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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

#261

Post by brindlejim »

Barrin92 wrote: post #143
thepasswordis wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Peter Thiel / Curtis Yarvin adjacent folks have in recent years heavily pushed these kinds of views in certain parts of the tech scene, Hotz tends to quote them frequently. It's not really religious Catholicism as much as an aesthetic for reactionary politics because you're more likely to find many of these newly minted Catholics at an 'Eyes White Shut' party than at mass. His syncretism of Christianity with Bronze A…

Fwiw, Bronze Age Pervert (BAP) is actually a classics scholar named Costin Alamariu, who holds a PhD from Yale and wrote a dissertation on the tyrants of antiquity. He puts on a Slavic accent for his podcast, but he moved to the US as a boy and speaks perfect American English.

BAP wrote a book popular in right-wing circles called Bronze-Age Mindset. In the late teens, it was reviewed in a couple of the usual places by conservative figures. BAP has lost a lot of steam since then, and it doesn't look like he'll lead his group of Frogs and fringe-heads to direct action, even though he fetishizes the warrior class.

BAP and his fellow travelers were early believers in Trump and grew disillusioned. They were consistent champions of Putin as well -- after all, he appeared topless on a horse and learned karate. I can only imagine that Russia's military failures in Ukraine have made them seek other idols.

The good thing about BAP is that he knows his sources. He has mastered political philosophy and read the original texts to a depth and degree that jokers like Yarvin cannot aspire to.

Like Yarvin, BAP wants a strong man. He does not believe in democracy. He does believe in racial superiority and inferiority. While I happen to disagree with him about a lot of issues, including those, for all the usual reasons, if I were to engage him on his own terms, I would simply point out that authoritarian regimes like those he idolizes have really obvious weaknesses.

Those include the inability to maintain high-quality, transparent communication under a punitive regime, and the inability of a kleptocracy to inspire the kind of collection action that wins wars.

BAP is chasing a pipe dream.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#263

Post by thfuran »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #154
ra7 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAE Level 4 driving is several orders of magnitude harder than SAE Level 2. You are either good enough to drive without requiring a driver or you are not. There is a reason developing L4 systems cost billions of dollars. George Hotz thinks Comma does the job with only a fraction of the spending compared to the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, but fails to realize his product also does only a fraction of what the others…

"Several orders of magnitude" by what dimension? Engineering labor? Hardware expenses and testing? You can't just throw out a dimension of scale and say, oh it's so-and-so hard that's why it costs billions. If you were trying to build L4, you'd hire a small team of exceptional engineers, and spend a few thousand on hardware tests. Billions doesn't come close. You'd try and get Level 2 to be as satisfactory as possibl…

>and spend a few thousand on hardware tests

Okay, that should let you just about afford to certify an Ethernet cable.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#264

Post by mikewarot »

I have this weird feeling I kicked it off with a reply tweet[1] where I said

  Comma AI is going to outlast almost everyone

  "The company, unlike its competitors, has paying customers for its products and is generating profit from its openpilot business model."

  Profit today: That's INFINITE runway ;-)
I suspect that implication of a Sisyphean task might have pushed him over the brink. 8(

But, probably not.

[1] https://twitter.com/mikewarot/status/1585406659467579395

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#265

Post by georgehotz »

vasco wrote: post #166
stale2002 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, people aren't really understanding the motivations that Geohotz has for looking into this stuff. He is being a bit cryptic about it. Here is a basic summary though. The atheist world, of no life after death, is scary. We have not invented immortality. And even if we do, well there is an even scarier thing called entropy, that will end the universe anyway. There is no escape from death, as far as we know, and this…

> But what other options do we have? Well, most of modern society has decided that once you've satisfied your basic needs, hedonism is the answer. Travel, good food, good times with friends, etc. That's what most people are living like and what the culture creates. No need to find hidden portals.

There’s only one outcome for hedonists. Wireheading. I suspect many people will go this way, I won’t.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#266

Post by ra7 »

Kbelicius wrote: post #247
ra7 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think George made it very clear that the architecture is what these companies spending billions are getting wrong. Tech debt is more expensive than you think at the cutting edge. And yet the architectures he disapproves are the only ones who have shown fully autonomous driving is possible. There are driverless robotaxis running now, albeit in small areas but expanding. > You know what is total fluff? Tesla FSD. D…

> And yet the architectures he disapproves are the only ones who have shown fully autonomous driving is possible. They did not. > There are driverless robotaxis running now, albeit in small areas but expanding. Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions. Not that we have fully autonomous self driving.

> Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions.

That is fully autonomous driving. It's just classified as Level 4. Geofences and operating conditions can be extended to provide a real, useful taxi service to a lot of people.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#267

Post by hello639 »

Ninjinka wrote: post #181

George references relistening to his Lex Fridman interview...the most recent Fridman interview is with Andrej Karpathy, head of AI at Tesla up until a couple months ago. I know that in Andrej's interview he talks about how he felt the Tesla team had become autonomous and didn't rely on him anymore, maybe George resonated with that.

> I know that in Andrej's interview he talks about how he felt the Tesla team had become autonomous and didn't rely on him anymore, maybe George resonated with that.

Ah, yes. Andrej left because the Tesla team has everything to finish FSD this year.

It has nothing to do with Elon’s obsession with the Boston Dynamics robot, nor the failed progress on FSD.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#268

Post by micromacrofoot »

atdrummond wrote: post #210
micromacrofoot wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience it's the opposite, Hotz comes across as someone with high-functioning mental illness (he mentions a manic episode in this post) and this can often include religious belief (along with delusions of grandeur). It's all anecdotal either way, and I'm never really comfortable with dissecting someone's religious beliefs or mental state much beyond a loose concept.

I don’t think it is your place to diagnose his mental state from public blog postings.

It's also not your place to decide what my place is. So it's all a wash really.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#269

Post by munificent »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #111
giancarlostoro wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

> 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.

As a programmer, I have never once believed that. I just believe that the problems I am being presented with are novel enough (usually because of the context and constraints surrounding it) to have not been encountered before and solved.

Just like you never cross the same river twice, I don't think you ever solve the same problem twice.

I think the core skill engineering requires is persistence: the belief that you can find a workable solution even when the problem itself gives you absolutely no positive feedback during the process.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#270

Post by mikewarot »

generationP wrote: post #28

George Hotz is my canary for the question "is there still adventure to be found in computing". I hope he finds some, because if he can't, then there is probably none.

There is PLENTY of adventure to be found in programming.

You can start by building a Twitter clone that doesn't do moderation at all, but rather ranks things in a vector space. Scalar go/no go ratings are passe.

Imagine ranking a tweet you read by any scale of your choosing, True/False, Funny/Not Funny, Interesting/Boring, Incriminating/Proof of Innocence

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