boing boing boing boing boing

The Rodeo Rule: you only have to do it for the first time once.

The Rohan Rule: if you are at a social function full of new people and you want to be liked, find someone doing important work like setup or food prep and offer to help.

The Tutorial Mode Rule: to navigate an unfamiliar situation where you fear you will mess up an interaction, preface the interaction by mentioning that you've never done this before, and let them know if you have a specific concern or question.

The Rocket Science Rule: most new things you want to try seem very complicated but are simple when taken step by step.

The [X] Will Remember That Rule: if you need to make small talk with the same person on a regular basis, try to save one fact or current event in their life from a given conversation and bring it up next time you talk.

it will always choose you. you cannot die. you'll always come back because it loves you so much. you are its right and left hand, its eternal weapon. it will drown you in its light. light as horror. darkness as horror. what if it thinks you are its best friend.

For movies, here is the beginner's list:

And the more advanced list:

Not all these movies are necessarily good, but the ones that gave me small pop culture epiphanies. It made me realize that 30%-40% of the jokes from modern sitcoms are references/parodies- and these movies are their source material.

^^ This is also true for socializing. So many people I thought were naturally funny were just doing movie bits.

I think this gets at something that's been bouncing around in my head for a bit about how people use AI, and how others perceive that use. And maybe it's not an original thought, but I haven't seen it laid out plainly and directly.

Generally, the use of AI models is essentially delegation. Essentially, you delegate the labor that you wish to happen, but don't want to do (or can't do) yourself. As a programmer, when I see my coworkers using AI to generate code, I instinctively get a little defensive and frustrated; programming is important, interesting, and fun to me and a part of me wants to shake them and shout, "Just do it yourself!"

But of course, there are many ways to use AI as part of the profession of computer programming. Maybe there are some repetitive or nearly-trivial tasks that might as well just be shoved off onto the program that's essentially an incredibly quick intern. But it's when people are using the AI for categories of tasks because they find the task hard, and the AI can do a better job then them, where I think my frustration is more justified. Because aside from just delegating the task, they are delegating the process of learning how to do the task, and any potential long-term benefits they (and by extension, the team as a whole) might gain from them developing those skills.

Now, outside of the workplace, the situation is different. Somebody with little or no programming experience might find they want a program that can do a particular task or automation for them, but making it themselves would be more time-consuming than the end product would be worth to them, and that's before the time they'd need to develop the skills to do it themselves. So they just fire off a request to an AI and get what they want. They basically have a cheap and quick contractor they can get mediocre work out of, and (through gritted teeth), that's fine. Developing programming skills and doing the work themselves are not priorities to these people; they have other uses for their time and energy that they find more valuable.

And of course in general, this isn't something new that comes with AI. I distinctly recall in 2012, overhearing a college student in the frozen foods aisle of a grocery store say that nobody should be buying a full frozen meal that just needs to be heated as that's too lazy and reflects poorly on the purchaser. Of course this is nonsense; people must eat very frequently and not everyone has the time, inclination, or ability to spend the time and effort involved in cooking every meal from scratch (or cooking most meals from kits, or preparing any meal outside the microwave, etc). I mean, I enjoy cooking and developing my cooking skills, but I often have things I'd rather be doing, and while I can often make something that tastes better than a frozen prepackaged stir-fry or pasta-with-sauce, I'm perfectly fine regularly delegating that work to a factory that mass-produces such things so I don't need to spend an hour plus in the kitchen every night.

And I think that thinking about this in terms of delegation makes sense when it comes to interpersonal communications as well. When you have Claude compose a text message to your friend, that's basically going "I'm not going to speak with you, I'll have my personal assistant do so on my behalf." Now, I'm not going to make a moral or ethical judgement about that, but just in terms of what that tells the other person, of course that's going to be perceived as rude! You are delegating the task of maintaining a friendship to something else! You are signaling that the friendship is not enough of a priority to do it yourself.