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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

johnsalvatier.org

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Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#21

Post by bonoboTP »

lelanthran wrote: post #13
kouru225 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that machine learning can learn highly detailed patterns is the very reason why AI is so useful. So what you’re saying doesn’t really make much sense

> The fact that machine learning can learn highly detailed patterns is the very reason why AI is so useful. AI doesn't deal with reality, it deals with tokens. This is why all those vibe-coded harnesses, little more than glue between various text IO interfaces, are several hundreds of thousands of source lines of code. It's why a SOTA model took 100kSLoK to write a C compiler to compile one specific project. It's why…

Do you exist in reality? Or just in a virtual world made up of sensory signals? Do you have access to the Ding an sich any more than a (multimodal) LLM?

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#22

Post by farfatched »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #8

This sentence is the exact reason laying people off and replacing them with AI doesn’t work.

In the spirit of the article, what detail in the decision making of layoffs might you be missing?

I expect there's a lot of detail that I'm unaware of relating to running a company (planning; risk; legal; ...) that might make a decision foolish to me, but make sense if given more context.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#23

Post by ngm7 »

boron1006 wrote: post #4

This has always been the fun part of programming to me. I know most people hate it, but I really don’t mind being on-call (ok I hate being woken up) and fixing weird bugs that users run into. All these small edge cases that people run into because reality is odd. Of course I’m in scientific programming so that probably colors my view. It’s always a little disappointing to me when I think I’ve run into something uniqu…

I echo this. The kind of entropy that real users bring has been refreshing to face as a founder.

Being a founder has a lot of SRE like activities. Fortunately I used to actually like troubleshooting and hence love being a founder but I know a lot of people quit this path because of the "suprising amount of details" in reality!

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#24

Post by farfatched »

> If you’re a programmer, you might think that the fiddliness of programming is a special feature of programming, but really it’s that everything is fiddly, but you only notice the fiddliness when you’re new, and in programming you do new things more often.

I think I'm drawn to programming because the fiddliness is tractable, and fixable.

In which other domain can I:

* introspect the relevant processes/state, step by step

* snapshot/undo

* fix niggles, once and for all, and for everyone; and get their fixes too

* probe and test my inputs and outputs, checking for quality. Get notified if a part changes in a way that breaks me.

And the only tool I need is a commodity general purpose PC.

When I try woodwork, or even electronics, I'm struck by much friction is in even simple tasks: tools, parts, lead time, safety, space, physical effort, cost, ...

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#25

Post by lelanthran »

bonoboTP wrote: post #21
lelanthran wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that machine learning can learn highly detailed patterns is the very reason why AI is so useful. AI doesn't deal with reality, it deals with tokens. This is why all those vibe-coded harnesses, little more than glue between various text IO interfaces, are several hundreds of thousands of source lines of code. It's why a SOTA model took 100kSLoK to write a C compiler to compile one specific project. It's why…

Do you exist in reality? Or just in a virtual world made up of sensory signals? Do you have access to the Ding an sich any more than a (multimodal) LLM?

> Do you exist in reality?

Yes.

> Or just in a virtual world made up of sensory signals?

No, definitely reality. Things affect my thought whether I sense them or not.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#26

Post by arzmir »

Lovely article!

Contemplating the details of a thing is really satisfying. At times I find myself sitting there and trying to decompose the astonishing amount of work, research, both evolutionary and revolutionary progress that has gone into reaching the current level of something. Buying myself a coffee and stare at the local ferry and acknowledge that someones life's work went into figuring out how to make the paint stick to metal.

Naturally the other point also sticks.. I too often get stuck on the details. :P

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#27

Post by buildbot »

lelanthran wrote: post #25
bonoboTP wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you exist in reality? Or just in a virtual world made up of sensory signals? Do you have access to the Ding an sich any more than a (multimodal) LLM?

> Do you exist in reality? Yes. > Or just in a virtual world made up of sensory signals? No, definitely reality. Things affect my thought whether I sense them or not.

Things affect LLMs besides tokens, like ECC errors or cosmic rays? …

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#28

Post by amatecha »

WastedCucumber wrote: post #7

The first time I built a freestanding bookshelf, I put a lot of effort into making the feet level and the back straight and at a right angle to the feet. Once I put it up against the wall I'd built it for, I realized I'd solved completely different problem than the problem I really had. I needed crooked bookshelf, since the wall was totally tilted. In the end I screwed some wall shelves in and called it good enough.

Coincidentally just had this realization last night. Leaned a piece of furniture against the wall, realized the ~perfectly straight/level edge didn't lean smoothly against the wall -- the wall is not perfectly straight!! :-O
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