euvin

Can someone help me understand the first footnote?

>[1] These examples show why it's a mistake to assume that economic inequality must be evidence of some kind of brokenness or unfairness. It's obvious that different people have different interests, and that some interests yield far more money than others, so how can it not be obvious that some people will end up much richer than others? In a world where some people like to write enterprise software and others like to make studio pottery, economic inequality is the natural outcome.

Yes, clearly different passions lead to different industries which mean different economic outcomes.

But when people talk about "fairness", it usually means quality of life right? The ability to afford good healthcare, high quality food, housing, security, providing for a family, social opportunities. How are we defining fairness?

I have no idea of how to solve this or create the perfect utopia, btw. I'm just confused on the point of the footnote.

Yeah, I had a similar sentiment as I read the last sentence: "You're not the best at everything, and you don't have to be."

It really does get harder to internalize this when it starts to involve real, tangible outcomes like money and job security. No one would reasonably argue that what she said wasn't true on some spiritual or personal level, but it feels like a nothing-burger when people are clearly in a competitive environment, a competitive program, a competitive job, etc.

These tactics of slapping numbers and quantifiable metrics on resume bullet points really do remind me of the formulaic clickbait tactics on social media. Once everyone starts to do it, it leaves the same film of tacky bullshit everywhere. It's beyond actual merit and accuracy at this point.

One time, I sent in a question to a panel of anonymous recruiters asking if they could tell that a quantitative number in someone's resume bullet points was bullshit, and if they even cared.

The only responses I got out of that were "generally we can tell if you're embellishing, and the hiring manager can probably tell, so don't lie!" without much further deliberation.

I was hoping that the anonymity would grant them the ability to say the quiet part out loud, but I guess I shouldn't have expected much.

I largely agree with this article, though I think the point about being aware of your own choice nodes is really important here.

> Learn how to identify the moments when your mind is readily responding to your will.

In my personal experience, these awareness moments tend to occur in small and inconsistent bubbles of time. Even though the article says the choices occur when I launch Civilization or not, that act of launching can also be pretty automatic for me. Additionally, we can't entirely disconnect ourselves from these vices -- like uninstalling a game or blocking a website -- without significant mental resistance that ends up bringing back the vice.

So how do we create more of those moments of choice?

A technique that I've heard of: whenever you find the mental opportunity, you simply try to be acutely aware of every action you take during the habit. You don't even have to stop the habit at all, you're just being hyper aware of every stimuli and every movement you take while doing it. The action of clicking the icon, clicking the play button, scrolling through menus, your posture.

I tried the above strategy to junk food. I tasted the saltiness and goodness of each chip, but I also tried to acutely focus of the emptiness and disgust after it, how temporary the senses all were. I genuinely think that repeatedly practicing the above allowed me to significantly decrease my consumption, and I'd like to know if anyone else ever did the above and found success or not with it.

That does sound like an interesting idea. Upon further thought, I think that it would heavily depend on implementation.

In a bad case, I envision a ton of companies or institutions employing very strict & narrow situations to the point where they only accept a very homogenized personality. It could end up creating a stiff or worse culture than if they had naturally accumulated a diverse population, if that makes sense. Discrimination already exists, but would be made a lot easier, automated, and commonplace.

In a good case, extremely antisocial behavior (situations that are "softballs" or "hard to screw up for reasonable people") could be easily caught at scale and addressed an early age. Plus the cases you've listed, eliminating the need for special attention and mentorship from the limited people we meet irl.

I'm sure there are other horrible or amazing cases I'm missing.

So as all tools are, it would depend. Whether this will actually benefit more than harm will depend on the society you place it in, and I'm not sure I have that much faith in the corporate world.

The idea of testing an agent with annoying situations, like uncooperative people or vague responses, makes me wonder if, in the future, similar approaches might be tried on humans. People could be (unknowingly) subjected to automated "social benchmarks" with artificially designed situations, which I'm sure I don't have to explain how dystopian that is.

It would essentially be another form of a behavioral interview. I wonder if this exists already, in some form?

I'm speaking as a potentially ignorant layman here (in the US), but if you need a job for income then isn't that taking away a lot of avenues for entry career progression and way more competition for remaining roles?

I don't think reducing the need for human labor is inherently bad, but our current society seems to be heavily centered around finding work.

This is slightly off topic, but does anyone else think that the accompanying video is AI?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jOYX2pgTZk

When I came across their twitter post about this, I was a bit taken aback. I think it is AI, but I can't tell that easily. I've seen Dalton and Michael videos so the facial expressions and cadence are off, but maybe I'm just seeing things? Anyway, no judgement on the use of AI or anything, just wondering if I'm correct.

> Sometimes, I feel like our mental models can form outside of a context (e.g., a classroom setting), and we are tempted to "force" the context to mold to the existing mental model. The problem, as the author describes, is the context tends to be far more complex than your rudimentary mental model.

Right. A lot of common wisdom I hear seems to agree, like "professional work > university courses", "experience > reading theory", "iterative launches > the perfect launch", "just play/draw/code/practice more". The line about the context being smarter seems like an amalgamation of all of that, where direct experience with the "context" (the real world) yields a subconscious amount of depth you can't even imagine beforehand, much less with rigid external abstractions drilled into you.

I'm not sure what this talk about luck and privilege has much to do with the core ideas of the article, which I took to be:

* look critically at your life's successes and your interests, discern what to prioritize

* being aware of societal abstractions and what you're "supposed" to do in life affecting your choices

* that your current "vision" of a proper life might not be the actual best fit for you, precisely because of the above abstractions

I thought these were generally fair points, if not rephrasings of common wisdom like "iterate more" and "your first idea isn't perfect" and "be wary of preconceptions". If you're in a bad material situation, I'm not sure that everything here suddenly doesn't apply?

Not saying that the author isn't privileged, that the path to success wasn't made easier by being able to travel, rent, and buy a farm in the footnotes. But again, the advice seems to be pretty universally put no matter how big or small your steps are.

> I don't trust anyone in this industry who has never had a mentor. I would never work with anyone else in this industry who is themselves not already a part of an active community where they are valued and can make their own valued relationships/experiences.

I think I can understand where this statement comes from, and it's generally a good idea to stay away from those with bad track records and no signs of change. The wording does rub off wrong a bit because I think it's important to give unproven people a chance, especially if their circumstances have been very unkind to them. What would you count as a sufficiently active community or a qualified mentor?

Interesting perspective. I do agree that there are people out there who develop a distinct "taste", but I can't tell if this refers to a "style", an emergent property of multiple "habits", etc? I've always wondered how one develops their "taste".

Also, would you consider a subconscious habit "memory"? What's the difference between the two?

I think memorization gets a bad rep because you need to be acutely aware of what you're memorizing, like memorizing the sequence of an answer sheet instead of core concepts. But when done sufficiently rigorously, the foundations of memorization make room for higher-level critical thinking and reasoning.

Practice is an oft suggested solution to developing mastery, but I did like how the article framed it: creating subconscious heuristics and memory.

To be fair, I would totally have the same reaction if this project didn't have all the "satire" and "jokes" stamped on it, and if it was advertised for actual use in research papers. And while this project in particular is (relatively) harmless, it is pretty disgusting to see in real paper submissions.

Sure, I'm a bit tired of repetitive ChatGPT output too. But I'm really surprised at how vitriolic this reply is.

It's a student's side project, with the tagline "Your Source for Academic Satire", with a basic one-liner prompt textbox. No one's expecting this to disrupt the academic world or whatever. The author (a college student) doesn't advertise this to be "the world's most advanced academic scientific rigorous paper generator", of course it's going to hook into GPT for content.

You don't have to like the project or think it's interesting, but problems with ChatGPT output are already apparent and well-known so I'm not sure what your comment adds.

> They were close and had potential, but we also saw some gaps.

I would be really interested to hear more about the specific "gaps".

> After lots of discussion with my management chain, we decided not to extend the offer.

I wonder exactly what was said, given that this candidate was led on for months by this point and I presume the management knew about everything along the way. Also, was someone else hired, or did they just cancel the entire opening?

I understand some emotional pain about passing up a really nice candidate for an objectively unbeatable one (that's competition for you), but I only get the sense that it was a single person in the interview loop (who was then cancelled on): they were apparently hiring for just one extra manager position?

>It hit me. What if we use the ''custom audiences'' thingy, but just populate it with 299 deceased people and 1 person whom we really need to show this ad to?

What a sentence. And what an article, too: using the deceased as a marketing ploy, sending cryptic emails, AI + voice impersonation. I'm surprised they only got one cease and desist letter at the end. I wonder if this is the endgame of social mobility as more and more humans become replaced through automation: a competition for the attention of those at the top.

Where did you find your team, or all these small teams? I don't suppose it's through regular job boards, is it through more intimate channels like irl events, connections?

I thought you were making a joke about TikTok the social media app at first. I wonder how many other products were named TikTok.

>"What AI can offer is a space away from the friction of companionship and friendship," Turkle explained. "It offers the illusion of intimacy without the demands. And that is the particular challenge of this technology."

What I would be interested to see are bots that offer just the right amount of conflict, the right amount of demands, to prepare you for the real world.

Instead of offering an all-perfect being who never gets impatient with you, such AIs could hypothetically "train" a socially inept loner into engaging with real messy human relationships. At the flick of a switch, they could change from an infinitely patient teacher into a realistic simulation of a stranger, a manager, a lover.

I wonder what it would be like for a child to grow in such an environment, where they aren't coddled or abused: they are exposed to some highly-tailored balance of challenge and nurture, only achievable by an all-knowing, highly calculating entity (an AI).

I think it should be fairly standard expectation to be asked relevant questions to your expertise and not trivia. The interview seemed like a really low-signal interrogation where the folks that pass such an intense "psychological game" don't necessarily correlate to required expertise on the job.

I do agree that the spite aspect could have been reduced or removed. In fact, I couldn't really see the point the article makes: they had a bad interview, a 15 year gap, then they're building yet another search engine... to contest Google?

It would be great to have examples of such interviews so that I'm convinced it's not just another ChatGPT wrapper. Maybe one free mock interview?

I would think the answer is to peer into the applicant's thought process through conversation and decide if they're capable enough for the job, LLM or not.

Are you looking for specific criteria on how to judge junior applicants?

Agreed, I personally found it distracting. I'm not sure if each section was making a point similar to the corresponding movie plots.