Punch Yourself in the Face with Reality
32 points
1 hour ago
| 5 comments
| adi.bio
| HN
ChrisMarshallNY
4 minutes ago
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I have found that it gets some of the "cruft" out of the work, freeing me to do more work.

Since starting to use LLMs, I have actually been spending more time, at the console, than before.

One reason is that I like to ship (as opposed to "code"). That means a lot of tedious, boring stuff. The kind of thing that I want to "take a break before tackling," so I may take 30 minutes, and watch something on TV for a while, before rolling up my sleeves.

Now, the LLM can take care of a lot of this stuff, so I am not motivated to "take a break," so much, anymore.

It doesn't actually feel bad, but I now have to schedule "downtime." I never used to have to do that, before. My work always involved a lot of "context switch" points; naturally set up for taking breaks.

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sorokod
1 hour ago
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This quote from Philip K Dick seems relevant:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

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quirkot
17 minutes ago
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Such a great synopsis. The things that are easy to signal (landing page, presentation deck, logo, etc) have never been the make-or-break aspect. The part that's always been hard, that remains hard, is that a business must solve a problem for people. Even B2B is solving business problems for specific people. And people are a difficult, difficult problem to solve.
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AdityaAnand1
6 minutes ago
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My previous business failed. Everything we built was useless. 2.5 yrs.

My current business is profitable. Almost everything we built was still useless. Since 4 yrs ago.

The amount of effort that went into that "almost" Is something that I don't think AI moved any needle for even though half of our journey was after AI coding took off.

Speed of coding was never the problem, still isn't even if AI allegedly 10x-ed it.

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card_zero
49 minutes ago
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"Being honest with themselves about whether what they are doing is actually working or not" and "Having the courage to go on when nobody believes in you" are opposites.
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jamesrcole
8 minutes ago
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> "Having the courage to go on when nobody believes in you"

If you're doing something that isn't like how people are used to things being done, is novel, or is contra to common beliefs, there's a good chance that nobody will believe in you. And in such situations, their lack of belief is not a reliable indicator of whether what you're doing is valid or correct. Most people's negative responses in such cases are emotional responses, not rational ones.

In such situations, "Being honest with themselves about whether what they are doing is actually working or not" and "Having the courage to go on when nobody believes in you" are not opposites.

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saghm
24 minutes ago
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Not if you're perfectly able to differentiate which things will eventually succeed rather than will always fail! The best strategy for "winning in the age of AI" is "be able to predict the future with perfect accuracy", which at least anecdotally quite a lot of people lately seem to think they are able to do lately.

Probably not so different from past hype cycles, except maybe this time it will be different!

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pjc50
40 minutes ago
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Not quite. Optimism about where you are going doesn't conflict with being able to accurately assess where you currently are.

It does require you to think carefully about what constitutes validation or invalidation of your ideas, though.

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Schiendelman
47 minutes ago
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There's a difference.

The first is getting market feedback.

The second is just getting opinions.

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andai
19 minutes ago
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>Figure out why you were put on this earth.

Who is responsible for this mess? ;)

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