Hacker News: throwaway_7274

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "On A.I. regulation and messaging"

throwaway_7274 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:37:14 +0000

It’s unfortunate no matter who!

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "On AI regulation and messaging"

throwaway_7274 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:25:38 +0000

People overcorrect, even when making directionally necessary corrections.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "On AI regulation and messaging"

throwaway_7274 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:29:07 +0000

Rhetorically wondering :)

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "On AI regulation and messaging"

throwaway_7274 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:19:14 +0000

Just want to say, this comment section on this website would have been unthinkable a few years ago. It’s wild: all the engineers have developed class consciousness. I wonder how that happened?

Anyway, it’s fun to watch, but remember to stay sane guys, be aware of the pendulum dynamics.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"

throwaway_7274 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 21:02:00 +0000

Even more so than borderline incoherent academic writing like Foucault or Lacan or whatnot, for that matter. It’s less “I don’t understand this and I suspect the author doesn’t either” and more “reading this feels like having a stroke.”

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"

throwaway_7274 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:59:53 +0000

Better start chinamaxxing

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"

throwaway_7274 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:00:49 +0000

I think it’s no longer speaking human language. It used to, when it was mostly or entirely trained with imitation learning of human-generated text. Now it’s increasingly trained with RLVR, and there’s far less optimization pressure on actually speaking English (or Punjabi or Mandarin). It still uses English words and syntax in its output, but the semantics are drifting more and more. It’s basically speaking in a code that superficially resembles English.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"

throwaway_7274 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:15:47 +0000

As a native speaker, it feels like reading an impression of a literature book by a high school English class’s most overconfident student who’s only ever read LinkedIn-speak.

Anyway, you might have more luck just writing to it in your native language. It’ll be equally crummy, but maybe you’ll find it easier to decode.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Dear people who work at the airport"

throwaway_7274 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:09:45 +0000

Isn’t this the point? To destabilize you, put you on your back foot, make you feel preemptively guilty and a little angry, to feel the presence of an Authority?

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Mushroom behind 'tiny people' hallucinations identified"

throwaway_7274 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 01:32:18 +0000

> teasing, cute, chubby, etc.

gordito

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "Ordinary abundance"

throwaway_7274 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:04:33 +0000

Maybe happiness is a different kind of thing from the pleasure/pain axis. Maybe it’s a different thing that’s tragically easy to mistake for the same thing.

I notice a lot of resistance and discomfort whenever someone says anything like this (“are you suggesting my pain doesn’t matter? How about the starving kids in xyz?”), and I get that. But it feels like there might be something to it.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "In a first, US will allow some private firms to carry out cyberattacks"

throwaway_7274 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:19:32 +0000

Privateering is back!

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "5th Heat Dome Expands Across Europe: 40°C+ Target Western and Central Europe"

throwaway_7274 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:43:50 +0000

Yeah, it's contextual. Of course. There's context in everything.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:38:18 +0000

Couldn't agree more!

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:29:05 +0000

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:33:57 +0000

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:36:50 +0000

All well said.

I would add that, while “giving every under-privileged kid opportunity” wouldn’t make them all successful, for just the reasons you said, I’m not sure that’s even the bottleneck! It’s like… how do you “give someone opportunity?” It’s a very subtle problem. It’s not easy. I doubt there’s any straightforward intervention where you can give everyone 10 units of opportunity, use them wisely please. School funding and clean streets and EBT and whatnot are sort of proxies for this, but it’s just really not that simple.

(This isn’t a disagreement with anything, by the way.)

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:24:07 +0000

Whatever strawman you’re fighting here, it ain’t me.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:16:02 +0000

I’m correctly estimating my own effort in my success. I know just how hard I worked. Making the right childhood best friend causally set me on the path to do it.

New comment by throwaway_7274 in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

throwaway_7274 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:43:41 +0000

I attribute 90% of my success in life to the fact that I happened to make the right childhood best friend. One thing led to another and I got a PhD and earn [unreasonable salary]/year now. Life is insanely unfair. On some level it is luck. I don’t know what the “skill issue” twitterites don’t get about it.

(Hard work doesn’t hurt, either, but that goes without saying.)