zataomm
1d ago
using AI for a prolonged period will lower your overall ability to code as a developer
This strongly depends on what your ability to code was before you started using AI. The reality is a lot of people can make websites now despite not having a professional approach to coding. If you're a classically trained developer, computer scientist, and you only use Vim, then yeah, you're probably right. That set of developers is going to be a smaller and smaller proportion of the total as time goes by.
On the one hand, I'm sure you're right that it's not as good as a human developer. On the other hand, it's kind of like the web in general. Websites all kind of suck now because React gives developers the ability to be lazy and not worry about resource usage or anything else because everything's kind of "good enough." But the cost and speed advantage of using AI is so overwhelming that I don't think your concerns are going to hold up. Developers are just going to have to add more bad code on top of bad code until it works.
Full disclosure: I really think that a lot of concerns from sophisticated developers about how AI makes mistakes are just snobbery/posing. But that's what I, an unsophisticated developer, would think, right?
Like, I'm not saying I've never had an experience where AI is going down a path that I think is bad and needs to change course. But in those cases, I usually hit the stop button and say, "Hey, I think you need to do this in a totally different way," or I can just say, "Hey, your last change was terrible. Can you just revert it?" There are a few instances where I feel kind of dumb because I'm using three prompts to say like hey I need you to change the font size, when I probably could've done it more easily myself in that specific case. But overall, I'd rather be talking to my agent than looking at code.
This is fairly impressive. Did you make this with assistance of generative AI?
Oh, very much so. Github Copilot + Claude Sonnet 4, if you care to know. Technically I am a web developer but at this point I am basically all-in on using AI wherever possible. Nice to get done in a couple hours what would have taken me much, much longer, and much more frustration, using the old method of typing code by hand.
zataomm
1d ago
Thanks! My inability to find such a summary was what caused me to embark upon this folly.
zataomm
1d ago
I felt kind of annoyed by the claim that "most" Supreme Court cases go 6-3 along ideological lines, although I guess the more defensible version would be that the controversial cases all go 6-3 along ideological lines. Be that as it may, I created a website this morning to help understand data from the most recent term. Spent more time than I intended on this so I'm hoping someone else finds it interesting: https://wbruntra.github.io/scotus/?tab=dashboard
zataomm
2mo ago
Produce seems like the perfect example of a place where regulation is not needed. Lidl’s general guarantee plus consumers’ discernment should be enough without Brussels needing to mandate a standard banana
A defense of... what, exactly? Haiti, Ukraine, and the Calculus of Sovereignty
Imagine that tomorrow, by some insane folly, Brazil decides to invade and annex Haiti. Brazil in general is... not great. Lots of poverty, questionable rule of law, wild swings in politics in recent years. But compared to Haiti, whose government is a strong contender for worst in the world? Living in a society merely as flawed as Brazil would be an incredible improvement. So okay, in our imagination, Brazil definitely annexed Haitian territory through unprovoked aggression. But would we encourage Haitians to resist? Put Haitian flags in our Twitter bios? Would we support a government that is failing its people? Or would we ask whether Brazilian rule, however illegitimate, might offer Haitians marginally better prospects? So there's the question: Under what conditions does a state's right to sovereignty outweigh its failure to secure the welfare of its people?
This is the question I keep trying to answer for myself on Ukraine. In 2022, I didn't know much about Ukraine but my stance aligned with the general consensus: Russia's invasion was a brazen violation of international law, and Ukraine's territorial integrity demanded defense. But after three years of stalemate, over 500,000 casualties reported, a failed counteroffensive, and no plausible path to Ukrainian victory, I'm asking "What's it all for?" The conflict will ultimately end in negotiated concessions. Crimea retained by Russia, Donbas partitioned, security guarantees exchanged. Why prolong a war of attrition that sacrifices a generation to marginally adjust the terms? Why fight for Ukraine at all?
Poland vs. Ukraine: Reform and Stagnation
For contrast, consider Poland, a nation that, like Ukraine, emerged from Soviet domination in 1991. Both inherited corrupt, centrally planned economies and oligarchic rot. Yet Poland since then has been growing like crazy and today boasts a GDP per capita around $21,000. Ukraine, by contrast, basically didn't advance at all, and was at $4,500 per capita pre-war. As I said, I was ignorant about the details before, and I am only slightly less ignorant now of the specifics of these two countries' trajectories, but as a big believer in Adam Smith's economics, I am convinced that a GDP of $4,500 indicates something really, really wrong with Ukrainian governance.
So if Poland were being invaded by Russia, I would see their post-Soviet trajectory as something worth dying for. I would feel like they were fighting to stay on the one true path, all that is good and right about liberal democracy. But Ukraine? "Fighting for all that's good and right" is definitely the vibe on Twitter, but where is the evidence that Ukraine is on the path to becoming Poland? Okay, they elected Zelenskyy in 2019, but what has he done? What have been the fruits of Ukrainian reforms?
Conclusion
Shouldn't the hypothetical Brazilians invading Haiti be greeted as liberators? It truly would be hard for Brazilian colonial rule to be any worse than the current government of Haiti. Ukraine isn't the basket case that Haiti is, but its pre-war stagnation, evidenced by a $4,500 GDP per capita, casts doubt on its claim to be a bastion of liberal democracy, an ideal actually worth dying for. I see no virtue in increasing this war's death toll merely to tweak an inevitable settlement's borders. Russia's aggression is unjust, but if Ukraine's fight preserves only a corrupt stasis rather than a transformative future, why are we supporting it? It used to be that more cynical people said the US supported Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and it's good for us that their soldiers die. But now we just hear the idealistic case. Is the idealistic case strong?
My views are of course nuanced and sophisticated, but stripped of all the sophistication and nuance, here's the deal:
Europe is a sinking ship and when we yell "your ship is sinking!", the captains (plural) insist, in the most arrogant tone possible, that we only think the ship is sinking because we are uncivilized buffoons. Fine. Enjoy the rest of your trip.
zataomm
5mo ago
Seems like an overreaction. Based on his own observations about how these people speak, it's not clear that they understand the effect their words have on people. The psychologizing was maybe a bit much, but I wouldn't call it highly inflammatory so much as a way to explain why certain people continuously make breathless statements that their audience has long ago gotten tired of hearing (e.g. "Trump is a fascist").
zataomm
7mo ago
Indeed. I couldn't really vote for Trump in this election because of his tariffs and the general policy uncertainty, but if he could somehow guarantee he would nominate a Gorsuch clone in his second term that would probably have been enough for me.
zataomm
8mo ago
At least I am consistent because I hated the Puerto Rico thing and I hate this. I hate it even in a “well, these are the rules the Democrats made so now we’re just making them honor those rules” sense. It’s all so stupid. Biden can’t speak coherently. He showed that in the debate. That’s why he’s not running for president. It’s also disgusting because people can’t even pretend that they themselves are upset. They’re just trying to convince stupid people that they should be upset.
zataomm
8mo ago
This may be the week I finally have to admit I don't understand a large portion of anti-Trump sentiment, at least as it manifests on Twitter. For me, the last straw was the reaction to the Washington Post's decision to not endorse a candidate for president, despite the fact that any reader who is paying attention at all knows that the editorial board endorses Harris, a fact reflected throughout basically all of their election coverage, and I am comfortable saying that the publication of an endorsement would literally have persuaded 0 voters to change their vote.
zataomm
8mo ago
Absolutely incredible finish. Commanders avoided a very tough-luck loss by handing the Bears one instead.
zataomm
8mo ago
I guarantee this never happened.
I don't know, there are a lot of people in the world who say a lot of things. This sounds like a really weird thing to say so maybe in context it made more sense? I tend to believe it, I just don't think it actually matters, doubt there was any animus behind it, and overall think that hypersensitivity to microagressions tends to make racial relations worse.
David French's current views overall are garbage, though.
zataomm
8mo ago
(I wrote the linked comment)
That's fair. The Democrats' repeated insistence on referring to "Trump's Project 2025" is so transparently ridiculous, It makes me want to post the Jesse Pinkman, "he can't keep getting away with it," GIF. It somehow causes me great despair that the Democrats found this phrase which sounds ominous, and for that reason alone will keep on saying it, despite the fact that anyone who stops to think about what they know about Trump would find it wildly implausible. It just seems so cynical to me.
That's what I was trying to express, but I agree that it's better to not fill the forum with sarcastic comments
zataomm
8mo ago
I just find the whole Project 2025 association so absurd because I actually followed the Democrats' advice and "google[d] Project 2025", which led me to the discovery of the project's 922-page book. And to claim that Donald Trump, of all people, actually read this book, well... is there any person in America who could believe it? As Loquat says in his comment, people invent all kinds of fantastical stories about Trump, but the idea that he would read a book? You've got to be kidding.
zataomm
8mo ago
But surely we can agree Trump's thinking has been influenced by his careful study of the 922-page publication from the Heritage Foundation describing Project 2025, and/or the back-and-forth discussions he engaged in with its authors on policy matters prior to its being released.
zataomm
8mo ago
Yes, it seems like every case I have seen as demonstrating the effects of overturning Roe v. Wade has been misrepresented in some way. Inspired by your comment, I looked up the Amanda Zurawski case that Walz cited in the debate. In their ruling on Zurawski v. Texas, the Texas supreme court wrote:
As our Court recently held, the law does not require that a woman’s death be imminent or that she first suffer physical impairment.2 Rather, Texas law permits a physician to address the risk that a life-threatening condition poses before a woman suffers the consequences of that risk. A physician who tells a patient, “Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,” and in the same breath states “but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances” is simply wrong in that legal assessment.
So the current rhetoric coming from Democrats on abortion is certainly very misleading, with Kamala Harris claiming that women need to be in the middle of bleeding to death in parking lots in order for doctors to provide treatment. In very general terms, it's fair to say that if there were no abortion laws at all, then doctors would not even theoreticallly have to worry about being prosecuted for breaking those laws. But in every single abortion case I have seen cited as an example of the disastrous consequences of Dobbs, doctors either were grossly negligent (Amber Thurman), or at best, believed that the law restricted them in ways that, properly interpreted, they were not restricted at all.
I definitely want the law to be clear, but I have this sneaking suspicion that a lot of the supposed "misunderstandings" about what the law prohibits are driven by opposition to the law.
zataomm
8mo ago
précipitâtes
Hey, we’re talking about New York magazine here. Get back over to the New Yorker with your weird orthography
zataomm
9mo ago
ProPublica has published their promised follow-up story describing the other death related to the Georgia abortion ban, and as you may have expected, the connection is even more tenuous than in the story you critiqued here.
zataomm
9mo ago
Her first pill was taken July 20, so according to Google she should have taken the misoprostol by about July 22.
According to the article, the first pill was taken on August 13th, at the clinic in North Carolina, after the missed appointment for the surgical procedure. She went into the hospital on August 18th.
zataomm
9mo ago
Thanks, this seems like an important insight. You could say that the economic value of land just isn't as high relative to labor as it was before, say, 1800. The American "empire" receives economic value from favorable laws in foreign countries: Apple can set up factories in China, the Gap can have its factories in Bangladesh, without the government of the United States actually needing to be in charge of the day-to-day business of government in those countries. And as the economy has become more complicated, it does seem like "workers + incentives" is a cheaper and ultimately more profitable technique than "slaves + force" for extracting value from labor. This seems like a new development, so I'm surprised to hear that it was already in Adam Smith. I guess the modern economy is older than I thought.
zataomm
9mo ago
I don’t know how you can look at that and think “America.”
Because I think America/NATO actually achieved what Germany (according to its modern defenders) was trying to achieve, peace through unquestioned dominance on the continent of Europe. America doesn't view itself as aggressively expansionist, even as NATO expands, because its military actually is so dominant that it seems only natural that other countries should want to join our military alliance. So America is definitely not like Germany if the comparison is "young upstart power with something to prove", but America does seem similar to Germany in its view of a peaceful world order, i.e. everyone should just do what we want.
But hey, I'm just getting into this stuff for the first time, my curiosity having been sparked by the much-maligned Twitter. Maybe there is no analogy to be made, but I appreciate getting informed pushback from people who know a lot more about this than I do!
zataomm
9mo ago
I'm sure this meta-argument is not original to me, but I'd say that morality is just how humans are wired, so if you want to achieve an outcome that involves getting a lot of people to do something (e.g. vote), it makes sense to appeal to their moral intuitions. Since I want to achieve libertarian outcomes, I'd rather libertarians spend time and energy convincing each other that they should vote, "because voting is the right thing to do," rather than engaging in these kinds of exercises about how voting is a waste of time.
The standard libertarian rejoinder to "well, what if everyone thought that way?" is that your voting doesn't cause anyone else to vote, so why bother? But that's not really true, since humans are social animals, and when all your friends and the people you admire are doing something, you naturally want to do it as well. If all the cool kids are voting, you want to vote like them! You could do cost/benefit analysis to figure out whether voting is really worth it, but you're never going to win an election by doing that.
I know what you mean. Any suggestions on how to break down the data this way? I mean, at some point, if you just define important cases as cases that go 6-3 along ideological lines, then by the way that you've defined it, 100% of important cases are going to be decided along ideological lines. I'm trying to think about what would be a good middle ground that's still data analysis-based while giving insight into these potentially controversial cases.
On the Agreement Matrix tab, I've added a checkbox that excludes unanimous cases from the analysis. Which I think is an interesting way to look at it, because you're seeing that if there's any disagreement at all in a case, then, for example, Thomas and Jackson are most likely to find themselves on opposite sides, while Thomas and Alito are most likely to be on the same side. You didn't really need data analysis to come up with this insight, but I guess it's good to confirm at least that data analysis confirms what everybody knows.
https://wbruntra.github.io/scotus/?tab=matrix
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