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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#451

Post by sahilagarwal »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #68
latexr wrote: post #17

> 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.…

From context, we can infer that "best minds" means "smart people who make new things." I feel it's fair to lament that, while these people could put their intelligence towards the betterment of everybody, they are often instead working on shit like ad tech.

The best tech stack I have ever worked on was in an adtech company. The code was beautiful and the utility functions to interface with various AWS services were really really neat. I built a near real time estimator using Theta Sketches.

While job searching, I have tried to use techs like Sketches in my filters but it mostly draws up a blank. Would love to work on genuinely interesting stuff like that again.

It honestly did leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever I thought what the end goal of it all was.

Re: Bored of It

#452

Post by [deleted] »

zwnow wrote: post #404
lolinder wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

Re: Bored of It

#453

Post by fmxsh »

Seems like the poetic ability of culture to comment on itself while simultaneously lacking self-awareness.

(the article is what it cricisizes. It tells how the author uses it (or not), it is talking about it like everyone else, it is vilifying it like everyone else, etc...)

(it's thus a clever critique by itself being the subject of criticism. The reader senses there is a higher level criticism, but can't really be sure. The reader must even suspect AI wrote it. The reader can sense something... But it's all potentially hollow, like nothing there, just appearance)

Re: Bored of It

#454

Post by therealdrag0 »

placardloop wrote: post #345
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.

It isn’t even close to being the greatest tool in human history. This type of misunderstanding and hyperbole is exactly why people are tired/bored/frustrated of it. The uncomfortable truth is that AI is the world’s greatest con man. The tools and hype around them have created an environment where AI is incredibly effective at fooling people into thinking it is knowledgeable and helpful, even when it isn’t. And the pe…

It’s not hype when it’s released and used for concrete tasks. Some are hyping future potential sure. But GP is hyped about how he can use it NOW. Which I agree is very cool.

Re: Bored of It

#455

Post by therealdrag0 »

elicksaur wrote: post #288
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.

It literally knows nothing. It is incapable of knowledge. I’m bored of it.

Neither does Wikipedia. But it’s still awesome.

Re: Bored of It

#456

Post by km144 »

adamors wrote: post #36
latexr wrote: post #17

> 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.…

Having been in IT for close to 15 years now, a lot of good minds work in IT a lot of good minds don't. But I've encountered a lot of stupid (for lack of a better word) people in IT who were convinced they are good at _everything_ just because they grokked algorithms and data structures. Not sure it's a phenomenon unique to IT, but what DOGE is doing is exactly what I mean.

I mean, there are probably only a few places on the internet with more people who believe their insights into other disciplines are profound simply because they understand how computers work than the HN comment section. So we should all be able to relate.

Re: Bored of It

#457

Post by lurk2 »

WD-42 wrote: post #342
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…

The difference is all those other things you listed - food, drugs, etc provide value. An ad provides none.

I’m in a group chat for a language I am studying. It gets targeted for event flyers due to the group’s subject. These sorts of flyers are allowed where other advertising is not because they add value to the group, even though most of them are for-profit.

Re: Bored of It

#458

Post by cloogshicer »

pj_mukh wrote: post #347
cloogshicer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except our superior ability to collaborate is arguably our strongest asset.

Of course! Nothing I said precludes this. Lots of collaboration is used for selfish means.

Is collaboration at its most useful/powerful when it's done selfishly?

Re: Bored of It

#459

Post by [deleted] »

lm28469 wrote: post #119
luc4sdreyer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animals eat their disabled children. Humans should also do it then, since it's normal or natural. Around 100k people die from age-related disease every day. I'd be careful to dismiss that as not a problem.

And them not dying would be an even bigger problem on pretty much every single metric I can think of

[deleted]

Re: Bored of It

#460

Post by mrb »

dcminter wrote: post #32
mrb wrote: post #24

"That there’s a ‘there’ there to it." WTF does this mean? This sentence is grammatically incorrect.

It's a literary conceit: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/there_is_no_there_there

I see, but the "to it" is what's grammatically incorrect.

It is correct to write: there is a "there" there. It would also be correct to write: there is a "there" to it. But it is grammatically incorrect to write: there is a "there" there to it.

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