I think the ai-as-an-exoskeleton analogy is quite apt: 1. It still requires your intent to move in the right direction rather than being fully autonomous, and 2. It's too big and bulky to use for delicate tasks.
The thing that supposedly sets Bitcoin apart from other cryptocurrencies is that it's deflationary and 'immutable', in that Satoshi is gone forever and any deviation of Bitcoin from his golden idea will result in undermining its essence. If Bitcoin can get quantum-attacked then, from a technical point of view, nothing will be lost. The Bitcoin core devs can issue a word-of-god statement stating that they'll roll back the chain to before the attack, and all is well. Then they'll change the cryptography. But at that point, is it still Bitcoin? Because you've undermined the immutability. If the core devs can just say "this core property of Bitcoin is now something completely different", who's to say that they won't change their minds about the deflationary nature in the future? All credibility will be lost. Now, if you accept that, is perhaps all credibility lost already? ...
> I have a great psychiatrist who has me on antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and mood stabilizers
Disclaimer: this is not medical advice, but have you considered being on less medication? I have seen a close family member become absolutely numbed from being on antidepressants, and although I have personally never been on them, I am highly skeptical that the amount of drugs the average American is being prescribed is healthy. My preferred choice of self-fixing is by quiet introspection, though I've had some useful experiences from therapy sessions as well.
I never stopped using foobar2000 on the desktop. I can recommend Evermusic on iOS for it's excellent playlist management, carplay integration and last.fm/scrobbling if you're ancient like me and still using that.
As someone whose stance is to be extremely skeptical of AI, I threw Claude at a complex feature request in a codebase I wasn't very familiar with, and it managed to come up with a solution that was 99% acceptable. I was very impressed, so I started using it more.
But it's really a mixed bag, because for the subsequent 3-4 tasks in a codebase that I was familiar with, Claude managed to produce over-commented, over-engineered slop that didn't do what I asked for and took shortcuts in implementing the requirements.
I definitely wouldn't dismiss AI at this point because it occasionally astounds me and does things I would never in my life have imagined possible. But at other times, it's still like an ignorant new junior developer. Check back again in 6 months I guess.
Trying on every single thing you do is exhausting. I certainly don't have the energy any more to try hard at some personal life things when my work is stressful. I think it's good to do some introspection from time to time to find out what things might be draining you and preventing you from trying on something that you should be trying hard at.
This is no different from reviewing code from actual humans: someone could have written great looking code with excellent test coverage and still have missed a crucial edge case or obvious requirement. In the case of humans, there's obvious limits and approaches to scaling up. With LLMs, who knows where they will go in the next couple of years.
Framing matters a lot. If you can afford to, take 6 or 12 months to widen your points of view. That might mean taking up a job in a sector you're not familiar with, or maybe changing locations (a new country perhaps?). I think by framing your situation as "my goal is now to X", when accomplishing that goal is at least partially dependent on things you don't control, is setting yourself up for failure. Instead, treat this time as a good opportunity to learn more about yourself and what possibilities are open to you that you normally wouldn't consider.
Back in the early days of Slack I wrote a chat bot that logged all the messages people wrote and used that data to make it say random things prompted by certain trigger words. It was hilarious, until the bosses found out that I was basically logging all their conversations. Unsurprisingly they made me turn it off.
Taste is a very subjective thing, but I think in a lot of the things described in the article there is a clear better or worse. I would describe that as craftsmanship or attention to detail, more of a craft than an art.
I will never trust Paypal with anything again after they completely botched up the closing of my deceased parent's account. It was a dystopian nightmare to try and get them to understand the situation, and every support person who replied to the ticket started from scratch to give a wholly new, and yet equally unhelpful, take on the situation.
It took nearly six months to fully close down the account and many, many phone calls, which were equally difficult because it's nearly impossible to speak to a real person, and when you do finally get connected to a real person they just hang up on you when they realize they can't solve your issue in under five minutes. Paypal is one of the worst companies I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with, and money or crypto is the last thing I would trust them with.