Advice for programmers

I think all those answers could be plausible for someone. And taking that drudgery, handing it over to machines, that is the history of civilization.

`1:16:16`

A lot of it is gone in a lot of domains, and the rest of it may be gone very soon. So that's where some of the romanticism also comes in... because pain in the moment is difficult. It's hard. It's annoying. Pain in the rear view mirror is accomplishment, proud, learning, steps forward, all the things, right? So we encompass all of this as part of the human experience, that we hate pain in the moment, but we cherish it when it's five minutes past and we don't remember the hardship. We just remember the progress.

`1:17:11`

Don't try to anticipate anything. You will literally go crazy. Because even the smartest brains in the business cannot anticipate what two model hops from here is going to look like. It's an absolute waste of time, and you will develop an AI psychosis trying to deduce what two years from now is gonna look like. Focus on right now, and right now is the most incredible time to be into computers. You can make them do the most amazing things if you lean in. If you maybe for a hot moment force yourself to learn where the state of the art is, I double dog dare you not to get excited about what's possible.

`1:17:59`

I think it's optional actually to build publicly. I think it's nice to do because then you get to be part of a community, and there's some camaraderie in open source. Not some camaraderie. There's an enormous amount of camaraderie. Open source is an incredible source of community and camaraderie, and it's also a great way to stem some of that personal existential dread. If you're amongst other humans, you can get infected with good forms of mind viruses, exciting forms of mind viruses, the ones that tell you that it's all gonna be okay, and the future looks bright, and if we build a bunch of things together, we can do things none of us ever dreamed we could do. I was just talking to Ryan Hughes, who's been my main partner on Omarchy almost since day one, and we were literally talking about yesterday how when We started on this journey together. Our ambitions were very modest. We're just like, "Can we get this distro to not crash at 3:00 AM because of an Arch package that just got pushed out outside of our control? That would be amazing. Then it'd be great." Now we're leaning back and thinking, "How can we take over the world? How can we make Omarchy go to Mars? How can we do everything we've ever dreamed of?" And that level of ambition inflation is partly because things have gotten better with agents, but hugely also because we've surrounded ourselves with others excited about the same journey.

And if you're just sitting in your little isolated cave worrying about the future, yeah, you're gonna go a little nuts. I think if we learned anything during COVID is that people will go nuts sitting in their little cave inside by themselves worrying about what's gonna happen. That is indistinguishable from depression, ruminating endlessly about things you can't control. I'm sorry to channel some Jensen Huang here, but that's just loser talk. You don't have to be a loser. You can choose to lean in and-... win. And win is very broadly defined as learning more, making more, contributing more, being part of more. And at the end of the day, what are your choices? You don't have a choice, mate. The future's coming whether you like it or not, so you might as well choose to be excited about it.

`1:21:55`

We don't know, and therefore, we should choose to have faith that it's gonna pan out. That is my best advice towards fighting anxiety, is that you have a choice, to a large degree, of how to lean. Do you wanna lean into PDoom? PDoom is gonna happen whether you lean into it or not. You don't have control.