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Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

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Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#131

Post by sriram_malhar »

Razengan wrote: post #81
sriram_malhar wrote: post #31

Everyone who writes enthusiastically about AI already has the benefit of having worked without AI. They have been schooled in the basics. Enough of us know about data structures, concurrency, networks, language design etc. from the ground up that the knowledge is passed on. I worry about the world that we will be living in when a whole generation has skipped learning the basics the hard way. Given the attendance rate…

> I worry about the world that we will be living in when a whole generation has skipped learning the basics the hard way. Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? Does your ability to cook good food depend upon your ability to till soil and sow seeds? I don't mean that in ass way but re: what other comments said: > it feels like a rich getting richer scenario in all aspects of society Tha…

> Have you been schooled in farming? Raising livestock? Milking cattle? Does your ability to cook good food ...

Pushing that analogy, AI is the equivalent of automating everything from tilling, growing, all the way to cooking. It is as if the human is involved at the beginning in specifying what they want, and at the end, in plating up the food and consuming the product. The next generation will have no clue about the entire farm-to-table chain.

It's not there yet, but rapidly making it a reality.

Also, there is no one "tech". Different pieces of technology have different levels of effect on the world, and different timelines in which the world can come to terms with it. AI is the thermonuclear weapon introduced to a musket world ... it came upon us suddenly, and instantly flattened the talent/merit based economy. Now everyone has access to the same exoskeleton; the difference between muscles is not important.

The second huge difference between AI (and ordinary tech) is that a literal handful of people are in control of its economics. That kind of power breeds fascism.

> That's a problem with society, not technology.

Semantics. The tech directly enables the incredible power imbalance, and helps seize the means of consensus and debate and reporting. There is no incentive/mechanism left to fix society. An advanced society like the US is weaponized against vaccines, and social media and AI are to blame.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#132

Post by latexr »

alexpotato wrote: post #122

This post reminded me of the story about Jeet Kun Do [0] after Bruce Lee [1] died. JKD was supposed to be a martial art that adapted the best techniques from other martial arts. e.g. "have no style" because your style is constantly adapting. After Lee died, JKD broke into two camps: 1. "We should only teach what Lee taught us and no more. e.g. the techniques he taught us are the core techniques." 2. "Lee taught us to…

This is reductive to the level of the people misusing the Douglas Adams quote, with a sprinkle of false dichotomy. Fear and embrace aren’t the only options, and neither camp is entirely positive or negative.

There is plenty of middle ground which should be exercised. If anything, the reason we’re living in an increasingly shitty shit show shower is that too many people are too eager to selfishly embrace too much, with complete disregard for others or long term outcomes.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#133

Post by nxobject »

embedding-shape wrote: post #123
PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

Would a person who is lost in the weeds come up with such excellent though-formulations like this? > Musashi would probably have been pretty enthusiastic about assault rifles. Musashi famously "retired to a cave, Reigandō, living as a hermit to write The Book of Five Rings" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi ), for those not in the know. Edit: Had to re-read a bunch of stuff about Musashi, and to Carmac…

I’d be pretty relieved, too, if I thought the scope of AI’s impact could be described by just an assault rifle.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#134

Post by philjackson »

skrebbel wrote: post #93
PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

> because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite Wow that resonated by a scary amount.

Can you elaborate on this with real-world examples you've experienced?

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#135

Post by latexr »

embedding-shape wrote: post #123
PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

Would a person who is lost in the weeds come up with such excellent though-formulations like this? > Musashi would probably have been pretty enthusiastic about assault rifles. Musashi famously "retired to a cave, Reigandō, living as a hermit to write The Book of Five Rings" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi ), for those not in the know. Edit: Had to re-read a bunch of stuff about Musashi, and to Carmac…

“Fun” fact: Even the creator of one of the most widely recognised and used assault riffles wasn’t enthusiastic about it by the end.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/13/262096410...

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#136

Post by [deleted] »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #108
omnicognate wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of people don't understand that the joy of making something is not coding but actually being able to build anything I want I expect "a lot of people" understand perfectly well that that's where the joy comes from for you. Do you not understand that other people have different motivations?

coding for the sake of coding is, well, dumb.

[deleted]

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#139

Post by latexr »

epolanski wrote: post #128
PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

I can achieve more with AI than without. What's the complain exactly? That AI still hasn't made my effort and thinking and directing and checking and ideas completely redundant and thus out of job? It's like you people see everything in black and white and miss that most of the real world is a gradient of shades of grey and quite never full black or white.

> It's like you people see everything in black and white and miss that most of the real world is a gradient of shades of grey and quite never full black or white.

I’d go even further. Shades of grey implies two extremes on a linear scale, but the world has colour, meaning wildly different interpretations that go in novel directions.

However, ironically, your comment reads to me as extremely black and white—full of certainty, rigidity, possibly some bad faith interpretation and straw manning—while the one you’re criticising has (some) nuance and doubt and seems open to the idea of being wrong.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#140

Post by ozim »

omnicognate wrote: post #102
_zoltan_ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lot of people don't understand that the joy of making something is not coding but actually being able to build anything I want. AI just made it 50x better, as exactly as you said, we don't need to deal with the useless junk (what's the API syntax? what's the library syntax? oh it changed in the last 3 versions, let me look up the new API, this and that...). it's great.

> a lot of people don't understand that the joy of making something is not coding but actually being able to build anything I want I expect "a lot of people" understand perfectly well that that's where the joy comes from for you. Do you not understand that other people have different motivations?

Crafting code in your preferred language in a way that it is easily understood by others or fulfills some other constraints while doing whatever algorithm requires can be as fulfilling as writing poetry.

I can write „you live, you die, get over with it, life is hard, love hurts” - it basically encodes all wisdom of countless poems, books. Yet I have seen many people getting that idea better when the knowledge of this simple truth is in a form of a story.

Conversely, if you write an algorithm using better structure, better data structures it makes a lot of difference.

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