on making things, conviviality, vibe coding

27 Jun 2025

73 messages • Discord

23 Jun 2025
henry
anyone can make anything, supposedly, what are people going to make
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24 Jun 2025
fjpaz
23 Jun 2025
https://x.com/b___ence/status/1937219611000254524
omakase software

in a world where anyone can build anything, most won’t. if previous consumer behaviour tells us anything, it’s that we value convenience and and others’ taste way more than we think. even in systems designed for flexibility like notion, people buy templates

to be able to make anything is too much choice, which is its own kind of friction. most of us don’t want infinite freedom, we want a strong opinion to follow
henry
dang i want to remake a lot of things
fjpaz
people buying notion templates is so true

crazy that a whole cottage industry sprung up for it
henry
it's funny it's the opposite of tools for conviviality

part of the passage we read from illich is on all this
fjpaz
crazy that a whole cottage industry sprung up for it

and the worst part is 90% of the templates don’t (or at least for years, didn’t (idk about now)) even use notion properly

part of the passage we read from illich is on all this

which one
henry
the sidewalk thing I went to on saturday

also henryzoo.com may be hard to read but i think it's interesting

https://henryzoo.com/illich/silent-commons
Silence is a Commons
Ivan Illich from In the Mirror of the Past, May 1st, 1992
fjpaz
ok finally I understand the word conviviality

that second paragraph is v clarifying
henry
yea this passage is super helpful

I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members.

the last sentence speaks to the balance part too

basically it doesn't matter how amazing the LLM, the service, the market, the government is.. it creates a dependency. people fundamentally need the freedom to make for themselves and community
fjpaz
very interesting

basically it doesn't matter how amazing [...]

the other bipolar model id had in mind for tools actually came from an essay Linus wrote

which I think kind of defines the same ends in a different way

maybe not a perfect overlap
henry
ya I see it as tools and systems
fjpaz
I wonder if he’s read illich
henry
he should know of him at least, notion should, since i know they reference him before
fjpaz
oh true

" # "thesephist.com

1 Aug 2024
https://thesephist.com/posts/interface/
Instrumental interfaces, engaged interfaces

he should know of him at least, notion should [...]

yeah notion does feel fundamentally inspired by conviviality
henry
tools to work with and tools to work for
tools that don't ask anything of you, and tools that demand something
fjpaz
things just went a bit wrong somehow

too slow, no offline, idk

tools that don't ask anything of you, and tools that demand something

despite being extremely flexible compared to other tools notion does demand that you use it a certain way"
henry
its kind of like how people talk about a protocol

it does need an affordance but it doesn't impose in a coersive way

someone was commenting they like coercion (like bike lane is only for bikes) but i think illich is speaking differently
fjpaz
basically it doesn't matter how amazing the LLM [...]

I think that you can argue that LLMs remove more dependencies than they create

programming and making stuff myself felt truly insurmountable to me, and I didn’t expect to try it properly for many years, probably never make an app or webapp of interest

and sure I’m largely dependent on them but I’m also dependent on my keyboard
henry
i agree that llms are actually convivial if you use them in that way, i certainly love and use it like that

and true that most people thinking about llm are still thinking about the "write an email" slop stuff

but you can argue the perception of llm is not convivial then, like culturally

it should be a tool for agency
fjpaz
right true
henry
and true that most people thinking about llm are still thinking about the "write an email" slop stuff

also kids skipping work throughout school

see the part about imagination, which i think is the least convivial part of any industrialization
fjpaz
i agree that llms are actually convivial if you use them in that way [...]

if we could quiet the moral panic and just focus on teaching kids to see and use them this way it would be a great thing I think
henry
his most biting critique imo is about the issues of imagination when some idea basically takes over as the only way

these are my annotations lol
fjpaz
[...] issues of imagination when some idea takes over as the only way

right

I see the connection to McLuhan
henry
coke becomes a substitute not just for soda (normal monopoly), but water or even the need for thrist itself

cars becomes a sub for transportation, movement (vs walking, biking, skipping, galloping, etc)
fjpaz
if we could quiet the moral panic and just focus on teaching [...]

another angle on this is fear → sometimes hate of vibecoding as a concept as opposed to state of mind/stage-of-process

another angle on this is fear [...] of vibecoding as a concept as opposed to state of mind/stage-of-process

specifically fear that this is what future programmers will become
henry
it kinda is a real issue, esp for younger people

like i saw a video of kids that didn't know how to peel a banana or osmething crazy

bc parents always did it, or they only drink or eat banana flavor, never the actual thing
fjpaz
lol yeah

idk if I referenced to you this thread from emmett shear I think?

where he or whoever said that while the kids on the left edge of the bell curve are getting “dumber,” the ones on the right edge are getting more impressive

but also that the right edge is shrinking

where he or whoever [...]

actually it was PG

and I think this was pre LLMs

[...] the ones on the right edge are getting way more impressive

because internet and other effects

social media etc

basically the kids that don’t fall into the tarpits → learn / have the opportunity to practice agency can go very far
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fjpaz
[...] while the kids on the left edge of the bell curve are getting “dumber”

but yeah just to close out the thought – the reason I brought this up regarding vibecoding + kids/AI

if we could quiet the moral panic and just focus on teaching [...]

is that we need as a society to move ppl to the right on the bell curve

another angle on this is fear → sometimes hate of vibecoding [...]

rather than collectively fighting about whether it’s good or not

[...] we as a society need to move ppl to the right on the bell curve

which I realize requires you to see the good in it first

so yeah it’s complex lol
27 Jun 2025
fjpaz
actually it was PG

ok no it was tyler cowen, and it was post (not pre)-LLMs

it just came to me while transcribing this chat lol

share.snipd.com

Variance in Competency
Dwarkesh Patel: What did you think of Patrick's observation of the competency crisis?

Tyler Cowen: I see it differently from Patrick, and he and I have discussed this. So I think there's basically increasing variance in the distribution. So young people at the top are doing much better, and they're far more impressive than they were in earlier times. And if you look at areas where we measure performance of the young, chess is a simple example.

We perfectly measure performance. Very young people are just better and better at chess. That's proven. Even like NBA basketball, you have very young people doing things that they would not have been doing, say, 30 years ago.

And a lot of that is mental and training and application and not being a knucklehead. So the top of the distribution getting much better. You see this also in science, internet writing. The very bottom of the distribution, well, youth crime has been falling since the 90s.

So the very bottom of the distribution also is getting better. I think there's some thick middle above the very bottom and extending like a bit above the median that's clearly getting worse. And because they're getting worse, there's a lot of anecdotal examples of them getting worse. Like students wanting more time to take the test or having, you know, flimsy excuses or mental health problems with the young or whatever.

It's a lot more of that because of that thick band of people getting worse. And that's a great concern. But I see the very bottom and a big chunk of the top of the distribution as just much better. And I think it's pretty proven by numbers that that's the case.

So I would say this increasing variance with the weird mix of where the gains and declines are showing up. And I've said this to Patrick, and I'm going to say it to him again, and I hope I can convince him.

Dwarkesh Patel: It seems concerning then the composition is that the average goes down if you look at PISA scores or something.

Tyler Cowen: The median goes down. You know, a lot of tests, they've pushed more people into taking the test, PISA scores in particular. So I suspect those scores adjusted for that are roughly constant, which is still not great. I agree.

And I think there's some decline. Some of it is pandemic, and we're recovering a bit slowly, getting back to human bottlenecks. But I think a lot of the talk of declining test scores is somewhat overblown. At most, there's a very modest decline, I would say.

Dwarkesh Patel: If the top is getting better, what do you make of the anecdotal data he was talking about yesterday where the Stanford kids come up to him and say, you know, all my friends, they're stupid. You can't hire anybody from Stanford anymore. That should be the cream of the crop, right?

Tyler Cowen: There's plenty of data on the earnings of Stanford kids. If there were a betting market in, you know, what's the future trend? I'm long. How long I should be, I really don't know.

But I visit Stanford, not every year, but, you know, regularly. And there's selection and who it is I meet. But, yeah, we're talking about selection and they're very impressive and Emergent Ventures has funded a lot of people from Stanford—uh, as far as I can tell as a group they're doing very well—so that is of no concern to me. If like you're worried about the Stanford kids, like something seems off in the level of salience and focus in the argument because they're overall doing

Great and you know they have high standards—that’s good too—like you know, Paul McCartney thought John Lennon was a crummy guitar player and John thought a lot of Paul songs were crap. Like, in a way they're right, in a way they're wrong—but it's a sign of what high standards the Beatles had. Yeah, I mean, you'd hope—how old are you by the way? 24. Okay. Now go back, whenever, however many years. Was there a 24-year-old like you doing the equivalent of podcasting?

Like, it's just clearly better now than it was back then. And you were doing this a few years ago. So it's just obvious to me, you know, the young peaks are doing better.

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