I actually tend to keep my cards super concise. I treat Anki as a way to practice fundamentals, like memorizing certain formulas. Anytime I try to add conceptual stuff to cards I feel like I'm only memorizing one specialized version of the thing and it doesn't feel super useful.
I think of it like drills in a sport. If your practice is 100% drills, you'll be pretty bad. But drills give you an awesome foundation to do the really complex stuff intuitively.
My little brother is a beach lifeguard but in the last year he’s pumped out so many incredible projects. It feels like he’s been unleashed. Such a cool era!
I feel like this is a joke but honest answer: I worked ocean rescue for 4 years then lived with some tech folks in sf who were making literally 5-10x my salary.
What’s stopping me? Probably some combo of wanting to one day afford a home and a family without having to move to Memphis and the a sense that I’d get bored as a welder and therefore be a bad one.
I invest my wages to take advantage of compound interest. It’s kind of my only hope of having a family / owning a home / retiring. If stuff stops compounding, I’m fucked. Multiply by however many millions of people are on the same position.
I don’t necessarily think the theories are making any assumption about what is good (except for the “greed is good dicks”)but more acknowledging that this is how our system currently works and the first generation to step off this ride will have a horrible time.
Shot in the dark but my sense is that a lot of our economics presumes growth and, if we don’t get it, a lot of terrible stuff happens. I feel pretty confident that ai will eventually be a large driver of growth but I do worry about whether it'll come soon enough.
In your opinion where is the line on where LLMs are useful/harmful to learning?
In my school projects I've found them super useful for working with libraries. In the past it felt like the theory I learned was pretty low impact. 80% of my time was spent learning the quirks of a library. Now it feels like I can take theory and iterate over a ton of different solutions without having to worry about learning whatever library the professor requires. Basically I'm I feel like it lets me spend more time learning the thing I want to learn rather than all the busywork around it. Would be curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
I think you're right in that it has the shape but I think it's missing a pretty key piece. We still haven't been able to solve catastrophic forgetting, yet everything with a brain has. Basically LLMs seem good at approximating intelligence on a moment-to-moment basis, but feel quite far away when you chat with one over time.
Like at some level, yes, transformers are trying to emulate a human brain but the second you ask folks if they do a good job of it, I think most rationale people would say no.
> 1) This definition could actually be expanded (for example, with definitions from Mumford or Reuleaux). But still this definition cannot be applied directly to living organisms.
I think the point of the commentator above is that there are two extreme narratives that start each start with an uncontroversial assumption and then taking it to a pretty wild place. One narrative takes the assumption that brains are just matter so it should be possible to engineer consciousness and then argues that LLMs are conscious. The other takes the assumption that LLMs aren't conscious but then argues that because they aren't we won't ever be able to make anything conscious.
I don't actually think the commentator you responded to is arguing for either of these narratives and I thought it was a pretty useful way to look at some of these arguments.
I think a big part is that the hiring market for juniors feels apocalyptic rn. Jobs may be up in aggregate but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone’s feeling it equally.
Junior here. There are still a few of us who value books and documentation. It's a weird time though. Hard to feel confident that you're learning in the correct way.
Anyway, I've found that if you want to get a coworker into reading technical books, the best way is with a novel or three. I've had good success with The Martian. The Phoenix Project might work too. Slip them fun books until they've built a habit and then drop The Mythical Man Month on them. :)
My partner is an outdoor ed teacher at a no-screens school. I tried to teach her to code a few months back and it was hilarious. We started with "First download VS Code". We never made it to another step.
I had a similar experience showing her Skyrim. She never quite figured out how to walk and look at the same time. Made for an absolute berserker of a barbarian.
In any field, when you're surrounded by competent people, you'll begin to take that baseline competence for granted. I think especially so in ours due to virtual forums. I can work with my peers all day, go home, and talk with more online. It's enlightening to walk a curious outsider through your day (and probably also a great test of the systems you have in place).
I think there are authors where this definitely applies and I don’t think Steinbeck is one of them.
It feels analogous to complaining about how Michelangelo painted the Sistine chapel on the ceiling instead of on a canvas where we wouldn’t have to crane our necks to see it.