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What I Worked On

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Worked On

#51

Post by dsr_ »

chrisaycock wrote: post #9

> during the first year of grad school I realized that AI, as practiced at the time, was a hoax. I had a similar realization during grad school about a lot of the popular topics at the time (early 2000s). I even used to call them "the hoaxes of computer science". Things like grid computing or formal methods of software engineering had a lot of resources behind them, but nobody was able to use the results. Instead, ve…

Rather than an outright hoax, I like the term "fad". There are fads in technology, some of which are directly inspired by what has become possible and some of which are mutations of of other ideas. Some fads have more worth or more longevity than others -- in the world of clothing, denim jeans are now a foundation on which to build; I might consider object-oriented language features to be similar.

Re: What I Worked On

#53

Post by kenjackson »

alberth wrote: post #38

How does PG recall so much about college. I was a computer science major as well. I made good grades. I went to university similar to PGs. I’m younger than PG and it wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve forgotten that I even took a particular class, let alone recall the professor and certainly don’t recall the small details described by PG. Just curious if I’m the only person who can’t recall as vividly courses as PG can.

I graduated undergrad 25 years ago. I can't randomly recall tons, but there is some random stuff I do remember -- like getting an F on my first test in Numerical Analysis, but then ending with the highest score in the class for the quarter (yes, a lot of people failed every test).

But I still have my old course catalog and flipping through that, a lot of memories jump to mind in classes I totally forgot I had. So I think with some prompts you can probably remember a lot more than you think.

Re: What I Worked On

#54

Post by whatshisface »

colincooke wrote: post #40
sdevonoes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny because I do have the same feeling these days: that ML is a hoax. Even funnier: I do have a master's degree in ML.

There are many many practical example of modern ML (especially DL). Would be interesting to hear why you think those examples are not indicative of a field which is useful/not a hoax.

Word on the street is the level of superficially attractive papers with no merit is very high in ML literature.

Re: What I Worked On

#55

Post by increscent »

For me the theme of this narrative is that PG always relentlessly pursued what he wanted: AI, art school, Florence, Lisp, etc. He would often find out after pursuing those things that he didn't really want them, but that was helpful feedback. I'm usually stuck wanting things but not pursuing them so I don't know if I would really want them. It seems better to take initiative and go for it.

Re: What I Worked On

#57

Post by ve55 »

sdevonoes wrote: post #32
chrisaycock wrote: post #9

> during the first year of grad school I realized that AI, as practiced at the time, was a hoax. I had a similar realization during grad school about a lot of the popular topics at the time (early 2000s). I even used to call them "the hoaxes of computer science". Things like grid computing or formal methods of software engineering had a lot of resources behind them, but nobody was able to use the results. Instead, ve…

Funny because I do have the same feeling these days: that ML is a hoax. Even funnier: I do have a master's degree in ML.

Something can be both legitimately revolutionary/interesting, but also significantly over-hyped and misrepresented, often with strong for-profit incentives. Some recent good examples of this include progress in cryptocurrencies, decentralization, and ML/AI.

Re: What I Worked On

#58

Post by meagher »

inbx0 wrote: post #30
meagher wrote: post #19

If you want to read with more readable (I think) formatting, check out this CSS proxy site I made: https://pg-essays.now.sh/worked.html

Don't know if you are interested in feedback for the site, but IMO the low contrast of the gray hurts to read. I don't mean this as a knee jerk "all text must be #000 on #fff" reaction, but maybe something like --color-body: hsl(0, 0%, 10%) would be a good compromise.

Definitely https://github.com/tmm/pg-essays

Re: What I Worked On

#59

Post by colincooke »

whatshisface wrote: post #54
colincooke wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many many practical example of modern ML (especially DL). Would be interesting to hear why you think those examples are not indicative of a field which is useful/not a hoax.

Word on the street is the level of superficially attractive papers with no merit is very high in ML literature.

That is absolutely correct, but is sadly the case in a lot of fields. It doesn't mean that the practical results we see (AlphaFold, Imagenet Performance, NLP performance, Robotic control with RL) isn't amazing progress.

Luckily due to so many people using ML these days, what's useful vs. fluff gets sorted out over time.

Re: What I Worked On

#60

Post by nostrademons »

This is a good essay.

It's interesting to contrast it with some of the psychological/self-help literature around being your "true self", where the true self is fluid and amorphous and avoids being rigidly defined. Or with Drew Houston's commmencement address [1] - "That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little voice knows best." Or Steve Jobs [2] - "Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

Don't ignore your emotions, particularly the niggling feelings that make you do things that seem to have no purpose in your grand plans but nevertheless draw you along. Don't ignore reality either - that'd be putting art galleries online - but oftentimes our subconscious has a better grip on reality than we give it credit for.

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2013/drew-houstons-commencement-address

[2] https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-steve-jobs-stay-hungr...

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