My own take on this is that neither quality or efficiency are at issue at all.
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My own take on this is that neither quality or efficiency are at issue at all. The issue is monopoly, false incentive structures, proxy metrics and the what happens when people fail up far enough that there's no meaningful down anymore.
Paul Cantrell (@inthehands@hachyderm.io)
Hearing the feelings in this rant, which does touch a nerve, I can’t help think about how different the developer community reaction to the LLM push might be if the focus were on quality instead of efficiency. 1/
Hachyderm.io (hachyderm.io)
Despite the law bearing his name, Goodhart didn't actually say "once a measure becomes a target it stops being a useful measure." What he said was that "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes", and the part of that that we don't talk about nearly enough is "for control purposes"; the implied question that's quietly (and conveniently, I think) elided in the simplified rephrase is "control of what, by who, and to what end."
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Despite the law bearing his name, Goodhart didn't actually say "once a measure becomes a target it stops being a useful measure." What he said was that "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes", and the part of that that we don't talk about nearly enough is "for control purposes"; the implied question that's quietly (and conveniently, I think) elided in the simplified rephrase is "control of what, by who, and to what end."
It's an old adage that the poor pay taxes, the well-off pay accountants, the rich pay lawyers and the ultra-rich pay politicians.
Another way to say that is, the poor pay what they're forced to, the well-off pay what they have to, the rich pay what they can be made to, and the ultra rich pay to be above any of that.
To the powerless, the rules define the game. Higher up, the rules are part of the game. If you're powerful enough, the rules _are_ the game.
The ultrarich own the stadium.
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It's an old adage that the poor pay taxes, the well-off pay accountants, the rich pay lawyers and the ultra-rich pay politicians.
Another way to say that is, the poor pay what they're forced to, the well-off pay what they have to, the rich pay what they can be made to, and the ultra rich pay to be above any of that.
To the powerless, the rules define the game. Higher up, the rules are part of the game. If you're powerful enough, the rules _are_ the game.
The ultrarich own the stadium.
@mhoye Damn!
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It's an old adage that the poor pay taxes, the well-off pay accountants, the rich pay lawyers and the ultra-rich pay politicians.
Another way to say that is, the poor pay what they're forced to, the well-off pay what they have to, the rich pay what they can be made to, and the ultra rich pay to be above any of that.
To the powerless, the rules define the game. Higher up, the rules are part of the game. If you're powerful enough, the rules _are_ the game.
The ultrarich own the stadium.
"The ultrarich own the stadium" in this AI vibecoding world means they decide how many seats you need to sell to keep playing, what kind of events are allowed and aren't. And those metrics just trickle down into targets, goals, KPIs, lines of code. All of it with made up stories about what success looks like or means - quality, velocity, who cares what - that people make up to avoid staring at the fact that it's all made up but you lose your house if you don't perform your belief hard enough.
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"The ultrarich own the stadium" in this AI vibecoding world means they decide how many seats you need to sell to keep playing, what kind of events are allowed and aren't. And those metrics just trickle down into targets, goals, KPIs, lines of code. All of it with made up stories about what success looks like or means - quality, velocity, who cares what - that people make up to avoid staring at the fact that it's all made up but you lose your house if you don't perform your belief hard enough.
When we saw the huge Return To Office Return To Normal push, You Will Be Measured By Days Of Your Butt In A Desk... where did that come from, fast and hard?
True story: it came from companies whose boards and major shareholders had enormous investments in corporate real estate. It came from the people who owned the stadium, and saw that their stadium might lose its value.
For the rest The Rules now included Incomprehensible RTO Mandates and leaders making up fantasies about productivity.
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When we saw the huge Return To Office Return To Normal push, You Will Be Measured By Days Of Your Butt In A Desk... where did that come from, fast and hard?
True story: it came from companies whose boards and major shareholders had enormous investments in corporate real estate. It came from the people who owned the stadium, and saw that their stadium might lose its value.
For the rest The Rules now included Incomprehensible RTO Mandates and leaders making up fantasies about productivity.
Today, software is - already - everywhere and in everything. There's no evidence that there's a meaningful place to put new software that will justify continuous 30% year over year growth, and if tech companies - whose stock values are predicated on 30%+ annual growth forever - don't see that growth, they're going to dramatically lose their value. But there's this one way to keep the consumption rate up, to keep these plates spinning another year or two, evidence of real utility be damned.
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When we saw the huge Return To Office Return To Normal push, You Will Be Measured By Days Of Your Butt In A Desk... where did that come from, fast and hard?
True story: it came from companies whose boards and major shareholders had enormous investments in corporate real estate. It came from the people who owned the stadium, and saw that their stadium might lose its value.
For the rest The Rules now included Incomprehensible RTO Mandates and leaders making up fantasies about productivity.
@mhoye Good point. The housing shortage is also part of that—the workforce must be forced to have household budgets and schedules under strain at all times. (The founders of today's dominant companies got started using the slack that was allowed by the previous generation of companies, and do all they can to deny it to potential challengers.)
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Today, software is - already - everywhere and in everything. There's no evidence that there's a meaningful place to put new software that will justify continuous 30% year over year growth, and if tech companies - whose stock values are predicated on 30%+ annual growth forever - don't see that growth, they're going to dramatically lose their value. But there's this one way to keep the consumption rate up, to keep these plates spinning another year or two, evidence of real utility be damned.
"Failing upwards" isn't real. People don't fail upward, we just call it that because the alternative - that they are succeeding at the pointless bullshit that's defined as success - means the work we do, the source of identity and meaning for so many of us, might also be pointless bullshit.
It's easier to make up a story that gives us an adversary than admit that we're trapped inside and complicit in the same process of anti-meaning.
AI Psychosis isn't really about AI. It's about meaning.
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"Failing upwards" isn't real. People don't fail upward, we just call it that because the alternative - that they are succeeding at the pointless bullshit that's defined as success - means the work we do, the source of identity and meaning for so many of us, might also be pointless bullshit.
It's easier to make up a story that gives us an adversary than admit that we're trapped inside and complicit in the same process of anti-meaning.
AI Psychosis isn't really about AI. It's about meaning.
@mhoye are you sure it's not real? because I'm a great developer but I've been promoted such that I also have management responsibilities, which I suck at
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"Failing upwards" isn't real. People don't fail upward, we just call it that because the alternative - that they are succeeding at the pointless bullshit that's defined as success - means the work we do, the source of identity and meaning for so many of us, might also be pointless bullshit.
It's easier to make up a story that gives us an adversary than admit that we're trapped inside and complicit in the same process of anti-meaning.
AI Psychosis isn't really about AI. It's about meaning.
I mean, it doesn't help that the chatbot says you're great and doing well and absolutely right. That part is particularly sinister.
But when I see people in the grips of this shit I don't see naivete or idiocy or mendacity so much as I see people who've found themselves trapped in a cult of their own personality. But the rules of that cult, the ceremonies, everything defining it has been out of their control and has been forever.
And the only alternative they have is confronting that.
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I mean, it doesn't help that the chatbot says you're great and doing well and absolutely right. That part is particularly sinister.
But when I see people in the grips of this shit I don't see naivete or idiocy or mendacity so much as I see people who've found themselves trapped in a cult of their own personality. But the rules of that cult, the ceremonies, everything defining it has been out of their control and has been forever.
And the only alternative they have is confronting that.
We're all adults, we've all gotta make our own choices and we're responsible for them, I get it, but so much of tech has always looked kind of like a cult, certainly prone to cult like tendencies, and maybe AI psychosis is what psychological abuse would look like, over a long enough time horizon, if it were just slow enough that people's ability to see themselves, or see outside themselves, or define themselves outside the metrics and targets, was - deliberately - atrophied long enough.
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@mhoye are you sure it's not real? because I'm a great developer but I've been promoted such that I also have management responsibilities, which I suck at
@aburka Yeah, I misspoke - that should have read "failing upwards", not "the peter principle". I've corrected it.
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@aburka Yeah, I misspoke - that should have read "failing upwards", not "the peter principle". I've corrected it.
@mhoye ah okay yeah. I was going to say those weren't the same but thought you might have been trying to give two examples
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We're all adults, we've all gotta make our own choices and we're responsible for them, I get it, but so much of tech has always looked kind of like a cult, certainly prone to cult like tendencies, and maybe AI psychosis is what psychological abuse would look like, over a long enough time horizon, if it were just slow enough that people's ability to see themselves, or see outside themselves, or define themselves outside the metrics and targets, was - deliberately - atrophied long enough.
When the metrics by which you have defined yourself have been turned into a way to to target your identity, are they still useful metrics?
Useful to who? To what end? And what do you do, then?
If your sense of self has this much pressure is being placed upon it for control purposes, where do you find time to ask, control of what, by who, and to what end? What are the alternatives _but_ collapse?
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I mean, it doesn't help that the chatbot says you're great and doing well and absolutely right. That part is particularly sinister.
But when I see people in the grips of this shit I don't see naivete or idiocy or mendacity so much as I see people who've found themselves trapped in a cult of their own personality. But the rules of that cult, the ceremonies, everything defining it has been out of their control and has been forever.
And the only alternative they have is confronting that.
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We're all adults, we've all gotta make our own choices and we're responsible for them, I get it, but so much of tech has always looked kind of like a cult, certainly prone to cult like tendencies, and maybe AI psychosis is what psychological abuse would look like, over a long enough time horizon, if it were just slow enough that people's ability to see themselves, or see outside themselves, or define themselves outside the metrics and targets, was - deliberately - atrophied long enough.
Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝ (@richpuchalsky@mastodon.social)
There is no such thing as AI psychosis. There are a few people going through ordinary psychosis at any time who, during this, interact with an AI. All the rest of it is: the worst people you've worked with on a programming project, who didn't ever seem like they knew what they were doing, now still doing know what they're doing but because of AI they think that they do to a greater extent.
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
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"Failing upwards" isn't real. People don't fail upward, we just call it that because the alternative - that they are succeeding at the pointless bullshit that's defined as success - means the work we do, the source of identity and meaning for so many of us, might also be pointless bullshit.
It's easier to make up a story that gives us an adversary than admit that we're trapped inside and complicit in the same process of anti-meaning.
AI Psychosis isn't really about AI. It's about meaning.
@mhoye oh i've personally witnessed someone failing upwards once but that was ages ago.
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When we saw the huge Return To Office Return To Normal push, You Will Be Measured By Days Of Your Butt In A Desk... where did that come from, fast and hard?
True story: it came from companies whose boards and major shareholders had enormous investments in corporate real estate. It came from the people who owned the stadium, and saw that their stadium might lose its value.
For the rest The Rules now included Incomprehensible RTO Mandates and leaders making up fantasies about productivity.
@mhoye The whole "return to normal" was due to corporate panic and the fact that people simply didn't need to work in the old ways which lowered the corporate control over their workers. Nope, wouldn't do, get everyone back in and show them who's boss.
For a brief moment, the worker had power over their daily lives and could have demanded more equitable working situations, that struck fear in the paymasters so return to normal it was, make up something about "the economy" meaning shareholder value and away they went.
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When we saw the huge Return To Office Return To Normal push, You Will Be Measured By Days Of Your Butt In A Desk... where did that come from, fast and hard?
True story: it came from companies whose boards and major shareholders had enormous investments in corporate real estate. It came from the people who owned the stadium, and saw that their stadium might lose its value.
For the rest The Rules now included Incomprehensible RTO Mandates and leaders making up fantasies about productivity.
@mhoye
Don't forget the tax breaks the companies get on leases etc but have to maintain certain % occupancy. (At least that's what I had been told)
