The biggest thing the ₹20-per-order discount broking model solved wasn't cost

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The biggest thing the ₹20-per-order discount broking model in India solved wasn’t cost.

It was fear.

Before discount brokers, every trade felt like a trap. Brokerage slabs, hidden charges, fine print, you never knew what the final bill would look like.

The flat-fee model changed that. You could place an order knowing exactly what you were getting into.

Fast forward a decade.

The pricing fear is mostly gone. But a new fear has replaced it.

Open a modern order window and you’re greeted with multiple tabs, order varieties, MTF options, product types, validity settings, advanced conditions, and acronyms that many users don’t fully understand. A wrong click may not cost you through hidden brokerage anymore, but it can still expose you to unexpected charges, penalties, margin requirements, or risks you never intended to take.

The old question was:

“Am I about to get trapped by charges I don’t understand?”

The new question is:

“Am I about to get trapped by features I don’t understand?”

Funny how things come full circle.

The industry solved trust through simplicity, then started giving it back through complexity.

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Fair point. The flat brokerage model removed one kind of doubt, but order windows have become their own learning curve.

For beginners, simpler defaults may matter as much as cheaper pricing now.

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It’s not ABC, but XYZ. :triumph:
Classic LLM! :sob:

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This reminds me of Raj.

Raj was the best coder in the company.

When AI started writing code, Raj spent most of his working hours hunting for AI-generated commits and pointing them out to everyone. The more he found, the more convinced he became that he was winning. He had never felt more satisfied in his career.

A few months later, his colleagues received letters from HR with new titles and responsibilities aligned with the company’s new AI strategy.

Raj got a letter too.

His was a termination notice.

The moral is simple: if you spend all your time fighting where the world is going, you might miss the chance to go there yourself.

Nobody cares what tool wrote it if the message is worth remembering.

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Na, he is not alone. I just stop reading when a comment seems like AI generated.

I dont read many of your comments too.

Why should i take the effort to figure out whether the other guy has made some effort or just posted some ai slop.

Forums have gotten worse due to AI. Many things have gotten worse due to this so called AI.
This decade has had a lot of hyperbolic worshiping of new not yet completely proven tech.
AI investments are consuming resources at a massive scale, everyone duplicating each others efforts over same-ish data and causing supply issues for retail. So much hurry.
Enjoy less copper in your ACs. Global warming ? Who cares, perhaps AI will solve it so its ok. Perhaps if this really was AGI, who knows but it isnt.

Atleast we have fewer blockchain and crypto comments these days. And yeah AI is more useful that this and will likely lead to many useful cases, but perhaps wont be the magic tool that its getting portrayed as.

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Oh yes. Thats what I feel too…
And its more-so done by guys who either have an agenda or are disinterested in community discussions.

It’s less annoying when it is the opening post, but more so when even followup comments are AI slop. Its rampant on LinkedIn comments section :sweat_smile:

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Did the company shutdown in post credits?

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Since this is now a thread discussing LLM writing (last 3 posts),

By that logic,
when we know that the world finds tell-tale signs of LLM-writing off-putting,
rather than fight it, isn’t it better to avoid such tell-tale signs in one’s writing? :thinking:

True.
However, in this case,
apparently the message wasn’t worth enough
that one could ignore that a despised tool wrote it.

Atleast for some. Maybe even most?
Some cared enough to provide explicit feedback.
Others were happy ignoring and letting their silence be the implicit feedback.
Sure, it’s subjective. Over time, lines will be drawn.

Also, when adopting LLMs
and delegating significant parts of thinking/writing to LLMs,
it is useful to be vigilant against dropping quality (eg. tautologies, logical fallacies,… )
“Bs hire Cs” is a similar sentiment in hiring/delegation.

Wondering how far into this vicious cycle one already is with the use of LLMs?
Maybe can ask oneself - “Is my LLM a B ? or is it already a C ?”

A significant problem with analogies
is that they can oversimplify complex issues
and often lead to misunderstandings
by ignoring important differences between the subjects being compared.

As an example,
continuing with the analogy of Raj from earlier in this topic-thread, for another 12 months, …

The company that let Raj go, is now bankrupt.
Most employees are still owed their last few months of salaries.
The ones used to throwing AI at everything,
now find themselves without access to AI and unable to get another job,
as the world is flooded with folks who cannot put 2 and 2 together without AI.
Meanwhile Raj is happily working elsewhere.

Moral of the story
= Don’t use AI? No.
= Make judicious use of “AI”. Do not be beholden to it.

This story reminded me of another similar story - My colleague Julius.

Also, folks who find themselves in positions of “gatekeeping” at work,
will find this post - The “just say no” engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
and the surrounding discussions, very insightful.

C’mon Raj! Get ahead of the curve. Be smart :wink:

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