I've found that Good Code is actually actively detrimental to agent performance. I suspect agent-written code is very comprehensible to agents(for example, agents love to define single-use variables because it lets them document the code without adding comments, having to read whole files, or understand novel code patterns(complex pipeline statements, for example) but is a nightmare to read. You have to keep the meanings of all the small variables in your head, so your short term memory gets overloaded with small pieces of info. I tried making the agent refactor to reduce these, but noticed a substantial increase in how often it misunderstands what the code does.
Readit Newssomesortofthing commented on The silent death of good code amit.prasad.me/blog/rip-g... · Posted by u/amitprasad
somesortofthing commented on LLMs could be, but shouldn't be compilers alperenkeles.com/posts/ll... · Posted by u/alpaylan
One thing that's missing from this is that the specification itself only matters insofar as it meets its own meta-specification of "what people will use/pay for". LLMs may have an easier time understanding that than what a specific developer wants from them - a perfect implementation of an un-marketable product is mostly pointless.
When the upside is extraordinary, it’s very reasonable to expect some downside, just based on experience of, like, everything ever.
As well as the undeniable benefit to individuals, a cure for aging would unleash a whole new bunch of problems that have been kept in check through the mechanism of people dying off regularly. A society of immortals could be quite alien to us.
Biology is one of very few areas of science where you do just find free lunches sometimes. Human bodies are adapted to environments with harsh constraints about injuries, pathogens, temperature, energy usage, etc. The only catch to counteracting those adaptations is that it makes you worse at being a hunter-gatherer.
Generating reports that are rarely read and almost always ignored seems like a great use case for AI. Performance reviewing is de facto zero-sum - once you've ranked the people in your bailiwick, there's no reason not to let the incentives you're subject to do the rest of the work.
somesortofthing commented on Preparing for when the machine stops idiallo.com/blog/when-the... · Posted by u/foxfired
On the other hand, maybe one day "thinking without AI" will become as absurd a notion as "thinking without a brain".
somesortofthing commented on Ask HN: My CEO wants to go hard on AI. What do I do? · Posted by u/throwaway778
Draw up the product roadmap such that you can claim maximum AI-ness while including as little of it as possible in the actual product. Sounds like the CEO doesn't have any technical objections to not using AI, he just wants the ability to raise on AI branding.
Include as much non-AI work as you can in the AI teams' projects, pitch an "AI efficiency initiative" that minimizes new spend on AI with the justification of other teams picking up the slack, talk up whatever ML you're already doing, etc.
The reality of one's lack of value to one's own employer is often baffling. It makes you wonder how anyone manages to stay employed at all, since apparently everyone is replicable and unimportant. I have been through layoffs where other people on my team, doing the same job I did approximately as well, got laid off. No explanation given for why them and not me. And it could happen to me at any time.
It doesn't matter how good my evals are or how big my contributions. It doesn't matter that there are multiple multi-million-dollar revenue streams which exist in large part due to my contributions. It doesn't matter that I have been told I am good enough that I should be promoted to the next level. Raises barely exist, let alone promotions. Because theoretically some other engineer could have done the same work I actually did, the fact that I'm the one who did it doesn't matter and I deserve no reward for doing it beyond the minimum money necessary to secure my labor.
Under those conditions, why should I - or anyone - do any more than the minimum necessary to not get fired for cause? If the company doesn't see me as more than X dollars for X revenue, why should I?
Layoffs in particular are like this because they're planned very quickly by very small groups of people. Rumors of impending layoffs obliterate morale, so the people in charge do everything they can to maintain secrecy and minimize the time between people hearing about layoffs and the layoffs taking effect. This basically always translates to random-seeming decisions - priority 1 is to cut costs by X amount, choosing the right people to cut is secondary. This means that, for example, engineers that have received performance-based raises are punished since, on paper, they do the same job as lower-performing but lower-paid engineers.
Not defending the process(the right way to break this equilibrium is statutory requirements for layoffs a la the WARN act) but that's why you see the outcomes you do.
somesortofthing commented on The myth of the loneliness epidemic asteriskmag.com/issues/08... · Posted by u/Luc
I don't think "all-time" means what you think it means...
That's fair. It's more of a post-WWII peak. I've edited the post.
somesortofthing commented on The myth of the loneliness epidemic asteriskmag.com/issues/08... · Posted by u/Luc
I mean we have suicide statistics.
People are literally killing themselves.
Edit: I reached comment limit, but I want to respond to the "correlation/causation" response:
I get what you are saying from pure statistics, but the basic premise is that "loneliness" ... don't get me started on how you define that aside from the usual bullshit social sciences survey crap ... isn't a problem.
But is it a stretch to take this sentence:
"modern life, struggles with meaning, increased competition, mental health issues, stubbornness against seeking help, access to deadly weapons/knowledge"
isn't all basically saying "loneliness"?
And by people killing themselves, I mean men, because also this article is possibly/probably doing the almost-all-female psychology male blindness thing.
Humans are social creatures and need social interaction and connection, but men aren't social connection developers, especially in the Land of the Stoic Cowboy.
Loneliness the concept is IMO deeply semantically intertwined with loss of meaning, economic disenfranchisement, maintenance of sanity, feeling trust in society to get help, paranoia/clinging to weapons for surrogate psychological defense.
The scary thing is that the suicide rate increase in old men has basically stabilized, instead suicide growth is in YOUNG MEN, which are critical to the demographic / GDP / economic performance of the US, especially if we are entering a period of deglobalization and increased nearshore manufacturing.
Depends on the time horizon you choose. If you look at US stats, we're only 1.5 suicides per 100000 people above a previous post-WWII peak in the early 80s. Suicide rates in the first half of the 20th century were downright apocalyptic by modern standards, sometimes reaching 22 per 100000 before sharply declining post-WWII. If you want to look outside the US, Japan used to(~2000-~2010) hover at ~20 suicides per 100000, compared to our current all-time high of 14.
The increase is significant, but I wouldn't call it definitive proof of an urgent crisis.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/suicide
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t...
somesortofthing commented on New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike washingtonpost.com/style/... · Posted by u/ChrisArchitect
From the WSJ’s reporting on this:
> Most employees in the tech union receive pay of more than $100,000, and average compensation, including bonus and restricted stock units, is $190,000, according to a Times spokeswoman. That figure is an average of $40,000 more than members of the Times’s journalist union, she said.
> Times leaders have also bristled at the nature of some of the guild’s requests. The union previously sought a requirement that the company use unscented cleaning supplies and offer a pet bereavement policy that included a leave of up to seven days, though it has since backed down from those demands.
Journalist salaries, especially at prestigious piblications, are quite famously set such that only people who can rely on external support to the tune of 5-6 figures a year can become journalists. It makes sense that the journalists union would prioritize things other than salary in bargaining - their W2 job isn't where their money comes from.