hedgew (u/hedgew) - Readit News

hedgew commented on The Bitter Prediction 4zm.org/2025/04/05/bitter... · Posted by u/jannesan

hedgew · a year ago

>Why bother playing when I knew there was an easier way to win? This is the exact same feeling I’m left with after a few days of using Claude Code. I don’t enjoy using the tool as much as I enjoy writing code.

My experience has been the opposite. I've enjoyed working on hobby projects more than ever, because so many of the boring and often blocking aspects of programming are sped up. You get to focus more on higher level choices and overall design and code quality, rather than searching specific usages of libraries or applying other minutiae. Learning is accelerated and the loop of making choices and seeing code generated for them, is a bit addictive.

I'm mostly worried that it might not take long for me to be a hindrance in the loop more than anything. For now I still have better overall design sense than AI, but it's already much better than I am at producing code for many common tasks. If AI develops more overall insight and sense, and the ability to handle larger code bases, it's not hard to imagine a world where I no longer even look at or know what code is written.

hedgew commented on Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe openeurollm.eu/launch-pre... · Posted by u/joecobb

bayindirh · a year ago

I can see that you're unfamiliar with how EU grants and how these project collections work, but I don't have much time to address this with great detail.

As a person who's in this type of projects for a long time, what I can say is "it works", because people do not compete with each other, but will build it together.

What I can say is, if they have came this far, there's already plans about what to do, and how to do, and none of the parties are inexperienced in these kinds of things.

hedgew · a year ago

My experience from these projects is the opposite. The projects are always secondary priorities for participants, and the difficulty of coordinating some dozen entirely separate organisations towards something actually productive is immense. In practice each participant independently spends the money they get on something lightly relevant, and the occasional coordination meetings are spent on planning how to fulfill the reporting requirements of the grant.

Business and research are difficult enough even when done by tightly knit teams and constantly tested against real world systems and customer feedback. The idea that a hodgepodge of organisations can achieve poorly defined yet aspirational goals on a low budget is massively misguided.

hedgew commented on What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? theguardian.com/news/2024... · Posted by u/sandebert

MaxikCZ · a year ago

I find this fascinating. Could you please elaborate about anything youd find relevant/interesting about how such delusions come about without being obvious delusions? I cant imagine actually believing I am Star Trek captain, but I sure can believe someone else do. I just cant imagine how that must feel/look like inside that someones head.

hedgew · a year ago

A hallmark feature of psychosis and schizophrenia is lack of "insight", meaning that the patient can't recognize that they are having delusions, nor the fact that they are suffering from the illness. The belief that you are a Star Trek captain feels as real as knocking on wood.

The illnesses simultaneously cause hallucinations that enforce delusions, and twist your belief systems so you pick up on the most insignificant details to support your delusions. Almost all patients end up believing that they are god, Star Trek captains, or stalked by a government agency, because this best explains their (hallucinatory) experiences. For example, if you hear voices in your head, the patient can't usually understand it as an illness, but has to explain it in some other way, so you end up with CIA/god/whatever beaming voices into your head.

hedgew commented on Ask HN: What business would you start in 2025? · Posted by u/jamesq

fastneutron · 2 years ago

With all the hype around AI, deeptech, etc., I’m wondering if there’s a market for R&D consulting as a form of technical due diligence. I see money being thrown at some of the most hare-brained nonsense that could have been avoided with a bit of critical analysis. I would think sophisticated investors and customers would find this kind of service useful, but maybe I’m missing something.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of work?

hedgew · 2 years ago

There is a market for technical due diligence consulting, but the work is typically done by friends of investors; it's a difficult and tiny market to get into.

hedgew commented on AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles... · Posted by u/mindracer

andirk · 2 years ago

If what I do as a seasoned software engineer becomes redundant because of "artificial intelligence", so be it. Then I'll need to learn more, which I am! I'm not in the business of stiffening technology like an oil baron.

I do understand that IP, for example using an actor's likeness via CGI+AI, is a very real issue that needs to be addressed.

hedgew · 2 years ago

What exactly do you think you can learn at that point, that'd give you market value?

hedgew commented on Ask HN: Is there a spiritual successor to del.icio.us? · Posted by u/tunnuz

dotcoma · 4 years ago

pinboard.in

hedgew · 4 years ago

Pinboard was nice and simple once, but nowadays doesn't seem to be maintained and is broken in many ways. I've been trying to export my archive backup for almost a year without success.

hedgew commented on Notes on Effective Altruism michaelnotebook.com/eanot... · Posted by u/sebg

codeflo · 4 years ago

When I first heard of Effective Altruism, it was all about vaccines and mosquito nets — low cost solutions with clear, positive outcomes. I found that convincing, and even donated some money to some of the recommendations.

When I checked back a few years later, the community seemed to be all about surviving the Rapture, I mean “Singularity”, summoning God, I mean the “Friendly AI”, and maximizing the happiness of the expected 10 to the trillion lives in Heaven, I mean the “Simulation”. I found all of that a lot less convincing.

There are several social reasons why this shift happened, but the root problem, to me, is utilitarianism taken to a dangerous extreme. Effective Altruism was arguably always rooted in some form of utilitarianism as a guiding principle. The problem is, the concept seems to have attracted some very logical, abstract thinkers who somehow didn’t realize when they started to lose contact with reality.

Note that all of this is just my opinion, but here’s my point. I find it always problematic to assign a numerical goodness value (“utilons”) to a human life, though I concede that it can work as a heuristic in small, non-extreme cases. What definitely doesn’t work is to take that number, multiply it by population sizes and claim to have solved ethics. No matter how much you wish it was, ethics is simply not a subbranch a mathematics. To put it very bluntly: That road has been traveled before, and it leads to genocide.

To be clear, this isn’t hyperbole. I won’t link any sources to limit exposure, but you can find articles by self-proclaimed altruists who argue that it’s better to lose a billion lives to climate change than to delay AI research by even one year. The suggested reason being that delaying the Ascent into Heaven — I mean the “Upload into the Simulation” — costs humanity a collective 10 to the gazillion utilons, compared to the mere billions of utilons potentially lost to the climate catastrophe. Just think about the implications.

hedgew · 4 years ago

One reason why EA takes AI risks seriously is exactly because of how hard it is to define what is "good" or what "utility" makes humans happy.

hedgew commented on Google Interview Warmup grow.google/certificates/... · Posted by u/lastdong

tiborsaas · 4 years ago

I'm really surprised they included the strengths and weaknesses question. Anyone asking my weaknesses expect anything other than bullshit or humble bragging?

The execution of this page is so perfect that it gives me dystopian vibes. I think this might actually be just a tech demo for demoing speech capabilities :)

hedgew · 4 years ago

Ability to bullshit on bullshit questions is a good test of both intelligence and subservience!

hedgew commented on How Can I Work on Interesting Problems and get Paid Well?[mid life crisis] · Posted by u/ilikeerp

hedgew · 5 years ago

I'm in a similar situation. I think if you read a lot of HN and are reasonably successful, your expectations for life can get detrimentally high. And what happiness and meaning you experience largely depends on what you expect. You're already quite successful yet you're probably very unsatisfied. We read so much about startups and these amazing projects other people are doing, but it's hard to understand what you should actually expect from yourself and your life — are these reasonable things to aim for, or even to just dream about? We're only seeing the survivors and successes, not the (how many?) others.

You could try planning for a longer break or vacation to see how you feel with more freedom, do you still want to do something "more meaningful" or do you actually miss work?

Even more than HN, what meaning you find tends to depend on the people around you. Imagine how some people in objectively much worse positions than you can despite that find much more meaning in their lives than you; usually because of the bonds they create with other people. (If you ever watched Star Trek or Futurama, remember how it wasn't the stuff the characters did that made it meaningful, but rather the characters themselves and their relationships..) Your social influences can be hard to change, but that's how it is. Meaning comes from being a part of something. Stuff you do on your own requires so much more effort to reach that same level of meaning.

hedgew commented on The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions fs.blog/2021/03/ooda-loop... · Posted by u/feross

hedgew · 5 years ago

OODA loop is often hyped, but really it is just a description of how humans (and animals) behave in almost any situation. "Look, Think, Decide, Act" in other words.

It's not valuable in the sense that you can "practice" or "apply" the loop and perform better. Your behavior already follows this model. Its real value probably came from presenting this common decision making process in a way that appealed to upper military management, which made it easier to develop processes and practices that help decision makers (like pilots) in critical situations.