From my understanding, we are pretty close to a Dystopian world where all elites of a certain group collaborate to run a Super Leviathan. We still gotta choose our flavors, which may not be feasible in maybe 5-10 years when those leviathans clash into each other.

Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp covers it pretty well I think.

Likewise, thank you for the recommendation. I obviously haven't read Goliath's Curse yet, but it seems like Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988) might also be interesting for the same readers.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I don't think they are going to rise up this time. Maybe laying down flat is more realistic.

This time is different. The global system is not going to fall apart like isolated kingdoms in the past.

You seem very confident. This seems to imply you feel the haves will know when to leave enough on the table for the have nots to still feel like they are a part of the haves. I'm not so confident in that.

Far more likely is that we head back to a feudal era where data mining tech is used to identify and eliminate potential rabble-rousers. Once enough production is automated, all remaining have-nots are exterminated.

The weak link is that for “the haves” to have, the “have -nots” are needed. To have or to not is just a comparison, a millionaire needs the poor to be rich and to feel special otherwise when everyone is special nobody is.

People in technologically advanced societies have more than enough & the people who are not as advanced can not do anything that will have any effect on the people who own the fighter jets, missiles, robot factories, & "internet" satellites. The current system has no historical precedent. It is very close to an almost perfect panopticon w/ an associated media & police apparatus to keep everyone docile & complacent. Like I said, this time is different.

It will instead eventually fall apart in more thoroughly destructive ways. But not until it does a possibly-unrecoverably (at least in the medium term) amount of damage to civilization, humanity, and life on Earth first.

I agree but my point was that it will not be like any previous collapse.

yep. There is too much infrastructure now. Its going to take a lot for this to end.

“ Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting – Haruki Murakami”

I think they deliberately underplayed their role in this. Especially with Asian parents who think such nurturing is part of the "norm". I wouldn't be surprised that they spent TONs of time tutoring him when he was young -- and when he was more or less self-bootstrapped they don't need to spend too much time.

But I could be wrong. He is definitely a genius so maybe he did grasp the ideas rather early, like from 3 or 4.

That one looks like fake news to me. But we will see. I think the next iteration may reach 1-2 minutes instead of 15 seconds, so we will see 5 minutes of stitched together videos instead of 1-2 mins.

You just have to decide it for yourself. Note that fluency probably takes months, if not years. For me it's not necessary and I'm not going to touch it.

I kinda think I am lucky to spend my whole life in a rather peaceful, prosperous time. But the good time is almost over.

Go Costco! Costco is now my official restaurant whenever the family wants a bit of treat.

This is probably true, TBH. I can't think of any work that I can do whence I lose my job. Trade, Uber...those are not for me. I'm not competitive enough with people who bagged so many years of experience. At best I'd be at the lowest echelon and might as well just collect benefit from the government.

I really have no idea what I'm going to do, but I can probably still sit in the basement hacking kernels when I'm done with my whatever day job.

> If society collapses because 80% of white collar jobs disappear, I guess I'll just be in my basement wanting to know how a linux kernel driver works.

I'll probably do the same (actually doing this), camping in the woods or something, using a camper van.

Being a grown up man with a family and a kid, I gradually care less and less about my economical "social identity". It is not exciting at all. I bring bread to the table for the family. I am among the backbone of the society i.e. people who pays the largest amount of tax proportional to their income, while receiving very little benefit from the government.

Why do I even want this identity? I have to wear this hat simply because we living in a modern feudal world.

Now come back to the "social identity" defined in the article -- "computer programmers". I do care about this identity, but as all identities, like tags, you gotta beautify it a bit -- you have to attach some meaning to it. Without the personal meaning, you handle the power of definition to other people, who naturally don't care about you.

The tag I created for myself is "Kernel Programmer", initials in capital letters. My motto is "There are programmers, and there are system programmers, and ultimately there are kernel programmers" and I want to put it on my table in print. Don't get me wrong though, my work has nothing to do with kernel programming. It is not system programming either. It is even more abstract (and boring) than your usual FE/BE programming. But I do kernel programming as a hobby, and as a hobby I'm my own master and I'm willing to apply the most stringent standard to myself, which I'll never do the same to my work BTW.

And who can say that I'm not a kernel programmer even when it is just the XV6 kernel? Who can say that I'm not serious about kernel programming when I'm ready to write as many tests as I can imagine for a very early Linux kernel?

Life is meaningless and I have to create meanings out of the void. That's it.

> "There are programmers, and there are system programmers, and ultimately there are kernel programmers"

... and "ultimore" there are assembly programmers, machine code programmers, ASIC microcode programmers, ... :-)

Exactly. Pick one that excites you, and paint a picture that you are special in a list. I think that definitely excited me and put a meaning, however small, into my very boring and mundane life. Dogs at least have freedom.

BTW definitely would love to do more professional assembly or microcode, if possible! I'm planning to migrate a very old kernel to different architectures and there is tons of assembly code, or, to be more precisely, more cursed GCC inline assembly code in the kernel. E.g. everything in string.h is in asm.

I always heard that individualism is centric to the American mind, but on the other hand, I found that American interests groups (corporations especially) are very good at "hunting" in a group. I talked to some mid-level policy-maker friends in China and they recognize that the American corporations are very good at working as a "wolf pack", while the Chinese ones usually fight each other -- you can see examples in Huawei versus Zhongxing when both are competing in foreign markets.