Hacker News: farts_mckensy

New comment by farts_mckensy in "Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking"

farts_mckensy — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 05:39:54 +0000

And that's what's going to happen now. No amount of complaining about it online is going to stop it. They literally just passed a bill that prevents regulating AI. Rich people and their puppets in congress have some degree of agency. We don't. Sorry.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking"

farts_mckensy — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 03:18:13 +0000

You chuckled silently to yourself as you posted this.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking"

farts_mckensy — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 22:06:22 +0000

Whenever people claim that LLMs are not capable of reasoning, I put them into a category of people who are themselves not capable of reasoning.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking"

farts_mckensy — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 22:05:12 +0000

The discussion is completely useless without defining what thought is and then demostrating that LLMs are not capable of it. And I doubt any definition you come up with will be workable.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking"

farts_mckensy — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 22:03:32 +0000

AI is here to stay, and you do not have agency over that. You can choose not to use it, but that has zero impact on the broader adoption rate. Just like when the automobile was introduced and society as a whole evolved.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking"

farts_mckensy — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 22:00:46 +0000

Watch out, HN. The em dash police are here. Hands up

New comment by farts_mckensy in "U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites"

farts_mckensy — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 15:47:17 +0000

If America's responsibility is deterrence, why do we invade countries that don't have nuclear capabilities? Don't you suppose that incentivizes every country watching this to develop nukes? They see that if they don't, eventually they'll get invaded. That's the opposite of deterrence.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites"

farts_mckensy — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 04:34:52 +0000

What planet have you been living on the past 25 years? Iran has a population of almost 100 million as well as a sizeable diaspora across the world. If even a small percentage of the population engages in terrorism, that translates into thousands of potential actors. And unlike a state-to-state war, this is the kind of distributed, unpredictable threat that’s much harder to deter or contain.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "George Orwell's 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth"

farts_mckensy — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 02:05:29 +0000

Orwell was not a good writer. 1984 in particular is a slog. His work was mostly popular because it conformed to anti soviet narratives, so schools naturally added them to the curriculum to stamp out any communist sympathies. Now that the soviets are no longer a threat, it's not surprising that his work has gradually fallen out of fashion. Yet every pseudo rebellious edgelord thinks the ideological order of 1984 is being enacted because of progressive college kids and trigger warnings.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "George Orwell's 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth"

farts_mckensy — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 01:58:06 +0000

The idea that "power manufactures truth" sounds profound but it's ultimately a truism, and a somewhat unhelpful one due to the imprecise language of power and truth. Anyone who's worked at a small business with an authoritarian owner can attest to the distortion effect of authority. People trip over themselves to ensure such a personality remains placated. But truth, in any meaningful sense of the word, is something beyond the grasp of any single authority. Powerful elites may have sway over the narrative, but eventually the truth catches up with them, and that's when history starts moving again. The 2008 recession is a great example. Most financial authorities maintained that real estate was solid. Orwell's vision vastly oversells the true power of authoritarian states. At the end of the day, if you cannot keep a baseline number of the population satisfied, they will rebel in ways that will eventually undermine the status quo. It may not take the form of a full blown civil war, but people have a way of expressing their interests. For example, the birth rate is dropping in many countries. Increasingly, people do not see having children as viable. And for good reason. That undermines the present society. The upper classes need a working class to maintain their position.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:54:00 +0000

I'm saying there's a cost to that mentality. There's a personal cost, which is you giving up a part of yourself--not just your time, but your personality--to grow your net worth. And there's a societal cost to this level of cynicism being so pervasive. When the intellectual laborers of a society just go through the motions instead of being invested in what they do, the society as a whole suffers.

If you have to repeat thought eliminating clichés to justify this, it seems like there's a level of self deception going on. The chickens will come home to roost eventually.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:35:25 +0000

My preferred modality: "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:29:59 +0000

>CBT can definitely veer into gaslightning territory. But then, if it helps you cope, so what?

That's myopic. There's only so much "reframing" you can do before the tension begins to rear its head. Serenity now, insanity later.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:26:48 +0000

There's a mental cost to that. Essentially having to put on a mask and performatively "play their little games" is taxing. Some are better at it than others. But in those quiet moments, don't you ask yourself what percentage of your life you have to be a different person?

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 05:32:34 +0000

The problem with these kinds of discussions is, we tend to get more abstract and further and further away from real-world examples. And it all hinges on what you actually value. I could come up with positive adjectives for every single negative attribute you listed. I can only speak for myself when I say that I have never regretted not giving someone the benefit of the doubt. I have regretted the contrary. Good things often just happen to people because of chance, and they attribute it to some mystical property of the universe--generosity of the spirit, for example. Conversely, being generous does not guarantee that good things will happen to you. I'm afraid it's far more random than most are willing to admit.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 04:05:52 +0000

It's not difficult to imagine a number of scenarios where that perspective could bite you in the ass.

If you have a false impression of a person's character because you've jedi mindtricked yourself into not thinking the worst of people, you might end up trusting an untrustworthy person.

If you are in a toxic work environment, and you convince yourself it's not so bad, you might end up staying in a situation that is actively harming you.

We are speaking in the abstract and I can't comment on anyone else's experience. But I personally find toxic positivity and the endless drive to be more productive much more dangerous than being too negative.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 03:46:55 +0000

The idea that there are varying degrees of depression is not a difficult concept to grasp.

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not"

farts_mckensy — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 03:30:30 +0000

On the other hand, some studies show that mildly depressed people have a more accurate model of the world. So what if you were right about your job initially, and the CBT is basically just gaslighting you into spinning things in a positive way?

New comment by farts_mckensy in "The Illusion of Thinking: Strengths and limitations of reasoning models [pdf]"

farts_mckensy — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 19:37:13 +0000

The premise of your question is incredibly dumb

New comment by farts_mckensy in "How we’re responding to The NYT’s data demands in order to protect user privacy"

farts_mckensy — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 20:59:18 +0000

Great. What do you think that proves? That doesn't negate my inital argument. The data is largely useless, and often counterproductive. The evidence shows the vast majority of plots are foiled through conventional means, and ruling out false positives is more trouble than it's worth. I cited sources in this thread. Where are your sources?

"Corporations and the US government are spending money on it, so it must be useful." Are you serious? Lmao.