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johnaspden commented on Programmers Will Be Replaced by People with Ideas   cleverthinkingsoftware.co... · Posted by u/Todd
johnaspden · 4 months ago
Programmers will be replaced by whatever the superintelligence makes out of their atoms.
johnaspden commented on Scientists working to decode birdsong   newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/tintinnabula
johnaspden · 10 months ago
Fancy a fuck? Fancy a fight? My tree! My tree!
johnaspden commented on What ever happened to Modula-2?   goto10retro.com/p/what-ev... · Posted by u/thunderbong
johnaspden · a year ago
JPI Modula-2 was my first proper compiler on my childhood PC! I loved it, it was nicer to use than either Turbo Pascal or C.

I actually bought my first ever hard disk (a mighty 10MB as I remember, more storage than I'd ever be able to use), for something like £200, an absolute fortune to an adolescent in 1986, just so that I could install modula-2 permanently in the machine and could stop swapping compiler floppies and program floppies all the time.

But when I first got access to UNIX boxes as a postgrad there was C but no Modula-2, so I switched to C, which could do everything Modula-2 could do except it was a bit more fragile and treacherous.

johnaspden commented on Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain   arxiv.org/abs/2405.04540... · Posted by u/wonderlandcal
johnaspden · a year ago
Who cares? And how would we tell?
johnaspden commented on Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You by David Graeber (2000)   theanarchistlibrary.org/l... · Posted by u/TotalCrackpot
johnaspden · a year ago
Apparently not. And I am slightly surprised by that.
johnaspden commented on Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office   washingtonpost.com/opinio... · Posted by u/fortran77
johnaspden · 2 years ago
Oh God, yes! I'm old enough to remember when people thought it was important to have quiet and privacy to think.

I used to love my job. All my life I've loved programming, and I used to love being able to solve other people's problems for them by doing the thing I love.

And I used to love being surrounded by other people who were interested in the same things as me, all collaborating on a project to make something useful.

The open-plan curse killed it for me. For years I've done as little paid work as I can get away with because I hate trying to think in an open-plan horror so much. It's like having my brain in a blender.

I still program, and think, a lot, but I only do it for other people when I need the money.

johnaspden commented on The Sad Bastard Cookbook   traumbooks.itch.io/the-sa... · Posted by u/throwaway154
johnaspden · 2 years ago
Christ, this is supposed to be for people with no spoons, and yet one of the recipes is: "Peanut Butter On A Spoon". Could they not be bothered to get someone to proof read it?
johnaspden commented on He dropped out to become a poet – now he’s won a Fields Medal (2022)   quantamagazine.org/june-h... · Posted by u/hyperthesis
johnaspden · 2 years ago
Presumably he doesn't care. How's his poetry?
johnaspden commented on Eliezer Yudkowsky's six-minute TED talk on AI   files.catbox.moe/qdwops.m... · Posted by u/johnaspden
johnaspden · 2 years ago
He gets a standing ovation at the end, which is nice to see.

Apparently this was released by accident and the youtube copy has been set to 'private', but luckily some quick-witted person downloaded it and has put a copy where it can be found.

I made a copy of that with:

$ wget https://files.catbox.moe/qdwops.mp4

and I'd be happy to stick that somewhere if this one disappears.

Just in case anyone needs to be reassured that this is a thing that can be believed by at least two people, I endorse what he's saying here wholeheartedly, and I don't think we've got very long left at all.

Timescales are the dodgiest bit of this whole argument, and all we have is intuition, but I'd be absolutely amazed if humanity still existed in ten years time, and pleasantly surprised if we make it to the end of this year.

u/johnaspden

KarmaCake day741October 30, 2009
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John Lawrence Aspden Contract Programmer in Cambridge, England
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