be at the top, and I definitely think it's their most even and refined. The lyrics on Skeletá can occasionally be cringey, not unlike Impera, but like all Ghost albums, there are some hits, and they're not all singles.

The rock ballad Guiding Lights may be my favorite song on the new album. It sounds like something that belongs on a film's soundtrack. It also contains what I consider to be genuinely useful insight. I'm embarrassed to quote Ghost, but as Seneca said, “I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.” (Not that Tobias is a bad author. He's just not who most people think of when they think of life advice.)

Anyway, the line is:

The road that leads to nowhere is long.

In other words, if you find yourself stuck, you may be on the wrong path, and continuing down it may never prove that to you. In fact, the continual belief that the reward is “just a little ways ahead” is a pretty good indication that you'll never reach it. Although it can be painful, in circumstances like those, you'd be better off turning around and trying something else. You might even find that another approach gets you to your destination more quickly than anticipated.

#Life #Quotes

What if we made all advertising illegal?

[…]

The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles.

Clickbait, listicles, and affiliate marketing schemes would become worthless overnight. Algorithm-driven platforms like Instagram and TikTok that harvest and monetize attention, destroying youth, would lose their economic foundation.

[…]

Removing these advanced manipulation tools would force everyone—politicians included—to snap back into reality. By outlawing advertising, the machinery of mass delusion would lose its most addictive and toxic fuel.

—Kōdō Simone in What If We Made Advertising Illegal?

#Life #SocialMedia #Tech

There should be an app, browser, browser add-on, or some other tool called Deshittify which does everything accomplished by uBlock Origin, Pi-hole, Unhook, DeArrow, SponsorBlock, Fakespot (which is now discontinued), ClearURLs, and more, with reasonable defaults and in one convenient package. God, that's a long list. For those who aren't familiar with those tools, they block ads, trackers, addictive designs on YouTube, fake reviews, and more. The web is a mess.

If anyone wants to steal this idea—not that the idea is all that original—please, go right ahead. Mozilla, Brave, someone: do this!

#SocialMedia #SoftwareDevelopment #Tech

I've now had COVID-19 three times. That has to be some kind of record.

#Life

Why haven't I been using Google Forms all these years? It makes data entry for spreadsheets (e.g., weight, pet's health information) so much easier.

#Life #Tech