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I’m taking some time away from Comma

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Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#311

Post by lgg »

stale2002 wrote: post #233
shafyy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because if the current atheist world is the real one, then we are doomed. We are in the death world. Game over. Thats it. All evidence points that this is true so far. What is wrong with that? It doesn't mean life doesn't matter. This passage from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

> All evidence points that this is true so far. What is wrong with that? This is unfortunately an axiomatic philosophical disagreement. For those with my viewpoint, of nothing mattering to you, once you are dead and gone, this is basically unfalsifiable, as are most axiomatic disagreements. And the quotes and arguments that you link in that video, basically just come off as a nice sounding cope, made by people who ar…

I don’t dispute that there is a lot fear bound up in the idea of death, but I disagree that accepting that our existence is finite all has to be terrifying. I actually find the idea finality comforting: It gives meaning to my life, and a bounded scope to my concerns (which is not to say I don’t care what happens after I die… until the moment I die I expect to have concerns about the future of those I care about, but I know ultimately there is a limit to my influence and responsibility).

On the other hand I view concerns about the afterlife to actually be somewhat depressing. So much time and energy from the limited time we actually have being spent on some fantasy that is completely unverifiable, and so much of it motivated by fear (of hell, emptiness, a vengeful god, etc).

To state my view point simply: The unknown is scary, concerning oneself with an afterlife (or singularity, life extension, etc) is a coping mechanism to avoid processing that fear, whereas admitting that our existence is finite is an acceptance that there are things we can’t know, can’t prepare for, and that we shouldn’t waste our time on.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#312

Post by prvit »

Rahul_Ligma wrote: post #309
prvit wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt he’s well known. Successful? Comma.ai has raised a rather small amount of money and hasn’t delivered anything except a toy for a couple of nerds. I really can’t imagine by which metric you’d call his work in self-driving “a success”. It certainly hasn’t been a commercial success.

> Successful? Comma.ai has raised a rather small amount of money and hasn’t delivered anything except a toy for a couple of nerds. I rest my case. Go troll elsewhere.

What has comma.ai delivered? Who are their customers?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#313

Post by wartijn_ »

SilverBirch wrote: post #255

I'm sorry but I find it incredibly absurd the number of people walking away from autonomous driving basically saying "The hard work is done, the problem is solved, it's time for me to move on to something else". Bullshit. In the last 5 years we've gone from optimists saying "Hey these new ML models are really smart we might be able to solve self-driving with this", to "We've totally solved self-driving, sure you can'…

I don't think that's what Hotz is saying at all, but he's saying that he's not person for the job anymore.

He writes: "My two part blog post from 2019 remains a true description of the space."

And this is a quote from (part two of) that blog.[0]

> Nobody will have cars without a safety driver in cities anytime soon. Self driving appears to be like fusion, but instead of being perpetually 50 years away, it’s perpetually 5 years away. It’s 5 years away because that’s what the marketing departments are told, but the truth is finally leaking out. It’s going to be decades before robotaxis are profitable, and these companies are burning way too hot to last decades.

[0] https://blog.comma.ai/a-100x-investment-part-2/

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#314

Post by baligena »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #200
baligena wrote: post #77

what a loser. Just recently, I saw a stream of him denying remote work, life and work balance and refusal to state if compensation was competitive in comma.ai. He cannot grow this company because he will never attract the best people with his stupid and old mentality. Now he leaves the company. This guy is a foolish drugie.

I disagree with you about the guy as a person, I think he's great, but I was considering working there and his requirement that you have to move to SV and work in the office was a deal breaker. The guy seems to understand how our kind of work can be done from anywhere, he seems interested in developing technology to enable self sovereignty, yet it seems he has blinders on on that one issue. I'm sure he has some reaso…

he understand so much and interested that he is quitting. Why not stick thru with it?

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#315

Post by LegitShady »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #23
awestroke wrote: post #3

Hotz has always come across as very arrogant to me. Claims everyone else is doing things the wrong way, claims he can do it himself in 24h, then never delivers on his words.

This is a weird comment to me, the guy is clearly exceptional. He's written security exploits that have been seen across the industry and in publications and has touched various spaces across engineering. His insights on self-driving in particular were just far ahead enough in their time that now Tesla Engineering is doing what he claimed was the only practical way to deal with SAE level 2 driving, without radar.

In his last talk with lex Freidman he specifically predicted that Tesla would switch to vision only.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#317

Post by pvg »

Rahul_Ligma wrote: post #282
pvg wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Exactly. I’m not referring to what’s upvoted the most (don’t care). I’m directly referring to the tone of the over all thread, the volume of comments en masse. Voting one way or the other doesn't change this. Of course, I’m not surprised that HN is bashing Hotz - any amount of tangible success will bring about negative rhetoric from people who don’t like seeing others succeed. It’s just that HN keeps having its own s…

Right but it's hard to take this as genuine concern for the quality of the forum when you're mostly posting troll things with a troll username. You want to improve the tone, post things that improve the tone.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#318

Post by gnramires »

vasco wrote: post #159
gnramires wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should get to know Spizona's ideas. Note: I support all peaceful religions. Spinoza's ideas are close enough to this notion: that God is also Nature; for Spizona, we're not bytes in God's computer, we're literally part of God's (infinite) mind -- Nature itself. This is a really beautiful interpretation of Christianity, and absolutely compatible with science and all modern knowledge. God is hence all knowing, a…

So call it Nature, why do you need a separate theological construction to realize all of nature is part of the universe which all came from the same start in the big bang and we should all respect each other? Is there really a need for anything else?

The idea is metaphysical -- you're literally a fragment of a greater mind. Like, a cell should respect its host organism -- it's basically redefining what or who you are.

I don't know if there is an absolute need for something else, although clearly you do need some ethical framework to make decisions. Assuming you're a self-interested cell can have definitely different implications than assuming you're literally a tiny part of a whole (even if you are in favor of self-interested cooperation: this redefinition has many further implications). You could also assume you're are a cell, but decide to axiomatically value the whole as well. One way you could justify this axiom is through parsimony -- saying it's simpler than only valuing the self. Another justification (without appealing to Spinoza's definition) is that self-interested cells will fail in certain situations, s.t. whole-valuing cells can go much further -- that is, self-interested cells can turn into cancer or just don't survive as well as a multi- or omni- cellular organism. People already value their children and other people, this is a mostly logical conclusion.

This isn't just academic: we're going through crises right now that would be very different if people were less exclusively self-interested, and humanity's survival may depend on it in some way.

I like to put it this way: Love is optimal.

I think ultimately most ethical systems converge (to fundamentally valuing one another), so in a way some differences are aesthetic, how you prefer to think about it, etc. I think it's nice that we have more than one way of seeing those things coexisting peacefully (although like I said, I think it's very important they are consistent with the truth, at least for the most part).

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#319

Post by asdfqweqe12 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #121
phphphphp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>it was just an even more limited environment Huh, so are you saying maybe we're a little close to autonomous cars than we were 5 years ago?

If you think geofencing scales to solve the FSD problem. Otherwise no.

Re: I’m taking some time away from Comma

#320

Post by serf »

deltree7 wrote: post #105
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.

I'm a fan of George Hotz. But don't be a cult

Excited to see what Hotz gets into next. An ounce of humility might do him some good, but i'd be hesitant to recommend it to someone like that and ruin his whole edge -- similar to Musk, I think that attitude is huge with regards to their personal effectiveness.

now a short story that your cult comment conjured in my head:

the year is 2122.

the Muskalonian robotic death squad approaches the last cave hold-out of Hotzite believers..

thankfully the killer robots pass by peacefully, blind to the possible engagement because the squad lacks radar and lidar, and the cave is dark.

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