[palmotea]

> This same instinct is why a pencil costs almost nothing and is perfect, and isn't rubbish, really expensive, and created by someone who took pride in their work.

No. Have you worked with businessmen? 90% of the time they're telling you to cut corners and leave things broken, to the point you have a janky mess that can be barely held together. And, right now, we're talking about a technology (LLMs) that is well known to introduce stupid but often hard to spot errors.

They don't want a pencil that's perfect. They want one that's just barely good enough to write with and that they can get maximum profit margin on.

And then, you know, there's the whole thing about life being more than output.

[philipallstar]

Life can be more than output, which is why you don't want buying pencils, or anything else, to take up any more of your wages than is absolutely necessary.

[palmotea]

> Life can be more than output, which is why you don't want buying pencils, or anything else, to take up any more of your wages than is absolutely necessary.

You're not getting it. It'd probably help if you stopped focusing on your pencil story, it's frankly off-topic.

To try one more time: You probably spend half your waking ours at work. The quality of that time is important to your well being. Even if the businessmen sell you cheap, perfect pencils (which I do not grant), swimming in them in your off hours won't help with the other half of your time.

[philipallstar]

> It'd probably help if you stopped focusing on your pencil story, it's frankly off-topic.

I've no idea what this italicisation is meant to do; nor why this is off-topic. Stating things isn't explaining them.

> Even if the businessmen sell you cheap, perfect pencils (which I do not grant), swimming in them in your off hours won't help with the other half of your time.

It helps in that I don't have to spend as much of my time working to buy pencils. It's the same with everything. There's no reason why a laptop doesn't cost $1m except that the incredible, detailed, cross-continent cooperative work is done by experts and coordinated by a market for that work driving costs down and quality up.