That language makes my brain hurt. But IIUC, I have a few nits to pick, in
order of their priority:
1. It isn't Dave's "should", not really. Dave was attempting to pump the
computation set up by Kass, playing along with it and its implications. Even if Dave
dislikes what's become of software develop[ment|ers], he explicitly disagrees with Kass'
setup. The important point of this nit is one's ability to *play along* with another's
little game. That ability is important to game selection ... i.e. if we don't like what
*is*, what games are available to move from what is to what should be?
2. You list 3 systems: systemic metabolism, distributed cognition, and meaning. I presume meaning
should have some prefix like systemic and distributed, indicating it's higher order than the
individuals who actually _have_ the identity, [in]dignity, narrating, etc. What I'm lacking in
parsing these weird words is how each of the 3 differ or overlap, how they relate. How can one use
a word like "cognition" without implying a fairly tight relationship to
"meaning"? And if that's the case (that there is a tight relationship), how can Kass-Dave
be super-imposing metabolism over meaning without doing the same to cognition?
3. I don't think it's reasonable to use "phase transition" without some clear concept of
"phase". What was the phase before the GPT? ... or even before the "financialize
everything" of polymarket/kalshi? ... or whatever transition you find most amenable to description in
these weird words?
On 4/20/26 10:05 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
In the spirit of alien-thinking:
Norbert Weiner (1950) sed: /When we use humans as components in a
machine—reducing them to repetitive, protocol-bound roles—we “chain a man to a
thwart,” turning him into an inferior machine. /
Commodification and automation are dual /operations/ that reorganize the
relationship between affordances and competencies across a (heterarchical)
system (of systems).
In this case there are two (or more) systems superposed: The /systemic metabolism/
attempting to extract work and redistribute resources and the /"distributed
cognition/" system (cultural norms, government regulations, religious unctions)
attempting to organize elements to effect that extraction/redistribution?
We are in (yet another) phase transition where formerly innovative/creative processes
have become commodified to the point that they can be automated, which is part of a
cascade of "yet more" commodification and automation.
A third (and most salient to well adjusted human biengs and other sentients perhaps?) is
that of meaning whose objective is to justify and stabilize participation through
stablized idnetity, dignity narrative, ethics, using ideas like purpose fairness, value
and "shoulds".
To summarize: Dave's "should" seems to superpose the logic of the /metabolism/ (should
automate to optimize efficiency) and the /meaning/ realm with something like "everyone would
be happier and more well adjusted" if they were to give over to this commodification.
On 4/20/26 9:16 am, glen wrote:
There's a reading of Dave's OP not considered in this thread. He used the word "should": "several
hundred thousand developers/software engineers should be replaced with AI and automated out of existence". Of
course, there is a usage of "should" that's more of a prediction than a moral imperative. E.g. "We
expect several hundred ...". But I didn't read it that way. I read Kass' 5 questions ([mis]informed or not) as an
ethical stance. And Dave extended it to imply that those developers *should* be obsoleted, according to Kass' ethic.
Granted, many others are being obsoleted. But should they? Should they
according to Kass' ethic? Something else like the one I forwarded? Does
everyone have their own persnickety set of rules?
A practical (though perhaps cynical or even nihilist) approach is to
[in|ab]ductively arrive at what *should* happen based on what *is* happening,
rather than stumbling into axioms of occult provenance. How and when to map
is-should is the fundamental question, much more important than whichever
individual rules might be adopted.
On 4/20/26 7:53 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
I agree with Marcus. It is not just software developers that are getting
replaced by AI. Book writers, musicians, lawyers and many other professions are
seeing competition from AI.
This article about an AI author just showed up on Hacker news,
https://theamericanscholar.org/who-is-blake-whiting/
<https://theamericanscholar.org/who-is-blake-whiting/> . Apparently the books
get very good reviews, but the author doesn't actually exist.
I would speculate that almost any desk jockey profession is at risk.
_ Cody Smith _
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM Marcus Daniels <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dave writes:
< It seems to me, based on fifty years working in business IT development,
that several hundred thousand developers/software engineers should be
replaced with AI and automated out of existence. >
It's a growing list, and where it is weak, it mostly just a question of
getting the token expenditure high enough while providing tools and
grounding / embodiment.
For sysadmin work, the main obstacle is having (something like) hands to
open boxes, power cycle, and that sort of thing. The other day Claude Code
set up a multi-architecture Kerberos server for me with NFSv4.
Traditional software development is mostly done IMO.
Also, building architecture is done. Claude Opus is surprisingly skilled
at building plans. That will only accelerate IMO.
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