It felt good being able to finish work tonight at 8pm where I was able to pack up, throw on a coat then head down to the supermarket to pick up a few things for dinner – pumpkin soup with fresh bread and some garlic butter. I finished that off with a fresh fruit salad – although the fresh fruit is a bit on the expensive side given that we’re heading into winter I do like to have a bit of a sweet treat once and a while with the be bonus of it being healthy .
Regarding the whole AI hype (yes, another rant by me) I don’t understand this fixation about ‘agents’ and ‘agentic AI’ given that we’ve had the ability to write macros and if you don’t want to wrote cote you could record macros where each step done with the mouse creates code (and if need be you can edit the code to make tweaks). I keep hearing the same AI fanboys hyping something we had over 20 years ago while ignoring that at least in the case of macros there is the benefit that we know exactly what the outcome is where as LLMs are based on a probabilistic model where every time it is run it is going to produce a different result or may not work at all.
I keep hearing the same nonsense regarding how AI is going to some how many people even more productive while ignoring that we already have tools right now that could achieve their promises with none of the problems that many AI researchers have pointed out regarding probabilistic models. This is once again silicon valley doing what they always do – reinventing the wheel with an even worse solution then claiming that they’ve created something new when in reality it is a worse version of what came before it. As I’ve said in the past, we are currently in a productivity slump but we already have technological solutions right now that, if they were were executed properly, would boost productivity rather than the current situation of executives believing the latest snake oil being sold by silicon valley.
It encourages you to triage what is actually important based on what your needs are as well as reflecting on what you want to purchase something – are you purchasing it because you genuinely want it or is it a situation of manufactured consent where external influences claim there is a problem that needs solving or a need that has to bet met then having that decision then justified after going ahead to purchase it. With that being said, I think it is important not to equate minimalism with being asceticism but rather it is about making sure that when you make decisions that deliberate rather than just simply going through the motions, questioning why suddenly out of nowhere you want something – is it a need or is it the endorphin rush of having something new that you crave and if so is there a more healthier way of boosting your endorphins.
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