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rnd33

196 karma · joined October 26, 2013

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rnd33··on I'm becoming AI-blind
Isn't this a case of missing the trees for the forest though? The human brain is not an LLM, and an LLM is not intelligent in the same way as a human brain.

However, an LLM is a prediction machine, prediction IS at the very least one (or the most fundamental) element of intelligence. The brain most surely contains at least some kind of simulacrum of a prediction machine. How that prediction machine is used or wrapped is another matter.

If I said to you: "Blue blue blue, the color of my car is red", would you have absolute confidence in your prediction that my car is red? Or would the way I phrased that sentence make you slightly uncertain, and wonder if there's some miscommunication going on here?

rnd33··on I'm becoming AI-blind
Intelligence is compression, compression requires subtraction, and for some reason LLMs are not good at subtracting. To create a coherent model you kinda have to subtract correlations until only the essential parts are still there.

What I don't understand is why LLMs haven't been able to do this yet, if it's the harness or some orchestration layer above the LLM that is needed. Because fundamentally if you can identify correlations then it's just another small step to prioritize and remove lower value or irrelevant correlations.

I wonder if what's needed is to introduce subtraction tokens in some sense, and in post-training reward the model on that.

rnd33··on I'm becoming AI-blind
Completely agree. AI is very impressive in many ways but there is something deeply wrong that is hard to put into words. The output is probable but never true, if that makes sense.

I think this is also the mechanism behind why AI generated videos and images are so captivating at first. I remember when Midjourney first launched and it was hours and hours of a brain-melting "Wooooooow". But once you get used to it and start to identify the patterns the brain quickly labels most AI-generated content as blank space.

If the image or text wasn't created by a human, then there was no intent behind the content, there is no message or novel information conveyed, and it reads as noise.

rnd33··on Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?
I think the last one is by far the biggest reason for why this happens way less in humans. In every conversation, almost for every sentence, people gauge the response their words have on whoever is listening. If something didn't land as expected (frown, confusion, unpredicted response) you unconsciously adapt and try something slightly different.

It's immediately obvious by the fact that you're clearly using way different ways of speaking (tone, speed, vocabulary) when you're speaking with a friend, versus your parents, your colleagues, people you don't know, children, etc.

rnd33··on Understanding is the new bottleneck
Maybe, or maybe you are overly pattern matching on what you what to be true?

I don't think anyone would mind having a competent manager or PM in a standup, someone that is actually contributing towards finding solutions and ways to move forward.

rnd33··on As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
Isn't this only a transitionary problem though? Right now, during the transition there is no incentive for humans to write anything, it will get drowned in AI slop.

As time goes on, more and more people will recognize this problem and we'll develop new ways of measuring information quality and trustworthiness. Nothing about this problem is fundamental, it's just that we're in the middle of a very chaotic transition.

rnd33··on As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
The end goal though (in my understanding) has never been for an LLM to regurgitate knowledge it ingested during its training. The end goal is to use the patterns and correlations found in internet data to generate an emergent prediction and problem-solving machine.

Whether that's possible is something we'll discover, but no one is throwing billions on AI companies for the hope of them building a giant natural language queryable internet information repository.

rnd33··on As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
For well-scoped tasks I wouldn't say the code is bad, not brilliant for sure, but definitively good enough.

For a lot of problems "quick and good enough" is all that is required. I've used it a lot for managing my Home Assistant setup. Has saved me countless of hours.

In principle I could've done it myself, but I never would have, the time investment required to learn it wouldn't have been worth the value I get from it.

rnd33··on Please stop the AI confidence theater
Subsidized from a capex perspective maybe, but the profit margins for API-priced inference tokens are likely very high.

Also, a lot of people get stuck on the idea that the main use case of LLMs is to generate more production code. I don't see it like that at all anymore. It's just as useful or even more useful as a problem-solving partner, generating throw-away prototypes, conducting experiments, verifying assumptions against code and documentation, performing one-off UI or smoke testing.

rnd33··on Eat Real Food
A large part of the world population is poor, and they do not have the same level of health problems, nor are they similarly obese. Not purely diet related, but a huge part of it for sure.
rnd33··on Show HN: We priced basic needs in work hours (global ranking and CSVs)
The wage structure is very flat in my country, the average wage is only around 15% higher than the median. The median wage is very livable on. For essential or basic needs I would estimate you would only need ~70% of the median wage.

I appreciate that I could be biased, and my guesses could be off, but we're talking about almost a factor two here. If the numbers would be correct the average person does not even have enough money for the minimum essentials every month, which is extremely far from what I see and hear.

rnd33··on Show HN: We priced basic needs in work hours (global ranking and CSVs)
I don't understand this data at all. All of the rich Western European countries has over 200h required work per month, but I don't know of anyone in my country (high or low income) working more than roughly 40h per week.
rnd33··on Preliminary report into Air India crash released
There is no electronic lock as far as I know, as many people seem to assume. It's a mechanical notch that you have to physically pull the switch past to operate it. The lock failures described in the air worthiness directive was about this mechanical stop or notch not being installed.
rnd33··on Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake
That’s an interesting perspective, and it makes sense it works. Thankfulness is known to provide a lot of psychological benefits, such as greater appreciation of the thing you are thankful for.

Where it goes wrong though is if we take it too far and start connecting this to some non-existent deity, which in turn makes us construct an incorrect model of the world (such as if we’re not thankful for the food, then next year there will be a drought as a punishment).

I suppose codifying beneficial practices into religion or spiritual beliefs is just part of being human.

rnd33··on Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)
Same experience, putting everything related to tech (printers, programming, Wifi, email) into the "IT department", which is seen as a support service to the core business of banking, instead of seeing automation as business critical in reducing overhead and managing risk.

This is why fintech (although a very overused word by now) is such a breath of fresh air in the banking industry, and desperately needed.

rnd33··on Deutsche Bank's “dysfunctional” IT division (2018)
This is what I think a lot people don't understand when it comes to unruly IT systems in large organizations. Deutsche Bank does not have an IT or software engineering problem, they have a culture and corporate politics problem. Even if you have the world's best engineered systems, as soon as you have 30 different systems you'll have a giant mess, and the reason you have 30 different systems is because you have groups of people with different incentives not interested in using someone else's system.
rnd33··on A method to promote sleep in crying infants using the transport response [pdf]
That's a mind-boggling theory actually, that some general survival skills are encoded in the parent-child relationship. Basically you have to become a parent to level-up your survival skills.

I wouldn't put it past evolution to encode useful information wherever possible, but it would be hard to prove that theory.

rnd33··on A method to promote sleep in crying infants using the transport response [pdf]
I think it's more an indication of higher expectations in child-rearing. If you're struggling daily for survival and 7/10 of your children will die before age 6 I don't think can afford to spend hours every day experimenting which method will get your child to fall asleep without crying.
rnd33··on The layoffs at Klarna
Yes, if unions exist at the company (which they did at Klarna), a company is required by law to negotiate with ALL employee organisations present at the company. This is one of the reasons large companies adopt kollektivavtal, it allows them to only have to negotiate with one union for employment changes.

Source (Swedish law): https://lagen.nu/1976:580#P13S2

Google translated:

> If the employer is not bound by any collective agreement at all, the employer is obliged to negotiate in accordance with § 11 with all relevant employee organizations in matters relating to dismissal due to a lack of work [...]

rnd33··on Inflation, part 1: On shelter futures
On average over a longer period variable rates will always be lower, since the risk premium due to future rate uncertainty will be lower. If that period is a 100 years it won't help lenders much though.
rnd33··on Inflation, part 1: On shelter futures
It's the same case in Sweden, all new lenders have to be able to handle rates of 6-8%.
rnd33··on Can growth continue?
What a ridiculous article... everyone understands that exponential growth cannot continue forever. The bigger and more interesting question is what the life of an average human looks like when growth inevitable slows down, and how fast we can get there.

Because the assumption that we will grow our energy use indefinitely is flawed. Energy use has diminishing returns, eventually we'll run out of useful work we want to perform. At least in terms of material wealth and comfort.

There's probably also major opportunities for energy savings that extends this timeframe greatly. Incandescent -> LED lights have reduced energy consumption by a factor of 10. Technology improvements in just the last 5 years have halved the energy consumption of air conditioners.

rnd33··on Major Swedish supermarket chain hit by cyberattack
People are quite loyal to their grocery store. The shut down means all of their customers are forced to try out another grocery store, could hit them hard long-term.
rnd33··on Amazon plans to ‘return to an office-centric culture as our baseline’
This! Job-hunting is so ridiculously easy when everyone is working from home.
rnd33··on What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry
Dressing appropriately does not mean "dressing up". It means dressing slightly above what is generally accepted as the normal dress code for the role your interviewing for, and the culture of the company. This is what makes it so hard, if it was just about putting a suit on everyone could do it.

If you're completely unsure, just call the hiring manager and ask. "What's the dress code at company X?", "How do people in role X normally dress at your company?". No one will be mad at you for making an effort and trying fit into the culture.

rnd33··on Vitamin D, part 2: Shannon's story
As others have pointed out, it depends on time of year and where you live. Far north, e.g. Canada, the U.K, Scandinavia the sun won't give you any Vitamin D at all for roughly six months of the year.
rnd33··on Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash
How is there a lack of supply and not of demand right now? Most of China is already back to work, and we'll see lack of demand in the coming weeks/months when people isolate themselves and not going out buying things.
rnd33··on Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash
I'm not saying everyone is rational, I'm just saying there is no reliable way of predicting when the market has bottomed out.

DCA-ing on the way down means I will at least buy lower than a year ago. I have no way of knowing when we will bottom out, or if it will be -25%, -30% or -50% and beyond.

rnd33··on Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash
The problem is separating the great recessions from less dramatic recessions. Was 2008/2009 a once in a decade recession or once in a century recession? In a normal recession you'll never get Ford for $1, and most stocks will never feel that cheap.
rnd33··on Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash
Are all bear markets the same? If there's a clear signal when to start buying why isn't everyone doing it?

To me technical analysis of the stock market is the modern equivalent of a shaman predicting next year's harvest. It sounds very convincing but there's little scientific evidence that it can predict anything accurately.

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