We all stand on the shoulder of giants? Should every engineer rediscover the Turing machine and the Von Neumann architecture?

Of course not. But in this context the point was simply that it’s not exactly a fair comparison.

I’m reminded how hard it is to reply to a comment and assume that people will still interpret that in the same context as the existing discussion. Never mind.

Don’t get salty just because people aren't interested in your point. I for one, think it’s an entirely _fair_ comparison because culture is transitive. People are not ignoring the context of your point, they’re disagreeing with the utility of it.

If I best you in a 100m sprint people don’t look at our training budgets and say oh well it wasn’t a fair competition you’ve been sponsored by Nike and training for years with specialized equipment and I just took notes and trained on my own and beat you. It’s quite silly in any normal context.

If someone replies to your comment then I think it’s entirely fair that they take your point in the context in which it was intended. Otherwise, if they are not interested in the point then simply don’t reply to it.

No-one enjoys being taken out context.

But I do accept that given the hostility of replies I didn’t make my point very effectively. I think most simply took at it as an attack on DeepSeek (and yes, the comment was not very favourable to them).

In a nutshell, the original comment was that it’s surprising a small team like DeepSeek can compete with OpenAI. Another reply was more succinct than mine: that it’s not surprising since following is a lot easier than doing SOTA work. That’s especially true in a field where so much research is being shared.

Sure, it’s a point. Nobody would be where they are if not for the shoulders of those that came before. I think there are far more interesting points in the discussion.