It's not merely cost per word, but it is even more bizarre: "cost per word thought", whatever that is. Most of these "word thoughts" from LLMs of today are just auto-completed large dumps of text.
"... the way to commoditize suppliers and internalize network effects is by having a huge number of unique users. And, by extension, the best way to monetize that user base — and to achieve a massive user base in the first place — is through advertising"
Urgh. There we go, advertising as the panacea.
How about a decent product that people actually want to pay for?
Related: I don't see a mention of Michael Tomasello. He did some good work in comparitive studies of other primates and humans. One of his main ideas is how "joint attention" is what separates humans from the Great Apes.
Look up his book, "Becoming Human"[1]. I'll paste its abstract here:
"Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Becoming Human looks instead to development and reveals how those things that make us unique are constructed during the first seven years of a child’s life.
"In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tomasello draws from three decades of experimental research with chimpanzees, bonobos, and children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that differentiate humans from their primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities, but the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities into uniquely human cognition and sociality."
> where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs
They have all drunk too much AI cool-aid. I doubt these people have any meaningul education in fields such as biology, neuroscience and related life sciences.
Quite simply, we don't yet understand how consciousness arises. There are a lot of theories, but they are just that—theories.
Related reading: Antonio Damasio wrote a book in 1994 with the spicy title, Descartes' Error[1] to rebut his famous quote that you cite.
Also look up "Somatic Marker Hypothesis" by Damasio.
Like someone else mentioned in this thread, I'm not a "traditional" Emacs user. I use Emacs only for Org Mode; for the rest I use Vim, or occasionally something else. (For the rest of your question, there are some good responses from others.)
Not only the "Vexations" is to be played 840 times but he also instructs:
"It would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by staying very still"
I recently listened to a Sati recital by a Dutch pianist. The pianist told us the story, and said, "now I'm going to play this to you". Then played us a compressed recording of it that plays the whole thing in one second.
Thanks for sharing; I didn't expect to see Erik Satie on HN :-)
It's a lovely little vignette of Satie's work and life. If you haven't already, give a listen to his Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies. Beautiful melodies with a lot of harmonic variation.
Thanks, this is an interesting take. The 4 reasons for "radiating intent" make sense. It works in moderately high-trust organisations.
I also appreciate the author (Eliz Ayer) adding the below nuance:
"In all fairness, you might get less done by radiating intent. It does give obstructive or meddling folks a way into your thing. Also, advice like this is very situation- and organization-dependent and won’t be appropriate all the time."
> Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor, but he hasn't said anything explicitly. [...]
I don't see it that way. Linus is conscious of not becoming a bottleneck on every topic; he doesn't want to baby-sit overly grown adults. I read most of the relevant LKML thread[1]. Martin did the unwise thing of escalating it on social media:
"If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas."
That is not the way to build bridges and relationships in a community! No matter how frustrated you are. He reaped the whirlwind for taking that destructive approach.
Also, Christoph Hellwig, as an established maintainer, totally missed the mark by using the highly-flammable word, "cancer", to describe Rust. It scorched the LKML and the internet. He should have showed more restraint and wisdom.
reply