One of the most important game theory results is that in a hostile environment, asshole behaviour is rewarded, and the net group utility sucks. But in a supportive environment, virtuous behaviour is rewarded, and group utility skyrockets.
Readit News(For context, I've conducted hundreds of system design interviews and trained a dozen other people on how to do them at my company. Other interviewers may do things differently or care about other things, but I think what I'm saying here isn't too far off normal.)
I think three things about what you're saying:
1. The answers you're giving don't provide a lot of signal (the queue one being the exception). The question that's implicitly being asked is not just what you would choose, but why you would choose it. What factors would drive you to a particular decision? What are you thinking about when you provide an answer? You're not really verbalizing your considerations here.
A good interviewer will pry at you to get the signal they need to make a decision. So if you say that back-pressure isn't worth worrying about here, they'll ask you when it would be, and what you'd do in that situation. But not all interviewers are good interviewers, and sometimes they'll just say "I wasn't able to get much information out of the candidate" and the absence of a yes is a no. As an interviewee, you want to make the interviewer's job easy, not hard.
2. Even if the interviewer is good and does pry the information out of you, they're probably going to write down something like "the candidate was able to explain sensibly why they'd choose a particular technology, but it took a lot of prodding and prying to get the information out of them -- communications are a negative." As an interviewee, you want to communicate all the information your interviewer is looking for proactively, not grudgingly and reluctantly. (This is also true when you're not interviewing.)
3. I pretty much just disagree on that SQL/NoSQL answer. Team expertise is one factor, but those technologies have significant differences; depending on what you need to do, one of them might be way better than the other for a particular scenario. Your answer there is just going to get dinged for indicating that you don't have experience in enough scenarios to recognize this.
OP has stated that the system design interview exists as a way to performatively answer a set of questions that don't relate to actually being a good system designer. In your response, you have claimed that their proposed truthful answers don't give a lot of 'signal' and that you would prefer candidates to engage with the performative nature of the process. This is true - but is not an argument against the OP's claim, which is that reciting a set of facts about system design in an interview != being a good system designer.
elliotto commented on What does Palantir actually do? wired.com/story/palantir-... · Posted by u/mudil
Don't be afraid to say what you believe! let's bring this out in the open. you're saying that women shouldn't be allowed to vote?
I feel so sorry for you people. You need to find some constructive way to deal with your issues, instead of blaming your insecurities on women.
I've made a lot of baiting internet comments in my time, but not in my wildest imagination did I expect a response to my comment mocking Palantir to be anti-women's suffrage.
Isn’t that backwards? Most people need to build a business to make the $10M+ in the first place. Are you talking about a nonprofit or an airplane/movie business (both famous for turning large fortunes into small ones). Otherwise you probably should follow the advice from the “Producers”: never put your own money in the show.
I think you have conflated 'build something for society' with 'build a business' which is very hacker-news-core. My mind immediately went to building infrastructure and schools in rural Nepal, not building a b2b saas that raises customer acquisition rates by 8 %.
elliotto commented on Why it's a mistake to ask chatbots about their mistakes arstechnica.com/ai/2025/0... · Posted by u/andsoitis
I've found the opposite of this to be the case. I've spent some time recently debugging a chatbot - when it goes astray I say 'what part of your system prompt made you do that' and it responds with the line that drove this decision. Then I clarify my intent and ask for better phrasing, and fix it. This usually works.
This also often works with tool use and tool cause - just ask it what part of its prompt told it to do something and it can usually point there.
If you ask it why it thought something a priori was wrong, then the bot can't answer it, and neither can I. If you ask me to clarify why I wrote some code I can walk you through the steps I got there. But if you ask me to clarify why I believed a function exists, that upon runtime I learned doesn't actually exist, I can't provide justification there.
elliotto commented on Why Hasn't Medical Science Cured Chronic Headaches? newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/fortran77
I understand they are different people. But, you would agree sometimes doctors have headaches where they are then are a patient treated by another doctor, right?
How would that person understand the contradiction of sometimes being in a role where they dismiss patients, but also sometimes being in the role of the patient where they are being dismissed?
I've thought about this problem a lot too.
I've wondered if it comes down to a game theory result where if you have x amount of time to distribute amongst y problems, there's more net social utility in applying a simple solution to everyone, and accepting that difficult problems will be missed. Versus spending detailed time on each problem, and as a result solving fewer problems but better.
Of course, when money comes into play, it seems as though you're going to be financially required to rush everyone through the door in 15 minutes, or else your business will lose to someone who adopts this strategy. Leaving anyone with a complex problem dead.
I spend a lot of time on migraine and pain subreddits and there is an air of deference to the medical authority to know what to do. But if your case is complex, you just can't fit into the simple flow chart, and need to advocate and problem solve for yourself. Which leads people into the path of pseudoscience and exploitation.
elliotto commented on What does Palantir actually do? wired.com/story/palantir-... · Posted by u/mudil
Yes, but...
They also have one of the most profitable business models the world has ever seen. Their RPE (revenue per employee) is roughly $1mm and growing at a 50% YoY rate...
They heavily use technology as leverage for insane margin growth. 90% rule of 40 as well.
Yeah turns out leeching off the surveillance state makes heaps of money. Great business model
elliotto commented on Why Hasn't Medical Science Cured Chronic Headaches? newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/fortran77
The author is a New yorker columnist, and seems to be a practicing / ex-practicing doctor. They talk about their experience with their various doctors and being passed around different medications with various side effects, to some degree of success. Despite all their expertise and expense, they still cannot find a root cause (which may not exist at all), and struggle to find a medication protocol that works for them.
If you really want a bad trip, head over to the r/migraine and r/chronicpain subreddits. These subreddits are full of people, with none of the resources or experiences as the author, betrayed entirely by the medical system which does not serve them, and condemned to chronic pain. The complexity and range of headache and migraine causes does not lend itself well to a 15 minute GP appointment every few months, and without the technical expertise these people turn to alternative medicine, online pseudoscience, and opiates.
elliotto commented on Why are there so many rationalist cults? asteriskmag.com/issues/11... · Posted by u/glenstein
Holding one’s own against Stephen Wolfram isn’t exactly the endorsement it might seem.
I'm interested in this perspective, I haven't come across much criticism of Wolfram but I haven't really looked for it much either. Is it because of his theory of everything ruliad stuff?
I really enjoy his blog posts and his work on automata seems to be well respected. I've felt he presents a solid epistemology.
I agree with your first point, maybe AI will close some of those gaps with future advances, but I think a large part of the damage will have been done by then.
Regarding the memory of reasoning from LLMs, I think the issue is that even if you can solve it in the future, you already have code for which you've lost the artifacts associated with the original generation. Overall I find there's a lot of talks (especially in the mainstream media) about AI "always learning" when they don't actually learn new anything until a new model is released.
> Why does it require 100% accuracy 100% of the time? Humans are not 100% accurate 100% of the time and we seem to trust them with our code.
Correct, but humans writing code don't lead to a Bus Factor of 0, so it's easier to go back, understand what is wrong and address it.
If the other gaps mentioned above are addressed, then I agree that this also partially goes away.