soultrees

I can assure you that you have.

I can attest. A lot of people with ADHD will gravitate towards cannabis because of the focussing effect. Cannabis affects everyone different and some people need to sink into the couch after smoking, but myself I usually find myself going for a bike ride, working in excel, code, or cleaning, which is a big one.

That said, I have worked for one of the largest cannabis companies in the world (at the time) and I can say, some of the most productive people I know are all day, every day smokers. A lot of them should have been on some sort of adhd meds for sure but if the cannabis is working, and it keeps them off pharmaceuticals then what’s the harm? It really did change my perception of how some people operate while stoned.

All that said, it’s easy to use cannabis as a crutch, it’s definitely not healthy in other ways but there are worse things to be hooked on.

I have to laugh, because I literally just got back from a week in the forest. I have a spot I escape to that I charge my laptop every night and then in the mornings I can drive up and work from my laptop overlooking an old growth forest in bc. And I get more work done, feel the best about myself, and just overall feel the modern society stress way less.

It’s funny because I found myself feeling very isolated and lonely the last few few weeks and without even thinking my body just packed a bag and drove out to this spot. And I have to say, I feel a million times better if anyone out there is craving the same thing.

Maybe, but it sounds like you’re operating within pretty restricted walls. Sometimes there are better ways to do things that you haven’t thought of but it requires experimentation.

That would be like assuming every piece of code you’ve ever written compiled perfectly on every run. Do you hold yourself to the same standard? Or do you give yourself some leeway because you walk through it, talk through, think through it and then come to a solution?

Humans are just a collection of experiences that are using past data to make future assumptions. So yes, thank you Mr. Caveman because of your ingenuity of using a rock and a stick to create a hammer, we now have a full modern society built off the back of tools. But that seems ridiculous doesn’t it?

So at what point do we stop attributing the previous innovations that led to our current innovations? And why do we stop there? Would Mr. Caveman be the only special human to ever figure that out or could the argument be made that eventually someone else would have figured out how to make tools and therefore attribution is just pointless?

What I am trying to get at is, everything you do or create, is because of work the all of humanity has done. So pertaining to copyright, why should 1 single person claim an idea as solely theirs when that idea was not created in a vacuum.

I should also say, I am not discounting anyone’s work, but rather if the monetary reasons for creating became secondary, would the need for copyright even exist?

Yes deduced to it’s lowest form but there’s billions of inputs that go into your own training set to produce the outcome you’re at.

Along the way, you’ve experienced trauma which nudged you a direction, you’ve been inspired by other people which left an impression in your mind, you’ve had people teach you 1 skill and another person teach you a different skill, and you combined them, life experiences that changed your outlook etc.

It’s less about the specific teachers and more about every single person and event that has happened to you is your own ‘training set’. But sometimes we can definitely point to a specific event or person who influenced us to where we are at today and I like to think of that just like model weights in current LLMs.

I’m not denying those achievements of those individuals at all. But I am saying that those individuals didn’t invent or discover those ideas out of the blue. There was information gathered up until that point in their lives that allowed them to make those connections and form ideas from there. No idea exists in a vacuum, yes someone needs to be the first to do anything, but all knowledge is passed on.

We should test it and your ego at the same time. We might find some interesting results.

Find someone at the same level of competency as you, set a goal, that person gets access to any LLM they want, you have to do it with no assistance other than reading stack or googling. And if you think your ego can handle it, find someone who you know is below you in competency (but not junior) and set the same goal and see if they surpass your own productivity or progress.

We’d have to set up some controls but you see where I’m getting at. It would be an interesting experiment either way.

It’s all in how you use the tools. If you’re zero shotting and hoping for the best then yeah, not great. But that’s where your domain expertise is supposed to come in.

I don’t know how to answer this other than I’m not smart enough to know what the solution is. The ‘within reason’ is simply to appease any unknowns that I’m not accounting for when I say we should just open the flood gates.

What that looks like, who knows.

Everything you do or know is a derivative of your own training set. True original thoughts without context don’t exist, well at least in any way we can find out as every human is the product of their own training set.

Just out curiosity, what makes the code you write, more original than an LLMs who’s training set is way bigger than yours and likely will more variance in how to achieve same goal.

I’m not trying to be facetious but rather stoke the philosophical idea of the reality that humans aren’t as special and unique as we think we are.

This is less of a productivity risk than a legal risk. Nobody is denying that these tools enable productivity like we haven’t seen before, but google is afraid of outputting protected code while the courts haven’t fully decided the stance on things.

Imagine Google Bard outputs a piece of code for a major new feature, making them a shit ton of money. It’s then found out that code was actually taken copied, almost directly from average Joe’s hobby app, and now you’ve got a situation on your hands. Amazing for the average joe who’s expected to get a big pay day if the courts ruled in his favour but less so for the business owner.

Frankly, I can’t wait to see what happens when all copyright is out of the window. Obviously within reason, but wait until you see the innovation that comes about when the gates are open. The free-for-all of ideas is a fun time to live in that’s for sure.

Personally I was browsing Reddit for 1-3 hours a day from my phone (3rd party app) and the website. After this whole debacle, I haven’t been on once. This drama is exactly what I needed to step back and see that Reddit wasn’t actually providing me much value other than a place to scroll when I’m avoiding work or avoiding responsibilities.

I can’t remember the last time I felt like I learned something valuable there. It used to be id learn about a random subject from some random expert who had lots to say in a random subreddit. Now, even after continually pruning, all the stuff that comes up in my feed would be considered mental junk food. So seeing how the users are seen by the Reddit big wigs was just final nail in the coffin.

Someone once said to quit smoking you should imagine the CEO of the smoking company laughing at how dumb you are, and how you’re a sucker. The idea being that once you see the manipulation, it’s easier to see how you’ve been manipulated and therefore easier to break it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, imagine what spez is saying about you all right now.

What would you say the basis of all knowledge you know is? You are a collection of everything you have consumed and the stuff you create is all influenced by that.

Personally this whole llm debate about copyright is quite funny. As someone who very much has skin in the game(my art is trained on midjourney.), and who runs in a circle of artists, it’s interesting to see people’s ego’s come at play here. The ones who are excited about these as tools are the ones who are openly inspired and want to inspire however the ones who claim copyright infringement seem to come off as insecure, almost like they are afraid that this idea of theirs will be the last great idea they have. There’s already a separation happening in the art world of people who are exploding in creative output vs the people who are so defensive and cling to the old way of doing things.

If I had my way, I’d see copyright laws abolished completely. A complete free for all in innovation. And people who claim that without parents and copyright then there’s no incentive to make money seriously underestimate humans and their ego to continually innovate.

Did their algorithm account for a CEO with major foot in mouth syndrome?

The scariest part of that was people who weren’t necessarily in that group but agreed that the vaccine requirements were going too far so they donated to people who were willing to stand out, in a time when even questioning the office owners five got you called an anti-vaxxer, and got their accounts frozen.

I feel like that was the moment the government of Canada let their true colours show and it scared me.

That might catch unintended emails. Such as sub:‘Merry Christmas from the family’ text: hey HN user we’re updating our contact list and haven’t thought about you in a while! Hope to see you at the next reunion”

The worst is changing class names or hallucinating property names. I wasn’t sure if it was just my expectation or if indeed it has gotten worse so it’s good to see other people having the experience.

I have a theory that they made it worse on purpose, not to save money but instead to really train it’s reasoning and arguing skills because I spend so much time ‘fighting with a computer’ now.

What probably happened, is that you watched a video for 1 second too long, and the algorithm took that as a positive signal, and since the average amount of dudes probably spend longer than you, they assume they can increase your engagement through biology and your monkey brain alone.

I hate it too, don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of a nice pair of Tatas, but I don’t need them in my face all day. You have to actively steer your feed away from it by gaming the algorithm harder. If a Thot shows up in your feed, swipe away instantly. Don’t even stop for a second. Then when something comes in that isn’t a thot but engages you, smash that like button so hard the algorithm thinks you’ve got the shakes.

Yeah not cool here. Leave that for Reddit.

It’s not the home layout so much as the habits that data uncovers. Access to peoples homes is the holy grail and especially so in amazons case. Whereas the Alexa gives Amazon audio from inside, and ring gives them video and audio from outside, this would take things a step further. You have the obvious data like in and outs, bedtimes, house schedules (kitchen to living room, living room to bedroom, bedroom to bathroom trips) but it can also get more granular and even more so with LiDAR and image recognition. Imagine a vacuum that knows which brand of shoe you wear and size of feet you are, which can then identify if a new pair shoes up on its next scan (same size? Oh this person bought a new pair of shoes. Different size? Oh this person is potentially in a relationship now.)

These are all key data points which Amazon drools over.

Genuine question out of curiosity - what do you get out spending that much on a game? I’ve heard some whales spending 10-20k a week and that’s probably not even the highest. Do you get genuine enjoyment out of it or do you ever feel fleeced at all?

Probably not to be honest. Even Covid just made the industry bigger. Only issue is that crafty might be a bit bare ;)

There’s a suburb of Vancouver called Richmond that has been built on an old bog. There are building limits and other codes to deal with because of it but I heard recently that the ground in Richmond is actually becoming more stable of all the piles being driven into the ground from new condo developments and other infrastructure.

Let’s also not forget that 2-3 contracts exist and are pretty standard for most people with a phone. That’s years of lock-in on a post-paid customer.

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned factorio. Easily my favourite game and right up HN’s alley.

This is troubling because the future economy will be segregated to corporate walled gardens with each of them standing as gatekeepers to a falsely free economy, under the guise that it’s a private network.

Couple that with a % of every economic transaction that occurs within these walled gardens, these companies are amazing capital and gaining political influence at a faster rate.

It appears that you are putting your own feelings toward this headline and making large assumptions about the intent of the submitter or author. I read this article as a signal for how bad the drug problem is and not that COVID is unimportant. I live in Vancouver and anyone who lives here can attest that the scale of drug addiction in this city is on full display. COVID was a catalyst in this problem as the borders being closed, unemployment and isolation sent drug use skyrocketing.

As a consumer you will (are?) likely only involved in a few economic Microsystems. If you break it down, you probably spend a lot of your money through the same companies as it is, so it’s not a far fetch to think that each of these companies will use a main coin or have their own coin in the long run. This is only going to amplify as more of our payment systems are consolidated under big monolith corporations. So while you may be involved in some economic Microsystems, I will be involved in others. Each having their own currency needs and only having to go in an out of some main coin.

For example take Apple - you have the App Store , iTunes, app purchases, Apple Pay, the new Apple Card and more I probably forgetting. As time goes on, it’s not far fetched to assume that you might rarely leave the Apple economic ecosystem or even need to since everything you have is provided by one corporation. This applies to Amazon, Facebook (not as embedded as Amazon or Apple but has ambitions to get there), and more. So the idea of there being an Amazon coin or an Apple coin, once things mature in the cryptocurrency industry, is not totally out to lunch.

NFTs are interesting because they are a start of the conversation on the path of digital ownership and scarcity. As it stands now, this space is not even close to its final form and eventually the idea of digital ownership is not so far fetched.

As an example - say a famous artist decides to create 1 single sketch. I only create 1 item and sell it to you who now in turn owns that piece to do as you please whether it’s lease it out for commercial purposes, stash it away on a HD, launder money, etc etc. Sure it’s just pixels on a screen but the ownership of rights is what you are paying the artist for. (Now imagine the same scenario 10-20 years down the line when super VR is a thing and most of us spend more time in our digital lives than the real world). As the purchaser, you can now track the usage of your asset you’ve purchased through a blockchain.

So it makes sense, but the current state of small iterations of the same piece of artwork are akin to ikea pieces in real value and are completely just advantage of the current hype. There will be a correction at some point as things mature.

As someone who has hired creatives from around the world back in the day - I used to love the BTC option to settle any invoices. Back then it wasn’t as well known so it usually took a little explaining but anyone who accepted it received their payment within minutes. It was so much more preferable than dealing with banks internationally.