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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

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Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#271

Post by neerajsi »

nemomarx wrote: post #135
boron1006 wrote: post #128

I don’t like the term taste, but the problem that I have is that LLMs don’t seem to work “good enough”. They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but stacking this on the scale of 3-4 devs over 6 months or so doesn’t seem to produce anything. One thing that I’m particularly frustrated with is the writing quality of LLMs. Like this is the thing that they should be able to do, but I would say almost everythi…

Since they can summarize, you'd really think they would be better at condensing their own output and cutting out the filler after. I wonder if you could use a specialized second pass for it or something?

In my recent experience it seems to be a contextual issue. Llms are constantly being dropped into new situations where they have to rediscover high level and cross cutting information about the system they're working on from contextual clues.

The internal representations of this state and its projection back out to human language wouldn't be as concise as that of a practitioner or team that develop their own verbiage and ontology over time molded to their system.

This verbosity might get better as we figure out better ways for agents to learn long term and use that knowledge to adapt to the users and projects over time.

There might also be some good harness improvements we could consider like forked output streams or multiple long lived filter subagents to ensure that output appropriate for thinking is separate from code output and separate from output given to the user driving the session.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#274

Post by movpasd »

ricardobeat wrote: post #131
vor_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've updated the article to state that no LLM was used.

The update itself has strong AI tells: > I do write like this sometimes. The short sentences, the reversals, the one-word lines—all of it. It’s just the way it is. > That says something about my writing. It says nothing about who wrote it. > So let me be plain about it: Claude was not here. No LLM wrote this—not a sentence of it, nor was it outlined, drafted, reviewed, checked, etc. by one Either the author is doing…

It's LLM-like in the details, but there are certain patterns of repetition and idiosyncrasies, also certain analogies I don't think an LLM would make (like the aliens thing), that make me believe that it's written by a human.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#275

Post by BlueTemplar »

kazinator wrote: post #240
madrox wrote: post #142

We've been talking about taste for a year now as it relates to AI, so I'm going to counterpoint it: if competitors can reproduce your features, UX, and visual decisions within days, your taste is not really an advantage. How many apps implemented pull down to refresh once one person did it? How many people even remember (or care) whose taste spawned that UX pattern? [1] AI is not inaugurating an age of taste. It is s…

Dumbest idea ever. You are composing some text in a form, or filling in fields. You want to scroll up just a little to see something out of the viewport. Oops, your little swipe is misinterpreted as a refresh gesture: the input is gone.

Yeah, it's infuriating when poorly implemented.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#276

Post by gniv »

DrBrock wrote: post #77

I find this post disheartening. To my eye, it seems to be the author's first blog entry with obvious LLM contributions. Given the recent "moving to a farm" ... 7 days later ... "leaving the farm" posts, it's hard not to read this as someone clearly struggling with the burnout which is all too common in our industry, and resultingly giving in to the false promise of a machine that can just handle the thinking for you.

> To my eye, it seems to be the author's first blog entry with obvious LLM contributions.

Not to me. It's actually quite sharply written. I enjoyed the style a lot.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#277

Post by red75prime »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #25

I keep seeing people trying to define judgement and taste and then they don’t actually like cite Kant’s Critique of Judgement where this is basically the entire concern.

Shouldn't this 236-year-old paper be updated in accordance with, say, neuroeconomics research on how provenance influences aesthetic taste?

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#278

Post by attheballot »

easygenes wrote: post #187

Oof, even the post-mortem promising none of it is AI slop is obvious AI slop.

I was expecting them to state that they were doing a bit with the post-mortem, but the punchline never came. It is even more consistently AI coded than the full text. Give us a /s, give us a wink a nod, give us a markdown sygil of LOSS.png, anything that says "I am actually a human", because all that reads as is BEEP BOOP KILL ALL HUMANS.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#279

Post by imtringued »

chongli wrote: post #220
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes on a very personal level you look at LLM-generated code and think to yourself "wow this is garbage" but what about the people, as pointed out many times in this thread, that simply do not care? Does that not count as "good enough"? Aside from the "amateur" qualifier, the Booch quote below provides insight to those questions: The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic, some sensational method or…

The use of “amateur” is indeed a very poor choice. An amateur is someone who seeks to master a skill or perform a craft for the love of the art, not for money. It’s the professional who is looking for the shortcut, not the amateur. The amateur is the one who hones a tool’s edge until it’s razor sharp, and cuts away all unnecessary detail until they’ve found the essence of what they’re trying to achieve. The work of a…

You just twisted the meanings of the words.

An amateur is not a master nor a disciple of a master (e.g. future master).

The vast majority of amateurs have no ambitions nor passion and simply give up early on, that's a rose tinted view.

Since they don't get paid to do it, they have to allocate their precious free time toward the skill, which means they don't have those 40 hour weeks where they spend all their time honing their skill to begin with.

Even someone who does a skill half heartedly without passion nor ambition is going to learn faster with those 40 hours at his disposal.

>The amateur is the one who hones a tool’s edge until it’s razor sharp, and cuts away all unnecessary detail until they’ve found the essence of what they’re trying to achieve.

That's not an amateur and you know that. By your logic Japanese master craftsmen doing this are amateurs.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#280

Post by BlueTemplar »

agentultra wrote: post #215
notashelf wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll risk sounding antagonistic and ask you this: if LLMs are not "good enough", why are they still around? Obviously "good enough" was a poor pick of words of words on my behalf---and I'll gladly own it---but they should be "good enough" for something if a significant amount of resources keep getting allocated to them. Yes on a very personal level you look at LLM-generated code and think to yourself "wow this is gar…

The market logic isn’t going to be defensible. The market is highly irrational and prone to be influenced by those with the most capital, not the, “invisible hand.” Cars are freaking everywhere not because they are the best solution of transportation but because people with vested interest in the sale of oil and cars made it so by buying politicians, starting political and marketing campaigns, and on for generations.…

The current kind of car is extremely good at doing what it does. It's just that most of the benefits are short term, and for the car user (and the oil salesman), while the costs are borne by everyone else, and some of the worst ones are long term.

(Some similarities to hard drugs here.)

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