pegasus

> Have you been in nature recently? We've evolved to deal with very busy pictures and parse relevant information from them.

Have you ever played "spot the bird in the forest"? Let's not turn our interfaces into that. OTOH, I do grant that there are personal preferences in play as well. There is, for example, the phenomenon of Japanese web design previously discussed here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122789

> New UIs often don't have relevant information

That information is usually implicit. You're supposed to know that a scrollbar will materialize once you've moved the pointer to just left of the right edge of the bounding box. We've interacted with these elements enough to be able to not be confused just because that particular element is not always in my face. Same for 3D buttons, a well-designed interface doesn't need such heavy cueing. A "Send" button shouldn't need any more than the semantics of the word already implies to make it clear it's clickable. Unless one wants to start clicking buttons before reading (and understanding!) the text. It's the UX inconsistencies, design flaws and general bugginess I've already highlighted in my comment that are making this more painful than it needs to be. Though it's not scrollbars that frustrate me on latest macOS, that part works comparatively well as far as I'm concerned.

Do you sincerely believe Dario wants Fable to be restricted to US citizens only?

> I honestly don’t get why anyone would give up their mental health like that and work for such places.

Mostly for money, of course. And all the attendant improvements that can bring to one's life. Some people need it more than others, e.g. a H1B worker who is attempting to pull a whole family out of poverty.

I bet many go in thinking they will do it temporarily, until they pay their college debt, to give one example. But money is very addictive.

> Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen.

I would say information density was too high. All those always-on indicators: 3D scrollbars, buttons, etc. create a very busy picture. Today's interfaces are much cleaner which comes at a price of less information and hence, more ambiguity, but I for would rather pay that price than go back.

One problem I see is that while the UI itself has been simplified, incidental complexity has crept in other ways. Most importantly, the OSes themselves as software systems have clearly grown ponderous and unwieldy so that today they are more bugs and more of those bugs can be subtle and surprising. Also, there is less uniformity in UX across apps (and UI frameworks).

Space to fire would be my preference as well.

And not just that, these networks are becoming a conduit for all kind of disturbed people to invade the privacy of kids and pollute their world, sometimes convincing them to harm themselves, including suicide. Let's face it, as the internet has become more and more accessible to just about anybody, needing to police the space was bound to become inevitable.

All I got is a "loading" animation. Gave up after 10 seconds. So, not a counterargument, but a confirmation of the article's thesis.

I don't believe agents care less about architecture than us. Badly architected code has the same effect on them as on us, namely to slow them down and degrade the quality of their output. Which translates to the same thing as well, loss of revenue.

Coding agents are driving up the value of architectural skills to the detriment of more specialized/technical skills.

Unless all those people are transfixed into their own isolated, smartphone-mediated experience, as they are likely to be these days, then it's arguably "liminal" again. I.e. a lonely, deserted and uncanny place.

A Nina Simone song comes to mind: everyone's gone... to the moon...

Sure it does. To a point, as all things. One could always have more, but it is what it is.

Sure, by your definition they totally are conscious simply because at one point in the past they fooled one person that they might be so (and so is the OG chat agent, ELIZA). But no one else will accept such a definition.

And if you read my comment above carefully, I point out at least one way you could tell whether an agent has an I or just pretending to – by tracking their energy expenditure/reaction times. But they would give themselves in other ways as well. Pretending can only fool one short-term.

I'm not going to discuss the quote since @sp1nningaway already pointed out it doesn't say what you say it does.

There's definitely a sizable contingent of people who desperately want to believe consciousness is just electrical impulses in our brain. Because "what else could it be"? The fact is that we just don't know, and "abiding in the not-knowing" is for many the most uncomfortable thing ever. Especially for the curious- and rational-minded people this forum tends to attract. I'm one of them, too.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I notice that people are missing the core argument of this article completely. That core, summarized below, seems very hard to dismiss to me. This argument has been presented before, but there seems to be something about it that makes it very hard for people to grasp.

Here's how I would summarize crux of the argument: LLMs (specifically) are, by construction, chameleons. More precisely, role-playing machines. When compelled to have a conversation as "themselves", all they do is take on the role of "themselves", as inferred from the training data plus the text of the conversation so far, just like they do for any other role. This is fundamentally different than we humans. When we have a (normal, non-roleplaying) conversation, we don't put aside whatever role we might have been acting out before and instead take on the role of "ourselves" and act from this new perspective. Acting as ourselves is a completely different way of interacting than any play-acting we might do for example as an actor in a play, or when trying to predict the future behaviour of a third-party. Even in terms of energy expenditure, acting as ourselves is much less strenuous than trying to simulate someone else's perspective.

IOW, we have an inherent perspective, an I like an inner eye which looks at all things with a certain slant or tendency. LLMs don't. There's no I inside them, instead they can take, and in a sense are, all Is possible.

What? Where are you seeing such claims? I.e. that only humans can be conscious, that AI in general is not conscious by definition?? Seems to me you've put up an easy-to-dismiss strawman.

Here's how I would summarize crux of the argument: LLMs (specifically) are, by construction, chameleons. More precisely, role-playing machines. When compelled to have a conversation as "themselves", all they do is take on the role of "themselves", as inferred from the training data plus the text of the conversation so far, just like they do for any other role. This is fundamentally different than we humans. When we have a (normal, non-roleplaying) conversation, we don't put aside whatever role we might have been acting out before and instead take on the role of "ourselves" and act from this new perspective. Acting as ourselves is a completely different way of interacting than any play-acting we might do for example as an actor in a play, or when trying to predict the future behaviour of a third-party. Even in terms of energy expenditure, acting as ourselves is much less strenuous than trying to simulate someone else's perspective.

IOW, we have an inherent perspective, an I like an inner eye which looks at all things with a certain slant or tendency. LLMs don't. There's no I inside them, instead they can take, and in a sense are, all Is possible.

No greed whatsoever? Unlikely. But less? Possibly, why not? There's no reason to believe greed cannot fluctuate across societies. Quite the opposite, I'd expect fluctuations along any given dimension by default.

Yes, they are exaggerations, similar things have been said about the Minoans. It's still true AFAIK that these societies were much less militaristic than the ones that followed them.

You've just reiterated the exact same points you made in the comment I replied to. Consider that it might be you who is getting hung up* on the "Trump" name, which, in common discourse, can, and usually does function as a signifier not just for the man himself but for the Trumpist political attitude and movement, and even more generally, the quasi-fascist/quasi-monarchist regressive politically infantile post-truth nationalist/authoritarian-revival movements which we are witnessing world-wide. Declaring that this phenomenon is "at the bottom of Europe's list of problems" might sound like surprising and important, but it's just plain false.

As for Europe being "asleep", who isn't? I would say the US is just as much (if not more) asleep, wondering unwittingly into a techno-dystopian future. Or look at how they have been whiplashed by China's rise (which has their own big problems too). Not to mention the more recent disastrous reputational decline on the world scene. Of course, that wouldn't happen if Americans would recognize these dangers and not imagine themselves self-importantly as singularly awake at the wheel of international politics and economics while the car is heading head-long into the proverbial ditch.

*I assume that this is what you mean by "over-indexing" – I'm not feeling like digging around for the origin and exact meaning of this phrase, which is definitely not common English.

He said exactly why: because Trump's policies are unpredictable. Before that, there was no problem, really. Of course, it's a political movement and Trump is much a symptom as a disease, but you're saying we should thank him for bringing about this unpredictability — because now we can see that unpredictability is possible? There's something seriously loopy about that argument. It's like asking one to thank the burglars because they woke them from their peaceful slumber of safety...

Sure, and that's laudable, both for Canada and for your family. But most other countries don't have such a professional certification program, and since a ton of brilliant creators of software never had one, should we declare them fake engineers? People like John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Richard Hipp, Linus Torvalds... I think ultimately results speak for themselves. Surely there are plenty of middling licensed Canadian software engineers as well. Let's not police language like this.

Godspeed!

By "franksystems" do you mean those cathedrals which will outlast most buildings we're putting up today? We could go even farther back in history: how about the Pantheon, still the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever made?

So unless you're licensed in Canada, you're not an engineer? That's a very silly notion...

Is this so unusual for Ferrari and do we need to blame it on Jony Ive? Ferrari's been selling an SUV since 2024, after all...

People use Replit to build websites too, and some of them might scratch enough of a need to make money this way. So what? Is this what I should be mightily impressed with? That some random dude vibe coded some slopware which he was able to convince some random others to pay him for? I'm personally more interested and impressed by brilliant technical achievements, even if less monetizable, than some hustle or another in some industry niche which only ever attracted the interest of two legacy players. This is Hacker News, not Hustler News after all.

Possibly yes when it comes to air pressure, but the learning curve will be steeper. But not when it comes to the generated vibrations, and my bet is the latter are more important.

What are these "others" shipping, slopware? Agents are not a "magical software factory", they are a tool with a lot of limitations, but which can speed up development in a sustainable way, when used wisely. And that includes configuring it in a way that complements the other tools in our toolkit.

Everyone's waking up to this simple truth: vibe coding like there's not tomorrow accumulates conceptual and technical debt at a unsustainable rate. Then when the "magical factory" gets mired in its own mess, it's back to the drawing board. This is the also what the makers of pi have discovered, if you listen to their talks about how pi came about. I don't believe there are any justification for the assumptions you make about their approach, nor am I seeing you presenting any either. As it is, you take just feels peevish and unfair, to be honest.

Why would taking the more open, minimalist, configurable and ultimately diligent route means you won't be working on anything else?? Not to mention that pi has other advantages over Claude and Codex, read up on it. Also, improvements to the agent itself will pay more dividends the earlier they are applied. The tone of this message is waaaay off.

Use a box didgeridoo instead, it's much quiter than a full-size one.

Try bamboo straws, they work very well and are as green as it gets.

Circular breathing is easiest to accomplish on the didgeridoo. This is because of several reasons: optimal back-pressure (hits the sweet spot between lack of resistance on a flute and too much of it on an oboe, for example), loose embouchure (relaxed lips make it easier to puff up the cheeks) and single drone focus (no distracting fingerings required).

I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect (probably stronger) to humming, which is known to dramatically (15-20x) increase the release of beneficial nitrous oxide in the nasal passages.