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Reading across books with Claude Code

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Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#41

Post by rbbydotdev »

I had a similar toy project. Attempting to make custom day trips from guide books. I immediately ran into limitations naïvely chunking paragraphs into a RAG. My next attempt I’m going to try using a llm model to extract “entities” like holidays/places/history and store them in a graph db coupled with vectors and original source text or index references(page + column)

Still experimental and way outside my expertise, would love to hear anyone with ideas or experience with this kind of problem

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#42

Post by smakt »

voidhorse wrote: post #11

This was posted before and there were many good criticisms raised in the comments thread. I'd just reiterate two general points of critique: 1. The point of establishing connections between texts is semantic and terms can have vastly different semantic meanings dependent on the sphere of discourse in which they occur. Because of the way LLMs work, the really novel connections probably won't be found by an LLM since t…

One has to be the special kind of stupid that is blinded by efficiency promises from the LLM Church to think the article is any worth.

It's the usual jargon soup. Publish a vetted paper with repeatable steps instead of a hyped-up, garbage, supposed 100x productivity bomb.

And his best result is mechanical findings from where the LLM got the highest correlations between its vectors: Bravo; there's always going to be a top item in any ordered list, but it doesn't make it automatically interesting. Reading literature is about witnessing the journey the characters take. Reading technical material is about memorizing enough of it. In both cases the material has to go through a brain. I find it idiotic to assign any value to outputs like "Oh King Lear's X is highly correlated to Antigone's Y"

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#44

Post by smakt »

stavros wrote: post #14
gulugawa wrote: post #6

[flagged]

I need a name for people who dismiss an entirely new and revolutionary class of technology without even trying it, so much so that they'll not even read about any new ideas that involve it.

And I need a name for shills that handwave the whole magic thinking in a blog post and conclude with "oh my claude code pointed out correlations between atlas shrugged and steve jobs" I'm so much smarter and ready for the future that's coming.

You are damn right I didn't try it out. I try things published in journals, vetted by peers, with clear explanations and instructions. On the other hand, when the tone is "It's All Magic Sprinkle(TM)" my pseudoscience alarm goes off.

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#45

Post by stavros »

smakt wrote: post #44
stavros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need a name for people who dismiss an entirely new and revolutionary class of technology without even trying it, so much so that they'll not even read about any new ideas that involve it.

And I need a name for shills that handwave the whole magic thinking in a blog post and conclude with "oh my claude code pointed out correlations between atlas shrugged and steve jobs" I'm so much smarter and ready for the future that's coming. You are damn right I didn't try it out. I try things published in journals, vetted by peers, with clear explanations and instructions. On the other hand, when the tone is "It's…

Why are you reading this comment section? Nothing here has been peer reviewed. In fact, all my comments here are written by an LLM, because I can't be bothered arguing with closed-minded people.

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#46

Post by smakt »

stavros wrote: post #45
smakt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I need a name for shills that handwave the whole magic thinking in a blog post and conclude with "oh my claude code pointed out correlations between atlas shrugged and steve jobs" I'm so much smarter and ready for the future that's coming. You are damn right I didn't try it out. I try things published in journals, vetted by peers, with clear explanations and instructions. On the other hand, when the tone is "It's…

Why are you reading this comment section? Nothing here has been peer reviewed. In fact, all my comments here are written by an LLM, because I can't be bothered arguing with closed-minded people.

> Nothing here has been peer reviewed

Oh but everything here is peer reviewed all right: it's sheep-reviewed. All sheep singing the same note. Where's the explosion of groundbreaking, uber-creative, world-shattering, reliable software from MagicDust LLMs that turn you into a 10x engineer? If anything, it generates a lot of noise. Tell you what: being 10x more productive with a statistical engine that will only bring out the most normal of normal solutions is the dream of the incompetent.

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#47

Post by gulugawa »

gjm11 wrote: post #7
gulugawa wrote: post #6

[flagged]

I agree that we should be reading books with our eyes and that feeding a book into an LLM doesn't constitute reading it and confers few of the same benefits. But this thing isn't (so far as I can tell) even slightly proposing that we feed books into an LLM instead of reading them. It looks to me more like a discovery mechanism: you run this thing, it shows you some possible links between books, and maybe you think "h…

The ideal way to find similarities between two books is to read both of them. If an LLM is finding links between two books, that means that the LLM read both of the books.

To determine if a book is worth reading, I think it's better to ask someone for their recommendation or look at online reviews.

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#49

Post by dredmorbius »

dang wrote: post #23
stavros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need a name for people who dismiss an entirely new and revolutionary class of technology without even trying it, so much so that they'll not even read about any new ideas that involve it.

The HN guidelines include the term "curmudgeonly", which IMO is fair.

I've of course seen this note many times, but am inspired to seek the word's source. "Curmudgeon" has an interesting etymology --- unknown origin though a few possibilities and false starts:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/curmudgeon>

Re: Reading across books with Claude Code

#50

Post by [deleted] »

smakt wrote: post #42
voidhorse wrote: post #11

This was posted before and there were many good criticisms raised in the comments thread. I'd just reiterate two general points of critique: 1. The point of establishing connections between texts is semantic and terms can have vastly different semantic meanings dependent on the sphere of discourse in which they occur. Because of the way LLMs work, the really novel connections probably won't be found by an LLM since t…

One has to be the special kind of stupid that is blinded by efficiency promises from the LLM Church to think the article is any worth. It's the usual jargon soup. Publish a vetted paper with repeatable steps instead of a hyped-up, garbage, supposed 100x productivity bomb. And his best result is mechanical findings from where the LLM got the highest correlations between its vectors: Bravo; there's always going to be a…

[deleted]
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