Bored of It • Hacker News Board

Re: Bored of It

#241

Post by ant0ni » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

wzdd wrote: post #183

terhechte wrote: post #71

I'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.

I found the parent comment humorous as it cites a lighthearted quote from Douglas Adams. it is relevant to the conversation in a similar way an xkcd is, when called relevant.

Re: Bored of It

#242

Post by Kerrick » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

nsagent wrote: post #164

terhechte wrote: post #71

I'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'll bite. I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at. How old do you think I am?

Doesn’t that feel a little bit like saying that the hype around transistor-based logic gates is ridiculous because they’re designed to execute Boolean logic, and that’s exactly what they’re good at? The simple mechanism isn’t what’s exciting. The exciting part is composing that into a symphony of functionality, running fast and cheap, to better our lives.

Re: Bored of It

#243

Post by spencerflem » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

cdecl wrote: post #236

lurk2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tactic literally hypnotizes you into dropping all your money on an arbitrary good or service. It is isomorphic to somebody mugging you. I like the quote and despise advertising of any kind for mostly the same reason, but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart. > The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfec…

I'm actually convinced that "marketing", as such, can be completely orthogonal to profit altogether. Any sort of communication of a novel thing would fall under this banner, but I learn about new FOSS projects on here every day because the maintainers and developers are willing to 'advertise' them to me.

Marketing is so rarely for a "novel" thing. The biggest spender is CocaCola, how much do we still need to know about them?

Re: Bored of It

#244

Post by JacksCracked » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

wzdd wrote: post #183

terhechte wrote: post #71

I'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.

[dead]

Re: Bored of It

#245

Post by arcbyte » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

nisa wrote: post #140

jsheard wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.

It's creating devastating effects in higher education here. I'm a bit older but did a masters after working a few years and I've now decided to quit because most - if not all - students just upload the sheets to an llm and copy the output. Group projects used to be really intense and interesting here - now my partners in the group-projects ask me to explain their code to them. It's not an ivy-league university here b…

> It's 100% transactional - how can I go through this as fast as possible - as a result people fail the exams at unseen rates like 50-80% in classes that can be passed by learning a few days and doing the exercises yourself.

This is a funny post because this was my experience 20 years ago in college. Nothing new from LLMs here. My big takeaway from my experience in different universities (I attended several different ones) is that the content in all the universities is largely the same - the main difference is that you are picking the caliber of your classmates. My classmates in one technical, well-regarded university were MILES beyond the classmates in a local second-tier state university in terms of intelligence, passion, and drive; and those classmates were more attentive and intelligent than the ones in a third-rate community college.

Re: Bored of It

#246

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

zwnow wrote: post #101

lolinder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> empathy isn't useful to society ... Having empathy will actively hurt your own life Even if I accepted the second statement (which to be clear, I absolutely do not), it doesn't follow that empathy isn't useful to society. Society is not benefited by everyone running about chasing their own personal success to the exclusion of all others: that kind of world isn't even called a society. We have other names for that a…

I am aware people have trouble building this mental model of an unempathetic society. I am old enough to have witnessed that in 99% of situations people are directly responsible for their own situation. There is no reason to have empathy.

[deleted]

Re: Bored of It

#247

Post by terhechte » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

flappyeagle wrote: post #161

lm28469 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? Well it's just a technology, don't you love technology ? Technology is progress and progress is good! > it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Eugenics would objectively solve a lot of suffering though, your AI might even come to that conclusion > Did you grow up watching…

Are you being obtuse on purpose?

His purse is empty already, all’s golden words are spent.

– William Shakespeare

Re: Bored of It

#248

Post by UncleMeat » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #54

Nobody asked for it??? Nobody wants it??? You're not paying attention. I want it. I think it's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like aging, cancer, Alzheimer's.

Going great with the destruction of medical research communities and organizations that evaluate the effectiveness of experimental treatments.

Re: Bored of It

#249

Post by nessbot » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

hersko wrote: post #223

This is insane. We have created the greatest tool in human history and people are complaining. I can use it to help me code, fix modeling issues as I learn CAD, help me troubleshoot the issues in my two-stroke leafblower engine and can consistently walk me through complex leetcode algorithms. It literally knows everything and people still complain.

People saying things like "It literally knows everything..." unironically is half the reason some of us are bored of it.

Re: Bored of It

#250

Post by dandellion » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

nsagent wrote: post #164

terhechte wrote: post #71

I'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'll bite. I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at. How old do you think I am?

I was in my 20s when crypto was "it" and I was definitely on the last group about it, so it's definitely not just about age, even thought there's probably some correlation.