Hossein Alidaee

@p_ganong Shoot me an email

Agentic AI q: --You write code which replicates or builds on a paper. --You want to give the LLM the paper PDF to reference as needed. --You don't want to burn your whole context window. Help! How do you do it?

If (a) $200/month claude plan actually subsidizes $5k/month in equivalent API usage (b) we expect a rug pull with model prices going up, this really changes predictions about labor impact. Compared to $60k/year just on token usage, firms may keep lots of knowledge workers around.

@arthur_spirling I guess it's a semantics argument then? Like I think you can be revolutionary in magnitude but not mechanism. I.e. sending a rocket into space was revolutionary since we never fought gravity that hard before but burning a bunch of fuel to fight gravity is known to work.

@halidaee I think that's an admission that it's not uniquely revolutionary.

You can believe “this time it’s different” and that AI is a uniquely revolutionary technology. You can make confident predictions about how AI will play out in equilibrium in politics, society and the economy. But I don’t think you can really do both.

@arthur_spirling Like, I've never gone mountain climbing but given my shoddy joints can barely handle some of the hikes my wife picks, I can extrapolate how that would go pretty easily.

@arthur_spirling But can't past data from smaller magnitude be effective training data of you do have strong conviction that the direction is the same?

"At least the Ayatollah is gone." Congratulations to that crowd. The monarchy is back...in the form of Khamenei's son as the successor. A+ foresight.

I can't process the fact that seemingly intelligent (even if warmonger) people didn't understand that a people with bombs and missiles raining down on their heads aren't going to try to overthrow the regime. Especially as no one in the pro-war crowd or not, has yet offered a realistic alternative (or person) to replace what exists. Right now, it appears that people are busy trying to survive. You know, not die.

the black smoke and raging fire from the refinery strikes around tehran = one of the best ways to lose the hearts and minds of the iranian people who hate the regime.

Apocalyptic scenes from Tehran tonight. I’ve never seen something like this.

Though it is day, the sun cannot be seen in Tehran today because of all the smoke following the US and Israel bombing Tehran's oil refineries. People on the ground describe it as armageddon. History will not forgive Reza Pahlavi, Masih Alinejad, Nazanin Boniadi, and all other "leaders" who tricked Iranians into thinking this war would set them free.

@alexolegimas @ChicagoBooth 10/10 guerrilla marketing campaign by @ExpectedParrot @johnjhorton

If you are using or citing mturk in the last year or so, up to 38% of the respondents were AI bots. Prolific is up to 6% (likely less). Important research from my colleagues at @ChicagoBooth.

@brett__gordon @NotionHQ @obsdmd Hated Notion. My favorite is actually Bear (Obsidian can get needlessly complex). You can get best of both worlds (Bear design and Obsidian distributed file structure) in Obsidian with minimal theme + Tags View + Tag Wrangler + Live Preview

hive mind: I'm considering switching note apps from @NotionHQ to Obsidian @obsdmd. I don't like how Notion requires internet access (and there is no way to set "Available Offline" as a default). Any thoughts on each tool especially for typical academic use cases?

"There is a harder question underneath that one, about what comes next." Article alludes to a issue missing from so many of these discussions: a myopia from both sides about the realistic strategic outcomes from this intervention.

"The Iranian diaspora is fracturing in real time, across dinner tables, on WhatsApp, and in the silence of blocked numbers."

@Afinetheorem @alexolegimas Behavioral considerations aside, this also assumes that firms are primarily constrained in terms of build capacity and not (i) business capacity (ii) staying within niche.

@alexolegimas I am a real Chicago guy, not one of you behavioral nuts ;-) (but let's just say, if you actually take the individual productivity claims seriously, the belief is that we are leaving a huge amount of profit on the tree, no?)

I agree with Alex partly...but also, if your org is in the place of "expect workers to apply AI and are getting big productivity advances", their MP is now *high* and you should be hiring more! Need the second derivative of efficiency over workers to be falling to get layoffs...

If you’re in the Iranian diaspora and scared of backlash for opposing this war—fuck that. Speak out. Loudly. Silence only helps them. Don't let a loud minority of pro-war idiots hijack the narrative and dictate the mainstream position of our diaspora to media and broader public.

We cannot allow Iran to fall to separatism. I hate Islamism, I hate the people who make up this regime and the evil they’ve done to the Iranian people, including my family. Two of my cousins were raped by the regime during the Woman Life Freedom movement. One of them later killed herself because of this regime. The Islamic Republic is a cruel and disgusting force that I despise, and one that we must destroy. I do not say the following lightly. If the choice is between allowing separatist to shatter Iran, and “saving” the regime, I choose the regime. No Iranian can support separatism, or the groups that promote it. In my view that is what the United States and Israel intend to do. They will start with the Kurds, and then the Balochis, and they themselves may occupy and help to break away parts of Iran. This has always been a fantastical scenario, but the preparations for ground troops suggest that the US will occupy Southern Iran, as the British did just over a century ago. US preparations for the Kurdish incursion is clear. Azerbaijan is mustering troops on the border. Balochi group tied to Israel and the CIA are launching attacks in Balochistan. If the war continues, each of these fronts will become separatist battles one way or another. Those who continue to support the war, for what are noble reasons, are committing an unconscionable mistake. They are supporting the enemies of Iranian civilization in the hopes that it will hurt the regime. But even if it succeeds, and the regime is destroyed, the cost will have been Iran. Whether you’re a democrat like me, a monarchist, a leftist or an islamist, we must all work together to prevent the disintegration of our country. This war has become existential for us, and even though many of us are outside of Iran, we can protest, we can raise funds, and we can apply political pressure to try and end this war. If we do not, we may never see Iran whole in our lives. The scale of death that will begin when the infrastructure collapse is unimaginable. It will be the largest humanitarian criss in modern history. We have a duty to the people in Iran who have no voice in the West to act. We here do have the ability to influence the course of this war before it is too late. Please, find the courage to act. We don’t do this to support the regime, but to support Iran, the nation, and all of its people.

@evavivalt Oh yeah. I meant that I use superwhisper inside claude code. Let's me have a bit more control over the transcription process itself.

@halidaee Thanks, it's not for me but I'll check it out! I've also heard good things about Wispr Flow. Still, I was looking for something that was not just voice to text but would *do* things on one's computer, like find and open a file, and there a CLI-based LLM tool seems perfect.

So, I can't test this out because I don't have access to it yet, but I don't think you know what you've got here: This will be ESSENTIAL for people who are almost blind. I was just vibe coding something much worse to fulfill this kind of function, glad you made it. Think about it: suppose you want to open a file on your computer but can't see where to click. This seems like it would solve your problem - just ask Claude to do it. Tell folks you know. And yeah, also cool for people who like to talk instead of type, but extremely important to a small group.