ajju
I think it would be helpful if you explained how distillation works (as relevant to the conversations threads here) because I agree that this is a key point.
For instance, a software engineer who also understands how to design microprocessors would indeed in my own evaluation be a “better engineer” than me (someone who does not). Yet, I wonder if they would be meaningfully more productive than a good software engineer who “just” understands how microprocessors work..
The U.S. is either harming itself erratically, or systematically enforcing control on US based businesses in a way that is historically more synonymous with, say, China.
A lot of us worry it is the former. I wonder if it's better or worse if it is the latter. The US, having seen that Europe and the world seem to tolerate interference by CPC based on opinions expressed by Alibaba or Chinese car companies, may have decided that it's fair game.
It seems to be observably true that expressing opinions critical of the administration, even about one's own business, leads to further harm from government right now in the U.S. in a country which is supposed to have strong freedom of speech rights.
It's obviously unfortunate that this is the case.
It's also a shame that this is happening when the folks regulating AI have a tech industry background.
The administration seems to be clearly signaling "stop resisting". I am not sure how you read me as saying that.
I hope those who represent technology in government, especially the AI head David Sacks are giving this due consideration.
Thanks for sticking up for my humanity ;)
More broadly: any interpretive mismatch between components creates a failure surface. Sometimes it shows up as a bug, sometimes as an exploit primitive, sometimes as a testing blind spot. You see it everywhere — this paper, IDS vs OS, proxies vs backends, test vs prod, and now LLMs vs “guardrails.”
What’s interesting about the malware in this post is that it goes one step further: instead of exploiting mismatches, it corrupts the computation itself — so every system agrees on the same wrong answer. That’s arguably worse.
Fun HN moment: as I was about to post this, I noticed a reply from @tptacek himself. His 1998 paper with Newsham (IDS vs OS mismatches) was my first exposure to this idea — and in hindsight it nudged me toward infosec, the Atlanta scene, spam filtering (PG's bayesian stuff) and eventually YC.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~adrian/731-sp04/readings/Ptacek-N...
* Or gods' work if you are polytheistic, or $god's work with "god" as a variable for all other belief systems on the Unix shell ;)
“Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method of the teacher did not suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen monk, but he felt a need to find a vocational outlet for his philosophical inclinations. He entered Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, an Episcopal (Anglican) school in Evanston, Illinois, where he studied Christian scriptures, theology, and church history. He attempted to work out a blend of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a master's degree in theology in response to his thesis, which he published as a popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.
He later published Myth & Ritual in Christianity (1953), an eisegesis of traditional Roman Catholic doctrine and ritual in Buddhist terms. However, the pattern was set, in that Watts did not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that he decided were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing—no matter if they were found within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism.”
—- From the Wikipedia page.
A marriage certificate is not a 100% vaccine against what imho are the shared root causes of divorce and unhealthy home environments - like mutually incompatible or self-centered human beings (absence of love as a noun), lack of commitment (absence of love as a verb).
Even without marriage - partners with a shared world view do well if (a) both partners want happiness for the other as much as they want it for themselves and (b) both openly expect to be a good partners to each other for life, even as both partners inevitably change, grow, fall short, succeed, fail etc.
We don’t have to call (a) “love” and (b) “marriage”.
IMHO though, since we are very much imperfect animals and social animals, society having a shared expectation that couples strive for (a) and (b) also matters.
I would agree that it is the commitment that matters.
Where we may agree:
Social norms really do impact human behavior. Marriage is a social norm supporting long term commitment. In communities where it has been replaced with another social norm supporting commitment (eg my well-off friends in Europe), it has become less relevant.
I also posit that adults in committed coparenting relationships constitute a small minority of unmarried adults in America (vs. France for example where a majority of my friends with kids match your description).
Where we probably disagree:
In my observations of close friends in loving relationships with children, previously in loving marriages, are now divorced and in respectful and functional coparenting but not cohabitating relationships.
For a considerable amount of time, they are functionally single parents. In most cases parents and siblings of one ex-spouse are unlikely to want to support the other ex-spouse with in-person child support.
The bright exception to this rule seems to be divorced co-parents who live in close proximity or in one instance in the same duplex and are good friends.
In particular I wonder what he thinks would be best for his own kids. He seems to be, per wikipedia, married to a high-school friend (sweetheart?) for almost a decade with two kids.
While I do not think his personal actions have any bearing on the accuracy of his statistical critiques of the author, it does seem like his revealed preferences support the author’s points of view. I would be shocked if he believes the health of his marriage has no bearing on the overall wellbeing of his kids.
Regardless, I wish him and his wife a long and happy marriage, because I believe that would be the best outcome for both of them and their kids.
I worry too, especially about the weaknesses I share with one of my parents. Occasionally though, I find that my inward focus on my concern about a mistake I might make causes me to focus less on my kid or his concerns in an important moment. Since I learned this, I try to be present enough to react to life while it’s happening, instead of ricocheting painful memories while life is happening!
The good news is that loving parents who strive to continuously do better serve as a good example for their kids, even when they fail. Life is hard and full of failures. Even when you fail, and even if you fail frequently, showing your kid that you’ll keep striving to do better - now that may be the most valuable lesson of them all.
Pup has been eating fine, and continues to eat fine, including relatively hard stuff (no bones or bully sticks but softer dental chews). He does have an accumulation of plaque on said tooth which indicates he favors the other side, and despite the hard pitch, I doubt the vet is lying about a fracture.
The literature online is very equivocal about whether tooth removal is needed and says some fractured teeth are fine and don't cause pain.
Any advice / information sources you trust on how to triage this situation?
If you visited India after the first wave, most people masked, enforced by the police - as they should have. Soon after the 2nd wave (which was bad but resulted in near-endemicity(?)) - after vaccines where widely available and well accepted in India -and to this day, you will see a vast vast majority in India don't mask. A visible minority mask everywhere and are not looked down upon or derided because of it. There is no meaningful propaganda either way right now.
(tldr - in which I conclude that we agree on the goal but disagree on “which was easy to implement”, after thinking through my own educational / economical history at some length ;))
I benefited from:
* a nearly free and (luckily) high quality school education from kindergarten through 12th grade - most schools were not that great in my time, I lucked out (with parents who strived / persisted until they got me into the right one) * a nearly free but terrible education for my bachelors in engineering in India * a largely discounted and excellent post-graduate education in the US, paid for by my work as a research assistant, which I had to compete for, and that paid the equivalent of $375/month after taxes for working 20 hours a week with a full course load from which I paid my living expenses (in the early oughts - so i was poor :)), but came with a tuition waiver.
Here’s how it has led me to approach this subject:
* I definitely agree that the ideal of nearly free education for everyone that wants it is the right one for a richer society like America to strive for, but subject to some basic rules(eg maintain non-abysmal grades that reflect at least basic effort)
* Free just means someone else is paying for it - and that has its limits. In a free / subsidized college world, major states in India had (have?) so few engineering colleges that if you got less than 99%, you couldn’t study technology - at all! Barring a stroke of luck (family moving to another state where I at least got into a pretty bad engineering college) , I would have had to study economics instead of engineering.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/delhi-uni...
* Around the time of the article above (maybe a few years before) India started allowing private colleges to charge more. This has made education a lot more expensive in India on average, although I believe a similar number of “free seats” still exist, but the number of “seats” to study popular fields has gone up by on order of magnitude, and that has enabled a LOT more people to study what they want, but incomes have grown a lot too for white collar workers. For many (not all) fields, folks are able to take a loan and pay it back.
* If, for instance, the US government paid for just “degree granting post-secondary institutions” expenses, it would instantly become the #2 budget category just below social security and above health, medicare, “income security” and defense.
* It seems that 65% of US adults over 25 do not have a bachelors degree. It seems likely many of them will not support using their tax dollars to create a new #2 budget liability - despite the “chicken-or-egg” dynamic - that if the education was free, many of them would have a degree, and might support it.