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Punch yourself in the face with reality

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Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#101

Post by pizzafeelsright »

dfee wrote: post #60
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was true a while ago. Today we are replacing decades old sloppy production code with 100% verified better code through tests written by AI, code written by AI. This is not looking functional but drop in functional replacement with measurable improvements.

there are two camps: those who have spent the tokens to figure out how to wield AI, and those who haven't. unfortunately, it's not cheap to get to the former category… and i imagine it'd be difficult to lose access to that tooling and fall back to the second category.

Experimenting can be pricey but early on I spent my own money thinking "if I can get a handle on how to do this I'll get a 100x return on my money" and it was a good bet.

If you're not convinced - sign up and pay by the token of a high or highest level model. Anthropic or Grok for example. The vendor isn't the concern. The quality of what can be done. Then, find an agentic 'harness' that is written in a language you can read. There are several (pi, opencode, crush, etc) and then clone that repo or one of yours you don't mind having exposed and then point your agent to that repo.

Now ask questions: what api calls are made by this repo? Where are secrets stored and sourced from? Do an adversarial investigation and list the bugs. Then fix the bugs.

Then review the work and determine the value and how to wield this new tool. It replaces reading, writing, and editing - not thinking.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#102

Post by a_c »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #99
a_c wrote: post #30

I spent multiple 5-hour sessions spec-ing my climbing app with AI, clarifying interactions, algorithm, workflow etc. It ended up a frankenstein that I didn't recognise or know how each part interact with each other. Command line were a mess, different commands doing the same thing, with similar but redundant arguments. Everything looks kind of doing what I intended but overly convoluted and nothing really works. Real…

A climbing app.. Does anyone want one? The article says to stop building and go outside! And actually, talking about climbing apps with fellow climbers is a great way to be outside.

I climb and I want one :)

> talking about climbing apps with fellow climbers is a great way to be outside.

Indeed. The climbers I met are very supportive. They helped me scan the gym, shared their own climbing footage, which is what I'm trying to do, visualize climbing in a 3D scene.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#104

Post by munificent »

pixl97 wrote: post #82
munificent wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good time to point out that slippery slope is a fallacy. Saying, "Experiencing some friction is good for building character" is not equivalent to saying "We should demolish all technology and force babies to survive on their own in the woods." That the extreme position is wrong does not strictly imply that the moderate position is too.

There being a more extreme position that is wrong, doesn't mean that a supposedly moderate position isn't extreme. See: Overton window. This is the particular problem with deciding a position, it's all shades of grey. 200 years ago a good number of humans thought that owning other humans was a-ok. Today that's mostly not true. In 200 years it's likely the vast majority of humanity will look at eating meat and owning…

[dead]

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#105

Post by recursive »

SoftTalker wrote: post #45
a_c wrote: post #30

I spent multiple 5-hour sessions spec-ing my climbing app with AI, clarifying interactions, algorithm, workflow etc. It ended up a frankenstein that I didn't recognise or know how each part interact with each other. Command line were a mess, different commands doing the same thing, with similar but redundant arguments. Everything looks kind of doing what I intended but overly convoluted and nothing really works. Real…

It's very difficult to keep AI focused, when it barfs out 3 pages of reply in response to a one-sentence prompt. It's sort of its nature for some reason, it's very impressive if you've never seen it but it's exhausting to use for very long. It's like a very eager assistant who doesn't have enough experience to understand scope.

> for some reason

Usage is metered/billed by the token. This suggests a few possible hypotheses for why they might tend to be verbose.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#106

Post by inigyou »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #101
dfee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are two camps: those who have spent the tokens to figure out how to wield AI, and those who haven't. unfortunately, it's not cheap to get to the former category… and i imagine it'd be difficult to lose access to that tooling and fall back to the second category.

Experimenting can be pricey but early on I spent my own money thinking "if I can get a handle on how to do this I'll get a 100x return on my money" and it was a good bet. If you're not convinced - sign up and pay by the token of a high or highest level model. Anthropic or Grok for example. The vendor isn't the concern. The quality of what can be done. Then, find an agentic 'harness' that is written in a language you…

> It replaces reading, writing, and editing - not thinking.

If that wasn't a hyphen I'd be sure this line was AI-written.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#107

Post by holtkam2 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #37

No this isn't punching yourself in the face. Not for swes. What's written above is self confirmation that you are better than AI and that you will always have a job because you are better because AI can't build something that works. That stuff about convincing yourself you're building something useful is actually the easy question. Punching yourself in the face involves telling truths that are incredibly hard to stom…

This guy's head will explode when he realizes that AI has been better at coding than humans for years and yet software engineering employment % has barely twitched...

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#108

Post by Archer6621 »

jstanley wrote: post #25
ozim wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you break a leg you can’t start believing it is all good. It doesn’t go away. As much as you would have aspirations to be a pro soccer player, badly enough broken leg can prevent you from ever being good enough. Your imagination of being pro player does go away when in reality you’re not fit for the purpose.

You can't become a pro footballer just by wishing your leg wasn't broken, but you can pay close attention to the difference between pain and suffering, and acknowledge the pain without accepting any unnecessary suffering. Pain is part of reality. Suffering comes from wishing reality was different to how it is.

There will always be a point where you simply snap under stress, no matter how well you rationally understand the difference between pain and suffering while being at rest, and you will undeniably suffer from the pain when that happens. It's why torture works so well.

Not to say that knowing this difference has no merit, just saying that it has limits to how much it can do. After all, reality can also hit the brain, when it gets flooded by hormones and neurotransmitters that take away your rational thinking.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#109

Post by inigyou »

pixl97 wrote: post #78
inigyou wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of grids, USA power companies are saying they'll have to start blacking out millions of homes within a year, to have enough power for AI DCs.

Hopefully we're still at the point that millions of pissed off voters are more important than the relatively small number of DCs.

We're still at the point where people who give money to politicians are infinitely more important than people who don't.

Re: Punch yourself in the face with reality

#110

Post by pizzafeelsright »

inigyou wrote: post #106
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experimenting can be pricey but early on I spent my own money thinking "if I can get a handle on how to do this I'll get a 100x return on my money" and it was a good bet. If you're not convinced - sign up and pay by the token of a high or highest level model. Anthropic or Grok for example. The vendor isn't the concern. The quality of what can be done. Then, find an agentic 'harness' that is written in a language you…

> It replaces reading, writing, and editing - not thinking. If that wasn't a hyphen I'd be sure this line was AI-written.

You were right to call out the possibility. I assure you, honest take: this is all written myself.

I cannot stand the style of Opus 4.7 and 4.8.

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