hypfer

It tries, but fails, as it lacks edge.

You cannot pull that off if you're mid, and mid is exactly what the statistical average of humanity is.

It will try though, and it will just be an asshole. Which, funnily enough, is exactly the same failure mode as mid humans trying on that costume fall into.

Yes, we seem to be talking past each other.

You do realize how academia works, right? Granted, it is often dysfunctional, but this ain't that.

Trying to find every single angle and option to break something is how we verify the truth of something.

If something is objectively true, it will survive the scrutiny. If it does not survive, it wasn't objectively true.

This is how science works. That ain't no flaw. It is a flaw to be offended by science doing science things.

Nah. Raining on parades is good, actually.

It forces people to actually learn and understand the tools they're wielding, so that they can withstand said rain with no issue.

The people getting washed away by it would be a threat to sanity at large otherwise.

I think what breaks people's minds is just how far one gets with probabilistic approaches.

Which is interesting, given that life itself is merely that. It's just that humans decided that that ain't good enough and invented something alien to nature - logic.

The situation would be improved by non-experts acknowledging that they are and not hyping stuff up on <social media thing here> though.

But that's the content economy I guess.

Just because something is human doesn't mean that it is good

The most difficult part of LLMs and agents seems to be - surprisingly - humans.

Specifically, humans and their dysfunctions. Their fragility. Their ego tied to stuff.

This is an excellent post/reflection on the topic of solo LLM use. The only gap I see is that it assumes that one works on something alone and not in a team. Though, that might be a different essay in itself.

I didn't know that the "left behind" rhetoric also extends to investing into their stock?

I guess it applies to everything. Universal. Like LLMs.

The point being made here I think is that the same can be expressed in natural english language that does not pretend to be a physics class for some reason.

That reason possibly being to grant legitimacy to an otherwise mostly illegitimate and equally mostly fictional branch of the economy (that whole MBA cluster).

I did say that, yes, but I also think that this should be flagged, because HN will otherwise run with the panic, 5 "rationalists" will show up and argue for 50 comments about how their LARP is certainly real, and, generally, the world will be worse off.

Which is not George's fault, but it is the fault of the uncaring machine that is people on the internet. George probably needs a hug and a friend that is grounded and sane. He definitely does not need more people fueling this fire.

(I do not know the guy. I'm just claiming this with fake authority)

Not sure if that helps you or makes it worse, but you can probably relatively safely assume that you personally have little (if at all) control over the future at large.

You do however have control over your personal future, your friend- and relationships, your neighbors and your local social circles.

Unless you're in the bay area I guess, in which case I am part sorry part full of schadenfreude. I am not confident that healthy local social relationships are possible there.

I would say that these quotes hold a lot of stuff one could explore after resolving the emotional undercurrents.

> AI that can play a whole society in hours can manufacture entire histories, years of archives of daily newspapers, and an Internet that never happened. The dead Internet theory is coming true before our eyes. Now I can still see the bots, soon I won’t be able to.

> A media landscape that is botted and microtargeted to all hell, nonsensical elections where the only thing people agree on is the names of candidates. Massive dumps of corporate slacks and intranets. (come on Russian kids, grab an abliterated AI and do a hacking!)

> The Internet era is over. Your life will never be the same. The chaos will come for the resistance as well as the fascists; it’s unclear who it will hurt more.

He definitely has the smarts to figure stuff out, yes.

It will just be necessary to separate the emotions from the reality to enable one to react properly and decisively against a threat that primarily attacks emotions, stories, etc.

LLMs are story engines. Stories are the exploit vector. Language is stories.

___

There are very real things wrapped in stories, but one can only truly tackle them by unwrapping first.

I think at this point it is safe to say that the whole bubble is having deep mental health problems - and I'm not saying that as some sort of covert insult trying to skirt around HN rules.

Which isn't to say that there is no substance worth exploring in George's post there, but it should be treated as a cry for help and not an assessment of the situation. (Though the cry for help - in classic intellectualizing fashion - is wrapped in a lot of real genuine thoughts)

This genuinely feels either misguided or like a false flag psyop that will end in harm to the goals of the common people.

Possibly also a PR stunt

Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man.

___

What is the point of this blog post, declaring a problem solved with.. uh.. authority taking from.. uh.. uuuuuh. Anyway.

Is pi good? I guess? The post does mention some of its qualities.

Is it a sensible take to extrapolate this from that? I do not think so.

Intellectually unstimulating.

Enforcing boundaries and saying no have gotten more important than ever, now that violation of either is automated at superhuman speeds.

FWIW, there might be a silver lining in this. A lot of dysfunction in the current state of tech can (IMO) be traced back to violation of boundaries. This might lead to a cultural shift. Though, that might also just be wishful thinking on my part.

___

> I would love to hear your tips, but still be relevant in this AI era, so my boss does not fire me.

If your boss fires you because you didn't multiply your performance by doing more work in the same time (without your compensation changing), that's not your fault but simply your employer trying to squeeze you harder and that not working out.

Always keep that in mind in these discussions.

Which isn't to say that you should not improve efficiency and all, but it needs to be organic. If something inorganic is asked, then the (moral) failure is on the asker and not the askee.

I'm not quite sure what your point is tbh.

Do not even try?

I suspect that the energy required scales exponentially though, and, eventually, it might just become less of a hassle to just behave.

That and the fact that each increase in difficulty filters out people that do not have the capability to pass it. So the pool shrinks every time.

Though, valid counterpoint: Eventually prefabs emerge and get shared.

But then we innovate once more. We always did. We always will

> This is completely crazy. How could someone point out that assuming evil intentions is not a good way to interact with people without being accused of doing the same thing as the FBI telling MLK to kill himself?

I was genuinely wondering if we would see the end of it, but of course, no.

But I like this, because it's such an obvious strawman and bad faith reinterpration by an account consisting of random jumbled letters.

Thank you. This is background radiation one can live with. Thanks for making things normal again.

> It seems likely this comment is a waste but… no, that clearly was not a personal attack, and going through life treating comments like those as personal attacks seems like a good way to be miserable.

I'm not sure if can truly let this pass as a more sophisticated construct, but I do appreciate the opener that already invalidates dismissal.

That's a good tactic. Thank you for playing.

I feel great btw :) Thank you for your concern.

An interesting realisation there which I believe will shape the upcoming years of discussion spaces is that one can shift the burden of proof there.

Instead of leaving it with the moderation to prove without a doubt that someone is trolling, one can default to assume trolling and demand prove that it is not the case.

As it is impossible to bring up proof for either of those things, the house wins and people make damn sure to quintuple-check if their messaging is decent.

I don't think that that is a good solution, but the status quo was horrible, so maybe the pendulum swinging in another direction for a while might help us discover saner solutions.

> If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?

Are we going to play "prove me right" here? :D

Come on, this is just a direct personal attack. Go play better. Hide it with a more elaborate construct.

Not really, because a generic observation cannot be expressed specifically. So that's a weird question to begin with.

It is true that this is heavily moderated and that this is one of the more pleasant spaces, but it is also precisely the moderation style that is being weaponized.

As I said, the toxicity gets hidden in layers and layers of jargon, misdirection and plausible deniability. It gets a veneer of civilty applied, which, somewhat surprisingly, makes it hit even harder, because fighting back is a lot harder, as there is nothing immediately visible to fight back against. It just stings.

It's not just attacking but simultaneously gaslighting. Which has been what the whole internet has been doing since everything became twitter fwiw.

What I said is also not to be understood as "HN bad", because if I would feel that way, I would not be commenting here.

HN is one of those places, actually.

There are quite a few covert psychopaths on here that happily twist knives and hurt people.

It's just hidden under layers and layers of indirection, jargon and plausible deniability. Not unlike your standard boardroom I guess.

That letter reads almost identical to internet hate comments. Wild. I guess the tactics have always been the same then.

At least now we have LLMs that can produce this kind of stuff at human-overwhelming rates, so that is progress.

I know Show HN rules want you to be extra nice to people, but this is indistinguishable in execution from a honeypot, so anyone uploading their company slides to some random service like this one will likely be fired on the spot for gross negligence.

I see your idea and I suppose there is value in it, but the problem of screen sharing is basically fictional compared to the real problem of someone just uploading company data (+ metadata!) to a random service some random person came up with.

Screen sharing only shares pixels and does so through parties that the economy considers trustworthy enough.

This is not going to work as the SaaS you seem to envision it to be. It might work for a self-hosted internal service thing or a group of friends though.

___

Thinking about this, I suspect that at least one naive bored corporate guy browsing HN will have tried this out with a random pptx they had lying around on their work computer. The data is now.. somewhere.

So this could be an actual honeypot.

Yeah exactly. I was referring to exactly such businesses.

But, to put my previous point more bluntly, if you do this, you cannot hire idiots, because they otherwise start ruining everything.

Someone needs to hire idiots though, which is why this concept cannot work for all.

The alternative to that is idiot removal, however, that has proven to be a rather complex ethics problem where we've collectively rightfully decided that it is so radioactive, we will no longer entertain such thoughts.

My point is that with such a wealth cap, we will get some co-ops, but we also will have to get something else. And I have not yet found an idea what that could be

I hate to say it, but this kinda looks like that whole tariff horror show might have had a point.

Though, of course, if this has been in operation for five years already, that cannot have been the spark for this. But it might be what it needs to become fully viable.

Whether the guy responsible for said horror show actually thought this far of course remains questionable.

Is this supposed to play Linkin Park in my head or is that a neuron misfire?