by stuffn | 2025-12-08 19:48:22+00:00
> As my MD friend noted wisely a couple weeks ago: it’s noteworthy how this became a culture after LLMs became ubiquitous and user friendly. It was tons of fun and happy times when we were going to reduce # of radiologists, not software engineers.

You want intellectual argumentation and then make an asinine claim like this.

First, HN was never a place for intellectual argumentation. It's reddit level dunning kruger with the pseudo-intellectual snobbery of a college philosophy courses. If you don't follow the zeitgeist you dont get to argue anything anyway. This is a terrible place for actual debate and those that do enjoy "debate" here are generally on the same side with a marginal (< 1%) difference in their views. The average HNer is a tech enthusiast, mid-to-far-left reddit poster. If you want some good debate turn on flagged/shadowed posts and enjoy the people who generally do not agree with HN's insane take on almost everything and havent been thought policed by Dang. If you were as smart as your smarmy post implies you'd realize any place with le updoots and le downdoots doesnt allow for spirited debate.

Second,

> Now, every day there’s multiple stories where you have to be caught up on this cinematic universe where AI is fake and doesn’t work and no one uses it

"AI" doesn't work well. I've been a professional software engineer for a long time. The best use case for "AI" is mild code review, writing comments, and stubbing out boring work like initial database table schemas. It absolutely hallucinates to hell with any sufficiently complex problem and if you're not aware of context windows you will walk yourself into a trap. The average person is not smart enough to recognize this. Thus, "AI" doesn't only fail to deliver, it is also dangerous due to it's sychophantic nature. I quote AI, particularly, because LLMs are not artificial intelligence. At least, not anymore than least squares analysis is artificial intelligence.

> data centers they build will be a waste and they’re probably not even being built and OpenAI is JUST like pets.com so this is basically the web bubble from 1999

Your rant provides no evidence it is not a bubble. An entirely unprofitable industry attempting to scale to make pennies is not sustainable. The amount of capital pouring into a literal wish is not similar to 1999.

It's similar to the 2008 economic crisis where, when the chickens come home to roost, the government will be bailing out big tech companies with taxpayer money because their infrastructure has parasitically attached itself (via the "cloud") to almost everything we use.

> In this case, X = RAM supply shortage is fake and actually just coordinated price gouging

There have been two DRAM price fixing scandals. If it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck... well it might be a duck. People are right to infer price fixing. The only difference now is it's "legal" because they announced it via a quarterly report. Every 5 or so years there's always something going on with DRAM. One wonders why.

> It was tons of fun and happy times when we were going to reduce # of radiologists, not software engineers.

Your MD friend should stay in his lane and not weigh in on topics he can't hope to understand. His biggest problem is India, not AI. Just like software engineers. Radiology is outsourced at levels similar to software with the only difference he probably made his nut 10 years ago and software engineers aren't paid anywhere near as much as a good non-outsourced radiologist.