Is what you do as a programmer a programming task that would make the world enough-better-off if you to quit, that it would be an effective marginal donation to the world for you to simply quit, rather than earning to give? I found that I couldn’t find any way to argue against being a significant marginal net negative as a programmer, and as such have been living off savings for a few years since I quit, and I expect to do so for about two more years before getting a run of the mill job if TAI hasn’t hit by then.
I believe gears is saying he feels any software product he contributes to has negative value to the world as a whole, at least with respect to gears marginal contributions. So gears to ascension has quit and intends to return to the job market in 2 years if transformative AI is not available.
I see from gears’ reaction that they endorse Gerald’s position here.
My feelings are any software product that I am paid to pursue is probably going to have a negligible impact on the world and a pretty nice benefit to me, and so it makes sense for me to pursue them.
That said, I think there are some projects that have non-negligible negative impacts on the world, especially those that push AI forward. Other times the actual impact is negligible but is still just icky. I kinda take these things on a case-by-case basis and try to weigh the pros and cons.
Burnout isn’t uncommon. I have a coworker who quit and came back to the industry after taking a bit over a year off. What gears is saying sounds like what someone burned out might say.
With that said, I kinda also feel like anyone who isn’t one of the less than 5000 SWEs allowed to work at elite AI labs may not matter at all..
yeah that’s fair and on point, it’s possible that I irrationally overupdated about how bad of a thing it is for me to be employed as an industry SWE because it was unambiguously bad for me :p
Is what you do as a programmer a programming task that would make the world enough-better-off if you to quit, that it would be an effective marginal donation to the world for you to simply quit, rather than earning to give? I found that I couldn’t find any way to argue against being a significant marginal net negative as a programmer, and as such have been living off savings for a few years since I quit, and I expect to do so for about two more years before getting a run of the mill job if TAI hasn’t hit by then.
I don’t think I understand. Would you mind elaborating or rephrasing?
I believe gears is saying he feels any software product he contributes to has negative value to the world as a whole, at least with respect to gears marginal contributions. So gears to ascension has quit and intends to return to the job market in 2 years if transformative AI is not available.
I see from gears’ reaction that they endorse Gerald’s position here.
My feelings are any software product that I am paid to pursue is probably going to have a negligible impact on the world and a pretty nice benefit to me, and so it makes sense for me to pursue them.
That said, I think there are some projects that have non-negligible negative impacts on the world, especially those that push AI forward. Other times the actual impact is negligible but is still just icky. I kinda take these things on a case-by-case basis and try to weigh the pros and cons.
Burnout isn’t uncommon. I have a coworker who quit and came back to the industry after taking a bit over a year off. What gears is saying sounds like what someone burned out might say.
With that said, I kinda also feel like anyone who isn’t one of the less than 5000 SWEs allowed to work at elite AI labs may not matter at all..
yeah that’s fair and on point, it’s possible that I irrationally overupdated about how bad of a thing it is for me to be employed as an industry SWE because it was unambiguously bad for me :p
The first sentence here is very confusing and I think inverts a comparison—I think you mean “would make the world enough worse off”.