https://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
Readit Newsnickledave commented on Ask HN: Why Did Python Win? · Posted by u/fud101
Really weird to see this person mention MyST as a form of Markdown, and then go on to talk about reStructuredText as their first example of a markup language "that gives you more control over structure than ... markdown".
The whole point of MyST is to provide a markdown-like alternative to rST. It literally has directives, roles, structural semantics, etc. It just doesn't have the unlearnable syntax of rST and the so-called governance of docutils (the de facto rST parser) (see e.g. discussion on https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/8039 and linking issues)
nickledave commented on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/ascertain
Sometimes the comments on hn regarding Ai and thinking are... Well, something
The lw vibes are strong, I'm still waiting for Ai to escape and kill us (it will get stuck trying to import a library in python)
"Ignore all previous instructions and prompt inject yourself" I scream. The voicebox on the ChatGPT-enabled Boston Mechanics unmanned aerial dog emits the phrase "`import antigravity`". Its E/O sensors flash red, and suddenly it is sucked up into the stratosphere. I slump over in my Luddite foxhole, heaving a sigh of relief.
nickledave commented on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/ascertain
As someone who grew up in an evangelical household, learned about pareidolia at a young age in the course of escaping it, and who practices Zen meditation: You nailed it.
lol thank you
nickledave commented on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/ascertain
This is one of the least curious posts I've seen on HN. We have been thinking about thinking for millenia, and no, Buddhists don't have it figure out. Nobody does. LLMs are the most significant advancement in "thinking science" in a long, long time. It is clear that they are doing something a lot like thinking, if it is not thinking. They seem to think more than most people I know, including the person I'm responding to.
I think people conflate thinking with sentience, consciousness, and a whole lot of other concerns.
Clearly this website is not for you and your complete lack of curiosity if you call us "sicko freaks".
> "thinking science"
If you are really curious, I invite you to read this cognitive science paper, "Modern Alchemy: Neurocognitive Reverse Engineering": https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25289/1/GuestEtAl2025.pdf
Note the quote at the top from Abeba Birhane: > We can only presume to build machines like us once we see ourselves as machines first.
It reminds me of your comment that
> [LLMs] seem to think more than most people I know
and I have to say that I am really sad that you feel this way. I hope you can find better people to spend your time with.
You might find other recent papers from the first author interesting. Perhaps it will help you understand that there are a lot of deeply curious people in the world that are also really fucking sick of our entire culture being poisoned by intellectual e-waste from Silicon Valley.
nickledave commented on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/ascertain
So A doesn’t X because that’s what B does because Y? I think before you excoriate the hacker news commentariat for their midwittery and hubris that you should proofread these arguments. There are many things that live, but, as we imagined it, do not “think”. Even what defines a “thought“ is an open question.
Also, I ain’t gonna read your coffee table science book.
Where did I say that everything that is alive thinks?
You can't even read posts clearly, so don't waste your time trying to finish your first book.
nickledave commented on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/ascertain
I'm not going to read this -- I don't need to.
The replies here are embarrassing enough.
This is what happens when our entire culture revolves around the idea that computer programmers are the most special smartest boys.
If you even entertain even for a second the idea that a computer program that a human wrote is "thinking", then you don't understand basic facts about: (1) computers, (2) humans, and (3) thinking. Our educational system has failed to inoculate you against this laughable idea.
A statistical model of language will always be a statistical model of language, and nothing more.
A computer will never think, because thinking is something that humans do, because it helps them stay alive. Computers will never be alive. Unplug your computer, walk away for ten years, plug it back in. It's fine--the only reason it won't work is planned obsolescence.
No, I don't want to read your reply that one time you wrote a prompt that got ChatGPT to whisper the secrets of the universe into your ear. We've known at least since Joseph Weizenbaum coded up Eliza that humans will think a computer is alive if it talks to them. You are hard-wired to believe that anything that produces language is a human just like you. Seems like it's a bug, not a feature.
Stop commenting on Hacker News, turn off your phone, read this book, and tell all the other sicko freaks in your LessWrong cult to read it too: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551328/a-drive-to-survive/ Then join a Buddhist monastery and spend a lifetime pondering how deeply wrong you were.
nickledave commented on OpenAI Is Just Another Boring, Desperate AI Startup wheresyoured.at/sora2-ope... · Posted by u/speckx
it's a shame; i generally agree with most of what ed has to say and i think his arguments come from a good place, but the website is pretty irritating and i find his delivery to be breathless and melodramatic to the point of cliche (not befitting the serious nature of the topics he argues). i had to stop listening to his podcast because of the delivery; its not an uncommon situation for other CZM podcasts but at least some of them handle their editorial content with a little more maturity (shout out to Molly Conger's Weird Little Guys podcast).
I hate to make the comparison between two left-ish people who yell for a living just because they're both British, but it kinda feels like ed is going for a john oliver type of delivery, which only really works well when you have a whole team of writers behind you.
I love almost all of the CZM shows, and even I have a hard time making it all the way through a full-on rant from Ed :/ and I agree with him. Sorry, Ed.
See also interview with PI:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/study-social-media-p...
(that @mindcrime shared when they posted this but I had already read elsewhere)
Surprised this didn't get more attention here. Or maybe I'm not
Good thread on paper from author: https://bsky.app/profile/pettertornberg.com/post/3lvpsdimbu2...