I try to keep up with the tech, I also see what people do with it, but the amount of expensive computation you need to do very basic stuff just isn’t productive in any way. It’s random code generator with extra steps. Throw a junior at it, you’ll get a future senior. Throw a bot at it, you’ll get praised for your clever prompting, you’ll pay for tokens and have some slop in return. I can’t see how it’s productive to sustain a forever-junior?
Also, is “update your priors” some slang for “tell your parents”…? In that case, I can only say older folks are especially vulnerable to slop and I can’t imagine my parents would benefit from that tech.
Anyway, legitimate uses for chatbots are extremely niche, to the point I can’t really name even one such use…
"Update your priors" means to adjust your opinions as the circumstances that caused you to form them change [1].
> I can’t see how it’s productive to sustain a forever-junior?
Well, I've met enough developers throughout my career that were successful forever-juniors that I reckon it must be productive to somebody. And tokens may be "expensive computation", but those developers were more expensive still.
90% of everything was already slop. The simple matter is that in many fields, slop is enough to clear the bar, especially when that slop makes the unit tests light up in green.
> "Update your priors" means to adjust your opinions as the circumstances that caused you to form them change [1].
I checked Wiktionary but I was in disbelief that's labeled as a dogwhistle of a known fascist community[0] being used so freely here, so I gave you a benefit of the doubt..? I guess maybe it's not associated purely with them, but then it's not a valid or widely used phrase in English, so pardon my confusion..?
> Well, I've met enough developers throughout my career that were successful forever-juniors that I reckon it must be productive to somebody. And tokens may be "expensive computation", but those developers were more expensive still.
As someone who identifies with "rationalism", wouldn't you say this looks like bit of a selection bias on your side? Meanwhile the "ai race" to deploy the greatest boot-licking chat bot is having measurable and devastating impact on the environment and people? (And all that without tangible productivity gains, only with potential for long term loss thereof)
> 90% of everything was already slop. The simple matter is that in many fields, slop is enough to clear the bar, especially when that slop makes the unit tests light up in green.
Everything but pump and dump schemes (and perhaps other kinds of one-off fraud) has ongoing costs of maintenance, which slop tends to only increase. It was never nice to maintain things, but whether you keep burning tokens or hire actual expert devs to fix sloppy vibey mess, you'll be overpaying compared to if you put high effort from the start.
Most rationalists aren't fascists. There are some fascists that call themselves rationalists, but there are also fascists that call themselves libertarians, fascists that call themselves socialists, and fascists that call themselves democrats, so this proves nothing.
This constant equivocation in recent online discourse is tiring. I'm not even close to the rationalist community, I have always found them ridiculous for unrelated reasons, long before it was cool to do so: but I've also engaged with them enough to know that the majority of them is nerds with a science fetish, whose political alignment is about center-left by American standards.
Accusing somebody of being a fascist for telling you to consider the evidence in front of you, and then acting like that makes you the adult in the room, the one who is aligned with social norms and interested in a real debate, is laughable.
> Everything but pump and dump schemes (and perhaps other kinds of one-off
> fraud) has ongoing costs of maintenance, which slop tends to only
> increase. It was never nice to maintain things, but whether you keep
> burning tokens or hire actual expert devs to fix sloppy vibey mess,
> you'll be overpaying compared to if you put high effort from the start.
From my point of view, you're vastly overestimating the quality of most real-world software. There is a million internal applications running out there, powering every kind of business from financial over media to industrial, that evolved from a Perl script first forgotten by a sysadmin in 1994 and then just had more and more crap piled on top of them over the decades. As long as it works for what it needs to do, it will get used. "Software Quality" is a thing that matters only to nerds, and those very few working in sectors where it's actually relevant. But most people aren't writing software to go to Mars or power nuclear reactors.
Also, is “update your priors” some slang for “tell your parents”…? In that case, I can only say older folks are especially vulnerable to slop and I can’t imagine my parents would benefit from that tech.
Anyway, legitimate uses for chatbots are extremely niche, to the point I can’t really name even one such use…