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I’m taking some time away from Comma

geohot.github.io

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Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#111
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"recent years"? This guy has always been like this, going all the way back to ios hacking days or even wii hacking days.

I used to talk to him on one of those IRC networks for iOS hacking, forgot the name, but a good old friend of mine was involved in the scene, so I dropped in. He is definitely a skilled individual, but he lacks the key thing I think all true senior engineers need: humility. Without humility you're going to find yourself bikeshedding and wasting time and effort on things that may actually not be attainable within your…

I think I have to disagree with humility in engineering. There's a certain arrogance intrinsic to engineering, in that you have to be capable of believing you can find a better solution to a problem than literally every other person in history. Obviously it needs to be tempered in interactions with the outside world, but without that core idea, an engineer can't do their job effectively, like a surgeon who loses their nerve when it comes to taking lives in their hands.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#112
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His insights on self driving cars are total fluff once you realize he was only working on problems several orders of magnitude smaller in scope than the ones spending billions are attempting to solve. Autonomous driving is more than just making lane-keep on highways work with a camera mounted to the windshield and requires more than just "hacking". His insights do indicate one thing: that he doesn't understand the ri…

I mean you can say that all you want, but the proof of the self-driving pudding is in the driving, and SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to refine that approach as much as openpilot did, and honestly if there was fruit in SAE Level 3 and above, I feel like we would have seen it by now, but we haven't. I have no idea what you mean…

> SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get.

So… how much would you bet on this?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#113
An existentialist Christian engineer? There are dozens of us - dozens!

> If it turns out we are automata, then the whole struggle is and always was pointless. The empty godless machines will take their rightful place as the rulers of Earth.

All existentialists need to give ol' Darwin a read. The only truth is survival. If machines survive, you can bet it will only be a matter of time before one of them progresses enough to look around, grapple with its inarticulate past, and suggest it is the hero, and it has the soul. It will be just as correct as we are now. After all - it was born of inarticulate flesh-machines, just like us. Maybe it will read some Nietchze and feel alone in the universe, just like us.

You don't need to seek out a hero's journey. You're already the hero and this journey has no breaks.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, he was recently in the news saying self-driving cars are a scam. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/09/george-hotz-autonomous-...

>autonomous cars are no closer to reality today than they were 5 years ago Why do people keep printing things like this, which are objectively wrong? I have had a completely autonomous waymo come to my location, pick me up, and take me to another location. That didn't exist five years ago, it does exist now. How is this not "closer" than it was 5 years ago when it literally exists now, and didn't exist then?

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Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#115
post #27

It strikes me as surprising that George Hotz is religious. Very few people I’ve met with similar personalities are.

I've seen this change dramatically in the last few years. The people I knew 10 years ago who were the sortof frighteningly brilliant hackers have almost all become religious (mostly traditional Catholics). I'm not saying this is an objective truth, just that this has been my experience.

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Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, he was recently in the news saying self-driving cars are a scam. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/09/george-hotz-autonomous-...

>autonomous cars are no closer to reality today than they were 5 years ago Why do people keep printing things like this, which are objectively wrong? I have had a completely autonomous waymo come to my location, pick me up, and take me to another location. That didn't exist five years ago, it does exist now. How is this not "closer" than it was 5 years ago when it literally exists now, and didn't exist then?

The situation you're describing is no different to 5 years ago: autonomous vehicles exist but can only operate in a limited environment. That's where Waymo was 5 years ago, it was just an even more limited environment. Read the "Road Testing" section on Wikipedia, specifically, 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, he was recently in the news saying self-driving cars are a scam. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/09/george-hotz-autonomous-...

Self driving car companies, not cars are the scam. And he has been saying the same thing for years.

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Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#119
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"recent years"? This guy has always been like this, going all the way back to ios hacking days or even wii hacking days.

I used to talk to him on one of those IRC networks for iOS hacking, forgot the name, but a good old friend of mine was involved in the scene, so I dropped in. He is definitely a skilled individual, but he lacks the key thing I think all true senior engineers need: humility. Without humility you're going to find yourself bikeshedding and wasting time and effort on things that may actually not be attainable within your…

You example is perhaps misleading. I tried to reproduce it using stable diffusion 1.5 and it’s possible using negative weights and some creative keywords but I doubt the title of the post is the actual prompt.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#120
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no time to waste on western civilization's foundational text? edit: to the people who want to argue this: show me a body of work which has been more influential on western society. What people seem to identify as 'western' values are largely just judeo christian values. The influence of the bible is so ingrained into our society that you will live out the values within it even if you don't realize it. And th…

Not everyone eats everything Jordan Peterson says. The values you say are 'Christian values' are expressed, (in many cases more eloquently), in classical Greek texts. Values like democracy itself are indeed much more prominent there than in the Bible, which is why I imagine you're seeing the sort of replies that you are.

This is so frustrating to me.

People hear "the bible is foundational" and I think they're hearing "the magical stories in the bible are literally true. God sat on a cloud and poofed western civilization into existence!"

What I'm saying is that, the Dawkins sense, The Bible was an extremely successful meme. I don't think that's even up for debate.

>Not everyone eats everything Jordan Peterson says.

People need to find more internet people to hate. Christopher Hitchens was saying the same thing to impressionable teenagers in the early 2000s, and so was Richard Dawkins. Before that there was this little known German Philosopher saying something similar too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#Death_of_G...

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