jerkface

You read "new projects" in, actually. And the whole unit test thing was just an example demonstrating how AI use has to be tightly bounded to be arguably useful.

Unit tests become the specification once they are written. ChatGPT can easily write unit tests from whatever your specification is before that -- such as documentation, a bunch of comments and stubs, or even a first draft of the function itself, given enough context from the rest of the project.

Unit tests are too klunky to think in. You don't prototype the specification by implementing unit tests. And you really only lay down a few critical paths even if you "write the tests first" because code paths always come up during implementation that demand more test coverage anyway.

AI used extremely sparingly is sometimes helpful to an experienced coder. "Multivac, generate a set of unit tests for this function." Okay, some of these are dumb, but it's easier getting started on this mess than just looking at a blank buffer. Helps get the juices flowing a bit. But man, you try to actually do anything with it, and suddenly you're lost chasing a will-o'-wisp.

Oh fuck off with that.

To compare dead children to the cost of failing to check government power, we can reduce both to life-years lost:

🔫 Current Cost: Child Firearm Deaths in the U.S.

• ~2,000 preventable child gun deaths/year
• ~60 life-years lost per death
• 120,000 life-years lost annually
• Over 30 years: ~3.6 million life-years lost

🏛️ Hypothetical Benefit: Preventing Tyranny

Assume a worst-case scenario:

• Authoritarian collapse kills 10 million (based on 20th-century examples)
• Avg. age at death: ~40 → ~35 life-years lost
• 10M deaths × 35 = 350 million life-years lost

Estimate risk:

• Without civilian arms: 0.5% chance over 30 years
• With civilian arms: 0.4% chance
• These figures are speculative; there’s no empirical support that civilian gun ownership reduces the risk of tyranny—many stable democracies have strict gun control.

In fact, high civilian armament may reduce stability:

• Greater availability of weapons increases the lethality of civil unrest, crime, and domestic terrorism.
• Armed polarization can accelerate breakdown during political crises, as seen in failed or fragile states.
• States may respond with harsher repression, escalating rather than deterring authoritarian outcomes.

📊 Expected Value Calculation

• Without arms: 0.005 × 350M = 1.75 million life-years at risk
• With arms: 0.004 × 350M = 1.2 million life-years at risk
• Net benefit of arms: ~550,000 life-years saved (generous estimate)

📉 Conclusion

Even with favorable assumptions:

• Civilian firearms cost ~3.6M life-years (due to preventable child deaths)
• And prevent only ~550K life-years (via marginally lower tyranny risk)

Bottom line: The ongoing cost vastly outweighs the hypothetical benefit, and high armament may worsen long-term stability rather than protect it.

It's very amusing to read such things from outside the American hellscape. Well, "amusing."

Let's say eventually there comes a government overreach that a popular armed uprising puts down. Every day until that day, children die. Accidental death from firearms is one of the leading causes of death of children in your country. (Do you feel that pricking sensation in your neck and face or are you immune to shame?) If the rebellion doesn't come soon enough (or at all) then you are underwater in terms of dead children. So, how long is that runway? How long do you get to keep killing children until you have to admit, fuck, this is costing us more than it's worth?

HAVE YOU EVEN DONE THE MATH, or are you just working from feelings?