it's so hard to square such totalizing statements with my day to day experience with fable and sol, (every possible, improvement, really?? they are NOT omniscient) arguing with them/my colleagues' agents that no they have slowed down the system 200x with their terrible change, doing string operations on millions of db rows, trying to get it to understand that I don't care that it's calling it a "cache" if a cache hit is slower than what we had before.

These agents do let you learn codebases quickly, and produce code way faster. I don't look at IDEs all that often. But literally multiple times every single day I catch them doing something stupid.

I don't think its impossible that we could get better performance from the agents. I know ive tried all sorts of workflows and skills, few of which seem to have much effect on the things the models struggle with. I think a big part of it is encoding enough context for large codebases, and providing it with all the tools it needs to make it successful, things to automatically check its work, etc. But that's not automatic, in fact its generally a terrible judge of what it needs or what its bad at

They're talking about the result, one must think. The idea that people who could not have approximate pictures of ideas that lived in their head can now have those things. They didn't create them by an in depth process, of course, and would be wrong to pass it off as though they did. But there is some value to the enjoyment gained from that existing (whether that relatively trival enjoyment is offset by other harms is for the reader to decide).

You're talking about the process and/or the developing of the skill of crafting and thinking about images better.

We also lack words to talk clearly about the distinction here around "make". Did I make a piece of art if I created a file on a computer in photoshop and then printed it? or did the printer make it? Did photoshop make it? (imo, all are true, but in differing senses of the word make). It seems to me that there is a sense that, no matter how trivial their involvement, a user of some AI art app is "making" something, in the same sense that steve jobs "made" the iPhone. In both cases, an engineer that literally designed the iPhone or an artist that spent years would perhaps rightfully feel upset by such characterization, but to get across the point cleanly is harder.

It's the same for the taxi. If I can't drive (perhaps I never learned, or some flaw with my body doesn't let me), a taxi does enable some things I could never do before. I am, of course, not literally the one driving. But if I can get to the shop myself now, there is something there.

If you have a soul and aren't an awful creature that sees the world as a series of zero sum interactions, other concerns play into this. Things like you actually enjoy the work or you feel proud of making the piece or you care that every last detail is as perfect as you are able to make it.

Now I won't say that it's never right to use AI (goodness knows I do). But its totally wrong to suggest there is "no point" in ever doing things a different way from the cheapest possible technology

I mean, we could. But it doesn't really make sense to think that AIs are perfect at finding counterexamples, just because they are good (or even better than us). My general opinion is that they are orthagonally intelligent, that is, they are intelligent in an entirely different way to the way that people are. They are undoubtably clever, but the distance between when they are better than us at their best skill (or even most skills) and when they are better than us in all aspects is going to be MASSIVE.

idk the harnesses adding in "but wait -- " or some variation every few lines in the thinking trace seems to do great at this.

and most of them come out on top. It's main innovation is that its a more stable explosive, much safer to use. Without it, I think a lot more people would have died in mining and construction accidents. It's not typically the kind of thing used for warfare, but im sure it has been for some (but would they just use something else?)

I can accept the premise that condiitions have improved, but not that it was consistent. It seems to me that it was anything but; more like extremely spiky. great depression, postwar economic miracle. Massive labor movements rose and fell, general strikes... Plus most countries have had several wars + revolutions in the last 200 years, including two world wars. Not all of those are to do with technology, but I also dont think technology wasnt indirectly responsible for the conditions that created some of them

No? There's a rhetorical distinction, there isn't a physical distinction. It's like holistic medicine vs modern medicine, or wellness vs health, or human-centered design vs regular design, or chemical-free food vs regular food

Any given thing is one or the other of these soley based on your perspective of it. Im sending this message to you right now by performing a ritual on a object made of rocks some guy found in the ground

And yet, we make such beautiful and vacant software ourselves for our clients, because again, its b2b, so you aren't selling to the people who actually have to use the software. Im glad at least we arent forced that often to use specific internal tools, the better ones just get adopted organically

I find that there is some element of ritual to "proper" notes. Its personal, and everyone differs. Any given system may sound logcal and sensible, but its most important that you write something, anything. Everything else doesnt really matter. I like to use real paper and pen, and start with a wide ruler drawn margin on the left (of course, you can buy paper with this. I prefer to do it by hand. It feels right.) and the date and subject at the top. Then I put keys on the left (page numbers, question numbers, subtopics, speakers in a meeting) and values on the right (insights, things that seemed cool, the steps of a particularly tricky bit, definitions of words)

I put a dash before tasks I have to do, and a question mark on words or concepts I heard but didn't understand and I need to go look up later.

Literally none of this is necessary. It supports my learning only in the sense that it makes me feel like im doing things right. I rarely ever come back and read them (usually only ad-hoc looking for something I knew I wrote but cant remember, not a structured review of them). Your system is for you to figure out yourself. A lot of it came from imitating my math teachers. But maybe the description helped?

Some days I write the date and a margin, and nothing else. No pressure, not every day is a notes day. Some days you learn a ton, and others don't challenge you at all. Thats normal too.

I also feel that some of the technical explanations are a little dense here in the dev blog. I forget who it was who I saw mentioning it here on HN, but I've been having a lot of success with getting models to (re)write technical explanations in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English

I was linking it to mention that many (most?) people's mental model of risk is extremely conservative. They would forego an expected value 10x reward just for predictability/certainty. Similarly, I believe people weigh the "risk of getting caught" extremely highly in their heads. Far higher than it makes sense to from a purely game theoretic perspective.

However, this is probably a good thing. I like such people.

I'm aware that social trust in some places is lower than others (and that im lucky enough to live in a place with high social trust), but I really don't think this is true. Though ruthless optimisers do exist, my experience suggests the idea that most people do this is laughable. I'd guess 1% or thereabouts. I think most people are kinda bumbling along on autopilot trying to make people happy and avoid others getting too mad at them without expending too much effort(not the same as minimizing effort) + without deviating too much from their routine.

Meditate a while, if you will, on the results of this poll: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0njd4e2evo

I met a few of the ruthless optimiser types back when I was in the startup world. They aren't too bad if you can keep them at arms length, predictable in their own way. But if they get some power over you or you have to spend a lot of time with them it can quickly become miserable.