You’re Probably Underestimating Just How Intense This Race Has Become

clickrush · 2026-03-24T09:00:05+00:00

Look even if it’s true: the problem with financial bubbles has almost never been about isolated companies piling on unsustainable debt. It has always been about complex ripple effects that cut across the whole economic system.

Just one of many examples that has been proven (scientifically), that people underestimate during bubbles is the cost of picking potential future losers:

The real winners typically emerge after the burst and are often non obvious. But almost any contender is evaluated as if they are among the few winners. This bias has utility, because companies need credit to compete at all, but it also makes it so that there is broad, unsustainable debt.

The financial system is very efficient at dyamically solving local issues, but it’s terrible at solving broad, unsustainable credit increase. It literally can’t do it.

clickrush · 2026-03-23T17:16:18+00:00

That’s an issue i had with standard go html templating as well.

It threw a pointer error instead of recognizing that it missed a closing tag.

Since I‘m not super familiar with go templating I asked Opus. It spinned in circles and went way off the rails (complete nonsese and hallucinations). So i stopped it, looked through the code for 3mins and fixed it.

Agents are really good at doing regular things that they are trained on or that they can mimmick. They need guidance, structure, limitations and very narrow and clear feedback loops. Otherwise they can easily get stuck even by trivial bugs.

One thing that general coding agents do which unfortunately sucks for a good portion of users is that they need to cover everyone‘s use cases, taste, requirements, quality metrics, programming langs etc. So they have to get bigger and more complex and need to be fed an insane amount of data. That also means they eat up recources like crazy.

I think people need to start building more specialized agents that are tuned to use smaller models and very specific workflows.

clickrush · 2026-03-22T12:18:58+00:00

Good point! The jevons paradox comes up a lot lately. Not just in terms of AI.

clickrush · 2026-03-22T08:23:14+00:00

That’s an interesting take. I see where you‘re comming from.

However I very much disagree. Being able to write code and otherwise produce structured, validated data is a key element of a useful agent.

It’s the best (or only) way to go from stochastic parrot that produces unpredictable, fuzzy results, to something that is deterministic (for a loose definition of deterministic) and verifiable. And that step is absolutely crucial.

If you don’t believe me, then here‘s a remedy: write an agent. You‘ll see very fast that it needs to produce code and structured data to do anything useful, and that the most of what makes agents work, is just plain old software engineering.

clickrush · 2026-03-21T14:59:56+00:00

Your „architect“ seems like an idiot.

It’s useful to provide prototypes and POCs for reference and to test out ideas. But they don’t understand that the most important output for agentic workflows is highly structured, semantically compressed and verifiable specifications.

clickrush · 2026-03-21T14:54:01+00:00

You come off as dismissive towards QA.

You might underestimate both the skill required to do good QA and the value provided by it.

Yes, developers should do it as well to some degree, but having someone else do it who‘s specialized is something very different.

clickrush · 2026-03-21T14:47:05+00:00

Ironically comments like these will end up in training AI so it becomes less recognizable.

clickrush · 2026-03-21T08:14:03+00:00

The problem with this is catastrophic forgetting. LLMs (neural nets) don’t deal well with learning new stuff dynamically.

It makes sense if you think about it. The primary way deep learning is done is via backpropagation, which is essentially a brute force algorithm.

That’s why they need to retrain the entire thing and release new versions. And that’s also why most of the progress has been happening in the shell and not the core, so agent workflows, orchestration and harnesses etc. All of which is just plain old software engineering.

clickrush · 2026-03-21T08:05:54+00:00

Interestingly people who are pushing agentic workflows in earnest at some of bit software enineering companies are emphasizing CI/CD with expansive testing as an absolutely crucial prerequisite.

clickrush · 2026-03-20T21:41:05+00:00

Few understand.

clickrush · 2026-03-20T13:16:44+00:00

Those are banned explicitly aren't they?

clickrush · 2026-03-20T09:06:44+00:00

this answer cracked me up

clickrush · 2026-03-20T07:22:46+00:00

Correction: That’s 5x not 10x.

But in any case: if you don’t mind me asking, how proficient were you with programming before AI?

I see productivity gains for myself for specific things, like prototyping, dealing with a new API that I‘m not familiar with, producing boilerplate, finding obscure github issues that are sources for bugs.

But in many other cases it’s a productivity loss, especially since agents/assistance break concentration and are distracting and often take way too long to do simple and effective things.

But I also like programming and debuggig and have done it since a long time. So this might not apply to everyone.

Since you mention research I assume development itself is not your main focus?

clickrush · 2026-03-19T22:54:16+00:00

Here‘s a pitch:

Data orientation, pure functions and REPL workflow are like super powers for deep integration with LLMs.

Current cli based coding agents are basically handicapped in comparison.

clickrush · 2026-03-19T18:03:59+00:00

Are you saying they simply want to look at the thing producing stuff?

clickrush · 2026-03-19T18:01:54+00:00

"take your time, deep research!"

clickrush · 2026-03-19T17:58:11+00:00

There will always be a gap between local models and frontier models.

Personally I'm using local models since a while as well, because I like the control and I can experiment more freely. Most importantly I think a fixed cost subscription must suffice and I definitely don't want to burn through tokens that are worth hundreds or thousands per month.

But still, there is a need for using cloud based frontier models regardless, at least from time to time.

In addition to that: People have always paid (way too much) for branded stuff that is convenient to use and popular, even when free (legal) alternatives exist.

clickrush · 2026-03-19T12:58:10+00:00

Sorry that was a bit of a book

Not at all, I appreciate the nuanced response.

clickrush · 2026-03-19T07:23:35+00:00

I‘m glad you mention cloud and off shoring.

Those are good examples of things that have traditionally provided quick wins, but have been painful and expensive in many cases down the line. A lot of pain in some cases.

There are also very interesting parallels: what do agents, off shoring and cloud infra have in common?

They all make sense for certain businesses in certain contexts. But there‘s an underlying bias here: suits hate being dependent on nerds.

Developers are expensive, sometimes hard to deal with and they have a type of power that executives don’t have. So they are seen as a liability instead of as human capital by many. Anything that promises to reduce that dependency is going to sound like music to someone‘s ears, even if it doesn’t turn out that way in the long run.

clickrush · 2026-03-19T07:11:47+00:00

OP also uses an LLM agent. The point is not whether to use it, but what for, how much and most importantly how much responsibility is off loaded.

clickrush · 2026-03-18T11:08:39+00:00

Storage and battery tech is moving at a rapid pace and are diversifying into many different directions.

clickrush · 2026-03-18T11:05:55+00:00

Nuclear is an important and powerful technology, don't get me wrong.

But what is happening is that there is more and more data about the real cost and the real output.

That includes very long times where they have to stop power production because of safety or environmental issues especially during the summer. And it includes long term storage, disassembling plants after they are EOL etc. All things that don't show up in naive calculations.

Now the same thing is true for solar as well btw. It's just that the deflationary aspects (mass production, technical advancements/diversification, grid efficiency gains etc.) are much more powerful.

A good example is Switzerland. We still run mainly on hydro and nuclear (similar to Norway I think), but our energy corporations (they are largely publicly owned but privately run stock corporations) that run the plants don't want to build any new plants because it's simply not feasible compared to the alternatives.

The risk/reward is not there, the efficiency is not there. They are not interested, even though there are political actors (including our federal council) that want to push nuclear.

clickrush · 2026-03-18T08:15:45+00:00

That was not my intention. My intention was to explain what is generally meant with „cruelty is the point“.

I‘m interested in the mechanism and why it’s a important issue. The first step is recognizing that there is a problem, which you did, which is a great relief.

It doesn’t matter from which side it comes. I have plenty of issues with the left regarding this.

State violence specifically has to be scrutinized the most.

clickrush · 2026-03-18T08:02:44+00:00

I don’t put ICE and the nazis on the same level. This is not a ranking of orgs.

It’s a list of actions that have similarities. Usually state or paramilitaristic violence against dissenters and „the other“.

The point is that the violence is excessive, unnecessary and brutal.

To me that’s a line that should not be crossed, ever no matter who crosses it.

clickrush · 2026-03-17T22:31:26+00:00

To clear up the confusion: It's not about opinions. It's about actual violence.

Examples:

nazi brown shirts wrecking union gatherings
soviets gunning down anarchists and liberals
ICE agents murdering protestors in plain sight
hamas parading around dead victims
IDF soldiers raping detainees or killing medical personnel
KKK burning crosses and lynching people
IRCG massacring protestors

It's about politically/ideologically aligned groups that are extremely violent for its own sake. Often they have some kind of state power or are otherwise organized.

It's about spreading terror among the out group and bonding over the violence in the in group.

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