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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#461

Post by joquarky »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #434
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…

100% efficient everything is an unimaginable dystopia. All that's nice, and good, all kindness and love and happiness, all that exists within economic inefficiencies. It's the slack that lets us be human. That said, of the four examples you mentioned, only one has the distinction of being a metaphorical cancer on modern society, entrapping everything it touches in negative-sum games until it burns out all value and m…

In the past few decades, hedge funds have had a significantly negative impact upon the following industries:

- Manufacturing - Retail - Local Journalism/Media - Private Prisons & Detention - For-Profit Education - Healthcare Services - Veterinary/Pet grooming Clinics - Mortuary/Funeral Homes - Pharmaceuticals - Housing/Real Estate, - Toll Roads - Hospitality - Restaurants - Addiction Treatment Centers - Daycares - Hospice

What's next?

Doh, I keep forgetting that this site doesn't do markdown.

Re: Bored of It

#462

Post by mrguyorama »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #142
diggan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They still can’t decide, but I bet we’ve racked up 1000 coder-hours debating it. That sounds... Good? Lots of people run into using whatever is vogue without even thinking twice about it. See the massive move to using cloud for absolutely everything, money be damned, and you'll see what I mean. Cargo culting is a huge issue in the industry. At least they're actually considering if it's making them more or less prod…

It would be great if they’d actually collect data instead of merely speculating, that’s what I’m getting at.

Software developers and management rarely have the statistics chops to create actually good metrics and data collection.

Just writing everything down isn't data. You have to have a standardized methodology and low-ambiguity signals. You should have systems of blinding.

What's your proposed metric for "productivity" for software developers? You could probably get a management prize for it.

Re: Bored of It

#463

Post by antonvs »

layer8 wrote: post #367
antonvs wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It" could be computing in general. Or American-style ultracapitalism, a phenomenon for which terms like "the control problem" and "alignment" are certainly relevant.

“Policy-makers pandering to it.” Do policy-makers pander to computing in general? “People incessantly telling you how they use it.” I don’t think this can be said for American-style ultracapitalism. (Especially for the author who isn’t in the US.)

> Do policy-makers pander to computing in general?

At the current president's inauguration, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, and Musk were all seated next to each other right behind the president. Their companies have some of the largest computing footprints in the world.

Some specific ways they've been pandered to include the repeal of net neutrality and reduction in antitrust activity.

> “People incessantly telling you how they use it.”

This happens in too many ways to count. A majority of popular media glamorizes and flaunts wealth and what it buys you - like Succession, The Kardashians, Billions, and all the reality shows about wealthy housewives, about real estate agents and house flippers, about an unreflective businessman who likes firing people, and so on.

Many ordinary individuals do much the same thing on their instagrams, linkedins, etc.

> (Especially for the author who isn’t in the US.)

If we're supposed to be able to identify "it" purely by the statements in the post, then where the author is from isn't really relevant. And capitalism in other places may be less extreme than in the US, but many of the same concerns still apply.

Re: Bored of It

#465

Post by blatantly »

KineticLensman wrote: post #344
conductr wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a CFO that used to work in healthcare. Have had many cases where a doctor tries to explain to me how accounting “should work” and I have to tell them we have this little thing call revenue recognition or GAAP or how accruals work, etc. basically the stuff covered in accounting 101. I’m used to fielding questions about numbers from all types but only doctors will immediately jump to telling you it’s wrong without…

> how accruals work Slightly off-topic but I worked at a UK research organisation that was a privatised entity recently spun-off from a civil-service organisation. The new CEO (who came from a finance background) got a tour of each department. He apparently listened to all of the tech evangelism from the department directors and then asked them how their department's accruals were doing. Those department directors wh…

Oh nice. A culture where asking questions is punished. If this was a problem don't fire people. Train them. Make sure everyone does required training. If they refuse then you may have a case for PIP.

Otherwise it is just landmine driven performance

Rant not at comment! But the situation of the comment. Hope it worked out for you!

Re: Bored of It

#466

Post by bufferoverflow »

abraxas wrote: post #271
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.

Let's hope solving aging is beyond the grasp of even the smartest AI. No surer way to end up in a world full of calcified ideas than having lot of calcified humans clinging to power and enforcing their ways on younger generations. Not to mention the environmental impact of everlasting humans.

You don't have to participate, even if it gets solved. Feel free to die out.

The idea is that people can't take new ideas in as they age makes zero sense to me.

Re: Bored of It

#467

Post by bufferoverflow »

UncleMeat wrote: post #248
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.

Hopefully that can be solved with AI and modeling in digital representations of humans.

Re: Bored of It

#468

Post by bufferoverflow »

contagiousflow wrote: post #370
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.

Wake me up when an LLM has found the solution to Alzheimer's. Until then, don't force it into every software I use.

Nobody is forcing anything. Some creators of software add AI, because it's their software and that's what they want to do.

Re: Bored of It

#469

Post by UncleMeat »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #467
UncleMeat wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hopefully that can be solved with AI and modeling in digital representations of humans.

...are you serious?

Re: Bored of It

#470

Post by daliusd »

diggan wrote: post #446
daliusd wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Gemma from Google and various niche models as well. I have not tried to measure exact amount of Chinese vs other, but I guess it is not mainly Chinese.

> There is Gemma from Google Not even Google calls Gemma "open source", nor would anyone with knowledge of "open source" call those models that. If something requires signing an agreement before downloading and/or have a list of prohibited use cases, it's most likely not open source.

Well it is not propaganda spreading at least. Do we have truly open source model from China in that regard? But really there are niche oss models
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