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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#401

Post by randomopining »

diggan wrote: post #120
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.

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…

AI is just another abstraction. It's not like a senior Java dev can implement LocalDate.now() or CompletableFuture.await()

Re: Bored of It

#402

Post by dingnuts »

Kerrick wrote: post #242
nsagent wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

no, because before transistors we had vacuum tubes so the functionality of a transistor was well understood and the breakthrough was in size and power consumption.

the analogy would be more apt if tomorrow I could run ChatGPT 4o, the hosted model, on my wrist watch, and run it indefinitely for pennies.

Re: Bored of It

#403

Post by beepbooptheory »

lapcat wrote: post #251
beepbooptheory wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "utility" here?

What did you learn from the submission? What did anyone learn from it?

Someone might make a little game or fun experiment and might post it on here. Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something, but they are still something I expect to see on HN frontpage. At least: I thought they were acceptable. But I guess thats not the case? Only educational things are technically HN worthy? I will take your word for it.

It's just a little bit of a bummer tbh, sometimes I just want to have fun or feel something or read a certain articulation of something... But I have other places I can find that kind of stuff I guess.

Thanks for your reply and your concern for propriety!

Re: Bored of It

#404

Post by zwnow »

lolinder wrote: post #354
mdp2021 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a chance he is just seeing whether discussing brings some benefit - as he likes to say. Which is a good thing. Better than the opposite.

There's no discussion happening, though! They're just repeating themselves over and over and ignoring the contents of any replies.

Because the replies ignore the contents of my replies, weird isnt it

Re: Bored of It

#405

Post by dingnuts »

Arisaka1 wrote: post #351
y-curious wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it ageist, but this aligns with the conversation about "it" at my job. The cutoff is around 42, but there is a significant split by age group of engineers on the value of "it".

I don't think it has to do with age but more than active years of work experience in the field. There is some strong correlation but, I'm 44 and with 3 years of experience I have integrated AI tools in my workflow because they're just tools right now and it would be silly not to leverage it.

I added them, because they are a plug-in like anything else, but rarely find a use for them. They are best at helping me remember syntax for single statements, nothing more. Like autocorrect but vaguer.

Re: Bored of It

#406

Post by zwnow »

WD-42 wrote: post #364
zwnow wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trusting your neighbor already is a mistake. Well people like me benefit from society as I can benefit from people being naive.

> Well people like me benefit from society as I can benefit from people being naive. So you’re a leech on society, got it.

I even contribute, by paying taxes. Weird leech

Re: Bored of It

#407

Post by GloamingNiblets »

sigseg1v wrote: post #290
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.

> the greatest tool in human history So would the greatest tool in human history in your mind be something that is used to plagiarise most content in the world and then output correct-30%-of-the-time slop? Or is there another definition you would use? I'm struggling to think how this could even be in the top 10 tools in human history.

As a counterpoint, if I were to be teleported naked onto an abandoned island 10000 years ago and could bring one "tool" with me, a solar powered terminal with an LLM would be my #1 pick. An able-bodied and resourceful individual equipped with an LLM could accomplish far far more than with any other tool I can think of.

Re: Bored of It

#408

Post by TeMPOraL »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #316
anonymars wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's something like "a squandering of potential"

I think it’s more nuances, it’s saying that our definition of potential, best, etc, doesn’t weigh empathy for our fellow humans heavily enough. It’s an argument to flip that instead of our brightest minds being spent on ads, to instead say we are not rewarding our brightest minds at all but our most mercenary ones.

I read it as: best in terms of problem-solving power. On the ethical and empathic side, whether they're good/best or worst depends on whether you put more blame on systemic pressures (here mostly economic) vs. on individual agency.

Re: Bored of It

#409

Post by buttercraft »

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.

> mental model of an unempathetic society

You mean, like, a pack of wild dogs?

Re: Bored of It

#410

Post by spencerflem »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #408
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s more nuances, it’s saying that our definition of potential, best, etc, doesn’t weigh empathy for our fellow humans heavily enough. It’s an argument to flip that instead of our brightest minds being spent on ads, to instead say we are not rewarding our brightest minds at all but our most mercenary ones.

I read it as: best in terms of problem-solving power. On the ethical and empathic side, whether they're good/best or worst depends on whether you put more blame on systemic pressures (here mostly economic) vs. on individual agency.

Yeah, that's what the original quote means, and I agree with it. The comment tho is trying to argue that unqualified 'best' should not implicitly mean 'best at problem solving' which is a kinda interesting social/linguistic take.
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