531 karma · joined November 4, 2013
That he focused on things you consider "platitudes" may have more to do with the significance of these platitudes (primarily those having to do with "soft skills" ) than any more technical advise he may have given.
Unfortunately, the major problem is something you pointed out in your blog post:
> We must resist the temptation to anthropomorphize them.
The reality is that, we in meatspace simply cannot help but anthropomorphize them.
These language models regularly pass the Turing Test (admittedly for low bars).
They are surprisingly good at bypassing the Uncanny Valley to hit the sweet spot of persuading without legitimate justification, simply because they are so convincing in formulating sentences in a manner that a confident human would.
Yes, these tools have legitimate use cases (as you outlined in your blog).
But the vast majority of use cases will be those of confidante, of discourse partner, of golem brought to life without understanding what exactly has been brought to life.
That's really dangerous.
Where has this been all my life?
Reasonable price, great selection of periodicals and newspapers.
Definite value.
That is a much larger claim with a significantly greater burden of proof.
It has been an incredible privilege being able to spend quality time with the person I care for the most without the pressure to optimize what little precious time I have outside of work.
e.g., being able to have lunch together, or just taking a quick break to check in on each other's lives.
Would so much rather have this than sitting in a cubicle or forcibly socializing with people who are acquaintences at best (maybe the introvert in me speaking).
Yes, there are some folks who need the social interaction. There are also those who prefer quality interactions over quantity.
He asked about being able to work on greenfield projects focusing on AWS technologies.
I had to go into a historical context data dump on the value of addressing technical debt (the project she is being assigned to), and how that frees us up to work on the cool and shiny projects.
I think it landed, but I could see some of the fire slightly snuffed out of him.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but your tone lacks empathy. Fuck them, I got mine, those idiots deserve what they got for not being smart enough.
These are real people who lost real jobs, not just some cells in an excel sheet.
Yes, on both counts.
Optics matter, apparently enough so that we're talking about it right now.
Also, those aren't the only alternatives, but no matter how you spin it, what was done was not a good look.
Seems like a self-selection bias, possibly based on socio-economic factors that determine who you surround yourself with.
In my personal circles, I only know 1 person who uses iPhone, everyone else uses android.
Samba is a great example of how this is necessarily an imperfect model, and definitely not an optimal process:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=488089
Development as theory-building is intended as a metaphor to understand the impact of the collaborative mental model that is created as part of any complex system, and the losses incurred when this mechanism is not appreciated.
This reeks of all-or-nothing thinking, which itself reeks of deep insecurity (a very likely root condition of being disagreeable).
It's one thing to have differing thoughts and opinions. It's another thing to be "disagreeable", which is the personality trait of being difficult to work with, often for the sake of being contrarian or having an ego trip (i.e, proving that you are right to showcase your power and value relative to others).
As others have stated, disagreeing is orthogonal to being disagreeable. One can disagree via constructive dialogue and open communication; however, taking disagreeableness as an identifying personality trait (and moreover, holding it as valuable in-and-of-itself) is a slippery slope to the creation of toxic working relationships.
Apparently, WinME actually introduced at least one evolutionary improvement that stuck around, and wasn't a complete dead-end.
Why choose X over musk?
- X isn't erratic and unpredictable/capricious
- X has a solid track record of working with stakeholders and partners for win-win relationships
- X doesn't lead one to discuss enforcment of morality clauses in contracts
- X cares about best-practices for all stakeholders, including employees
I could go on.
At this point, almost ANYONE with a decent resume could be considered a better steward than musk
It's just a CYA statement, basically saying "oops, I meant to do that...", and leaving the door open to make more oopsies as intentional "experiments".
yeah, rhetorical question, but the issue here isn't necessarily adherence to local laws, but rather having some principled stance.
yeah, I'm hearing it, "principled stance"... one can dream
It seems like cherry-picking excuses to support Musk's leadership style rather than any justified basis. If the parent comment is correct, they just aren't as profitable as Wall Street would like (therefore they are not "profitable"). Saying that the firings are justified is then just moving the goalposts to support an a-priori conviction.
Additionally, it seems ironic that this is coming from proponents of the Silicon-Valley ethos of "screw profitability, we'll figure it out later"... an ethos that created Amazon and so many other tech titans. Yes, profitability matters, but only when your other forms of capital (e.g., social, political) have been depleted.
It's tragic that Musk is depleting whatever capital twitter had remaining on its current death march. Financially "profitable" or not, twitter did undeniably have social and political capital. Soon, it will have neither.
At home, I am within a few seconds from my wife (since she is working from home too), which allows for a significantly more rich social environment for myself and her, than having to be in the extended physical proximity of those in distant social tiers (e.g., loose ties, or "work friends").
I value the time I have been able to spend at home so much more than any social connections I may have made at the office; in fact, I focus on getting my stuff done even more quickly precisely so I can return to the quality time that I have to focus on those who truly matter to me.
I am no longer at the age where I care to go for a drink afterwards with work friends. For those of us who have richer social home lives than work lives, remote work is a godsend.
yes, please do
For all of Musk's proponents' claims that this is a boon for "free speech", such free speech is anathema to corporate interests, particularly advertisers and corporate partners (we only need to look at the recent Ye + Adidas bustup).
Thus, it will likely devolve into "Free Speech (TM)", the my-way-or-the-highway speech policing that we see in places like /r/conservative where any criticism of Musk's preferred views is silenced. Again, we only need to take his own history towards criticism to see what Musk with a bullhorn is likely to do.
And, thus, we can only hope that it becomes such a cesspool of hatred such as Parler and other so-called liberterian free-speech platforms that it becomes toxic for investors and users, save for those who relish the echo-chamber.
One can dream.
As others have commented on, the real issue is that, in order for someone to accrue that amount of money in the first place, there has to be such a systemic societal inequality in regards to access to resources that economic mobility is effectively a dream for a significant swath of the population.
People here talk about billionaires simply being rewarded for their effort/risk - a proposition that is simply laughable (so, unless you are promised riches beyond your wildest dreams, you won't invest in the economy and community? Seems to signify sociopathy more than anything).
And, yes, that is the implication: in order to have the propensity to accumulate that much money, far more than any one human would ever need to survive comfortably, you have to exhibit a significant amount of sociopathy and antipathy towards your fellow man; a willingness to usurp resources far beyond any natural need; if only because of some arbitrary internal itch.
Chouinard may be the exception that proves the rule -- a billionaire despite his intentions and efforts -- if only because the market happened to align with his convictions, rather than any intention to capitalize on any product for financial gain in and of itself. Even a broken market is right twice a day.
Can it?
In principle, sure, anything can happen.
In practice, given how it's not possible to pass any legislation without a filibuster-proof majority?
As others have commented in this and related threads, this is a win for industry precisely because congress CAN'T do anything in practice, given the reakpolitk of how congress actually "works" today.
I wish folks would stop saying "well, it should just go back to the spec, problem solved". This isn't code. This is the convoluted and complex world of political reality, where, unfortunately, might does often mean right. And more often than not, addressing the root cause isn't even possible, much less practical.
If anything, it's the current supreme court that is taking a binary view of legal interpretation and have "fixed the glitch". Glitches which in reality are patches which have been added organically over time to address changes to the underlying OS, new and unheard of use cases, changing specs and requirements, etc.
Unfortunately, a full rewrite often requires systemic overhall and reboot (something I would hope people are averse to doing in practice)
Just ordered a copy of the book "Showstopper"
The vast majority of threads are either regarding the interpretation of legal frameworks and their implications, or asserting a-priori values on start of life and following the rational implications thereof.
No-where do I see any discussions, or even caring about, how this affects women directly: the ability to govern their own bodies, their reproductive (and civil) rights. Or just the fact that they are de-jure 2nd-class citizens.
Pre-scheduling is ONE way of getting people in sync, but not the only way.
For me and my team, there is a LOT of ad-hoc communication, preferrably in public slack channels, which leads to extremely productive conversations.
Furthermore, these are SEARCHABLE, which is a godsend; if an issue comes up once, it's very likely to come up again.
And, of course, there are times when we just jump on a zoom call quickly to review something that may be quicker than a bunch of slack back-and-forth.
There has never been a time where I felt "damn, it would be easier if I were there in person". If anything, in-person communication has always been hampered by the very need for co-location (including arranging meeting rooms or whiteboard, etc), and it's always been difficult to view someone else's screen unless they connect to a projector or large TV, whereas zoom has made pair-and -group programming almost inevitable.
I understand the social side of people wanting to be co-located, but from a pure productivity perspective, my team has been significantly more productive since WFH.
WFH was instituted as an emergency response to COVID-19, thus it can't really be stated that employers forced WFH upon employees capriciously.
Enlightened employers can and have seen the value of hybrid policies that take employee preferences into account: those who prefer at-office can choose to come in, and those who prefer remote can choose WFH.
The disagreement is when an employer is unwilling to work with the employee to reach an understanding that benefits both mutually.
Taken from the other perspective, were a company to become entirely remote, then it could be seen to ruin the relationship for employees who had wanted to come into the office.
That is the case here: what is ruined is that no attempt has been made to reach a middle ground, whereby those who wish to remain at the office can do so, and those who prefer WFH can do so.
It is this reluctance to appreciate the learnings from our collective covid experience: that WFH is a significant boon to a large percentage of employees, and indeed is a competitive advantage, that has ruined an otherwise wonderful working relationship with an employer.
And thus, the only response is to look for employers who appreciate WFH as the competitive advantage it is.
Materialism, aka "physicalism", simply posits that all phenomena have an underlying physical basis, i.e., no "spooky" or magic stuff.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/
Quantum mechanics follows from physicalism by demonstrating that the physical nature of reality is incredibly complex and counterintuitive, particularly at quantum scales.
But that in no way implies that quantum mechanics leads to non-materialism or opens the door for materialism to be false. It simply becomes subsumed into materialism itself:
materialism requires that all phenomena be ultimately explainable via physical explanations, and those explanations must account for quantum-mechanical phenomena.
A significant portion of companies already accommodate hybrid work environments, whereby some meeting attendees are remote. This would be no different.
There may be legitimate cases where physical proximity is a key advantage for a specific team, but the current WFH situation has demonstrated that those cases have likely been exaggerated, as people are demonstrably productive (in the case of my company, results in record profits) while completely remote.