Hacker News: justanotherjoe

New comment by justanotherjoe in "The Dark Night of Mathematics"

justanotherjoe — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:44:44 +0000

Probably they wouldn't be. A lot of this is people catastrophizing. Probably already somewhat unhappy even before.

Regarding spirituality i think it's more about math itself than math as a discipline. Math might be divine. Even if math is divine, i think doing math doesnt make you more spiritual.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "SpaceX sheds $400B in market value as debut rally hits reverse"

justanotherjoe — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 04:05:09 +0000

Something like the plan in the anime Jormungand maybe? (https://jormungand.fandom.com/wiki/Jormungand)

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work"

justanotherjoe — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 05:14:17 +0000

This kind of thinking assumes quantitative changes never result in qualitative change. Which is demonstrably false. Obviously there are thresholds where phase transitions happen.

Take saltwatwer and cell. After some threshold of saltiness is passed, the water flow reverses from into the cell to away from the cell. And the cell frikkin dies.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school"

justanotherjoe — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 08:02:35 +0000

You tested it, i doubt you authored it. A paternal twin can have one with good impulse control and another who's more instinctual. Even in the same family and upbringing.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "How to Become a Person After Smartphones Have Rotted Your Brain"

justanotherjoe — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:47:13 +0000

I'm reminded of a kid, and there is always such a kid, whose parents put them in front of everyone and asked them, 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. And when they answered, 'i want to be a president!' Everyone cheered and clapped and remarked how cute they were.

The kid's lying of course, he just said what he knew they wanted to hear. He didn't mean any of it. But i find this disgusting, especially because it's pervasive basically with everyone, me, you probably, in the age of social media, just a little more sophisticated.

Louis CK, in a different way, said that you shouldn't do that. If your bit is 'i want to be a president' then all your thoughts should be of how you want to be a president, not of cheers or of bombing the bit.

Most people don't mean what they say. That's why they don't feel compelling. And it's so sickening to us, that we flee to the media, actors, politicians, who seem to say things, say things they mean. The ultimate irony is that ofc they do, they are performing. They dont mean it either.

So I guess, realize it's all performance. And try to mean what you say.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:45:23 +0000

what's stopping someone to feed it to an llm and say 'make it simpler' and maybe run it twice.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "How Terry Tao became an evangelist for AI in math"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:37:00 +0000

Yeah mathematicians tend to do that. Physicists not so much I think. However, none of what he says about AI is such a strong prediction, unlike the 'crackpots' that are probably on your mind.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:29:54 +0000

Might not be solveable. At some point the effort in finding that someone might be larger than the benefit you get from just using the second, third, fourth best. Or using some flawed approximation hiring mechanism. There's just so much noise now. And it hits the good job seekers too.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "When AI Builds Itself: Our progress toward recursive self-improvement"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 08:28:40 +0000

Dario is no John hammond though. That'd be altman. He actually has the discipline and background as an ai scientist to tell what the potential failure modes are. You're right, he might still be just hyping things up, but generally i'd give more benefit of doubts to anthropic. Precisely because Dario was a scientist and I'd stand by it. People who get their phd in science already self-select, or proven at least to be made of different stuff.

Likewise, people don't as easily blame ilya for 'hyping things up' when he said these things.

Also talk about incentives, there are also incentives to lower their valuation. If you wanna be vigilant against social engineering i'd be wary of that too.

These are moot anyway though cause the article isnt even making any super strong claim. If you read it it's no big deal

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Samurai City"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 07:30:04 +0000

Pain without suffering vs suffering without pain. Now everyone have smartphones but dignity feels like it's getting lower.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "What happens if Japan takes in zero immigrants?"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:01:10 +0000

Except in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

justanotherjoe — Sun, 24 May 2026 11:01:36 +0000

Gives them the freedom to interpret it 'case by case' which is to mean punishing businesses and states not aligned with Trump with a million inconveniences, while leaving his base unmolested. The most divisive and punitive president ever.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

justanotherjoe — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:49:50 +0000

At one point you just have to look at a mirror and ask, what would impress you.

Also why pay anyone, when they can keep up with all the papers that not one man can read them all? That seems to me like wasted money.

Another point is that that's not how AI training works anyway. It's much easier to put it in context rather than re-train them with every bit of random maths you find out. Things at the tail-end of the power law doesn't stick. At least, last I checked...

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Archaeologists find Egyptian mummy buried with the 'Iliad'"

justanotherjoe — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:45:27 +0000

You find it hard to believe...that Iliad was big? that 400 AD Egyptian medical practices involved quackeries?

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format"

justanotherjoe — Sat, 16 May 2026 09:53:00 +0000

Sure if the goal is entertainment and sports, you're right. However, unlike chess or counter strike it's downstream from a real needed utility. Like, is there a point to do it anymore? (ofc there is, but still, it's been devalued from the perspective of the 'real utility')

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Why Japan has such good railways"

justanotherjoe — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:34:51 +0000

It's worth mentioning that swiss is a nation of 9 million, whereas Japan has 128 million people. I'm not sure how comparable it is. You probably don't need to pass through a lot of settlements for any public projects in swiss, for example.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Claude's Cycles [pdf]"

justanotherjoe — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:37:23 +0000

To put this more succintly I think, the mind loves learning something new. Something to do with new connections in the brain.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin"

justanotherjoe — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 01:21:35 +0000

I'm sure. But can you explain more? Share that 16 years of knowledge, even a little bit?

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Raising money fucked me up"

justanotherjoe — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 15:38:57 +0000

For me the question is just, do you think it's a disorder or not. Would you take a medication for it, if there is such a thing. If yes to both, Then, it's not really you. You are just who you choose to be.

New comment by justanotherjoe in "Xi Jinping Vows to Reunify China and Taiwan in New Year's Eve Speech"

justanotherjoe — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 03:52:46 +0000

What's so surprising about it? Russia had been smashing their heads against the Ukraine wall for years now.

Defending can be done very efficiently with modern weaponry.

And Taiwan is more powerful than Ukraine potentially and more economically important.