sdsd's comments

On: Odin, a pragmatic C alternative with a Go flavour

[sdsd]

Once, on a previous account, he actually replied to me. It's like a kid going to guitar center and the guy who replaces your strings is Axl Rose.

If you're on here, Walter, you're my hero. I also once interacted with Brendan Eich, who I admire as much for his role in web history as for his activism.

[drannex → maleldil]

context: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/04/brendan-eich-suppor...

He has never given an update, and I don't believe his views have changed.

On: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

[sdsd]

On the other hand, it's only doing this accidentally, right? It could probably be optimized further if the goal were just transmutation. Who knows, maybe we could get all the way down to only 10 trillion per ounce! /s

On: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

[sdsd]

Wouldn't it make them dead weight, too? Their status as merely "economic" elites seems like a shaky position if the world becomes post scarcity.

[throw63 → sdsd]

Not quite. It's not about being economic elite per se, but about being part of the handful of people who will control the tech. That might well end up being a single person or family, of course. (I assume that AGI will not take over, rather the humans who program it will. I also assume that, unlike movie villains who need to keep rivals alive so that we can get an entertaining story, real life villains will not take chances and kill off almost everyone.)

On: India launches attack on 9 sites in Pakistan and Pakistani Jammu and Kashmir

[sdsd]

>By all measures India is the more powerful state, but as Ukraine demonstrates: Desperation can make up for a lot of disadvantage.

The question is whether China would prop up Pakistan like NATO did for Ukraine

On: Typed Lisp, a Primer

[sdsd]

You'd love threading macros in Racket: https://docs.racket-lang.org/threading/index.html

It's like Unix pipes for functions:

  (~> "hello"
    (string-ref 1)
    (char->integer))

[klibertp → sdsd]

Obviously, also available in CL, in Serapeum library[1]. Racket is credited in the docstring (since it's ~> instead of ->). Also, `nest` works very well for unnesting forms[2]

[1] https://github.com/ruricolist/serapeum/blob/master/control-f...

[2] https://github.com/ruricolist/serapeum/blob/master/REFERENCE...

On: Just redesigned my personal site with a TTY-style interface

[sdsd]

Love it! I added a little terminal thing to my site awhile back: https://danbednarski.github.io/

It's not really useful, just fun (for me)

On: Reading RSS content is a skilled activity

[sdsd]

I just filter my RSS subs through a locally running LLM trained on my journal to judge my interests, it then decides what to curate for me based on a prompt (sometimes something totally left field, this stuff always, etc)

[kleinishere → sdsd]

Was considering the same. Any GitHub link? If not, what LLM and what kind of pipeline? (If you can share!)

On: Avoiding skill atrophy in the age of AI

[sdsd]

I appreciate this, but feel the opposite way. Getting super good at all the Unix flags for commands used to feel super useful, but now it feels like a ridiculous waste of my human intelligence.

I'm very concerned about leveraging my humanity on top of AI to develop skills that would've been impossible prior.

What new skills are possible?

On: Welcome to the Era of Experience [pdf]

[sdsd]

Yes and no. In swaths of the world, we're actually observing a reverse Flynn effect and IQ has been dropping, in some places for decades.

Eg: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...

[jimbob45 → sdsd]

IQ tests are administration-sensitive and have changed dramatically since the beginning of such a Flynn effect study. The population makeup of many countries has changed in recent years to include many immigrants for whom the study would make exceedingly little sense to include. IQ tests do not cover and do not claim to cover a comprehensive view of human intelligence, famously lacking verbal and social components entirely. It is possible past IQ tests were simply overtuned and we’re now seeing the natural correction.

[_Algernon_ → sdsd]

This started long before the internet.

[trollbridge → _Algernon_]

Started in 2006 in Denmark and seemed to start a few years ago in the U.S… coinciding with smartphones (which I think will make us even dumber).

On: The New Moat: Memory

[sdsd]

>learn from our mistakes

Oof, I wish I had the optimism to even consider this a realistic option. If we thought social media power was a threat to democracy, wait til we see what AI companies do.

[bentt → sdsd]

You only have control over yourself.