jokesonly

@blakeir It is not merely buggy software or an algorithm that does not do want it was meant to do. It is "m I s A L i G n E d AI"

every algorithmic change is a reminder: the feed isn’t neutral. someone is deciding what gets amplified, what disappears, and how we spend our attention.

@SamoBurja ".. what we are aiming to achieve" followed by riot like scene

Sometimes ads are primarily made for the employees of a company, not customers or the public, and can be a good window into their perspective.

@rfleury Exactly, that is why we all should adopt rust right?

I do not understand defenders of status quo philosophies in software development. Even if you don’t think software quality has deteriorated at all in the past several decades (in some ways it hasn’t, but in numerous ways it objectively has), you have to lack all imagination or analytical abilities to consider modern software as the pinnacle of what could be produced. Software can be much better than it is. I’m not interested in your methodologies which have led to many decades of slop (both pre- and post-LLM). I’m not interested in producing status quo results, even if it’s faster than it used to be. I care about what I make.

@shengkun_ye Congrats on being one of the 32k chosen ones

marc andreessen just followed me!!

@coryalthoff I like to send the mirror image of a VC when applying for jobs. Because it is a CV

You don't need VCs. VCs need you.

@signulll This is not instagram

sometimes the simulation is beautiful for no reason.

@ashebytes You get into a prison when you do the outer work

you jailbreak reality when you do the inner work

@tunguz Algorithms are alive, long die software

Software is dead, long live algorithms.

@suchenzang Those that are missing a mate, they polycule

Those that can, do. Those that understand, teach. Those that are missing a moat, regulate.

@gabriel1 My therapist told me I should listen to myself. I agreed and started deluding myself that everyone listens to me

People Listen To You Only Because They Think Others Do To, Not Because You Post Clever Things Be Internet Famous

@fchollet Read my replies for examples

Gödelian humor is self-referential

@samzliu Dude this sounds like you need to take some time off and figure out what you want in life. I hope you figure it out

I've figured out why SF culture is so fucked. It's not AI, constant schmoozing, or the gender ratio. It's the work itself. I met a journalist the other day that was fascinated about how people try to find humanity in San Francisco, a the city that seems dead-set on trying to remove humanity from our society. She was especially interested by a rule I have at my dinner parties: no AI, no start-ups, no talking about moving to New York. I felt an urge to defend the bay: How is this different from bankers, political staffers, intense military specialties, or professional athletes? All of whom work insane hours and often live in all consuming bubbles filled with non-stop competition, jargon, and monoculture? But I knew she was right somehow. And it has to do with what the process of becoming a "technical person" does to you. On the surface, technical work has the hallmarks of flow. The mythical state of consciousness ascribed to only the best of us: artists, musicians, athletes, monks meditating, and the commuter driving home who has learned to stop worrying and love the ride. Long periods of time pass without conscious awareness. Focus that has its own inertia. Collapsing in of the world to only what matters right now. However, I often find that deep technical problem solving is the junk food of flow states. It maybe feels good in the moment but it leaves you feeling bad about yourself when the spell breaks. Similar to wasting a night away binge watching tv or playing video games until the sunrises. It’s a state where compulsion for what is next matters more than present joy. Not all technical problem solving feels like this, of course. There are moments of pure unadulterated beauty that I cannot experience in any other way. Moments where the struggle to the top of the mountain seems worth it because of the view. Maxwell, Noether, Euler. Giants whose first ascents have carved their names into history and whose paths have shown us the righteous way. Then there are the moments of overwhelming joy, relief, and exuberance that comes all at once. When you finally fix a bug. When the product is launched and the rover lands safely. The feeling that you have built something. Something complex and it works. And for me, those moments are what keeps me coming back. But it’s self-delusion to pretend that all or indeed most technical work is like this. Most of it looks like frustration. confusion. compulsion. suffering. Those that learned to code pre-LLMs remember the pain of debugging. Chasing down stack traces for hours only to find a stupid one letter mistake the cause of all your agony. The panic at 6 am, mere hours before a problem set is due, with 3 more questions still left undone. The utter confusion and hopelessness of concepts not quite clicking together. Or, once it clicks, it becoming so obvious that spelling it out in code or writing becomes an exercise in tedium. It's also not quite like a runner’s high either. There is no beauty found in this suffering. There’s no poetry in finding a bug that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. There’s no value in being confused. Indeed, the ones lauded here seemingly don’t have this problem. The prodigies for whom everything comes naturally. Perhaps this is why many people in deep technical subjects like physics, math, and theoretical computer science develop a hint of arrogance. If you haven’t suffered like we have, who are we to take you seriously? It is natural for the language of your craft to become the language of your life. And there’s a way in which a mathematical framework naturally lends itself to describing life. As has been famously observed, it is unreasonably effective. The physical world becomes reduced to forces. The world of human decisions to utility functions and Nash equilibria. This reductionism can be quite jarring for those that are non-technical. I remember accidentally offending a former partner by using the phrase “signal-to-noise” ratio, forgetting the connotations of the word "noise" in everyday speech. Just as mathematical thinking reduces the world to mechanical logical processes, the act of doing math reduces your brain to a machine. This is the crux of the problem. Unlike other forms of flow like music or sports, doing math inherently forces a type of dissociation. An abstraction of your mind from your body. To simulate an entire reality in your mind, you must remove yourself from this reality. Unlike prose or verse, the reality of mathematics and machine is devoid of texture. Almost poetically, everything here exists solely because someone willed it into existence. But in doing so, every object is perfectly smooth, platonic and pure. A mathematical definition is perfectly transferable without identity. It is the same to me as it is to you. Then, when you are transported back to the physical, embodied reality of the present, the whiplash catches up. All the sensory input, negative feelings you've been avoiding, and real life to be lived appear all at once and become overwhelming. It might be easier to just stay in the fantasy world where everything is simple and makes sense. Moreover, unlike other forms of disassociation which waste time or money (e.g. gambling, doomscrolling), a technical mind is rewarded extremely handsomely by society. For those that grew up in families that were emotionally repressed and valued success, it would seem worth it. Same for those that maybe have found solace in the simplicity of machines compared to the messiness of people. The cost though, is a sense of who you are.

@Plinz I know right! Hopefully it does not deteriorate to the point where it starts looking like the sf tenderloin

Whenever I am Paris, I experience its unique spirit, lovely and sweet. It’s still there in some moments, but the atmosphere has changed so much in the last decade. Something is wilting and withering, bit by bit

@vi0lentpr0phet @pglonghouse Your mother likes my dork

@recurrentneural @pglonghouse Dork

crazy how being a “voracious reader” is now one of the number 1 signs of being a midwit. if u read 100 books in a year im just assuming its all worthless drivel and that you’d have been better off reading 0 books actually

@itsolelehmann Nope, not talking about the mindfulness bullshit. Vipassana meditation is pure focus

@recurrentneural yes, but meditation is the opposite of focus

i predict "attention workouts" to become a thing soon multithread agent work, social media scrolling, constant noise around us all nuke our attention spans and you NEED attention to get anything significant done in life the answer to future true productivity wont be more information, but less

@vi0lentpr0phet @pglonghouse Congrats you noticed the meta joke, but that does not make you any less mid either

@recurrentneural @pglonghouse So ur a midwit

@0xluffy If you feel the need to use twitter, you are insecure by definition, regardless of how many probability density functions you look at

taps the sign

@levelsio Cope.

If you're in marketing, more education makes your income go down: high-school $85K/y -> Bachelor $80K/y -> Master $75K/y If you're a founder, education does not help or hurt you at all, the change is $0 The only place where education increases income from m data is PhDs who are developers do result in $150K/y median income, but sample size is 50 so it's noisy

@beffjezos You do know how exponential functions grow I hope, because I don't think you need to finish your PhD to know that stuff.

If you are not exponentially more ambitious over time you are falling behind