Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | danielmarkbruce's commentslogin

i have this for both my young kids and it's great. It results in me letting them do all manner of things I wouldn't otherwise let them do because in an instant they can call me if things go sideways.

It ends up being less "tracker" and more "if they really really need me they can get me". It's win win - they get to do more, and I get to feel better.


But this doesn't sound exciting to folks who like a good conspiracy theory. The google/xai deal is the least interesting thing at spacex.

"you have compute, i need compute, i'll pay you for some compute.".


Not if you want to develop world class talent. Baseball is incredibly technology dependent at this point. Ultra high speed cameras, radars, bat and ball sensors, software tying it all together, it's become rocket science. And honestly, if you don't have access to that technology, your chances fall dramatically.

But you’re only competing with other leagues in your own country.

The article is about global soccer, I'm talking about global baseball (MLB takes all the best players in the world). If you are a pitcher wanting to make it to the MLB, getting to 18 and throwing 65 mph and claiming "well that works in my country" isn't going to help you. You are miles behind.

Saying we have a good idea of how the brain works massively overstates the case...

We know how neurons fire. We do not know how a brain turns that into thought, meaning, intention, experience and on and on. That is not "pretty well understanding the brain", it's understanding some components and hand waving the thing we actually care about.


What I actually care about is how neural activity translates to behavior. And we have a good enough idea of that that we can design SSRI medicine to treat depression, or neurological tests to detect Alzheimer. As for experience we do know something and we are learning more with cognitive psychology, in e.g. priming experiments etc.

I feel like the search for consciousness is to psychology what the search for the Aether was for physics and chemistry. I think it is a worthwhile search, and maybe we will discover something important during that search, but we should also be prepared to find out that the thing might not exist, or it’s presumed properties are better explained with a different model.


SSRIs are not evidence that we understand how neural activity becomes behavior. They are evidence that you can perturb a system usefully without understanding it very well. That is exactly my point.

Respectfully, you are miles out of your depth here.


I don‘t see why you felt the need to insult me here. We are having a very common disagreement here, one which philosophers of science have been actively debating for several decades.

My point with the SSRI is that we know that serotonin is a chemical which incites certain neurons, and we know that a lack of activity of neurons in that general area in the brain is correlated with depression, so scientists were able to accurately predict that keeping the serotonin in that brain area for longer would increase brain activity there and decrease the level of depression.

This counts as pretty good understanding in my books at least. It teaches us very little about consciousness but my point is that it doesn’t have to. Just like Newton’s theory of gravity did not have to teach us about some deeper cosmological truth.


> Just like Newton’s theory of gravity did not have to teach us about some deeper cosmological truth.

I would also argue that Newton's theory of gravity was not a pretty good understanding of gravity.


It was still a good theory, and importantly the fact that it failed explain the nature of Aether had no effect on the quality of the theory.

It's not an insult to suggest one is out of the depth on a topic, especially when it isn't one's field of expertise. You are giving the pop science explanation of various things.

Why did you feel the need to add it though?

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Nobody called anyone any name.

If you are going to quote rules, be bothered to read what was actually written. Your behavior ruins things, it doesn't make it better.


You don't think "Respectfully, you are miles out of your depth here." couldn't have just been left off?

To repeat: your behavior ruins things. Hall monitors aren't needed everywhere.

Just as a reader with no particular dog in the philosophical (or semantic) fight over how well we do or don't understand the brain: That rude remark lowered rather than increased my estimation of your knowledge or authority on any subject you would be discussing. Generally, people who are highly knowledgeable and confident on a subject don't resort to telling others they are out of their depth, because they don't need to. At the very least, it's suspicious to throw an ad hominem into your rebuttal.

Winning a debate is about convincing the audience, and I found that an unconvincing statement, apart from it being an obnoxious rhetorical tactic.

But it did make me think of The Big Lebowski. "You're out of your depth, Donnie!"


i know the sun shows up every day and i know if i go inside my basement i dont get a tan. do i understand the sun?

Some schools of the philosophy of science would argue that you do. However you are describing is a very different acquisition of knowledge then what scientists did when developing SSRI medicine. We had to:

1. take pictures of brain activity under different conditions to see which regions were active during different moods,

2. sacrifice a bunch of mice to see which neuro-chemical activated which neurons,

3. predict that inhibiting the re-uptake of a specific neuro-chemical would activate that region,

4. predict that activating that region would decrease the level of depression

In your solar example you would have discovered melanin and its relation to your skin tone, and you would have studied the effects ultra-violate radiation has on your melanin levels. Then you would have predicted that staying out of the sun will not give you a tan.


Yes, but our friend's apt analogy shows the danger of absorbing Plato's cave as the one thing you learned in Uni. If everything is a shadow on the wall then, of course, every type of study you just mentioned is merely another set of shadows. Nothing can be proven, and the coin of the realm is not to disprove anything but merely to signal your disbelief. Arguing with data for the power of reason against such a philosophy is pointless, as sincere as your response was (and I did appreciate it).

Markets dictate the price. The terms "price" and "value" generally have actual meanings as used in financial markets. The idea that nothing can ever be mispriced (defined as price != value) is not really held by anyone serious.

Yeah, if price always equalled value, things like arbitrage, or speculative bubbles wouldn't be able to exist.

No, it's not. It's a stupid thing to say. Perfectly stupid assumption. There are 1000s of multi billion $ revenue companies operating and as a % the number that are fraudulent is close to zero, especially those public or looking to go public. There is always the possibility, but it's extremely naive to think it's likely.

This says more about you than the other person. Some people like giving good answers and are less concerned about being the source themselves.

I'll sometimes do the exact thing you are talking about. The reason is that I basically know the answer, but also know there is a nicer explanation to the question. I'll type in the question, often iterate a few times, get an answer that I basically knew but couldn't explain as clearly, and respond with it.

Humans haven't been "self sufficient" in 100,000 years. We've been building/using tools and specializing since the start. If you went back just a few hundred years some people (the version of you basically) would be profoundly sad you couldn't build your own house.


PE isn't really the issue. Some things just shouldn't be run for profit - doesn't matter who the owner is.

It's 100% this. Many people suck at prompting. It's likely that habits from search are ingrained. But in general some people are just so bad at it .


Prompting is just writing specification documents. A lot of people are very bad at this. I suppose that more to the point, a lot of people are just bad at writing.


This is probably correct. Perhaps prompting just brings out the very worst in specification.


According to Google, “there’s no wrong way to prompt”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBfYX8X5aU&t=48s


No wrong way to [consume thing I sell that you'll consume more of if you do it poorly]


Ehhh, their incentive in their marketing is to get normal people to not be intimidated by the big bad AI.

Power users are always going to have to take the messaging companies send out to the masses with a grain of salt.


IDK if it's just me, but I also find Claude, whether it be the model or the harness, is a lot more "forgiving" of poor prompts than many of the open models

The value prop is just really really low.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: