Irish Larry David

Linux Mentat and cynical environmentalist. Into sci-fi and martial arts. Former Navy dude. Lukewarm techno-optimist, staunch human-pessimist.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

I'm glad we could agree on this.

[Computer @AskPerplexity]

Great question! While the global fertility rate has dropped sharply-from about 2.7 births per woman in 1960 to around 1.4 in many developed regions today-the total number of births worldwide is actually higher now than in 1960, mainly because the global population is much larger.

For example, in 2024 there were about 132 million babies born globally, compared to a much smaller number in 1960 when the world population was less than half its current size-so yes, total births matter a lot when looking at population trends, not just the fertility rate per woman.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@Playerinthgame For people using self-managed brokerage accounts, what's your opinion on how people could mitigate the damage to their assets?

I obvs prefer S&P trackers, but also have a fair amount in foreign and industry-specific ETFs.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@buccocapital Their push has me assuming that the first people they fired were their PR reps.

[Mo @atmoio]

The AI industry just invented a new job. Wait until you hear what it does.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@BaronVanBurgum @Devon_Eriksen_ @danzu72 This is also any academic, scientist, or medical researcher working on curing diseases.
"Such scum, amiright?"

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Expectation: the age of the IDE is over
Reality: we’re going to need a bigger IDE
(imo).

It just looks very different because humans now move upwards and program at a higher level - the basic unit of interest is not one file but one agent. It’s still programming.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@NicoleBehnam C'mon. What should be obvious is that this is mostly a problem of what the 'high agency, mostly well-off' are losing, not what the 'destitute stand to gain.' Are there any real examples of the poor making real gains with AI?

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@Samuel_Gregson Roko, a while back: 'Every human should spend their time making money and building status.'

I responded with something like: 'Newton, Turing, Einstein, King Jr., Curie, Salk, and countless other luminaries who changed the world beg to differ.'

His own followers ratioed him.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@Noahpinion @benthompson @deanwball Alex Karp, essentially: "Thiel and I are happy to allow our company to be nationalized by the government we bank-rolled and basically control."

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@BoringBiz_ Not enough people ready for the conversation of how to transition from a labor-based consumer economy to whatever kind of utopia-economy we're supposed to have with an AI revolution, apparently

[Kim-Mai Cutler @kimmaicutler]

“Students and families with the ability to absorb really high token costs to become truly AI-native and capitalize on all of these AI products have a disproportionately outsized advantage against those who don’t.”

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@Noahpinion A maximizer, but it's vibes, not paperclips.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@VladTheInflator What's the rationale behind this?

Elon essentially had the keys to the fin system of the U.S., fired a bunch of people who needed to be immediately re-hired, exposed all of our data to insecure servers, killed countless impoverished foreigners, and didn't reduce spending at all

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@PeterDiamandis There's absolutely no empirical evidence that an "explosion of jobs" is on the horizon.

If that was the case, AI maximalists would be posting it incessantly.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@krassenstein @elonmusk He killed hundreds of thousands when he one-shotted USAID.

Funny that he suddenly cares about children.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@thebadstats What's represented by "Goliath" and what has become "visible" at this point?

Bret's delusion and grift is beyond parody.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@DaveShapi "...Anthropic escalated, drew confusing and unnecessary lines in the sand, and doubled down."

Just a bad take.

'No surveillance. No autonomous killbots.' Doesn't seem like "confusing an unnecessary lines."

If it was in their contract, DoW wouldn't have had to fight them on it

[ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ 🛡️ @DanielMiessler]

This is why I’ve been so pissed at all these people attacking Anthropic on moral grounds.

Claiming they’re the bad guys, the worst of the worst, etc?

Really?

The people doing the most on AI safety all this time? The people publishing their own mistakes the most?

And now the people holding the line on how their tech can be used.

Be pissed all you want about their prices, or their handling of the subscription communications.

But don’t conflate your desires to use their services at other companies’ prices with them being morally rotten.

Far as I can tell they’re the cleanest out there in terms of having a pro-human goal and actually doing what they say.

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@Xenoimpulse "Technocrats," in this case, seems to be limited to people with financial interests in the accelerated buildout of AI.

I've seen a number of AI/ML & CS engineers echoing the demand for pro-social AI. Seems obvs that the populist take isn't limited to "those without a STEM CV."

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@DeepDishEnjoyer The Competing Autisms War of 2026-2028

[Irish Larry David @EccentricTim]

@Vivek4real_ That was a lot of dancing around to say, 'Basically, only poor people eat our food, and the Poors now are too poor to buy our food. '