Well said. I've been attacked online so ferociously for mentioning it, that I suspect saying it in person would start an actual fight with some people.

I recognize that free will is foundational for society, but all right thinking people she be able to recognize that it is only a useful model - not descriptive of the actual territory.

> Although, reports of some expert meditators read as if they found intuitive evidence this is true and have also made peace with it or in some cases found the insight liberating.

Very much so. When I was taught to meditate they started by having me observe my own breathing, and then my thoughts and feelings as they came and went without judgement. After doing this for some time and learning to just quietly observe my own thinking as thoughts came and went they then sprung the trap: "If the thoughts are you, who is it that's been watching them?"

You come to accept that most thoughts happen the way breathing does, they're not something you "do", it's just something that brains do on their own. "You" are no more in control of them than you are your heartrate.

Have you heard of the Libet experiment? There are variations on it now that can predict your decisions from brain scans more than 5 seconds before you become aware of having decided. [0]

Most studies seem to show that thinking is largely post-hoc: a story we tell ourselves to justify decisions after already having made them.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18408715/

However, capitalism demands it and we all have to compete. Look at the fortune 100. How many of those companies produce finely crafted artisanal hand-made things of beauty designed to last for 100 years and be passed on for generations?

The truth is that people say they want quality, and then buy the cheapest thing they can find that works for today. It has always been, and will always be this way... At least until/unless we find ourselves in Treks post-scarcity, fully-automated, luxury communism.

In the meantime I try to apply my limited time on earth as effectively as I can, but putting the most work into the place where it will do the most good.

I did this months before that OpenAI demo, and produced a product that many people are using without knowing it was an AI designed PCB.

It ran using kicad completely headlessly from a terminal with a bit of python and DRC'd it in a loop until it passed. I sent it to PCBWay and it worked the first go. It did take a bit, but if you just set a goal and let 'er rip the LLM gets there in the end.

Would a real EE vomit if they looked at it? Maybe. Does it work? Absolutely.

Israel is fighting a war for it's very existence against an enemy whose very founding documents encode the idea that there can never be peace until Israel is destroyed. After October 7th Hamas doubled down and said they would not rest as long as they lived. Still they insist, even after all the destruction.

What choice does Israel have except to grant them their wish and fight until none of them live? They will not accept surrender, and they will never rest until Israel has been annihilated. They have insisted on that point since the 80's and on October 7th they proved that they are still dedicated to that principle. How could anyone doubt their convictions? Hamas means what they say, and what they say is that as long as they live they will continue to attack Israel.

Do you honestly believe there can ever be peace with someone who has sworn to their God that there can never be peace?

I don't have any personal stake in this, and I'm sorry if you do. It's just that from an outside perspective I can't understand yours at all.

On the other hand, if the value of that drops you can expect to see some folks start taking the wrong path.

I read it, it's irrelevant.

   Author: A = B. That doesn't matter though because of C.

   Me: A != B. Yes, C still doesn't matter... but A != B. 

I do not need to carefully read an article where the entire premise flies in the face of my own lived experience. LLM's can, are, and will continue to be better than the best humans at many tasks. The number of tasks increases every day.

I'm sorry if you don't like it, or if it doesn't seem logical to you. It's just the empirically observed reality of the world you live in now.

LLM's are better at some kinds of math, some kinds of bug hunting, some kinds or transcription, some kinds of... everything. It's a simple, testable, objective, and empirical truth.

Cyber companies are in the fortune 100 now, and it's not like it used to be back when you actually had to be interested in it and dedicate your life to learning the skillz from shady forums. Now it's just a job to most practitioners.

This is not true, and never will be again. It's also, as the author says, the first point they make.

LLM's meet, and often exceed, human standards for a great many tasks and the percentage is growing every day. The statement is either ludicrously out of date, or just biased nonsense.

Regardless, given that it is the first point they make and foundational to their argument, I do not need to know more.

I wish people who felt this way would just go use the tools they hate so much before passing judgement. I think many of them used it once, in a much worse form, many years ago and not since. Judging these things by the standards of 3 months ago is unfair, let alone the standards of 3 years ago.

You combine it with /goal. I usually set a goal like "Complete the application defined in goal.md as written. Then test it end to end autonomously using Compter Use. Record all issues discovered during testing in a to-do. Then fix the issues in the to-do. Repeat testing until no more issues are discovered."

If you get a nice Magnetar, or even a decent Panasonic it will do it's best and work on DVD and non BD-J blu-ray, but it can't control what the vendor did and it will still fail for those Java discs.

Letting whatever dummy made the disk control the hardware to the extent that BD-J does is just ludicrous.

I have no idea what you mean by this? The experts, including many here, don't seem to think it's unlikely.

1) Many humans labored for many years to solve these problems and did not.

2) Something else did solve at lest some of these problems.

3) The thing that did wasn't human.

What else do you need to know before you can allow yourself to be happy just to live in such an exciting time?

Sorry you don't like the phrasing.