Hacker News: jmcqk6

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Why I'm still bearish on LLMs after Navier-Stokes"

jmcqk6 — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:37:03 +0000

Not the OP, but it's because the value has got to ultimately be recognized by humans.

You can make llms perform judgement, and maybe that will get you some progress. But ultimately the value is going to come from engaging with other humans.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "America's Driver's License Breach Is a National Security Disaster"

jmcqk6 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:51:23 +0000

I have no doubt that it can be a deterrent for some. The question is more about whether this is the optimal strategy for addressing the problem.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "WangNet – 1.8 MB, zero-dependency Numberwang adjudication in 11 languages"

jmcqk6 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:02:09 +0000

It's not well known, but in February of 1983, there was a finch in the Galapagos that was found to be numberwang. And of course there was the famous incident in the 1994 World Series where a homerun was overturned because it turned out it was a wangernumb hit into the stands, and not a standard baseball.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "America's Driver's License Breach Is a National Security Disaster"

jmcqk6 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 21:58:32 +0000

There are quite a few people who murder despite the risk of incarceration. I would love a system that approaches it more like: "you've lost trust of this civilization to act in good faith, and now you will be contained in a way that can rebuild that trust, and you will not be allowed to re-enter this civilization until you have indeed rebuilt that trust."

We'll probably never get there.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Who People Talk to When They're Struggling"

jmcqk6 — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:54:18 +0000

This is a risky path. If you internalize it in unhealthy ways, you're empowering your shadow, and it will find inconvenient, self-defeating ways to express it.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Who People Talk to When They're Struggling"

jmcqk6 — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:52:53 +0000

It's likely there is, though it might be difficult to find. One place you can look is the local unitarian universalists. These can vary widely, but often you'll find them open to all religions (including non-religious), and full of open, curious, non-judgemental people.

One thing about UU's is that it's not dogma based. There's nothing you have to believe to be a UU. Instead, it's covenant based. You are in the community when you adhere to the agreements of the community. These are usually things like mutual respect, deep listening, etc.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Who People Talk to When They're Struggling"

jmcqk6 — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:47:36 +0000

Talking to bots can induce psychosis in some individuals. This isn't a solved problem, nor is there a universal solution.

People need connection, but the varieties of connection are vast. What works for one person, can be terrible for another. Maybe talking to bots gives you what you need, which is great for you. But projecting your solution to everyone else is not a rational step to take.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "My Feed, My Way"

jmcqk6 — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:03:12 +0000

Why does "there's lots of evidence that shows this is harmful" get reduced to "You don't like it?"

I'm not taking a stance here. I'm just noticing the rhetorical move you made. There is lots of evidence that some of those things are harmful. Cocaine, gambling, and alcohol have all destroyed many lives.

I'm not in favor of banning those things, or banning social media for that matter.

It is intellectually dishonest to reduce the arguments for those things to "oh you just don't like them."

New comment by jmcqk6 in "ReactOS 0.4.16"

jmcqk6 — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:46:25 +0000

The thing about this type of thinking is that it often requires risking millions of dollars and a major distraction from your primary goal in order to find out if it's true or not.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "My Experience Has Nuance, Yours Is a Data Point"

jmcqk6 — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:31:25 +0000

This is an unexpected yet welcome application of the fundamental attribution error: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

New comment by jmcqk6 in "If AI Writes All the Code, What Do the Programmers Do?"

jmcqk6 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:47:08 +0000

There are three things programmers bring:

Salience - Agents only know what we bring to their attention

Judgment - Agents cannot make decisions in the larger business context

Responsibility - Agents do not care if they crash the system

New comment by jmcqk6 in "How we measured AI writing across arXiv, and where the measurement breaks"

jmcqk6 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:48:05 +0000

Extend it to scan papers from pre-2020. That should give you a better baseline accuracy for your detection system.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU"

jmcqk6 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:43:07 +0000

How did it kill the product? It's still cranking along pretty good.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Don't you mean extinct?"

jmcqk6 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:37:42 +0000

I've been thinking of it as a "conservation of cognition". there is some fundamental about of cognition that needs to be spent in order to keep things moving. LLMs do not reduce that, they only change it.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Rewriting Bun in Rust"

jmcqk6 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:08:43 +0000

ghostty is a zig project too!

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Collapse of Atlantic Currents May Already Be 'Locked In'"

jmcqk6 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:13:53 +0000

You can't keep people from being stupid via the language you use. People who have the reaction you describe would not magically "get it" if different language is used.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected"

jmcqk6 — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:52:37 +0000

> Absolutely true, however my experience says that the correlation between "good software engineering practices" and "positive business outcomes" is, at best, small.

One of the most uncomfortable truths about our profession is that there is no floor to how bad software can be while still making people billions of dollars.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "CursorBench 3.1"

jmcqk6 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:12:52 +0000

I can't speak to benchmarks, but I have used Composer 2.5 extensively and it's performed quite well in my real world tasks.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "From Chesterton's fence to Chesterton's gap"

jmcqk6 — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:19:27 +0000

Why does it need to provide guidance about that? It's one step along the way of cultivating wisdom, not the destination.

New comment by jmcqk6 in "From Chesterton's fence to Chesterton's gap"

jmcqk6 — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:44:38 +0000

I don't think you've understood the lesson here. Chesterton's fence is not about keeping systems in place. It is about how you approach changing the system.