samiskin's comments

On: Try and

[samiskin]

I think this capture’s the essence better than anything else, “try and” simply behaving as “try and see if I can” (or whatever fits instead of “I” here)

On: Training LLMs to Reason in a Continuous Latent Space

[samiskin]

Language is definitely a significant part of thinking, but when I remember how cold it was outside yesterday to figure out if it was colder than today, I'm not bringing words to mind. I'm bringing up some other non-discrete information that I could never precisely encode into words and then factoring that in with the other non-discrete information I'm currently taking in through my senses. Its only after that processing that I encode it as a lossy "It was colder yesterday" statement.

On: Language models can explain neurons in language models

[samiskin]

Evolution created intelligence without even being intelligent itself

[dontknowwhyihn → samiskin]

How do you know that’s true?

[flangola7 → dontknowwhyihn]

Evolution is just a description of a process, it isn't a tangible thing.

[candiddevmike → dontknowwhyihn]

Because we eat and breath through the same tube

[_justinfunk → candiddevmike]

There are two tubes.

[p1esk → _justinfunk]

Evolution came up with the shared eating/breathing tube design because it made sense for aquatic animals (from which we evolved).

[KineticLensman → _justinfunk]

The trachea and oesophagus both start in the common space of the pharynx. The epiglottis stops food going down the wrong one

[hackernewds → candiddevmike]

we don't. which is why we choke and hiccup

[poulpy123 → dontknowwhyihn]

Because evolution is random change + natural selection

[thfuran → dontknowwhyihn]

You're proposing that statistics is intelligent?

[hypertele-Xii → thfuran]

You're proposing that evolution is statistics?

[thfuran → hypertele-Xii]

Basically, yeah.

[8bitsrule → thfuran]

Notable that the people who saw the first automatons argued whether they were alive.

[int_19h → 8bitsrule]

People also argued that animals are mere automatons, that all their observable behavior is basically scripted, and that humans shouldn't empathize with them on those grounds. That's how vivisection etc used to be justified since at least Descartes.

[chrischen → dontknowwhyihn]

Evolution is not a single orchestrator. It is merely the natural result of a simple mechanical process over a timescale that exceeds the lifetime of the common human.

On: Programming breakthroughs we need

[samiskin]

This all makes sense given "for the contexts I care about (small web applications largely written by solo devs)". Unfortunately for you most software (and therefore what most developers work with) isn't for those contexts, but rather for larger projects written by multiple devs, where being lower level and compiled (runtime speed) and having static typing (more explicit and easily understood by other devs) become much more valued.

You'll probably always be in the minority with your preferences because of this.

[jaredcwhite → samiskin]

I love being in the minority with my preferences…have for most of my life.

On: Functional programming jargon in plain English

[samiskin]

This makes a lot more sense than anything I've read about this in the past, thanks for the explanation!

[pdpi → samiskin]

Thanks, that's reassuring. I've long been frustrated by just how bad monad posts are in general, and been meaning to write something up about it that makes it clearer. It's good to know that I'm at least going in the right direction :)

On: State machine replication, and why you should care

[samiskin]

This seems like a more restrictive version where the "Actors" must also be entirely deterministic and single threaded without really blocking in the middle of processing something.