alittle116
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2022–2025
0:33 · 696K views · Jul 20, 2009
A short clip from the film Idiocracy showing a hospital reception computer where staff pick a condition from a board of simple pictorial buttons.
It is invoked as a joke whenever a product forces users through dumbed-down or unhelpful interfaces and automated support.
5 comments from Hacker News
The thing is that the data from actual research doesn't support your anecdotal proof of quality: - [LINK] - [LINK] But more importantly, it makes you stupid: - [LINK] - [LINK] And it's an unsustainable bubble and wishful thinking, much like crypto: - [LINK] So while it may be a fun toy for senior devs that know what to look for, it actually makes them slower and stupider, making them progressively less capable to do their job and apply critical thinking skills. And as for juniors — they should steer clear from AI tools as they can't assess the quality of the output, they learn nothing, and they also get critical thinking skills impaired. So with that in mind — Who is the product (LLM coding tools) actually for, and what is its purpose? I'm not even going into the moral, ethical, legal, social and ecological implications of offloading your critical thinking skills to a mega-corporation, which can only end up like this video
I am reminded of the scene in Idiocracy[1] where we see the receptionist picking conditions from a board containing a few dozen colorful icons. There certainly is a sense in which you could abstract e.g. medical diagnostics in a way that makes illiterate people better at getting an LLM to give advice to a patient. But to go back to my 3-part statement: do people who can't organize and express their thoughts really deserve to be in charge of your medical diagnosis? Or in other words, are UX designers catering to an audience that ought to not exist in the first place. [1] this video
Also, we're more and more moving to the situation where the humans might as well be computers. 1. They don't have the training or judgment to think about your problem and route you in the right direction and/or 2. They are disallowed from doing anything besides what the computer tells them they can do. So you tell them what you want, and if it doesn't fall neatly into one of the enumerated buckets of Things They Can Do, you're out of luck. Reminds me of the Hospital Customer Support scene [1] from Idiocracy . 1: this video
I agree. This constant pressure to "delight" users is just a race to the bottom. Reminds me of the scene in Idiocracy with the hospital diagnosis buttons. this video
> Cognitive complexity is low throughout the registration proces [sic]. The user interface of the future! this video