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The Rise of Whatever

eev.ee

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Re: The Rise of Whatever

#341

Post by ecocentrik »

Summarize this article as a prompt that can be fed back to Claude to generate similar content. https://claude.ai/share/5e348270-2eb8-40c3-ac32-ba9066a6fcee

I understand the frustration people have with technology but it's not the technology that keeps selling them out. Bad actors take control of the technology and use it to gain and consolidate power. Identify those bad actors and bad use cases for technology and avoid giving them power. Writing whiny tropey angst ridden blog posts doesn't help anyone.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#342

Post by greyface- »

yieldcrv wrote: post #262
georgeecollins wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote the article: >> But also… why do you care? Why would someone using a really cool tool that makes them more productive… feel compelled to sneer and get defensive at the mere suggestion that someone else isn’t doing the same? >> It feels like the same attitude that happened with Bitcoin, the same smug nose-wrinkling contempt. Bitcoin is the future. It’ll replace the dollar by 2020. You’re gonna be left behind.…

Evangelists can be ignored if you want, not all promoted use cases are relevant Its all about blockspace and the commodity that pays for the blockspace That was true when bitcoin was 2 cents and its true when bitcoin is $109,000 and 2 cents I mean, are you enjoying your socioeconomic status? the chronology was very clear to some and they were right. It wasn’t luck, it wasn’t a really binary proposition. you can read…

> Its all about blockspace

> That was true when bitcoin was 2 cents

I largely agree with you, but to nitpick: when bitcoin was 2 cents, blockspace was free, and miners regularly accepted zero-fee transactions into blocks. Today, you're not getting a transaction into a block without paying at least a couple hundred sats. Your statement is true today, but it wasn't like this until April-May 2012 when Satoshi Dice started filling blocks up. See Fig 3 on page 9 of https://maltemoeser.de/paper/transaction-fees.pdf> or look through some early blocks.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#343

Post by feelamee »

chrismorgan wrote: post #100

> Like, just to calibrate here: you know how some code editors will automatically fill in a right bracket or quote when you type a left one? You type " and the result is "|"? Yeah, that drives me up the wall. It saves no time whatsoever, and it’s wrong often enough that I waste time having to correct for it. I have not yet figured out why anyone would choose this behaviour in a text editor. You have to press somethin…

> You have to press something to exit the delimited region anyway, whether that be an arrow key or the closing delimiter, so just…

Hah, fun about this is that I press exactly the matched symbol ( `}` to `{` , etc) to exit this delimited region and VS even understand what I want! Incredibly useless thing

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#344

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

I imagine the future people, unless WW3 obliterates this iteration of civilisation, will be using slop for everything, and craftsmanship and doing the thing will be done in buildings not unlike gyms of today. Where you will pay for the privilege to exercise your mind.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#345

Post by latexr »

doug_durham wrote: post #54
arthurbrown wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've read that paragraph backwards. They are talking about LLM enthusiasts dunking on people who aren't using.

The author mocks LLM enthusiasts, because they "dunk" on him. While writing an blog post that "dunks" on LLM enthusiasts. Total lack of awareness. If they had taken the time to read their blog before posting it, they might have avoided embarrassment.

> they might have avoided embarrassment.

What embarrassment? This post, like plenty of Evelyn’s writing, reached the front page of HN and has a ton of commentary in agreement. Your comment, on the other hand, was downvoted to the bottom of the thread.

The author also draws and publishes what is, in their own words, “pretty weird porn”.

You should voice your disagreement with the contents of the post and explain what they are, if that is what you’re feeling. Discussion is what HN is for. But to believe the author is or should be suffering any kind of embarrassment about this post is detached from reality.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#346

Post by amiga386 »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #114

Cool post, but: > And the only real hope I have here is that someday, maybe, Bitcoin will be a currency, and circulating money around won’t be the exclusive purview of Froot Loops. Christ PLEASE NO. The only thing this will lead to is people who didn't get rich with this scheme funding the returns of people who bought in early. Whatever BTC becomes, everyone who advocates for funneling public money of people who actu…

But can't you see what he actually wants?

He wants normal banking and money transfer... but just to anybody, and for any reason. As an example, he'd like people to be able to pay him to draw bespoke furry porn for them. Or as another example, why can't a US citizen pay an Iranian citizen to do some work for them? (e.g. write a computer program)

That is totally possible. The only thing that stands in his way, and drives him into the arms of the cryptocurrency frauds, are moralising and realpolitiking governments that intentionally use their control of banks to control what bank customers can do with their money.

In an ideal world, government would only regulate banks on fiscal propriety and fair-dealing, and would not get in the way of consenting adults exchanging money for goods and services. But because government does fuck with banks, and sometimes the banks just do the fuckery anyway and government doesn't compel them to offer services to all (e.g. Visa/Mastercard refuse to allow porn merchants?), normal people start listening to the libertarians, the sovereign citizens, and the pump-and-dump fraudsters hyping cryptocurrencies.

He wants decentralised digital cash. How can it be done, if not Bitcoin et al?

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#347

Post by teiferer »

raincole wrote: post #44
gyomu wrote: post #10

Broadly agreed with all the points outlined in there. But for me the biggest issue with all this — that I don't see covered in here, or maybe just a little bit in passing — is what all of this is doing to beginners, and the learning pipeline. > There are people I once respected who, apparently, don’t actually enjoy doing the thing. They would like to describe what they want and receive Whatever — some beige sludge th…

People will write lengthy and convoluted explanation on why LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. Humans have been looking for easier and lazier ways to do things since the dawn of civilization. Tech never ever prevents people who really want to hone their skills from doing so. World record of 100m sprint kept improving even since car was invente…

[dead]

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#348

Post by Ezhik »

gattr wrote: post #319
Ezhik wrote: post #195

I feel it. We can debate AI over and over and over but my ultimate problem is not even the tech itself but the "whatever" part. I'm a bit annoyed with LLMs for coding, because I care about the craft. But I understand the premise of using them when the end goal is not "tech as a craft" but "tech as a means". But that still requires having some reason to use the tech. Hell, I feel the "tech as a means to get money" par…

On a more positive note, LLMs (or their successors) could be used to create a perfect tutor. Taylored for every individual, automatically adjusting learning material difficulty, etc. But yeah, first we'll go through a few (?) years of the self-defeating "ChatGPT does my homework" and the necessary adjustments of how schools/unis function.

Oh yeah, it's going to be really interesting when the hype dies down and we start seeing the actual good use cases get homed in.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#349

Post by eesmith »

fireflash38 wrote: post #326
eesmith wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen my accountant's fingers flawlessly fly using a calculator to track expenses down to the penny. Few people have those mental skills even in the days before calculators - either mechanical or digital. Slide rule are good for only a couple of digits of precision. That's why shopkeepers used abacuses not slide rules. I have a hard time understanding your hypothetical. What does it mean to hallucinate at the 0.5…

Slide rules were used in astronomy, engineering, and aviation. You could get them more accurate than 2 decimal places.

"A couple" does not always mean two.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/couple - "(informal) a small number"

FWIW, "Maximum accuracy for standard linear slide rules is about three decimal significant digits" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule

While yes, "Astronomical work also required precise computations, and, in 19th-century Germany, a steel slide rule about two meters long was used at one observatory. It had a microscope attached, giving it accuracy to six decimal places" (same Wikipedia page), remember that this thread is about calculating devices one might carry in one's pocket, have on one's self, or otherwise be able to "grab".

(There's a scene in a pre-WWII SF story where the astrogators on a large interstellar FTL spacecraft use a multi-meter long slide rule with a microscope to read the vernier scale. I can't remember the story.)

My experience is that I can easily get two digits, but while I'm close to the full three digits, I rarely achieve it, so I wouldn't say you get three decimal digits from a slide rule of the sort I thought was relevant.

I'm a novice at slide rules, so to double-check I consulted archive.org and found "The slide rule: a practical manual" at https://archive.org/details/sliderulepractic00pickrich/page/...

> With the ordinary slide rule, the accuracy obtainable will largely depend upon the precision of the scale spacings, the length of the rule, the speed of working, and the aptitude of the operator. With the lower scales it is generally assumed that the readings are accurate to within 0.5 per cent. ; but with a smooth-working slide the practised user can work to within 0.25 per cent

That's between 2 and 3 digits. You wouldn't do your bookkeeping with it.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#350

Post by nottorp »

adastra22 wrote: post #260
nottorp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're an experienced developer who Knows What They Want then you can wield it like a scalpel. But that's not what the marketing says. The marketing says it will do your entire job for you. In reality, it will save you some typing if you already know what to do . On HN at least, where most people are startup/hustle culture and experts in something, they don't think long term enough to see the consequences for no…

> In reality, it will save you some typing if you already know what to do. This goes too far in the other direction. LLMs can do far more than merely saving you typing. I have successfully used coding agents to implement code which at the outset I had no business writing as it was far outside my domain expertise. By the end I'd gained enough understanding to be able to review the output and guide the LLM towards a co…

I'd love it if everyone who posts statements like this would also include a link to their professional experience. Or at least state a number of years they've been developers.

I'm sure I can do what you describe as well. I've actually used LLMs to get myself current on some stuff I knew (old) basics for and they were useful indeed as you say.

I'm also sure it wouldn't help your interns to grow to your level.

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