chaps

> Well, I did write out a couple of paragraphs about what I thought I learned.

> And further, because of the highly contrived nature of the game and it's uncanny closeness to the material world, it might be actually harmful: it encouraged me to pretend I am ethical when in fact it has brought me to do literally nothing with other people.

I think you're underselling the second paragraph here as not learning something! "what I thought I learned" includes this lesson.

> I'd trade your "enjoyment of video games" for "my parents' failures as 'professional' musicians" any day of the week.

My dad used to be a traveling musician before he joined the army for reasons he won't tell me until I'm older (he told me that in my 30s so hmmmm), so, I totally get this.

Anywho, great chat. I appreciate the heck out of your perspective.

Jam on!

TBH the "don't call yourself a programmer" part of this blog is the least interesting part of it. It's decent or awful advice depending on the person.

The more interesting part, to me, is the 15 year old recognition that programmers' jobs are to replace other workers. It's definitely not a new thought at all, but it's interesting to reflect on considering how the dynamics are starting to turn the other way around.

Saying this as someone who knows many programming languages... but I don't consider myself a programmer because that's too job-oriented. Like.. I write code for fun and "programming" isn't fun.. it's a living. This approach has let me follow multidisciplinary paths by framing my career away from the code-as-my-product mentality.

"Code was never the hard part" misses the point but so does this blog post. This blog post from 2011 is worth reading and really cuts into the middle of the dreads-of-programmer.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

  Don’t call yourself a programmer: “Programmer” sounds like “anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo.”  If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired.  You know Salesforce, widely perceived among engineers to be a Software as a Services company?  Their motto and sales point is “No Software”, which conveys to their actual customers “You know those programmers you have working on your internal systems?  If you used Salesforce, you could fire half of them and pocket part of the difference in your bonus.”  (There’s nothing wrong with this, by the way.  You’re in the business of unemploying people.  If you think that is unfair, go back to school and study something that doesn’t matter.)

I mean, ICE is already sidestepping transparency by delaying FOIA requests to the Nth degree. Have a look:

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/list/?page=1&per_page=100&agenc...

  In the same way that I have to think about how to respond and think about why you have a negative reaction to what I wrote, I also have to struggle with a reasonable way of communicating why I think you don't understand what I wrote.

I think the point that you're missing from my post is: I don't think anybody actually says that guitar hero is like playing a guitar so I'm confused about where this idea comes from (that people think practicing guitar hero will productively lead to being able to play that). I just don't understand where that seemingly rigid argument comes from because I've not met a single person who actually believes that.

The only people who are saying that way are people who have negative feelings towards the game in the context of music. To me, that's pretentiousness because it assumes the thoughts of the people who play the game. It reminds me of people talking shit about Chicago who've never been to Chicago.

But ultimately I think my point is that people are going to flail, but we shouldn't immediately assume that people don't get anything out of them. You seem to have an absolute position that it's all or nothing -- surely you don't actually think you've learned NOTHING from playing Fallout? Nothing about yourself? Nothing about game mechanics? There's much more to learn than what's "formally" presented and each person gets something different.

Like, I've been playing with cipher mechanisms with LLMs... and after getting frustrated with all that, I'm now learning how to draw so that I can make my own similar cryptographic puzzles. Wouldn't have gotten there if I hadn't stumbled blindly for a bit. So in the same way that you wouldn't invalidate my path towards music, I'd hope you wouldn't invalidate my path towards drawing. There's a middle point somewhere in between that you seem hesitant to intellectually venture towards.

No true musician got their start in Guitar Hero, eh?

I got my start in drumming from playing on Rockband. When I mentioned it to the folk that I bought my first e-kit, they rolled their eyes. Fine, whatever, I expect musicians to be pretentious.

But yanno what? I still learned a lot. The controller itself was midi-capable so I was able to hook it up to my kit and play the game while practicing my form and timing. Was it perfect? Fuck no; it sucked. But it guided me into recognizing that I wasn't as good as I wanted to be, which led to lessons and many many hours of practicing.

I owe a lot to rock band because it opened a world of play beyond the game itself.

Anecdata, friend. Two old friends became extraordinarily good at guitar hero and even won competitions. They're also some of the best guitar players I know. One of them is an extremely good drummer and can do improv piano like a beast. They'd both agree that guitar hero helped them play better.

What are your thoughts on games like Keyboard Hero?

Thanks!

Totally. But I just gave one example of the anti-camera activism from the UK at the time! There was a lot more than just this.

Is anyone actually arguing that it conveys creative skill though?

The paragraph in-question:

  Sure, it’s all gamified and fun and even addictive, but at the end of the day no outside, transferable skill accrues to the player. To do that, you have to set the controller down, pick up an actual guitar, and start another, entirely different journey. And perhaps some Guitar Hero player did or will, which is awesome. It means at some point they were not satisfied with pretending to play the guitar, following someone else’s rules and set-up. They still started, effectively, at zero. There was a whole new skill tree to be learned that had very little to do with the game, outside of the shape of the controller. 

I get the point, but I think it's not great. A lot of what's said here can also be said about cover bands or learning to play other peoples' music.

Not the argument you're looking for, but I've been playing drums for over ten years now because of Rock Band. Even used the sticks that came with it on my first e-kit. The game didn't teach me how to drum, but it taught me that I had a much deeper interest in playing drums than I'd ever imagined. That led into years and years of practice and I've actually become pretty good.

FWIW, CCTVs in the UK weren't exactly loved either: https://www.wired.com/2007/12/burning-british/

  "Motorists Against Detection, the vigilante anti-speed camera group have announced a summer of MADness which will see them target for destruction all speed cameras in the UK. It’s now going to be a period of zero tolerance against all speed cameras, said their campaigns director Capt Gatso. (((A remote descendant of General Ludd, I reckon.)))"

Great! Glad you were able to take off your rose tinted glasses, even for a moment. Peace.

I'm aware of what they're good at. I got claude 4.6 to run linux as a native postgres module inside linux inside postgres inside linux inside postgres on a mac. It was impressive then and it's still impressive. IOW, I really think you're misinterpreting my comments as significantly more inflammatory than I actually mean. And you seem to be taking it personally.

But what I'm interested in is in the edges of their failure modes because those failure modes prop up frequently in pernicious ways. For a similar reason that I want to understand the edges of my own intellectual failure modes by regularly challenging myself. This conversation is an example of that.

It seems like you're just not interested in discussing the edges and failure modes. You call that a "silly metric", I call it, "understanding your tools".

For those interested in FOIA lawsuits, there are many, many attorneys out there who'd love to take on a pro bono FOIA case. Lots of it is quite boiler plate and pushing back on arguments that the courts decided on years prior.

Because I find what you have to say interesting. Sorry about that, I'll try to consider you less interesting.

What things have you tried that didn't go well? At this point, that's more interesting.

If you want to have a whack at a hard problem, have a try at the cryptographic puzzle in Noita if you want to see the silly failure modes of these systems. Lots of people have tried to solve it with AI and nothing's budged. If you can solve it, great.

My point is just that you're talking past people and being an asshole in the process. Not everything is about winning an argument. Lower your temperature and you'll have more productive discussions that revolve around disagreements.

Cheers.

If that's what you got from it, then I hope you have a good life.

Be kinder, friend.

"you should probably get your eyes checked."

Don't be a jerk. A lot of people have had bad experiences with these systems from people basically saying exactly what you're saying. This "you should get your eyes checked" mentality is pervasive with the nerds who confidently say that their analysis is solid when it's... not. It's a big problem in communities that have non-conventional videogame puzzles for example. Someone will come in, announce some novel solution.... leading to a four hour fight about the efficacy of LLMs, only to find a mistake in their code the next day.. never to be seen again.

Mind you, I'm not saying that these systems aren't great at reverse engineering and whatnot. They're spectacularly good at that. But RE is a relatively constrained problem because everything is still right in front of you. For complicated problems where the signal is mixed between noise... less so.

We can, yes. But then everything looks weird. :)

Neat but still hard for me (red/green) to differentiate colors between some. The Merge + Tubulin one in particular.

What would you change to make public defense more adequate?

Do you think the courts are independent?

Followup question:

Do you think public defenders are given adequate funding to ensure they can give proper defense to their clients?

From: https://lobste.rs/s/qj60m9/trmnl_e_ink_dashboard_stay_focuse...

https://archive.is/JWBUj#selection-438.0-438.1

https://archive.is/3C5tR

https://d5w6z860qaqqa0.archive.is/3Nu1c/35466b298ffa7adf3e80...

https://archive.is/F3Jlf

"this is wrong, but women deserve it. for years you've let men chop their d*cks off and pretend to be you. you celebrated it. now it's time to pay the piper, which means never winning a sport again. enjoy"

My comment about "lies" was NOT, I repeat, NOT about the robustness of current LLMs. Please reread my post and... please.. do well to yourself.

You're, almost like clockwork, responding to the wrong thing. Not contesting what's been made or what hasn't or what's possible or what's not. That's not the issue I'm bringing up.

Just -- do well for yourself. Deflection aint it.

Respectfully, a lot of what you're saying in this thread sounds a lot like the lies that gamblers tell themselves. Saying this as someone with a strong tendency towards addictions.

Some of these things are only possible to really see in hindsight. Yes, you've been working on these things for a while, but these systems are notably different in their capacity and strings they pull on us.

Be well, please.

Just tried to open stack overflow and was told their site was under maintenance. When I refreshed, it blocked my IP for refreshing too many times. I expect better from SO.