This is my favorite Asimov story. It's got a protagonist with compelling motivations, a society that has problems but also convincing reasons why they persist, and a great ending.
Two other Asimov stories that are similarly relevant to much of what is discussed on HN for similar reasons are “In a Good Cause—” and “The Dead Past”. I don’t know of a link for the first. Here’s one for the second. https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dead-past/
The Dead Past is one of my favorite Asimov stories. We don’t have the tech that’s in the story, but the idea of lost privacy is relevant today.
What concerns me is that learning depth is more discouraged than ever. For a long time it's been discouraged, which is natural as we have a preference for simple things rather than difficult/complex things. But we're pushing much harder than ever before. From the way we have influencer education videos to the way people push LLMs ("you can just vibe code, no thinking required"). We've advanced enough that it's easy t…
Ironically, when machine learning is getting “deeper & deeper”, human learning is getting more and more impatient and shallow. I have been searching “Vibe coding” videos on YouTube that are not promoting something. And I found this one and sat down and watched the whole three hours. It does take a lot of real effort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL7Au1tzNxE
I'm a machine learning researcher myself and one of the things that frustrates me is that many of my peers really embrace the "black box" notion of ML models. There are plenty of deep thinkers too, but like with any topic the masters are a much smaller proportion. Just a bit of a shame given that I'm talking about a bunch of people with PhDs...
As for my experience vibe coding is that it is not so much vibing but needing to do a lot of actual work too. I haven't watched that video you linked but that sounds to reflect my actual experience and that of people I know offline.
I've read this a long time ago, when I was a kid. Back then I thought about the education system and how it sometimes inhibits the creativity within the students. But right now, other comparison comes to mind - I don't know how relevant it is, though, so please don't judge it strictly. Modern "AI" (LLM-based) systems are somewhat similar to the humans in this story who were taped. They may have a lot of knowledge, ev…
This story is set thousands of years in the future, and yet their social norms are broadly those of 1960s America, conspicuously minus the racism. Their notion of gender equality, for instance, is to segregate, but add "(and women)" after every few "men" (respectively "(and husbands)" after "wives"). Stubby Trevelyan smokes, and litters the cigarette butts. This has to be deliberate on the part of the author. I wonde…
I read fantasy set a thousand years in the past, and yet the women are all individualistic and liberated, no women ever spend any time spinning thread, and the monks don't really believe in Christ. Ken Follett really tried with the monks, but although he clearly did a lot of research, it felt like it was alien to him. Br. Cadfael, for all of Ellis Peter's research still thinks like a modern. For that matter, maybe they had legitimately grasped it and I missed it because I was still Baptist when I read them, while medieval monks were obviously Roman Catholic. I've learned enough since then to know that Baptists don't understand Roman Catholics one bit.
I am sort of questioning my use of LLMs again after, first reluctantly, starting to use them multiple times a day. This story seems like it was intended to be an allegory for LLM-use though I know it couldn't have been.
It's an allegory about trusting "best practices", standardized bodies of knowledge¹, and "that's the way it's always been done". Not that those things necessarily don't work, they do in the story as well as in real life, but they need to adapt to change and the story illustrates what happens when they harden from best practice into unquestioned dogma. ¹ There's even a BoK for software developers, the SWEBOK, but I've…
I think it's more about social stratification than bodies of knowledge. The knowledge is treated as a class signifier, especially by the protanogist. In the bit with the friend, the new training he didn't have was practically useful, but, more than that, it sharpened the gap between the "haves" (went to a good school) and "have-nots".
I let my curiosity run and read the citizenship curriculum. While I in general agree to this curriculum, I shall argue that the most important thing for a citizen to learn, that should be on the top of list, is to push back when he thinks something is wrong. It is perhaps more important in nowadays.
I've read this a long time ago, when I was a kid. Back then I thought about the education system and how it sometimes inhibits the creativity within the students. But right now, other comparison comes to mind - I don't know how relevant it is, though, so please don't judge it strictly. Modern "AI" (LLM-based) systems are somewhat similar to the humans in this story who were taped. They may have a lot of knowledge, ev…
What concerns me is that learning depth is more discouraged than ever. For a long time it's been discouraged, which is natural as we have a preference for simple things rather than difficult/complex things. But we're pushing much harder than ever before. From the way we have influencer education videos to the way people push LLMs ("you can just vibe code, no thinking required"). We've advanced enough that it's easy t…
It is from my observation that more and more companies, even FAANG, not only encourage fast iteration with LLM tools, but discourage true study and thinking through. The later is inevitably slow, which is not favourable for today’s fast iteration world. This makes me think that it is so important to get into the right team, otherwise one runs the risk of not properly thinking and experimenting again.
I am sort of questioning my use of LLMs again after, first reluctantly, starting to use them multiple times a day. This story seems like it was intended to be an allegory for LLM-use though I know it couldn't have been.
I think using LLM or even vibe coding is fine for things you are not absolutely interested in but have to do it anyway.