I agree with everything this guy said and yet I still have a totally different take. Some of my friends and I started a book dedicated to reading books in the public domain (https://b00k.club). We began with Ancient Greece and it took as a few years but we're almost starting Rome. It's been slow but also incredibly thorough.
The thing is none of it has been difficult or even time consuming, and yet everything adds up as weeks turns into months which turn into years. Then suddenly we've looked back and realized that we've kind of read a lot of things, all primary sources, and we all have pretty educated opinions on these topics. Of course one could always go further, but that's hardly the point. We did this by doing one meeting a week.
The other thing is the result has been immensely positive for all of us--like, actually useful knowledge which we apply in our daily lives--and at least one of us is matriculating in the fall to study Ancient Greek. The total commitment has been a few hours spread throughout the week, but none of it ever really felt like work.
Basically, less focus on the number of books, reading with the idea in mind that you have to explain what you understood to other people (so, slowly), and just forgetting about goals and instead just enjoying the process. Little by little this all adds up, but the main benefit is the knowledge. You only really get that from working through the text, arguing, presenting theories... basically doing it in a social way. At the end of day, knowledge != data, and you really can't download what the book wants to tell you.
One can feel rage if something is intentional and annoying, unintentional but annoying, intentional and not annoying, unintentional and not annoying.
The first is justified. The second is understandable but a case of confusing it with the first. The last two also happen, and are not justified nor understandable.
Unfortunately there is currently an excess of the first case. I think people are arguing this is a problem. It probably causes the other 3 to happen more too.
I once had a manager who was extremely quiet and very good at winning arguments. They too would never argue. Instead they would present themselves in as supportive of a way as possible, and then just ask questions. There was never a point in the questioning where he would declare you made a mistake. Instead, he would just remain silent and maybe write something down. It was astonishing to watch. There was no counter to it. Maybe the clock, but he was persistent too, like Colombo.
Same. Coding by hand was really, really hard at first, I remember. Then one day it just clicked and it was like I could think so clearly in my head, without making mistakes, and write code that would have compiled by hand during an exam. We would just practice and work for it.
I don't want to be polemic, but I really miss those days.
I don't think the problem is that they used an LLM to write the article. It seems that the commenter takes issue with them using the LLM to get the data to analyze.
Haha I was there too. I remember he made thinking clearly seem so simple. What a humble man.
If I remember correctly, his talk was about how the world of science-the pure pursuit of truth-and the world of engineering-the practical application of solutions under constraints-had to learn from each other.
I think something that often isn't considered with affirmative action is the benefits that are conferred to the people who are not in a minority. In other words it is a genuinely useful thing to go to a university with a broad spectrum of people and ideas.
In a purely meritocratic sense, all other beings equal a university that provides a diverse faculty and student body will better educate its students than a university that doesn't, all other things remaining equal.
Hypocrisy? I said each side acts in their interest: NATO and Russia. My point was only to ask whose interest would readers on HN prefer prevail?
It's a simple question. Do we want to live in a world where Russia achieves their strategic goals or do we prefer to live in a world where NATO achieves their strategic goals?
NATO expansion doesn't happen illegally. It's completely voluntary. It's a defensive alliance meant as a deterrence. And countries in NATO all enjoy much higher standards of living than non-NATO countries. NATO countries all have laws to protect their citizens and they enjoy peace from invasion.
I get that Russia doesn't want that. But my point was so what? I never really denied that issue. Everybody is acting in their best interest. It's just that NATOs interests and values are also the same as my own.
There's no hypocrisy here. There's just a good and bad guy in this case. I don't see the problem here.
So what? Everyone acts in to further their interests. NATO expands because it's in NATO's interest to do so. Russia says that this expansion is not in Russia's interest. Why only say the Russian part and leave out the NATO part?
Furthermore, if having an interest in something gives the right to use military power to achieve that interest then the argument applies to everyone.
The point about foreign bases in Canada or Mexico gets repeated a lot online, but what is the ultimate point? The USA would not like it, but it's also not a political reality. On the other hand a NATO build out IS a political reality.
So I think rather than focusing purely on what one country wishes it's better to analyze things in terms of what the political realities are and which is better.
In that sense NATO is meant to be a deterrence. Russia doesn't like that. If you ask yourself whose vision of the future is better then the answer is clear. A world of where rule of law is the norm and invasions are deterred is preferable. There has been tremendous peace and prosperity in the EU because of NATO and people have just gotten used to it. They have taken for granted the cost and sacrifice that this peace came from.
However, simply saying that Russia has an interest in not having NATO on their border is almost tautological. Of course they don't want that, but so what. Peace only works if it's enforceable.
The AI/LLM movement is either utterly transformational or it’s not. By the former I mean there is no daylight between it and the latter.
If it’s not transformational then this is a bubble and the market will right itself soon after, e.g buying data centers for cheap. LLMs will then exist as a useful but limited tool that becomes profitable with the lower capex.
If it is transformational then we don’t have the societal structure to responsibly incorporate such a shift.
The conservative guess is it won’t be transformational, that the current applications of the tech are useful but not in a way that justifies the capex, and that some version of agents and chat bots will continue to be built out in the future but with a focus on efficiency. Smaller models that require less power to train and run inference that are ubiquitous. Eventually many will run on device.
I guess there’s also another version of the future that’s quasi-transformational. Instead of any massive breakthrough there’s a successful govt coup or regulatory capture. Perfectly functioning normal stuff is then replaced with LLM assisted or augmented versions everywhere. This version is like the emergence of the automobile in the sense that the car fundamentally altered city planning, where and how people live, but often at the expense of public transportation that in hindsight may have sorely been missed.
My friends and I have been doing a book club like this online for years, where we only read books in the public domain. It’s been an amazing experience and I think we look forward to it each week. https://b00k.club
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Interests: Books, Education, Open Source, Programming, Travel, Writing
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