zogwarg

joined 2 years ago
[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Once we get AGI, we’ll turn the crank one more time—or two or three more times—and AI systems will become superhuman—vastly superhuman. They will become qualitatively smarter than you or I, much smarter, perhaps similar to how you or I are qualitatively smarter than an elementary schooler. “

Also this doesn't give enough credit to gradeschoolers. I certainly don't think I am much smarter (if at all) than when I was a kid. Don't these people remember being children? Do they think intelligence is limited to speaking fancy, and/or having the tools to solve specific problems? I'm not sure if it's me being the weird one, to me growing up is not about becoming smarter, it's more about gaining perspective, that is vital, but actual intelligence/personhood is a pre-requisite for perspective.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

From a brief glance at the CTMU it fits into:

  • not even wrong
  • not that deep
  • cloaked in really unecessary jargon

It's fascinating to see people re-invent the same bad eschatology, it's like there's crazed compulsive shaped hole in the heart of man or something.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 1 year ago

But he didn’t include punctuation! This must mean it’s a joke and that obviously he’s a cult leader. The funny hat (very patriarch like thing to have) thief should only count himself lucky that EY is too humble to send the inquisition after him.

Bless him, he didn’t even get angry.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

Sed Quis custodiet ipsos custodes = But who will control the controllers?

Which in a beautiful twist of irony is thought to be an interpolation in the texts of Juvenal (in manuscript speak, an insert added by later scribes)

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 10 points 1 year ago

Also according to my freelance interpreter parents:

Compared to other major tools, was also one of the few not too janky solutions for setting up simultaneous interpreting with a separate audio track for the interpreters output.

Other tools would require big kludges (separate meeting rooms, etc…), unlikely in to be working for all participants across organizations, or require clunky consecutive translation.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm afraid my thoughts on the matter aren't that deep or well informed ^^.

In no particular order:

  • I grew up in France, and my (probably biased) view, it tends a bit more towards teaching "Literary" subjects, including for engineering students. I think in general this does indeed develop literacy and critical thinking.
  • France has "Professors Documentalist" and we call our school libraries "Center for Documentation and Information" from middle school up, with a few (very) introductory courses on using Thesaurus, Bibliography and digital index cards tools (this may of become enshittified by the availability of google since my time there)
  • I have a small Lexicography hobby.
  • I have a small reading old sources hobby.
  • I think more "Traditional" digital search is still incredibly valuable
  • I think principles predating the digital age are still incredibly valuable
  • The way STEM fields are taught is often focused on "one correct answer", and i don't remember that much focus being put on where the sources come from, comparing differing sources, or even any emphasis on how can be certain a given source has been accurately transmitted to the present age in history.
  • I think information retrieval is a vital skill (especially with the enshitification of google) that all fields when benefit practitionners from being more comfortable with (though of course it's still its own job).
  • I think software engineers in particular, during their education, would be well served by practical examples of reconciling conflicting or uncertain sources, and I think history is a good lens (less abstract vs software).

I'd be interested in your perspective!

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you keep in the mind the original angst of the students “I have to learn how to use LLMs or I’ll get left behind” they themselves have a vocational understanding of their degree. And it is sensible to address those concerns practically (though as stated in another comment, I don’t believe in accepting the default use of generative tools).

On a more philosophical note I think STEM fields (and any really general well-rounded education) would benefit from delving (!) deeper in library science/archival science/philosophy and their application to history, and that coincidentally that would make a lot of people better at troubleshooting and legacy code untangling.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

The artlicle certainly feels blasé ^^, I think the most objectional part is:

Large language models shift even more of that time into investigation, because the moment the team gets a chance to build, they turn around and ask ChatGPT (or Copilot, or Devin, or Gemini) to do it. When we learn that we need to integrate with google cloud storage, or spaCy, or SQS Queue, or Firebase? Same thing: turn around and ask the LLM to draft the integration.

Now clearly (to me) the author isn't happy about this, but I think they are giving hope on the direction of the profession too soon. There are still plenty of people happy enough to implement things themselves.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wish it were always that easy, few things in legacy code maintenance brings me more joy than deleting a single line of code, the solution is sadly often more involved.

The reality is sometimes more like fighting a hydra spaghetti ball, where felling one bug, uncovers/spawns two more.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Unsigned integers are larger because… Because the containing variables don’t have a signature that crypto-statically constrains it to the lower set! (Yes that must be it)

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Was it not always moot to enlighten the meaning of the word. ^^

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Merriam-Webster also has a good page explaining the expression, and the predominance of the natural meaning: https://web.archive.org/web/20240522073251/https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/beg-the-question

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