A LLM could have told you that this is badly written, maybe consult one next time.
Bored of It
181–190 of 507 posts
Re: Bored of It
#182Here's some of what I think is my personal best advice:
Learn to live in the gray areas. Don't be dogmatic. The world isn't black and white. Take some parts of the black and white. And, don't be afraid to change your mind about some things.
This may sound obvious to some of you, and sure, in theory this is simple. But in practice? Definitely not, at least in my experience. It requires a change in mindset and worldview, which generally becomes harder as you age ("because your want to conserve the way of life you enjoy").
Re: Bored of It
#183I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the na…
I'm a big fan of Douglas Adams, but there is a reason he was (best known as) a comedy writer and not, for example, a sociologist. Trotting this out adds nothing to the conversation and just comes across as vaguely ageist.
Re: Bored of It
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
That you see trampling as a value does not mean it is; if you have to move the point to the value you attribute to your own life the issue is with your perspective over your life. It is correct to see that you have that one life, so you have to use it wisely. The issue will remain about what is "wisely". > how do I benefit from having Did anybody tell you you should? You should develop adequate understanding instead…
Why would I put in the effort if I dont benefit from it though?
There will not be any greater benefit from understanding - it is the general condition to achievement. So: you do benefit from it, and you may want to put effort in it. It will have side effects, such as moral behaviour.
Re: Bored of It
#185> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…
There is one trait common to nearly everyone participating in the computing industry: overweening pride in one's own intelligence.
People in the industry like to reduce 'intelligence' to a single dimension. You can see this phenomenon directly in the current AI wave in which "intelligence" has been reduced to "does well at 'knowledge worker' tasks and passes arbitrary benchmarks we have defined".
Re: Bored of It
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I am old enough to have witnessed that in 99% of situations people are directly responsible for their own situation Old people can be wrong, and in this case, they are. >There is no reason to have empathy. This is a category mistake. You reason that empathy is superfluous if people are the cause of their misfortune. However, whether people are the cause of their misfortunes is utterly irrelevant to whether there is…
You not seeing arguments doesn't invalidate them. You arent the judge on this.
Do you think this response will convince anyone that you are correct? You still fail to provide an argument; you're just being unpleasant. To what end?
Is that what not having empathy in a society feels like? People just talking at each other without any particular goal in mind other than being unpleasant to each other?
Re: Bored of It
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm, this isn't just an IT thing. Physicians are a prime example—people tend to put doctors on a pedestal, and some doctors start believing they know everything about everything, even when it's clearly outside their wheelhouse. Being smart in one area doesn’t automatically make you an expert in another, but it’s easy for everyone involved to forget that.
I’m a CFO that used to work in healthcare. Have had many cases where a doctor tries to explain to me how accounting “should work” and I have to tell them we have this little thing call revenue recognition or GAAP or how accruals work, etc. basically the stuff covered in accounting 101. I’m used to fielding questions about numbers from all types but only doctors will immediately jump to telling you it’s wrong without…
I like it when they explain to you how hard they work and how it’s unlike how anyone else works and they are super special because of it.
Re: Bored of It
#188Right? How much more can we stand all this talk about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.
Re: Bored of It
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I initially picked up programming because I wanted to create things (well, initially break things, but moved on from that), and the programming was one way of doing that. I only learned how to structure my programs, because they became hard to change. I only learned testing and refactoring, because I noticed I was faster when the code was better and more tested, even if the upfront cost was slightly higher. If I was…
> would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks? Would even that have some downsides in the long-term, since the process of banging one's head could be crucial to rewiring your brain to understand new concepts.
Yeah, I'm guessing that most of my valuable knowledge comes from sessions like this, where something is hard, and eventually you solve it. If I was in the same situation today, I'd probably keep throwing stuff at the LLM until it got it right, and not really learn anything.
But then on the other hand, the point was never to learn, but to create. I'm still not sure if I'd be better or worse at actually creating things if I had LLMs in the beginning or not.
Re: Bored of It
#190> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…
I think the point is that people with the capacity to be both smart and empathetic have lost their way.
The more subtle point is that many empathetic people have bullshit jobs: they too work in service of it for simply their livelihood.