This is long but worth the read:
The future will belong to people with a very specific combination of personality traits and psychosexual neuroses. An AI might be able to code faster than you, but there is one advantage that humans still have. It’s called agency, or being highly agentic. The highly agentic are people who just do things. They don’t timidly wait for permission or consensus; they drive like bulldozers through whatever’s in their way. When they see something that could be changed in the world, they don’t write a lengthy critique—they change it. AIs are not capable of accessing whatever unpleasant childhood experience it is that gives you this hunger. Agency is now the most valuable commodity in Silicon Valley.
Somehow, this ended up turning into an invitation for Friday night dinner at Valinor, Alexander’s former group home in Oakland, named for a realm in the Lord of the Rings books. (Rationalists, like termites, live in eusocial mounds.)
Anyway, Eric isn’t involved with the underwriting firm or the venture-capital fund anymore. His new company is called Sperm Racing.
Donald was practically vibrating when we left Cluely. “Dude, he’s just a scared little boy,” he said. “He’s scared he’s not doing the right thing, and because of the fucked-up world we live in, people who should be in The Hague are giving him twenty million dollars. Something bad is gonna happen here, something really fucking bad is gonna happen.” He sighed. “I just want Zohran’s nonbinary praetorians to march across the country and put all these guys in cuffs.”
I could not finish this article. Got to the first quote and just couldn’t. I understand the point of this, I think, but I cannot care about these shitty companies and their shitty non-products enough to care if someone shits on them.
Also, I am glad the author still gets paid by the word and is really taking that as far as they can. Literally whole paragraphs of this are pointless drivel. I am sorry but a Hunter S. Thompson you are not.
For my part, if I gotta pretend I’m having a good time with the talking machines in order to keep the Powers That Be satisfied enough to keep paying me then reading about how much the people driving this suck is a sanity preserving measure and I’m here for it.
This is very valid and may be my future. I just recently told my boss after he asked about AI that I don’t need it, hate it and won’t use it if he buys me some sort of agent. To which he said he understood my stance, which can mean anything.
Yeah, I keep telling my bosses “Sure, we can do X but here’s an estimate of costs and my guess at the limitations”, and they keep going “Hmm, maybe.” I think they’re also skeptics but are getting pressure from their bosses. The thing that’s been crazymaking for me is that I keep going to these Emperor’s New Clothes presentations where the demonstrated results are mediocre at best and they’re being presented like it’s a major breakthrough.
Well, to be fair – every tiny little thing that anybody ever assembled that did something as advertised even a little bit at demo time was raved about by the sycophant theater in every company I’ve ever worked. When the thing was eventually deployed and nobody used it because it had some fatal flaw, it was still praised by management as an epic success, and then forgotten about by everyone, because so long as a thing that functions at all is around to point at, then that’s a notch on the belt for any mid level manager at review time. Gotta climb that ladder.
When I got to the “sperm racing” section I was fully convinced.
Western society is completely and utterly insane and cannot be redeemed.
“I just want Zohran’s nonbinary praetorians to march across the country and put all these guys in cuffs.”
E: Actually, having read the article, this is far too kind.
The highly agentic are people who just do things. They don’t timidly wait for permission or consensus; they drive like bulldozers through whatever’s in their way.
yet when i do it it’s “shoplifting” 🙄
You need to do a VC round on your agentic merchandise reallocation startup
This was a good fucking article
Cluely and its co-founder Chungin “Roy” Lee were intensely, and intentionally, controversial.
begging for the blog headline: Roy Lee Screwed
Wait I got stickers now.
Roy Lee Screwed
The only place I’ve ever seen a gitlab or tailscale billboard was in the bay. It’s kinda surreal coming from the land of personal injury billboards
