There are also some studies in China on the concept but I'm less familiar with that literature.
JumpCrisscross 10 minutes ago [-]
Thank you for the Berry post. Has anyone tried to test his hypothesis? My gut feeling is it will check out, particularly for AI chats. Input measure is easy–you have time and text quantity. But output value is more difficult...I'm wondering if there is a good case where this could be observed.
lensecat 5 minutes ago [-]
I'm doing a PhD in sociology of work (I have a background in software development) and want to do such a study on software development with AI, but as you say it's quite hard to find a good setting, because it's hard to operationalise quality.
But they have a closed sourced software so I would have to create my own, open one in that case.
hirako2000 25 minutes ago [-]
It isn't pointing at particular system to blame.
But if you feel like it's raining, it probably is.
JumpCrisscross 9 minutes ago [-]
> It isn't pointing at particular system to blame
It's hypothesising a phenomenon. I'm looking for a measure. The phenomenon is intuitively correct, but also suspiciously attractive. Sort of like the bullshit-job (or corrupt-bureaucrat) hypotheses, where every job or public official one doesn't like can be conveniently terms bullshit absent any rigour.
netmare 15 minutes ago [-]
There's a Greek proverb disputing the latter: they are spitting on him and he thinks it's raining.
anovikov 12 minutes ago [-]
"1920s style crisis of overproduction with Chinese characteristics"
DoggoMz 10 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 09:55:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The most famous study is on Javanese farming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Involution
In terms of software development, here's a blogpost from 2025, by a professor at Sussex Uni: https://stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/07/involution-and-artifici...
There are also some studies in China on the concept but I'm less familiar with that literature.
I have been thinking of measuring it along these lines perhaps... https://www.gitclear.com/the_ai_code_quality_maintainability...
But they have a closed sourced software so I would have to create my own, open one in that case.
But if you feel like it's raining, it probably is.
It's hypothesising a phenomenon. I'm looking for a measure. The phenomenon is intuitively correct, but also suspiciously attractive. Sort of like the bullshit-job (or corrupt-bureaucrat) hypotheses, where every job or public official one doesn't like can be conveniently terms bullshit absent any rigour.