100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
Unfortunately, I think that there are two layers of nonsense compounding on one another in the article.
- The reporter isn't specific in exactly where and how the cuts are being made, much less the reasoning behind them.
- Satya Nadella saying "1/3 of Code is written by AI" is a nothing burger all its own.
First, the obvious question is "what kind of code?" Does he mean boilerplate stuff that, before LLMs, was handled mostly by copying previous projects and re-using the basics? Does he man config files and deployment scripts for infrastructure? This is very much still code, but not in the user-facing, self-contained full product sense.
Looking deeper, the next questions are "so what?" and "how much code can AI actually write?" I am reminded of the classic The Mythical Man Month. Writing code isn't a linear function. 1.5x inputs does not yield a corresponding ratio of 1.5x outputs. The actual writing of code is often a pareto or power law function; you spend 80% of your time on 20% (or less!) of the codebase. Much like the hard part of writing is editing, the real slog in coding comes in debugging and, later, refactoring. Shitting out shitty but "hey it works" code is easy.
Every mid-to-senior level developer, data scientist, and ML engineer I've had discussions with more or less comes to the same conclusion space; AI is really handy, right now, for discrete problems. It's a massive time saver. It's actually extra handy for writing tests. In the not so distant future, it will probably be able to do some real system engineering work.
But it can't replace all the devs because, at some point, using more LLMs in your development will actually cause the project to take longer (again, reference The Mythical Man Month). If you look at the "thinking" output of Chain Of Thought models, you can see how it flirts with recursion loops. It tells itself to think about x but also to make sure it considers y too and, oh yeah, definitely make sure z is in there too. And that's for simple chat based prompts. If you have an LLM read a detailed system design plan and then hit the "do it" button, my worry isn't that it would output broken, non-internally consistent code, but that it would never actually output anything functional. Instead, I imagine millions of lions of incomplete functions with a lot of extraneous documentation and the wholesale swapping in and out of design patterns. Spaghetti code, but without even a "fuck it, it works" level of functionality.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
I feel like I was more productive with them a year ago than I am today.
I don't think this is just you or even a mystery. I've noticed the same thing, but I was talking to a friend and he came up with what I think is an excellent theory.
Through about mid 2024 (this is a rough timeline), the major AI companies were focusing totally on model performance broadly defined. The idea was that whoever could "break out" with the absolute best model would capture a $1 trillion+ market. Then, as open source and/or cheaper models began to not only keep up with the Big Boys but, depending on how you evaluate them, actually surpass some of them, the realization dawned on OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini; model performance is a race to commoditization. Commodity products can't sustain valuation and growth desires for companies with tens of billions in investment.
What's happening now is that they're all re-using their tried and true playbook; build products for customer engagement. The models from the Big AI firms today, I believe, are developed to maximize engagement instead of developed for maximal performance. I don't mean that they intentionally dumb them down or force them to produce knowingly inaccurate responses. I think it's more in the structure of the response. Take software development for instance. A response nowadays for "how do I design an API for my database" comes out in a nice, concise little five step plan. The LLM will conclude by saying "let me know which section you want to dive into first!" It all feels so "on rails." You think, "shit, this might be pretty easy" and you start to whip something up. Flash forward several hours and ... well, you said it.
My memory seems to tell me that asking that same API question last year would've produced a fairly technical blueprint for designing APIs in general. I would've looked at it and thought, "okay, that helps, but it looks like this is still going to be work." And, here's the important part, I may have then gone to a different website to research good API design. I would've disengaged with the LLM.
It's no surprise to me that a lot of the recent hype cycle has been "LLMs are replacing google as the primary means of interacting with information on the internet." Google's cash comes from the fact that most people don't even navigate directly to the URL they're interested in but, pop open google and type "nytimes" and hit go. It is actually "the front page of the internet" (sorry, reddit). If you have that same situation with OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini where people start at those chatbots everytime they want to do anything on the internet, it will support the user growth and engagement numbers that might be able to support the valuations of these companies (although I have some serious doubts about their unit economics).
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
It's amazing how much this bleeds into other genres as well.
I have a penchant for Noir/Neo-noir novels. Think The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. The story is full of anti-heroes. The whole point of the protagonist is that he's a beat-up, broke private eye who mostly lives to drink and works to support that habit. But there's still a ton of hints at his Vietnam service which gave him the skills to be a decent private eye. His skills were earned through a crucible in the jungle.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
Is this personal software you build and sell on your own? Or is this part of a corporate / small biz code base.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
I'll take a Jersey Mike's over most of the other sub shops, especially the execrable Subway.
But, much like @FiveHourMarathon, I identify as a Wawa Hypernationalist. When one factors in value in calories-per-dollar, Wawa is even more of the clear choice.
Now, if we're talking about ultra-premium sandwiches from traditional Italian joints, we have to confront the truth that the meats are secondary for overall quality to the bread itself and the freshness of the veggies, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. Tony Soprano ate his "gabagool" raw, or dipped directly into a mustard jar. Tony Soprano was a trash goblin from New Jersey who lived a caricature of his own life. This is not who you model your sandwich rubric on.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
Sorry, I was unclear. I was agreeing with you. Furthermore, I was saying that vibe-coding / AI coding often falls into exactly the trap I quoted.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
(From your link)
"It highlights the dangers of engineer overconfidence[2]: 428 after the engineers dismissed user-end reports, leading to severe consequences. "
This is AI-coding in a nutshell.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Fucking GOAT'ed comment, to use the parlance of our times.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Congrats! That "zero to one" of actually getting the damn thing out to customers is the hardest part.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
Can you actually point to any societies that collapsed as a result of, say, not exerting "sufficient intrasocietal controls on male avarice and female caprice"?
I think you can point to a lot of societies that absolutely failed to flourish because they didn't do this. I remembering reading the goofy book "Sex at Dawn" some years ago. It purported to show that monogamy and marriage was unnatural and that, akshually, tons of totally fine societies had practiced various forms of poly-like relationships.
Except all of its examples were undeveloped hunter-gatherer tribes that are still mostly existing in the stone age. Lots of sub-saharan examples and even a few from Papua New Guinea, aka the actual murder capital of the world.
When life is a constant battle against starvation, you don't have the luxury of resources to have to think long term. You live that beautiful, simple, horrifyingly savage life of "one day at a time." Once you figure our larger scale agriculture, you start to have more stuff and then you upgrade to the perennial problem of how to organize society. Every society that's flourished has settled on long-term pair bonding and marriage-til-death. Some have carve outs for lawful divorce, but the intent is clear.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
"I'm doing all the stuff you said would send me to Hell and I'm loving it!"
Yep. Pretty common for sin to feel good in the moment. That's the whole "trick" of it.
She plainly has very conflicted views about her father, who seems in the small extract she provided to have been a sadistic piece of shit.
So having to face "sexual abuse as a child"
Childhood trauma does not entitle you to a lifetime of unlimited compassion from others.
I've been seeing this meme more and more across wide swaths of social media - and from all corners. People are starting to point backwards to "childhood trauma" (ill-defined, subjective, and often shrouded in mystery) as the root of all their problems. This is neo-Freudianism but, somehow, with less rigor and logic.
The entire process of adolescence and early adulthood is the process of recognizing that when bad things happen to you, you have some level of control in how you react to them. Yes, there are some things that are incredibly and objectively traumatic. They will take time to heal, but you have the tools and capability to fuel that healing process if you developed emotional maturity.
When people fail to do this, they not only become unreliable, they become socially dangerous. Most of the men in prison right now had a childhood of neglect and abuse to at least some degree. They are repeating the patterns they were exposed to. Sadly, many of them lack the IQ to even sort their emotions into reasonable buckets, let alone manage them constructively. Should we extend our inexhaustible supply of compassion there way, let them out, and hug them until they've changed? Alarmingly, about half of the voting population would YesChad.jpeg this idea.
This is all part of the rot and incipient counterproductive nature of "therapy culture." It invites negative feedback loop rumination on bad feelings, the opposite of personal agency, all while promising constant absolution from responsibility that one can presume and demand of others. It's a kind of inverted religion; a kind of satanism, if you will. A self-referential cult of the victim ego.
Returning to Aella, and the sexy-rationalist-e-girl archetype, perhaps you had some level of childhood trauma. Let's assume this trauma was real and not cultivated by a very online life that invites all of us to make emotional mountains of molehills. You're (self-proclaimed) like, really, really smart or whatever. Perhaps you ought to take the time to sort through your own emotional baggage and then move beyond it. In her tweets, she is literally calling for internet friends and strangers to defend her honor to other (mostly) internet strangers. This is an obvious sign of emotional immaturity. She is outsourcing emotional regulation to other people through the odd mode of chivalrous honor codes.
(Side note: I bet Scott does it)
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Serious and genuine question:
Why not just shave your head? I ask because I've been balding since 26-27. I took the "plunge" and shaved it at 28 and ... everyone says I look better, I don't stress about going bald whatsoever, and I can get a dirtcheap haircut from anywhere because nobody can fuck up a zero buzz cut.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
WHOOOAAAAA WHAT?
You're going to pair "tweedle-dee-tweedle-dum municipal incompetence" with serial kid impregnator? Damn, homie.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
Posts a thoughtful essay on defending Aella while also discussing the many sided argument about her public persona, her personal history, and how we should think about judgement in the twitter sphere.
Or some fucking bullshit like that.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
22d ago
Yes and no.
Biden / Pelosi style catholics are definitely solidly blue tribe and do vote democrat. There's even vestiges of old school machine politics for these kind of folks in states like Rhode Island and Massachusettes.
The problem is they aren't actually catholic. Just as "culturally Jewish" is a thing for totally non-observing "Jews" in the bicoastal cities, I believe "culturally catholic" exists as well for many democrat strongholds. To me, it's almost stolen valor. People like Biden etc get to say "faith is at the core of who I am" blah blah blah and infuse their speeches - and votes - with high minded moralism. But they aren't actually living or even trying to believe the doctrine of their faith. The Church is pretty damn clear on abortion and divorce, among other issues.
Theologically serious Catholics, nowadays, have to vote Republican because, of the two parties, it is the only one that isn't openly hostile to all of the bedrock elements of the faith. A lot of the politically motivated (and serious) American Catholics also get really into issues of religious liberties. One need look no further than the recent SCOTUS decision on tax-exemption status for faith based charities.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
I think this will fail.
The humor on CumTown, and the dirt-bag left in general, is built on deep irony and sarcasm with a huge helping of funny sounding nihilism. It assumes you have a college degree or, if you don't, that college was at least on your roadmap for some time.
CumTown in particular has no sense of achievement, adventure, and purpose. It may be funny, but it's "dudes sitting around smoking weed and cracking jokes" funny.
Rogan is Rogan because he mixes so many different things but the underlying themes add up to a greater whole than the dirt-bag left. Rogan is curious about the universe, likes comedy and joking around, is more curious about culture war ideas, and, of course, wants to be in shape to kick other people's asses and hunt elk. For young men, this is a podcast that promotes within them the desire to set a goal and then take the necessary actions to achieve it. That's the nucleus of manhood.
But let's assume that this CumTown sperm fellow is the one that's going to win the race to the egg of young male voters (wow this metaphor is really getting stretched). What does winning look like? Because the problem for the democrats right now is that they don't have any conception of how young men would fit into their party. The major camps of male voters in the democratic party are: aging hippy boomers or their silicon valley equivalents, virtue signalling bi-coastal (and often bisexual) elites, men who want to be women (trans), and, well, ... women.
Young blue collar men? Please.
Young white collar? Lightly Dem through college years but as soon as they see their tax bill, they start to question things. If any of them run afoul of HR, they go hard MAGA in a hurry. Many here are smart enough to code switch in public (mostly in order to get laid), but you can bet a lot of them love privately smashing that Red Button in the voting both.
Dorky engineer types (the descendants of the Gen-X style "slackers")? Used to be far more reliable, but then left in droves when woke got woke'nd.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
That said, her entire schtick is stirring up controversy, posting provocative things as "thought experiments," and bragging about her gangbangs.
I truly love this sentence. The first 75% of it is kind of ho-hum internet drama and then it hits that hard left turn to close it out.
And it's 10,000% accurate. Aella is a twitter clickbait troll. But she's "attractive" (sincere personal opinion: she is not). Okay, there are other attractive twitter spammers. Hmmm, how do differentiate? Rationalist community! Pretty good, but I need that x-factor, that pizzazz!
Oh, i'll just fuck a bunch of people and talk about it all the damn time.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
16d ago
Respectful but enthusiastic request for more anecdotes from your experience.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
24d ago
Nitpick and I know it wasn't your intent, but I have a hard eye for Walmart hate.
Your average Walmart does a little more that $1milion / week in sales. The average customer is a suburban woman making between $40-$80k per year. The average supercenter employs 300 people.
The trope of "lulz Walmart is for fucked up redneck towns" is categorically false. Walmart is an amazing, massive company. They were FAANG before FAANG was a thing, having picked up RDBMs for inventory management in the 1980s. They promote from within to an extreme degree. Walmart Labs, for data science and engineering, is as prestigious and as lucrative as a FAANG job currently. Their buyers are some of the best negotiators, marketers, and logisticians in the world. The conslutants (no, I spelled the right, go back and read it) from McKinsey etc. would give their left nut to get an in house job at Walmart - most don't.
And walmart sells what people want and need for ridiculous prices. In a modern consumer economy, it is the triumph of scale and American purchasing power. Walmart is why, how, and where we go to not only feel like but actually live better than 99.99% of all historic royalty in human history.
Amazon imports junks from all across the world. Google and Facebook make you the product by using surveillance capitalism to capture and re-sell your data. Walmart sells you a ridiculous TV for less than $500.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
"If you x then unfriend me" style posts, I believe, are one of the best pieces of evidence for the argument that social media broke our brains.
This is because people can react to that post. And the only people (well, not only, but the majority) of people who would post a reaction to that post are going to highly validate it. "You tell 'em, girl!" that kind of thing.
The original poster is getting a source of approval and affirmation that is orthogonal to the original subject-object construction. By blasting "people who x", the poster gets thumbs up and smiley faces from group y who was never in the original "conversation".
The physical world equivalent of this would be something like saying "I told off my (ex)friend Tom because he likes Trump" and immediately having several people applaud you. This doesn't happen because, in the physical world, people are far less like to constantly re-count negative interactions publicly. Yes, of course, you do it with close friends or your drinking buddies or whatever, but, generally speaking, you're not walking around shouting about how you got into a fight with your drunk uncle at thanksgiving.
Social-media opened up this entire new vector of indirect praise related to fundamentally negative emotions and interactions. Which creates this really fucked up feedback loop of "the more negative emotions that I have in public the more I can count on public affirmation." How else can you explain people posting crying/screaming video selfies after Trump wins (or after x thing happens).
Negative emotions are a part of life. Prior to social media, I actually think the default pop-culture responses to them (talk to a friend, go for a run, journal about it, etc.) were good enough. They created a process of negative emotion --> sublimation of some sort --> return to normal emotional equlibrium. Now, with social media, the cycle reminds me of someone saying "Time to get good and drunk so that I can do some coke to get back on top of things."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
I am now nearly certain we live within 100 miles of one another.
We must never meet. My mental image of you is as a 7'9" Ajax hurling kettlebells at random passers-by a la Donkey Kong. I cannot support the dismantling of that fiction.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1mo ago
(Always excellent when I can resort to life lesson from The Wire)
How do you deal with those who are too seasoned?
Because, eventually, you're going to have a non-trivial amount of people who actually have exchanges like this:
- What if you had a life sentence?
- Then I'd fucking escape.
Fat tails are real. Whenever I see someone make your argument of "we have to love them more, and educate them!" I know, and even sympathize, with what you're thinking. You're thinking of my cousin who's just kind of goofy bro who drinks too much, smokes pot, lives in his girlfriend's parents' basement, and has been to jail a couple times. His shit isn't in order, but it could be. Is it his fault? Eh, his dad wasn't there and his mom didn't try. Love him more, educate him.
And that feels good because it feels manageable if we all just pitch in! And for a good number of guys-like-my-cousin, it would probably work! This is why I am a believer in charity in principle.
But what do you do with people like our friend Sean (from the clip) who, when faced with a hypothetical life sentence, immediately defaults to "I will escape from prison so that I can murder a man" -- and means it (inasmuch as he can "mean" anything, driven by immediate emotion and instant gratification as he is).
The fat tails of society are both what lift it to new heights (real entrepreneurs, real political leaders, et al.) and what pose a constant existential threat. The social consensus since 1964 has been to look at that constant existential threat and say ... just got to love 'em more!
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23d ago
Here's the security video. The link is foxnews, so there's .... oh so much javascript and other crap. The victim is fully blurred out and there isn't any gore or shocking content, but still probably technically NSFW.
The interesting thing is that there are half a dozen children who act as nothing more than curious onlookers. I could give you 5 paragraphs on Kitty Genovese, but that would be wasted here on the Motte.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
18d ago
If birth control is bad because it prevents the creation of persons, then so is not asking out people on a date. (This is now very contrary to the RCC, which views abstinence as praiseworthy.)
Eh, this is a misrepresentation. The RCC views abstinence outside of marriage as not only praiseworthy but necessary - all sex outside of marriage is sinful. But, regarding "not asking someone out on a date", the whole idea is that God has an individual level plan for everyone to use their gifts - we need not all follow the same path. The point is to actively follow the path God has set before you and to do so faithfully. Perhaps you aren't meant to ask someone out, marry them, and procreate. Perhaps your role is more monkish. If you're playing too much Warhammer, you have to ask yourself if you're being slothful, negligent in your duties, or complacent and self-indulgent. I think you might be right that God isn't pleased with incels - who stew in their imagined slights by imagined women. But he isn't displeased with those who have actively chosen a celibate life (be they clergy or otherwise) - so long as its done with care, intent, and intention.
As an aside, I really do like your deconstruction of birth control as "fractionally as bad as abortion or infanticide."
Style history:
The underlying reason common to both; growing a beard is a pretty good solution if you have a weak jawline. Some women don't like beards, but some do. The pool is large enough you aren't giving up much if you go for the beard. Very few women will totally overlook a particularly weak jaw line.
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