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Willingham

410 karma · joined March 21, 2024

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Willingham··on Newgrounds.com – A community of games, music, and art
Don’t know what my childhood would have been like without the dress up Brittany spears game! https://web.archive.org/web/20050120091734/http://www.newgro...
Willingham··on ChatGPT and Codex Is Down
Agreed, no reported Cloudfare, Azure, or AWS outtages.
Willingham··on Sun Clock
Very well done, I made a similar tool a few months back. https://ethanwillingham.com/daylight-globe.html
Willingham··on Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds
I actually used hacker news to get off of social media 2 years ago. I consider it ‘medically assisted treatment’ like suboxone for heroin addicts.
Willingham··on The unlikely revival of nuclear batteries
It is my understanding that small nuclear batteries output very little energy, so little in fact that they are virtually useless for most applications where a classical battery would be used. The upside is that they can produce power for decades without ever ‘charging’ or in this case, replacing the isotopes. In other words, the use cases aren’t as exciting as one would expect.
Willingham··on We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness
Amazing how fast humanity forgets basic we’ll know spiritual facts of this universe such as “there are no free lunches” and “you reap what you sow”
Willingham··on Recovering from AI Addiction
AA specifically suggests to only come when all other measures have failed, and if you can do it without AA ‘our hats are off to you’ quote from their ‘big book’ which is their main piece of literature. I truly believe and have seen first hand hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on rehab and counseling and medications and therapy and only AA ever brought those individuals into true long term recovery. I don’t like the AA is forced by folks who haven’t already tried, or had the privilege to try ‘all other measures’.
Willingham··on Recovering from AI addiction
12 step programs disagree, to grow a flower you water it and give it sunlight and good soil(the 12 steps version of this: reversing selfishness and getting out and helping others) but you don’t actually grow the plant, the DNA, photosynthesis, electromagnetism, soil chemistry…even quantum forces(AKA a power greater than yourself) are ultimately the core of what grows the plant. Therefor when one gets sober and becomes generally content and happy in life when previously they were suicidal, AA suggests that the core of the work was done by a higher power, even though the individual was indeed responsible for watering their flower.
Willingham··on Recovering from AI addiction
It’s important to understand that all 12 step programs(all of which are based on AA) approach addiction as a spiritual disease, and the program offers a spiritual solution. 12 step programs also teach that addiction is a progressive disease, and there is no permanent ‘fix’, but rather a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of one’s spiritual condition. Here is a concise summarization of the 12 step design for living: ‘reverse selfishness, get out and help others’. According to 12 step programs, if you stop working the program, addiction will come back in full force.
Willingham··on I deleted my second brain
I took some blurbs from your comment and added it to my…life/career notes. (:
Willingham··on Kid gamers to adult gamblers? Investigation of childhood gaming and YA gambling
Likely correlation and not causation, Gambling addiction is just like any other addiction, and no one has answered the question of ‘why’ one becomes an addict. Most likely the causation is more closely related to the upbringing of the child, and the genetics passed down from the parents.
Willingham··on Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a '70s artist who became a hero to 'garbage men'
https://archive.ph/dIQpU
Willingham··on AI: Accelerated Incompetence
> How often have you witnessed an LLM reduce the complexity of a piece of code?

I would add that AI often makes far too clever code as well, and would defer to Kernighan's law: “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”

Willingham··on What are people doing? Live-ish estimates based on global population dynamics
Your design of this page and your whole website is beautiful. How many years experience do you have with front end development?
Willingham··on Aurora launches commercial self-driving truck service in Texas
> She has not yet explained how Aurora is operating without a driver while still remaining in compliance with federal safety regulations.

Sounds like they require a vehicle to follow the trucks at this time, moreover, I can’t imagine that they can perform all maneuvers necessary for loading and unloading.

I do think all trucking should be automated eventually, truck driving really isn’t the best for mental health.

Willingham··on How long does it take to create a new habit? (2015)
For me, a habit is pretty well implanted into my life after 3 months, but only after 3 years do I feel insured that it will stick for life.
Willingham··on Five Nurses who work on the same floor at hospital have brain tumors
Wow this is a profoundly unsettling and truthful fact, thanks for sharing.
Willingham··on The blissful Zen of a good side project
-Written by human, not AI

Love that you added this to the footer on your website. Goodbye ‘organic’ and ‘non-GMO’ and hello ‘AI-Free’ XD

Willingham··on AI 2027
- October 2027 - 'The ability to automate most white-collar jobs'

I wonder which jobs would not be automated? Therapy? HR?

Willingham··on I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
Absolutely. On mobile, the letters are too thin, certainly less accessible for us folks with eyesight issues.
Willingham··on The reality of working in tech: We're not hired to write code (2023)
This article makes many valid points, but it’s important to remember 10%~ of devs are system developers(OS, compilers, firmware, database kernels etc.) For these jobs, the code itself often IS the core product. Correctness, stability, and compatibility come first, therefore the ‘out with the old and in with the new’ mentality is much less prevalent.
Willingham··on A Small Violin Part Highlights Bigger Problems for the Global Economy
I too am interested in learning more about the other side of the debate.

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion" --John Stuart Mill

Willingham··on Claim for a missing tooth
Absolutely love the work done here! Only change I would make is change "rubber" to "eraser" to help more English speaking children understand the content (:
Willingham··on C. Elegans: The worm that no computer scientist can crack
This project seems a bit funny to me. Cell level simulation is the current bottleneck of the project, why would we not start at the cellular level, and then move up to multicellular organisms? Of course this ultimately leads to the question, can we truly simulate anything if we can’t simulate at the quantum level?(at scale) It would be quite profound to find out that we can fully simulate complex life while abstracting the lower levels, if that were the case, maybe we don’t need them either! Good riddance to all those quantum conundrums (;
Willingham··on Nonprofit's Leader Convicted of Siphoning Off $240M in Federal Food Aid
That’s a good start! 199.75 billion more to go before we recapture the full amount stolen during the pandemic. I wonder if this is on the list for DOGE to audit? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/new-federal-estimate-fi...
Willingham··on Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wave Function?
I’ve always wondered, has there ever been a definitive experiment where one photon hits a slit and on the other side two photons come out, but then when you add a photon observer, it immediately only comes out on one side? Or has the proof always been mathematical rather than a live experiment?

Edit: Thank you all for the responses, it has been very educational. It appears I was misunderstanding the most important aspect of the double slit experiment. A photon is a wave function when unobserved, it literally goes through both slits and creates an interference pattern like how waves in water would. However, when observed at the slit, or at the detector screen, the wave function collapses and only one photon(billiard like particle) will be detected.

Willingham··on Honey Bunnies
This one is particularly mesmerizing https://mameson.com/experiment/glsl/young_5/young_5.html
Willingham··on Australian man survives 100 days with artificial heart
Looks like the device is powered by a battery carried by the patient that is connected through what is called a ‘driveline’ basically a wire coming out of your belly connecting to the heart. Really amazing stuff here, especially considering failure of the heart is THE most common cause of death in human beings. One day getting an artificial heart at an old age may be as common as a teenager getting braces. https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/monash,-bivacor-led-con...
Willingham··on It is as if you were on your phone
I love that it tells me when to scratch my ear. I am always confused about when I should be doing that. 11/10
Willingham··on Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects
This makes since, but I do like the idea presented before you, that humans are natural, and our evolution is natural, therefor the things that we make are natural too. But then where do you draw the line? If an alien drops a new element on earth, would this then be not ‘natural’? Or is it impossible for anything to not be natural?
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