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Ecoste commented on I am (not) a failure: Lessons learned from six failed startup attempts   blog.rongarret.info/2025/... · Posted by u/lisper
Ecoste · 7 months ago
Thanks for the interesting read! How did you support yourself through all of the failed startups?
Ecoste commented on Entropy of a Large Language Model output   nikkin.dev/blog/llm-entro... · Posted by u/woodglyst
EncomLab · 7 months ago
We should stop using the term "black box" to mean "we don't know" when really it's "we could find out but it would be really hard".

We can precisely determine the exact state of any digital system and track that state as it changes. In something as large as a LLM doing so is extremely complex, but complexity does not equal unknowable.

These systems are still just software, with pre-defined operations executing in order like any other piece of software. A CPU does not enter some mysterious woo "LLM black box" state that is somehow fundamentally different than running any other software, and it's these imprecise terms that lead to so much of the hype.

Ecoste · 7 months ago
So going by your definition what would be a true black box?
Ecoste commented on How Discord stores trillions of messages (2023)   discord.com/blog/how-disc... · Posted by u/jakey_bakey
aaptel · a year ago
This whole problem wouldn't exist if we used distributed chat protocols which have been around for over 40 years (IRC). With the added benefit of having an open specification and multiple implementations. No walled gardens.

And if you think IRC is too old for the modern world take a look at matrix or xmpp.

How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

Ecoste · a year ago
> How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

The fact that you're baffled why discord took over is exactly why it took over. You can't even acknowledge that the user experience is 10x better and it's suitable for a general non-technical audience.

Ecoste commented on How to do the jhanas   nadia.xyz/jhanas... · Posted by u/mandliya
wayoverthecloud · a year ago
Oh spirituality. The only thing that I spent years of life trying to understand and ended up realizing that there's nothing to understand. It sounds corny and cliche but there's no other way I can put it.

I have/had meditated for almost 5 years of my life for almost 2 hours a day(unless I am traveling/or sick etc), so I think I am experienced enough to help beginner meditators. Also being from a Sanskrit-derived-language speaking country, I can read Pali and Sanskrit texts without translation.(Being from a SA country doesn't mean anyone can do that obviously. My family was more religious than others I guess). I am not beating my own drums but I have to put in some credibility to be taken seriously on the Internet. I really have no other credibility to put forward than this so please take my advice with a grain of salt because I am not an enlightened man like the religious scripts depict.

If you are a beginner, forget Jhanas and these tricks. They are just there to confuse you more. The wanting of stages of Jhanas are actually a hindrance. Buddha has warned about it. But his warning has been treated like a footnote. But in modern context, the warning should be the introduction. Because people can rarely deal with any discomfort these days. They've read the Jhanas, they want it now. I am almost 45% sure we will see a AI for Jhanas in the next 50 years.

Anyways, here's my advice for beginners:

When you start meditation, sooner or later, maybe even after a day or two, you'll eventually feel a state of peace. It is bound to happen, you will just have to take words of countless meditation literature and gurus and see for yourself. And the peace will be short-lived. Then, you will want to extend this peace. You've read about the Jhanas, the bliss, the peace, the oneness, and all. But it's not working for you right? Because you have been fooled again.

Previously, you were chasing for drugs/media/TikTok/girls/whatever or some other forms of pleasure/happiness and now you are chasing for the bliss, the peace, whatever the texts say or you've been told. It's the same thing. You are still chasing, you are still desiring. The object of desire is "Jhanas" now but it's still a desire and in desiring there is going to be mental conflict and hopelessness and feeling of losing because obviously you desire only the things you don't have.

The best advice I would give to a beginner meditator, is to be interested. Become interested in the process of meditation, forget the happiness, the results. Oh spoiler alert, you will actually feel like you are being more sadder after you started meditating. You will feel like you are noticing more problems, more issues with the society/beings etc. You aren't becoming sadder or the world is not sadder, you are noticing the sadness that was always there. Let it ride, enjoy the process. Don't treat meditation like a chore like I did. Be really interested. You have to be interested because it's a lifetime work. Your brain is neuroplastic so it's been addicted to patterns and habits from your birth to now. Don't expect to change them in a single meditation session. It's okay to meditate for 5 minutes a day and 2 hours the next day or miss it for weeks. Do it when you feel like it and when you are genuinely interested and curious, you'll just come back to it more and more without needing to force yourself to discipline and hate the word "meditation" in the process. Unless you are genuinely interested you will never surrender to meditation and unless you let go, you will never allow "Jhanas" to appear, because remember everything appears in emptiness.

Ecoste · a year ago
I've tried to start meditating a couple of times in my life but every time after a couple of days instead of being introduced to gradual calm/bliss/joy/whatever I get met with an existential dread, sadness, anxiety, melancholy etc. I guess am naturally predisposed to those as well, much more than 'happy' feelings. I had to then take a week or even more to recover. I feel like you need to have your shit together so to speak before you try meditating or it might uncover some suppressed trauma or whatever it is. I must say though I am way more 'aware' of my body and emotions more than before, but the problem is they might not be pleasant. It is okay when the feeling is transitory but an existential dread which lasts for days or weeks feels impossible to shake off, it consumes your whole life. One day I hope to be able to swing the pendulum in the other way.
Ecoste commented on Feynman's Garden   marginalia.nu/log/a_108_f... · Posted by u/EvgeniyZh
Ecoste · a year ago
When this doesn't work, does it mean that you're simply stupid? Asking for a friend.
Ecoste commented on Giving Rust a chance for in-kernel codecs   lwn.net/SubscriberLink/97... · Posted by u/orf
fulafel · a year ago
What happens if you send bad bitstreams to the hardware?
Ecoste · a year ago
Explosions
Ecoste commented on Philosophy is an art   aeon.co/essays/philosophi... · Posted by u/drdee
thrance · a year ago
Oh I studied this, I'm well aware of those theorems, and I don't think they are the death bell of logic some make them to be.

If you somehow find an unprovable theorem (quite rare), you can always try with a different set of axioms. Mathematics are not about proving absolute truths of the universe but rather of pushing reasoning over a set of axioms the furthest possible.

Also as a nitpick, analytic systems that don't contain arithmetic can be complete and proven coherent.

As for the real world, facts that can neither be proven true nor false (existence of an immaterial soul for example), I think should be left at that. It is useless speculating about things we can't ever know of. I leave that to religion/spirituality.

Ecoste · a year ago
"It is useless speculating about things we can't ever know of."

And how do you know which things we can know of and which we cannot? Trusting your gut instinct on that isn't scientific. And why is speculating about immaterial things useless? I'm sure many great mathematicians heard some form of "what you're doing is useless and has no use or relation in the real world" especially in the realm of pure mathematics.

You bring up the soul which is a convenient example, but let's instead use a concept which YOU know exists for yourself which is consciousness. Can we ever know anything more about the mystery of consciousness or life or why any of this world and universe exists? Are those unknowable? Should we not talk about them? Should we only try to apply the lens of science here and for some reason not try to advance our understanding using philosophy even though it might not be as formal and unambiguous as math?

Ecoste commented on Philosophy is an art   aeon.co/essays/philosophi... · Posted by u/drdee
Kranar · a year ago
There is no reason that ambiguities or paradoxes can't be expressed analytically and formally. Math and computer science are full of such things and they are celebrated.

Being hard to communicate is precisely why it's important to communicate rigorously and formally.

Ecoste · a year ago
We have a ton of examples of great mathematicians who also happened to be great philosophers and vice-versa. Some philosophers also tried to incorporate mathematical symbols and such into their work. We value both their philosophical works and mathematical works. They were smart people and chose different mediums to express different concepts.

How can you try to explore the ego, consciousness, unconsciousness, dreams, suffering, life's purpose, subjective beauty, symbolism, truth, religion, god, ethics and whatever else that is not easily formalized? We might very well arrive at a formal and unambiguous description of these sometime in the far future, so are we not supposed to at least try to talk about these concepts now? You use different tools for different concepts, and science and philosophy is just 2 of those tools. At the end of the day philosophy undeniably changed the world, so there is at least some value to it. Philosophy is not anti-logic, it is very much for logic.

Ecoste commented on Philosophy is an art   aeon.co/essays/philosophi... · Posted by u/drdee
thrance · a year ago
I don't get that, if there is no unambiguous link of cause and effect, what is there left to describe, or even observe ?

I think that if someone is completely unable to justify an observed truth to others, then it might not be a truth at all.

Ecoste · a year ago
> I think that if someone is completely unable to justify an observed truth to others, then it might not be a truth at all.

What if the observed truth that someone is trying to communicate is paradoxical and hard to communicate in and of itself? What if the truth is ambiguous? What constitutes ambiguous or unambiguous?

At the end of the day ambiguity is a real concept, so is a paradox, therefore there will exist things that are ambiguous and paradoxical and pointing that out does have value.

Ecoste commented on Mental health in software engineering   vadimkravcenko.com/shorts... · Posted by u/cmpit
Zenzero · a year ago
I hear what you're saying, but I don't feel I said it was universal in the sense that you're describing it. On the whole I would rate the average software engineer as having a less stressful life than the average doctor. I acknowledge that there are outliers and individual experiences that go against the average.

That said, I would argue that you underestimate the number of people in medicine who are burnt out. Many of my colleagues stay because it is a sunk cost financially/time-wise/reputatationally. You can pull up the numerous studies on burnout rates that have been done.

I'd anything it affirms my statement that you don't realize how much worse it could be. Like I said, there's a difference between taking down prod for 6 hours and getting sued for accusations that you killed a living being. This isn't intended to be a competition but it does become a bit absurd to watch people in the software world act like burnout from a micromanaging PM, unrealistic stakeholders, etc is the pinnacle of human suffering.

Ecoste · a year ago
Which studies? I've checked a few Google results and none of them showed health-care even near the top, which is suspiciously surprising to me.

u/Ecoste

KarmaCake day127March 2, 2018View Original