Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46238999

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

This is not a strictly human trait. Anthropologists are pretty sure we received this trait from our primate ancestors. It evolved out of family groups/tribalism.

Also, a large part of our brains are safety mechanisms. Many features are directed at keeping us alive which is why so many of our what if scenarios are about the worst happening.

In very tribal environments anyone not in your in-group is considered unsafe even if they look exactly like you (i.e. a tribe from 10 km away).

But the thing that has made humans the most successful species on Earth is our ability to override this behavior to cooperate at larger and larger scales.

I’ve seen it in startups too. Some founders take bold risks because they know, consciously or not, that if it doesn’t work out, they’ll be fine. Others carry the weight of “I can’t afford to screw this up,” and that changes how they operate. Even if they’re equally capable, the emotional cost of risk is just higher when you don’t have that built-in safety net.

And from the outside, those differences are invisible. Both people might succeed, but one was playing on easy mode and didn’t know it. The other had to brute-force their way through every step. That gap is real, and we don’t talk about it enough.

I'm a novice in the area, but Chris is well respected in this area and cares a lot of about performance.

The primitives and pre-coded kernels provided by CUDA (it solves for the most common scenarios first and foremost) is what's holding things back and in order to get those algorithms and data structures down to the hardware level you need something flexible that can talk directly to the hardware.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43797058

Points: 44

# Comments: 21

Seems like a major thing if it’s true that would inspire an entire new area research.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43666834

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

As I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121594)

In my time at tier one companies I have worked with the best engineers I have come across in my entire career (even the worst engineers were more than competent) who were working on deep issues that could affect the revenue of the entire company because they’re laser focused on providing value to the business, instead of doing engineering for engineering’s sake. I have grown by far more in these kinds of roles than I have anywhere else because the kind of problems you encounter at such a high scale just don’t exist elsewhere. And most of them have been there for at least five years if not longer you don’t make those kind of contributions to accompany without a long tenure.

What changes to expectations are you talking about?