> Our inability to see opportunities and fulfillment in life as it is, leads to the inevitable conclusion that life is never enough, and we would always rather be doing something else.

I agree with the article completely, as it effectively names an uneasy feeling of hesitation I’ve had all along with how I use LLMs. I have found them tremendously valuable as sounding boards when I’m going in circles in my own well-worn cognitive (and sometimes even emotional) ruts. I have also found them valuable as research assistants, and I feel grateful that they arrived right around the time that search engines began to feel all but useless. I haven’t yet found them valuable in writing on my behalf, whether it’s prose or code.

During my formal education, I was very much a math and science person. I enjoyed those subjects. They came easily to me, which I also enjoyed. I did two years of liberal arts in undergrad, and they kicked my butt academically in a way that I didn’t realize was possible. I did not enjoy having to learn how to think and articulate those thoughts in seminars and essays. I did not enjoy the vulnerability of sharing myself that way, or of receiving feedback. If LLMs had existed, I’m certain I would have leaned hard on them to get some relief from the constant feeling of struggle and inadequacy. But then I wouldn’t have learned how to think or how to articulate myself, and my life and career would have been significantly less meaningful, interesting, and satisfying.

From your README’s philosophy section: “You describe what you want to feel — ÆTHRA handles how it sounds.” But the rest of the documentation doesn’t yet feel aligned to that vision. The closest you get to that is when you describe your example chord progression as melancholic, but you as the composer already happened to know that this particular progression provides the feeling you have in mind.

I love the idea of a high level way to programmatically or idiomatically describe how music should feel, especially how the composition should evolve over time (perhaps even in surprising ways that are beyond current tools). I hope as you progress that you’re able to find innovative ways to build toward that vision.

The current feature set feels like it would be considerably more convenient in a GUI environment. Again, I hope that as you continue to build, it becomes more obvious why this is a language and not a visual synthesis/composition tool.

A little audio output demo would go a very long way in potentially getting me interested in playing around with this.

Good luck!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33291388

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

I did realize while reading this that I could get a little more sophisticated by finding out the number of moves in a best solution using an aggressively optimized fast solver. If that number is within a range that's fun to play, say 8-11 moves, then go ahead and find all the rest of the solutions with the maximum brute force. If not, then just scrub the whole thing since I wouldn't use that puzzle anyway.

For now, you can use the little "Copy" button in the corner of the results text bubble area. That one just goes straight to the clipboard reliably.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Share_A...

Here's a quote from https://gdpr.eu/privacy-notice/ (emphasis mine)

> If an organization is collecting information from an individual directly, it must include the following information in its privacy notice: