Hacker News: aSanchezStern

New comment by aSanchezStern in "ProofOfThought: LLM-based reasoning using Z3 theorem proving"

aSanchezStern — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 19:43:12 +0000

I agree that "proof of thought" is a misleading name, but this whole "computers can't think" thing is making LLM skepticism seem very unscientific. There is no universally agreed upon objective definition of what it means to be able to "think" or how you would measure such a thing. The definition that these types of positions seem to rely upon is "a thing that only humans can do", which is obviously a circular one that isn't useful.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "How modern life makes us sick"

aSanchezStern — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 19:15:29 +0000

Sure, but when you're walking all the time, none of that time is wasted, because you're helping your body and brain function better. When you use a car, you really are wasting all your transportation time. To get the same benefits, you would have to drive places, and then go walking recreationally after, which would clearly take much more time to get the same utility.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]"

aSanchezStern — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 03:25:37 +0000

Cite?

New comment by aSanchezStern in "DOGE worker’s code supports NLRB whistleblower"

aSanchezStern — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:53:34 +0000

I don't think that "arguing that something is against the rules" is in the CIA sabotage manual, because it's not generally considered sabotage. Maybe if you argue things are against the rules that you know aren't, to slow things down?

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:46:30 +0000

The answer it seems is, it depends on what kind of code you're looking at. The post showed that `for` loops cause a lot more variable-name-biased reasoning, while `ifs` and function defs/calls are more variable-name independent.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:45:09 +0000

Yeah that's linked a couple of times in the post

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:01:29 +0000

Thanks for pointing that out, it's fixed now.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 19:02:24 +0000

If you're interested in a more scientific treatment of the topic, the post links to a technical report which reports the numbers in detail. This post is instead an attempt to explain the topics to a more general audience, so digging into the weeds isn't very useful.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:57:55 +0000

This post actually mostly uses the subset of Python where nullability is checked. The point is not to introduce new LLM capabilities, but to understand more about how existing LLMs are reasoning about code.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:51:17 +0000

Many people don't think we have any good evidence that our brains aren't essentially the same thing: a stochastic statistical model that produces outputs based on inputs.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:49:56 +0000

Yeah the link title is overclaiming a bit, the actual post title doesn't make such a general claim, and the post itself examines several specific models and compares their understanding.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "LLMs understand nullability"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:27:37 +0000

The post includes this caveat. Depending on your philosophical position about sentience you might say that LLMs can't possibly "understand" anything, and the post isn't trying to have that argument. But to the extent that an LLM can "understand" anything, you can study its understanding of nullability.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "PaperBench"

aSanchezStern — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 19:35:41 +0000

Where would the "paper" part come in? Is that just based on the word "bench" in general?

New comment by aSanchezStern in "Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo"

aSanchezStern — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:12:06 +0000

"Didn't even win the democratic primary" might be a bit of a misnomer if it's implying that winning the democratic primary should be much easier than winning the general. Bernie has positions that are popular outside of democrats, many people think that if he had won the primary, he would have had a much better chance of winning than Hilary or Biden, since he had less baggage and his policies were broadly popular.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "Treasury Announces Suspension of Enforcement of Corporate Transparency Act"

aSanchezStern — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:19:56 +0000

I mean, yeah, they are saying that you can commit a crime and they won't punish you. That's what "suspending enforcement" means. I think what you mean is that "law and order" is usually applied to poor criminals, where as what is happening here is refusing to enforce laws on the rich criminals.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

aSanchezStern — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 01:39:04 +0000

Yeah this was totally debunked, I believe the programs that were said to be "going to terrorists" were actually promoting women's literacy in Afghanistan.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

aSanchezStern — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 01:35:50 +0000

SpaceX is a government contractor, immediately presenting a conflict of interest.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

aSanchezStern — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 20:59:27 +0000

Yeah, if you're actually interested in government efficiency, Ro Khanna has been advocating for significant cuts to the federal budget in a way that actually improves efficiency.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

aSanchezStern — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 20:56:58 +0000

Actually exit polls say that most people who voted for Trump did so because they thought he would lower grocery prices, not because they thought he would make the government more efficient. So far grocery prices have risen significantly under his administration. As far as I know there is no evidence that there was a program to destabilize bangladesh that doge cut, that appears to be another case of doge not really understanding what it was cutting. But if you have a credible reference on that which isn't just saying "Elon said so", I'd love to see it.

New comment by aSanchezStern in "OpenAI has upped its lobbying efforts nearly sevenfold"

aSanchezStern — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 22:42:26 +0000

Right, but we've already got limits on individual contributions, so even if you have a bunch of money, you can't have outsized influence through your individual contributions.