domain:aporiamagazine.com
birb_cromble
12m ago
Personal anecdote, we had an order from the higher ups that we must use LLMs, and that they will be tracking how often we use them
You're not the first person to tell me that at various companies. Is there some kind of misaligned incentive there, like a KPI from higher up, or a kickback scheme? Or are they true believers.
mr_bailey
12m ago
It increasingly feels to me like the Tyler Cowen's of the world are right. That the impact will be large, huge even, but take a lot more time to play out then the boosters predict. It will take time, not only for the tech to improve, but for people and companies to learn how to best use it and for complementary infrastructure and skills to build up. The parallels to the personal computer or internet seem increasingly on point, especially the dot com era. People were, rightly, astounded by those. And, for all the jeering pets.com got, and all the (mostly valid!) reasons it wouldn't work, it ended up mostly just ahead of its time. I and everyone I know buy my pet food through an online subscription or auto-recurring purchase. In 20 years I expect AI will be omnipresent in white collar work.
hydroacetylene
27m ago
My expectation is that LLM/AI will boost productivity in the white collar sector and reduce pink collar jobs, but not totally upend the jobs market in those two sectors.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
33m ago
I think the answer to your question, in that other post, is yes. This is mainly incidental to the book and so I only have a bit of tangential material about it, near the very end, but I think you're right on the money.
I appreciate the objection, but will mostly decline to respond for the time being. Chapter six is substantially about exactly what you're describing here. It may or may not persuade you but we'll be in a better position to talk about it at that time.
For now what I'd suggest is that shared (genetic) substrate is critical. Your friends, etc. can share higher-order internal realities with you ('culture') only so long as they have the necessary genetic substrate in the first place. Assuming that all humans have the necessary components to be 'like you' given a similar-enough upbringing would be a major mistake. Humans do have an enormous capacity for learned associations and behaviours, but only so long as etc. You get it. We'll come back to this later.
And even then there's a tendency to, er, 'anthropomorphize' other people and assume that just because they laugh at the same jokes, those jokes occur to them in the same way. I'd be wary of this mistake too.
ETA: There's also the phenomenon of mass, lowest-common-denominator culture to consider. A mixed population necessarily devolves to those cultural levels which its mixed foundation can support.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
37m ago
I think of AI a lot like I think of my experiences working with H1Bs. LLMs have no concept of truth, no actual work ethic, and basically make whatever mouth sounds get you to leave them alone. With enough supervision they can generate work product, but you can never exactly trust it. If you put them in charge of each other, things go completely off the rails exponentially.
The problem with LLMs will always be supervising them. I think in any area where the truth doesn't matter (fiction, art, chat, summaries of text to a lesser degree) LLMs might crush it. I think for many other automated tasks (data entry from disparate documents), their error rate will probably be in line with a human. But in terms of advanced knowledge work, I expect their output to always have a high variance, and it would be catastrophic for any company to integrate them into their workflow without even more knowledgeable and experienced humans in the loop.
Of course, you then run into the problem of not training up those humans because AI is doing the entry level jobs, or allowing them to go to seed because instead of keeping their skills sharp, they are doing nothing but double check AI output.
ChickenOverlord
37m ago
Personal anecdote, we had an order from the higher ups that we must use LLMs, and that they will be tracking how often we use them. I asked Windsurf (which they provided me with a license for) and it generated C# code with the following issues (amongst many others):
- It wrapped all uses of HttpClient in a using block. Despite HttpClient implementing IDisposable, you aren't actually supposed to dispose it because this will lead to socket exhaustion when under load
- All DB queries it generated were called synchronously. Similarly to the socket exhaustion issue above, this will lead to thread exhaustion (and generally lower capacity for simultaneous connections, throughput, etc.). On the bright side, at least it parameterized them all.
I started generating crap to please whatever tracking mechanisms they are using, but have completely ignored the output.
Have you traveled for work to any great extent? If not, what you're yearning for likely isn't travel as much as vacation, lack of responsibility and limited adherence to social rules.
Most people who have to travel for work, even those who specifically sought it out for that reason, bounce off hard.
I was browsing through the news today and I found an interesting article about the current state of AI for corporate productivity.
MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing
Despite the rush to integrate powerful new models, about 5% of AI pilot programs achieve rapid revenue acceleration; the vast majority stall, delivering little to no measurable impact on P&L.
There seems to have been a feeling over the last few years that generative AI was going to gut white collar jobs the same way that offshoring gutted blue collar jobs in the 1980s and 90s, and that it was going to happen any day now.
If this study is trustworthy, the promise of AI appears to be less concrete and less imminent than many would hope or fear.
I've been thinking about why that might be, and I've reached theee non-exclusive but somewhat unrelated thoughts.
The first is that Gartner hype cycle is real. With almost every new technology, investors tend to think that every sigmoid curve is an exponential curve that will asymptotically approach infinity. Few actually are. Are we reaching the point where the practical gains available in each iteration our current models are beginning to bottom out? I'm not deeply plugged in to the industry, nor the research, nor the subculture, but it seems like the substantive value increase per watt is rapidly diminishing. If that's true, and there aren't any efficiency improvements hiding around the next corner, it seems like we may be entering the through of disillusionment soon.
The other thought that occurs to me is that people seem to be absolutely astounded by the capabilities of LLMs and similar technology.
Caveat: My own experience with LLMs is that it's like talking to a personable schizophrenic from a parallel earth, so take my ramblings with a grain of salt.
It almost seems like LLMs exist in an area similar to very early claims of humanoid automata, like the mechanical Turk. It can do things that seem human, and as a result, we naturally and unconsciously ascribe other human capabilities to them while downplaying their limits. Eventually, the discrepancy grows to great - usually when somebody notices the cost.
On the third hand, maybe it is a good technology and 95% of companies just don't know how to use it?
Does anyone have any evidence that might lend weight to any of these thoughts, or discredit them?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
59m ago
Does anyone else get annoyed when they see someone complain about "grammar mistakes" that aren't actually mistakes, where this is mostly a product of the complainer's overly-simplified understanding of language rules (usually due to poor education)? Whether it's the incredibly-frequent egregious misunderstandings of the rule of paragraph breaks in dialogue, total failure to recognize the (admittedly dying) subjunctive mood, or mistaking an imperfective-aspect dependent clause in a past-tense sentence for a "mistaken" switch to present tense (because English grammarians refer to the active participle as the "present participle"), I keep finding myself getting quite irritated.
Curly_rincewind
1hr ago
Damn. Been reading posts about your Marital issues for a few years now. This did feel inevitable. Not going to lie, I got the impression you were chronically miserable.
Even though I don't usually share your perspective on things I really enjoy reading your posts.
Anecdotes of your life and work are of great interest to me because from the bits and pieces you put out there, I feel like your an older version of me. I'm a young german graduating in a technical field and looking to start a family with my partner soon.
So it does pain me whenever you write about how unaffordable everything is and how having a young family in Germany sucks hahah. I still choose to be more optimistic.
I really hope I will see more upbeat posts from you in the future!
I haven't encountered that yet. This woman's version seems to be that all non-black people have hereditary environmental poisoning that damaged their ability to produce sacred melanin. There is a video where she seems to momentarily imply it was deliberate, though does not name a perpetrator (maybe a community effort; very sophisticated systems thinking).
It seems like a big part of originating narcissism here might be about distinguishing themselves from Africans, who who they've decided are parasitic interlopers out to steal the Black American birthright, wealth and identity (this woman is very loose with deploying the p-word).
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
Still working on Stranger In A Strange Land and His Broken Body. Making faster progress on Stranger, partly because it's much lighter reading and partly because His Broken Body is part of my bedtime Kindle reading, which means a lot of times I fall asleep before reading very much. I'm making good progress on Stranger, and will most likely finish it sometime this week. I've really enjoyed the book so far, though with some amusement as Heinlein has been turning his central character into a sex god. It is one of those things where you have to laugh and go "man, the 60s really were a different time".
Aapje58
1hr ago
Israel does not have racial policies.
This is false, see the Nation-State Bill, as well as the conscription laws. I already referred to both, so you should have been aware.
You completely invented this, out of nothing, and you pretend this is "obvious".
Surely you must be aware that my interpretations of these laws are hardly unique, so claiming that I invented them out of nothing, truly puts you beyond all ability to reason with. If you were to merely argue that one interpretation was wrong, there would be room for debate, but you are simply in full denial if you refuse to admit the obvious truth that my interpretation is a common one that you can even find on the most mainstream of sites like Wikipedia.
No, much more diverse actually. Which you would have known if you knew anything about Israel beyond a bunch of fourth-party packaged woke slogans, but you don't, do you?
I never addressed which country is more diverse and it matters nothing to my argument, or yours. I think that hurling personal insults that make any form of sense works better than what you just did.
They do [have civil marriage]. Ask me how I know? That's how I got married.
Did you get a civil marriage within Israel or did you get married outside of Israel and then got your marriage legalized? Because the latter is the common escape route, but is not an actual civil marriage performed by Israel.
Or did you get a 'couplehood union,' which is not a marriage?
Again, you didn't even try.
I did read up on the law before responding. So you are telling falsehoods based on false assumptions. Why don't you stick to the facts, rather than make stuff up?
Syria is at war with Israel, and repeatedly refused to sign a peace treaty. When you start a war and lose it, that's what happens.
This is false. I know, because I live in a country that 'won' a war and then had to give back the land that was gained. The idea that you can always just take land if you have the ability to do so, is not supported by international law or historic precedent.
Also, the idea that it's justified and no big deal when you go to war just because a peace treaty hasn't been signed is just trying to win a debate on a technicality, but is strongly at odds with reality. Do you think that if North Korea would attack the South, Western nations would shrug their shoulders since the countries are technically still at war?
"Tired" is not as strong an argument as you may think it is.
It is tired when the claim of double standards is never applied consistently or logically.
Israel has been and continues to be attacked by Arabs - from Hamas to Iran to Husites to Hezbollah to others. All those people eventually find out the dear and grave costs of such actions.
And vice versa as well. Again, you are so biased that you fail to apply your arguments to both sides.
If the inequality consists of having less chance to be murdered by other Arabs, then I don't see it as a huge problem, and neither see the Israeli Arabs.
I think that this inequality increases the abuse of Arabs by the IDF, by removing people from the IDF whose innate racism (that we all have to some extent) cannot be as easily be used to justify abuse as non-Arabs.
Nobody "drew them together" to Gaza and they resist all efforts to relocate them anywhere
They are being driven together right now and there are Israeli laws that restrict their ability to migrate to Israel, in cases where Jews would be permitted to immigrate (a racial policy!).
But I guess that what you mean is that they resist effort to ethnically cleanse them.
And their population grows by 2% every year, which is faster than Israeli population (1.5% a year). That's some shitty cleansing.
I never claimed that Israel was (effective at) ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in the past. You keep making stuff up that I never said.
I say they do not exist, what existed in Gaza was completely autonomous self-rule by Gazans
So Gazans had autonomy over the sea exit and could freely get on a boat and travel away, with no interference by Israel, and boats from other nations could freely travel to Gaza with no interference?
And the only thing that was asked from them is to please stop trying to murder us.
Resistance against an oppressor is legitimate. Of course, violence against civilians is not, but you've already demonstrated that you have no concern for that, given that you refuse to condemn Israeli violence against civilians.
And it is a lie that the only thing that was asked of them was not to murder Israelis. What was asked was to accept permanent oppression. Of course you can live in your alternative reality where Palestinians resist because they just want to drink Jewish blood, not because of a desire for freedom, but I think that it is telling that you never argue that Israeli's would accept it peacefully if they would have to live like you think is suitable for the Palestinians. Because of course they wouldn't, as they already demonstrated when they chose terrorism in the early days before the actual founding of Israel, even though they had it far better than the Palestinians already.
Not "all", but 80 to 90 percent. Look up any poll on support of Hamas.
The idea that people who support an organisation are 100% in agreement with the goals of that organisation is the kind of non-true, simplistic take that I would even expect most journalists to dismiss, let alone a mottizen. This is very untrue, which completely undermines your reasoning.
Secondly, your figures seem to be wrong: https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/997
Ultimately, I don't care much for the current hateful feelings among Palestinians or Israelis, because if you actually want peace, you cannot take these as a given anyway, but have to change them. The only alternative is ethnic cleansing or worse. But it is not realistic to suggest a peace based on Israel's boot forever stomping on the Palestinians face.
roystgnr
1hr ago
the ship probably doesn't need to run on a tight schedule.
3 Ariane 6 launches in the last year, but it looks like they've got 9+ planned for 2026 ... I looked that up because I was going to talk smack about Ariane flight rates, but 9 Atlantic round trips per year might actually be in the sweet spot between "frequent enough that speed is important" and "infrequent enough that additional capital investment doesn't get a chance to pay off".
Now I'm wondering what happened to all those startups that tried lashing a robotic kite to cargo ships...
The most prominent one seems to have migrated to kite-based electrical generation. Not sure why, but it can't be a great sign for the idea. Is it just that cargo ships don't have much of a keel, so they only benefit from the component of the wind that's parallel to their course?
Yeet_far
1hr ago
I dunno -- I think the bit about "But the less-closely related you are to someone genetically, the stranger his world would seem to you" is just really not ... true? Totally begging the question?
I am sure on average you are going to have a more similar internal world to your family than a random stranger. But it has absolutely not been the case for me that my family "gets me" more than my friends do.
Like.
I love my family.
There are certain things I have in common with them, sure.
But I haven't lived at home in fifteen years. I have been with my wife for twelve of those. Whenever we go visit my family, it's a bit weird. I don't have nearly as much in common with them as I did when I was a child. My wife's (or, for that matter, by friends in the city I live in's) world is far closer to mine than my family's is, because we have grown together over the years.
It seems like the only way you could write that is if you've never left home (or at least did not stay away if you did). Or just have done a much better job of staying in close contact with your family than I have, I guess?
But regardless, you're conflating shared history and experience (memetic closeness) with genetic closeness.
I really hope this isn't a load-bearing part of your thesis in later chapters, but I guess I'll find out...
Throwaway05
1hr ago
Unrelated but should still mention: not all specialities are sedentary/radiology, it's pretty common for proceduralists to actually do a decent amount (even if its just standing on your feet >16 hours a day) with Ortho at times being legitimately physically demanding (depending on what you do in Ortho).
My specific life course is highly identifiable which is one of the reasons why I've been vague about my specialty and background here but keep in mind that things like hobbies, pre or concurrent to medicine employment and family background can give people manual labor experience without the main career being one of those things.
To quote Heinlein - “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
If you aren't moving your body on a regular basis in some productive way you are leaving behind a ton of physical and mental health gains.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
Aren't you a doctor? How do you do manual labor?
pigeonburger
2hr ago
They soft retconned the entire point of the last two movies. Dinosaurs got loose and spread throughout terrestrial ecosystems, being somewhere between invasive and endemic. Photos of Triceratops herds migrating through Wyoming, Pteranodons nesting on skyscrapers, the works. And then they just... died off. No, seriously, dinosaurs - which colonized everything from the Arctic to the Antarctic - just couldn't handle conditions outside the modern equator. Thanks, global warming?
I think that's also pretty much what they did with the last two movies, in the sense of them trying to execute as little as possible on the premise of Dinosaurs Everywhere(tm), probably because it's not conducive to the kind of plot they want to tell, or it would be too high budget, or it would make the dinosaurs seem boring and not special anymore. So what they do is put out trailers that show prominently Dinosaurs Everywhere(tm), put it in opening or closing scenes, and then quickly in the movie find an excuse why yes, there's Dinosaurs Everywhere(tm) but not really dinosaurs everywhere and the trailer feels like a bait and switch.
GoofyGoose
2hr ago
The pathologization of savings always struck me as economist cope.
It’s not even good economics. Any good economist knows that the “deflation bad” meme is wrong unless you add extra assumptions.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
Tried to read The Deepgate Codex and had to quit halfway through, way to gruesome for no reason.
Just finished The Rot which was great.
When really using a shovel properly, hard, throughout a day, is a much more complicated physical task than the bench press is. Experience completing labor tasks will add to your ability in those tasks, no different from any athletic specialization.
I think most of the gym strength vs labor strength comes down to this.
On a practical level, most construction workers will have the added advantage of having both much higher work capacity in the movements most relevant to their work - gym strength is not commonly built by doing hundreds of reps (per hour, for 10 hours, in the sun) - and by having already built the mental fortitude necessary to complete hundreds of reps (per hour, for 10 hours, in the sun).
if someone tells me that they are strong but not with "gym muscles" then I know they aren't actually all that strong at all
The laborer will of course turn that around. The inability (in work capacity or mental fortitude) to lift all day is the same as not being "all the strong strong at all" - no matter what the little numbers on the plates say when they get moved around for a grand total of 10 minutes every other day.
Early 40s. The skiing injury/insomnia/gastric/heart items are all things that I would put in an acute, or at least "actual malady", category. Your friend's lingering ankle injury is probably more like a chronic condition than acute if we are being really choosy on our diction, but it is nonetheless something being clearly wrong, not the maintenance/preventative work that a nutritionist would generally be for someone without a physiological nutrition/diet problem. I am still missing the purpose of chiropractors, nutritionists, etc, for "normal adults".
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