dgfitz

What’s the saying, software projects are never finished, only abandoned.

Cabinets are finished.

> The more complicated and/or complex things become, the less likely it is that a human can act as a reliable judge. At some point no human can.

Give me an example, please. I can't come up with something that started simple and became too complex for humans to "judge". I am quite curious.

> Consider this thought exercise: if we were to ever do an upload of a human mind, and it was executing on silicon, would they not be experiencing feelings because their thoughts are provably a deterministic calculation?

You just said “consider this impossibility” as if there is any possibility of it happening. You might as well have said “consider traveling faster than the speed of light” which sure, fun to think about.

We don’t even know how most of the human brain even works. We throw pills at people to change their mental state in hopes that they become “less X” or “more Y” with a whole list of caveats like “if taking pill reduce X makes you _more_ X, stop taking it” because we have no idea what we’re doing. Pretending we can use statistical models to create a model that is capable of truly unique thought… stop drinking the kool-aid. Stop making LLMs something they’re not. Appreciate them for what they are, a neat tool. A really neat tool, even.

This is not a valid thought experiment. Your entire point hinges on “I don’t believe in souls” which is fine, no problem there, but it does not a valid point make.

> I don’t know (yet) where this change happens. This rules out this option for the time being.

This is the actual problem. I have used yocto for close to a decade. This conclusion is wrong, the fix is right there. The rest of the article is superfluous.

Their solution works, and I’ve resorted to things like that before, but it is not “the most correctestest way” because, in my experience if you need to use sed in a recipe you’re way off the reservation and there is usually a “better” way.

I hate to say it, but doesn’t every VC do exactly this? “ orient toward the unfolding of possibility in others” is in no way a unique thought.

Hell, my spouse said something extremely similar to this to me the other day. “I didn’t just see you, I saw who you could be, and I was right” or something like that.

Sure thing.

I read this site a lot, I don’t see this said often, at all.

Got links? 50 or so would prove your point.

As do I.

Because I’m a cynical person, I view LLMs like I’ve viewed rust for years: a neat tool that makes a small subset of people happy and a touch more productive.

The evangelical defense of either topic is very off-putting, to say the least.

@infogulch really nailed it with the comment about how the rust community wants influence/power, and ignores the responsibility that comes with said influence/power.

> And for the record: fuck cryptocurrencies. All of them. So much wasted hardware, all for nothing in the end.

I must be the only dummy that sees the parallels between crypto, NFTs, and LLMs…

The space I work in, which I don’t plan to leave, is hardware/software/embedded. I am hybrid, and sometimes I go in twice a month. When trying to integrate hardware into a system over a software interface (CAN, various serial, i2c, eth, etc) I am on-site daily.

Then integrating a whole subsystem into the actual product, same deal. I spend as much time holding a wrench or a meter as I do writing code.

This is very hard to outsource.

I skipped the whole webdev movement. Closest I got was using Wt (C++) to make an engineering interface for a system once, so non-engineers could actuate relays and devices.

I do think I’m better than most people at this. I don’t think it can be outsourced, and I am not concerned.

People can argue about the latest js framework or how amazing rust is for the next 15 years, at which point I plan on retiring.

This type of work is largely recession-proof and offshoring-proof.

If the Democratic Party can get their shit together, he will be a lame duck president in ~18 months.

Please note I am not planting a flag here, just making an observation.

I’ll never forget going on a business trip where the restrictions were in place on the way there and had dropped by the time of my return flight.

I was so mad.

I flew probably 30 times during covid restrictions, and as you say, it was absolute bliss. That return flight reminded me why flying was miserable before COVID restrictions and is miserable now.

No.

Generally, intelligence officers/employees (such as people who work at NSA) deploy to bases, or FOBs. I'm sure there are a handful of "NSA outposts" but this isn't generally how it works.

So no, no sources.

I never said it was impossible. Re-read it, and kindly stop putting words in my mouth. :)

Sure.

However, the status quo is that "AI" doesn't exist, computers only ever do exactly what they are programmed to do, and "thinking/reasoning" wasn't on the table.

I am not the one that needs to disprove the status quo.

>> LLMs don't think. At all.

>How can you so confidently proclaim that?

Do you know why they're called 'models' by chance?

They're statistical, weighted models. They use statistical weights to predict the next token.

They don't think. They don't reason. Math, weights, and turtles all the way down. Calling anything an LLM does "thinking" or "reasoning" is incorrect. Calling any of this "AI" is even worse.

There is an enormous difference between claiming an LLM can think or use statistics to generate a token. All of the difference.

> The point is that LLMs don't speak / think in English.

They don't think or speak anything at all. They use a statistical model to predict the next most likely token to display in response to a prompt.

If everything is a wrapper around something else, how can the description be a pejorative?

How so? They are wrappers, and it is niche.

Uh, who cares?

That is literally useless knowledge.

Statistical next-token predictors that aren’t even correct some of the time, and are currently crafted to pass tests, isn’t what I would consider revolutionary.

They’re neat tools. They help some people (a much, much smaller group of people than most think) be a bit more productive.

If LLMs are considered revolutionary, we are stagnating.

It seems like you would say: You should try to recalibrate your photon detector

To someone who asks for advice.

“I can’t understand these results! You should try to…”

The accent. The “stories”. The shallowness.

Should I keep going?

I can say with certainty I’ve never paid a penny. Have you?

Peppa pig is crap. Full stop.

As a male breast cancer survivor, when I dug into the actuals of the Susan g komen foundation, I realized how much of a fraud the whole thing was.

It’s awful. Non-profits in the US are generally just awful. It’s embarrassing.

Meta: why does c++ feel almost political on this forum?

Are you asking about supply and demand?