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LLMs reward expertise

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Re: LLMs reward expertise

#511
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "fully riced with cats" mean?

I understand "ricing" to mean customising the appearance of a Linux machine, see e.g https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/?sort=top&t=month (SFW). So in this case I assume the UI has a cat theme or cat icons. I think the etymology is from "rice burner" cars [0]: > Riced out is an adjective denigrating a badly customized sports car, "usually with oversized or ill-matched exterior appointments". [0]: https://en.wikipe…

Rice stands for Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements.

Race-inspired to look cool, but not actually functional. Picture putting one of those giant fake air intakes on the hood of your car.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#512
post #416
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that's the point. You know the code sucks, the guy who vibecoded it either didn't know or didn't care. That's the added value.

But how would you know? If you're an inexperienced developer you may well end up ingraining bad patterns without even realizing it.

Yes, how does the LLM make a difference there? Inexperienced developers write bad code. Hell, experienced developers who are outside their domain write bad code too, then you later realize that it's hard to read, or that it leads to architectural problems or such, and hopefully learn from the experience.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#514

I did a test a few months ago. A friend of mine wanted to develop what i understood to be a simple single page web app. But since she didn’t have any software engineering experience she asked me to help. Around that time everyone was talking about how literally anyone can develop software with LLMs i asked her if she could give it a try first, and if I could watch the attempt. I was fully expecting that writing the c…

I ran a similar test and got completely different results. My girlfriend (hair stylist/artist) with zero coding background mentioned a Telegram bot idea. I asked "Why not build it yourself?" I gave her a Windows laptop, but she said she wanted what I have instead. So I handed her a USB stick and told her she was on her own now. Fast forward: she now runs Arch Linux with Hyprland (I use Xorg/i3 though), fully riced wi…

Speaking of flexing..

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true as a platitude, I do find that medical colleagues seem to treat this platitude rather overzealously at times, often completely disregarding the posterior probabilities involved. I like to call this the prior-over-posterior fallacy/bias (though one could argue this is simply a variant of the normalcy bias) E.g., I get the whole "if you hear galloping think horses not zebras" adage, but I guarantee y…

I hear the complaint, all I can say is that everyone I speak to about this wants to diagnose things correctly while not wasting anybody's time or energy on bad diagnostic workups. > Combine this with our (otherwise reasonable) tendency of avoiding the information bias of seemingly unnecesary tests There isn't a way around this: if you order the test and a value is abnormal, you are now committing yourself to treat a…

I'm not disagreeing with what you say here, but I think we're arguing about subtly different things.

E.g. you'll note my zebra example was not about whether one should additionally request a photo of the animal just to make sure it is indeed a rare animal. It was arguing that given existing differentiating information that points to an uncommon condition in the first place, one should not dismiss this on the basis that horses are still more common than zebras in the general case regardless. Under this uncommon information, the prior of thinking about horses should go out the window, and one should absolutely focus on zebras (at least as an additional differential). I assume you would also agree with this conclusion.

But of course, in real medicine things are not as simple as this contrived example. So the point I'm making is that, from what I have observed, there seems to be a bias towards decisions based on "prior" rather than "posterior" probabilities, even in the presence of additional differentiating information which should have prompted additional differentials to be considered. But this is different to saying one should constantly seek additional evidence to include or exclude additional differentials that are unlikely in the first place. That, I agree, would be a waste of time and resources (and potentially harmful for the patient).

Having said that, I somewhat disagree with the phrasing that we should not be ordering tests if we aren't ready to follow their results to the logical conclusion. This is a bit like saying, "I don't want to check for X because if I do and it checks out it will derail my current management plan"; but then this is putting the cart before the horse, since it's the findings that need to dictate management, not the other way round. I do think it is reasonable to say that one shouldn't be ordering a test if the expectation that it will change management is sufficiently low to justify the time/cost expended for it -- and where this expectation is a function of both the likelihood of the finding (given current information!), as well as its potential to change management. But this doesn't mean that if you do find an unrelated inconsequential incidental finding you are now required to divert all resources to it.

Conversely, if an incidental findings does prove worthy of treatment, then I don't see the problem with committing to treat it, as long as you don't lose sight of the original complaint either. Obviously that doesn't mean one should go looking for incidental findings willy-nilly though.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#516

I did a test a few months ago. A friend of mine wanted to develop what i understood to be a simple single page web app. But since she didn’t have any software engineering experience she asked me to help. Around that time everyone was talking about how literally anyone can develop software with LLMs i asked her if she could give it a try first, and if I could watch the attempt. I was fully expecting that writing the c…

I ran a similar test and got completely different results. My girlfriend (hair stylist/artist) with zero coding background mentioned a Telegram bot idea. I asked "Why not build it yourself?" I gave her a Windows laptop, but she said she wanted what I have instead. So I handed her a USB stick and told her she was on her own now. Fast forward: she now runs Arch Linux with Hyprland (I use Xorg/i3 though), fully riced wi…

> mentioned a Telegram bot idea

> Fast forward: she now runs Arch Linux with Hyprland (I use Xorg/i3 though), fully riced with cats.

Did she end up building the bot or did the LLM just lead her down a desktop Linux rabbit hole?

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand "ricing" to mean customising the appearance of a Linux machine, see e.g https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/?sort=top&t=month (SFW). So in this case I assume the UI has a cat theme or cat icons. I think the etymology is from "rice burner" cars [0]: > Riced out is an adjective denigrating a badly customized sports car, "usually with oversized or ill-matched exterior appointments". [0]: https://en.wikipe…

Rice stands for Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements. Race-inspired to look cool, but not actually functional. Picture putting one of those giant fake air intakes on the hood of your car.

Do you think "Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements" is the origin of "ricing" / "riced-out" or a backronym[1]?

Honest curiosity about language and language use.

In fairness and full disclosure: I have believed until now that the language comes from rice-burners and related, and I have never liked it. If I were still in communities that used it (unix desktop crowd), I might proactively steer newcomers towards your acronym as a kind of reclaiming.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint, some doctors will zoom in on the most likely problem and misdiagnose. This is in part due to pressure on the health care system (where I live anyway); you can only get a GP appointment for 10 minute blocks, which really isn't a lot. But when a 30-some year old shows up at a rheumatologist with joint pain they will likely go to unusual (at that age) but not unheard of rheumatism/arthritis, not hypermobil…

I think endometriosis is common enough that it would be caught earlier ("Oh, does your joint pain get worse right before you menstruate? Tell me more"), but your point is reasonable. I counter with the platitude that common things are common - especially in fields like primary care, the amount of wasted effort one would expend in pursuing unusual explanations for every presenting symptom is considerable. We thus have…

You'd think, but I have 4 friends who have been diagnosed, and they all have horror stories. This is in 3 countries, none of which are the US, but from reading Reddit, it seems the US has the same issue.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#519
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I get out of my domain, I always ask it to describe things to me "like I'm a senior CS student who doesn't know any industry terms". I find it really easy to skim past the definitions I know and very useful to get the explicit clarification on unfamiliar terminology. Telling it to talk down to you a little also seems to calm down it's tendency to talk like it's trying really hard to convince you it's smart like…

I've been using a prompt that comes from the opposite direction for non-programming stuff: "Assume the user is an expert in all fields; while this is clearly logically untrue on a literal level, the user prefers to see a field's technical terminology and then ask the AI about terms the user does not understand rather than get an inaccurate statement about some issue." Whether you have to reassure the LLM that this is…

That's very interesting. It kind of mirrors the experience of having a very smart friend.

Edit: https://xkcd.com/2501/

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