How useful is the comparison with the worst human results? Which are often due to process rather than the people involved.
You can improve processes and teach the humans. The junior will become a senior, in time. If the processes and the company are bad, what's the point of using such a context to compare human and AI outputs? The context is too random and unpredictable. Even if you find out AI or some humans are better in such a bad context, what of it? The priority would be to improve the process first for best gains.
He is not the only one, this is normal now and not a sign of super-rich depravity.
Here in my Bavarian city I can get mangos explicitly labeled "flight mangos" ("Flugmangos" - German supermarket), for example. They look so much better than the regular ones, but at almost 10 Euros per piece I have not tried one yet since I still have dried mango pieces in the fridge.
I don't think they mean food imported from another country. A billionaire sending an assistant on private jet to fetch a jar of his favourite marmalade only sold in a store 8000 miles away because they had a craving for it, the absurd resources required to satisfy it and no concern for how wasteful it is.
The human world model is based on physical sensors and actions. LLMs are based on our formal text communication. Very different!
Just yesterday I observed myself acting on an external stimulus without any internal words (this happens continuously, but it is hard to notice because we usually don't pay attention to how we do things): I sat in a waiting area of a cinema. A woman walked by and dropped her scarf without noticing. I automatically without thinking raised arm and pointer finger towards her, and when I had her attention pointed behind her. I did not have time to think even a single word while that happened.
Most of what we do does not involved any words or even just "symbols", not even internally. Instead, it is a neural signal from sensors into the brain, doing some loops, directly to muscle activation. Without going through the add-on complexity of language, or even "symbols".
Our word generator is not the core of our being, it is an add-on. When we generate words it's also very far from being a direct representation of internal state. Instead, we have to meander and iterate to come up with appropriate words for an internal state we are not even quite aware of. That's why artists came up with all kinds of experiments to better represent our internal state, because people always knew the words we produce don't represent it very well.
That is also how people always get into arguments about definitions. Because the words are secondary, and the further from the center of established meaning for some word you get the more the differences show between various people. (The best option is to drop insisting of words being the center of the universe, even just the human universe, and/or to choose words that have the subject of discussion more firmly in the center of their established use).
We are text generators in some areas, I don't doubt that. Just a few months ago I listened to some guy speaking to a small rally. I am certain that not a single sentence he said was of his own making, he was just using things he had read and parroted them (as a former East German, I know enough Marx/Engels/Lenin to recognize it). I don't want to single that person out, we all have those moments, when we speak about things we don't have any experiences with. We read text, and when prompted we regurgitate a version of it. In those moments we are probably closest to LLM output. When prompted, we cannot fall back on generating fresh text from our own actual experience, instead we keep using text we heard or read, with only very superficial understanding, and as soon as an actual expert shows up we become defensive and try to change the context frame.
Having grown up in East Germany, that is the truth. From both my grandparents, born early 20th century, to me things continuously got better. Apart from the war of course. They started little better than servant class and ended up with their own big nice houses, and in comfort. That is true even for the GDR. They lived through war and famine and at least four different currencies and types of government.
They also got more and more educated. From the lowest education to ever higher education degrees, one more step in each new generation. My grandfather tried many new tech hobbies as theY appeared, from (actual, original) tape recorders over mechanical calculators to at the time modern cameras and color slides, to growing hundreds of cactuses in a glasshouse, maybe as a substitute for being unable to travel to those places. I still have lots of quality 1950s and 60s color slides of people and places in East Germany.
Looking around. even the GDR until the end experienced significant improvements over what existed before, at least for the masses. Except for the environment especially near industry.
This did not happen fast though, but over decades.
On one side, the right preparing by slowly taking over positions, on the other side people ignoring the problems of many.
Here in Germany I fear the AfD too may get into power, because instead of fixing the problems that people complained about for decades (costs, bureaucracy, rents, no vision apart from "consume and work") people are fixated on that right wing party itself.
When I did some skydiving in my youth I was fascinated by watching sooo many skydivers barely avoiding the lone single tree near the landing zone. Turns out, if you concentrate on something ("I must avoid that tree I must avoid that tree...") you end up steering towards it. The winning move is to instead concentrate on where you do want to go. There are precious little positive ideas in our politics, it's mostly about what we don't want, or distractions on things that while it sounds nice and it's definitely okay when it gets done should never be the main focus.
> the problems that people complained about for decades (costs, bureaucracy, rents, no vision apart from "consume and work")
Insofar as people are actually going over to AfD (and it's not just exaggerated hysterics, the sky is always falling these days...), it's probably got something to do with the issues which are conspicuously absent from your list, which AfD ostensibly addresses, at least more convincingly than the other parties. Namely, immigration. You may not want to admit that as a real problem at all, but that refusal to engage with the issue is the primary reason people line up for the politicians who at least pretend to care about it.
> When you tell people their problem isn't real, (...)
Their problems might be real, but they sure are not caused by immigration. The Trump administration boasts about having deported 1M immigrants, and yet everything turned to shit, there are less jobs, pay hasn't increased, and things haven't became more affordable.
The first step to fix a problem is to identify it. Failing to do so risks aggravating the actual problems.
Tons of morons bought the Trump administration lie that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets. Their problem isn’t real. They are complete idiots with zero critical thinking skills who have more influence in elections than more rational populations due to this stupid ass country’s prioritizing empty land over actual citizens. Isn’t it funny how when “centrists” compromise with conservatives it always seem ruin things for decades if not centuries?
I had some hope as a millennial youth that we were “evolving” past the conservative mindset. It was insane to me that an ideology that has been consistently wrong from supporting slavery to opposing women’s suffrage would continue to have any support. But here we are still talking about gay marriage again because fucking conservative bigots cannot let anyone live in peace. But I’m sure you consider their “concerns” to be very valid and worth entertaining.
well, the concerns do need to be addressed. it is important that everyone gets an opportunity to voice their grievances and not be ignored. but grievances that come from lack of understanding the reality can only be addressed with education.
you are missing the point. addressing people concerns doesn't mean conceding that they are right about the cause of those concerns. it means listening to them and work with them to find the actual root causes and then fix those. it means taking people seriously with the fact that they have concerns and not ignore them.
ignoring people because you consider their concerns illegitimate doesn't wok when they make up more than 50% of the voters. it doesn't even work when they make up more than say 20% of the voters.
but as i keep repeating, addressing concerns means educating people, not letting them have their way.
i am not telling people that their problem isn't real. i am telling them that their understanding for the cause of their problems isn't what they think it is, or what they are being told it is.
the people who are having problems finding work, facing crime, etc, do not actually have a problem with immigration. they are only getting told by deceptive politicians that dealing with immigration would solve their problems. they are the ones being lied to. that's the nature of a scapegoat.
Tomato, potato. If you refuse to address the issues people have, or even just wrongly feel they have, and the only party that even pretends to care is your spooky boogieman right wing party, and you're so sincerely worried about the implications of that, then pull your head out of your ass and meet people where they are.
Me personally? Right now I'm most bothered by a large splinter in my finger. I'm pretty comfortable and my grander concerns relate not to immigration but rather how America will handle the demise of their global hegemony, if America will go to war with China over Taiwan.. That's what worries me the most.
But concerning immigration, you seem to think that people have other (perhaps even real) problems which they are falsely attributing to immigration. Like "Oh I can't afford a big house because of those damn immigrants" when really the problem is a lack of affordable housing, or some other real issue which you happen to agree is a problem. And to be sure, there is some of that kind of thinking going on. But for the most part, I think people who are upset about immigration really are upset about the immigration itself, particularly from substantially different cultures. There is a prominent belief among anti-immigration people that their governments are trying to ethnically replace them. They want to continue living in the society they grew up in, not in New New Dehli. I suppose you might think they're wrong to want this, we're all one race, the human race, etc. Whatever, all that ideological rhetoric doesn't change the way people vote when they begin to feel like foreigners in their own country.
you seem to think that people have other (perhaps even real) problems which they are falsely attributing to immigration
the only problem that can be directly attributed to immigrants is xenophobia. the solution to xenophobia is education.
really the problem is a lack of affordable housing
and that has to do what with immigrants? no, immigrants are not taking away affordable housing. whatever housing policy is responsible for the lack of affordable housing needs to be changed and can be changed in such a way that there would be enough housing for everyone, including immigrants.
I think people who are upset about immigration really are upset about the immigration itself, particularly from substantially different cultures.
as i said. xenophopia. excuse me if i don't take pity with that. the solution is education, to learn about compassion, care, tolerance, build communities, loving your neighbor, which btw, is a deeply christian value, so before people complain about different cultures how about they actually honor their own culture.
There is a prominent belief among anti-immigration people that their governments are trying to ethnically replace them
and you take this seriously? do you really think people are that dumb, to believe such nonsense?
I suppose you might think they're wrong to want this, we're all one race, the human race, etc. Whatever, all that ideological rhetoric doesn't change the way people vote when they begin to feel like foreigners in their own country.
what then is your proposal to address those issues?
i already shared mine: education, build communities, and fix whatever other real problems people have (housing, jobs, etc)
Most of this is just name calling now, blah blah xenophobia, who cares. I'm talking about the way people feel and you're talking about whether or not they're in the moral right to feel that way. It doesn't matter, people do feel this way and if you refuse to address their concerns then they'll fall in behind others who do.
Remember, the context of this conversation is "Here in Germany I fear the AfD too may get into power, ..."
> muh education though
Do you really believe tha Germans of all people haven't had enough Holocaust Class in school? Get real. You either have to meet people where they are, or accept that they're going to be voting for people that you aren't comfortable with.
what exactly does "meeting people where they are" mean?
if people fear foreign cultures, then the only way to deal with that is to get them in contact with these cultures and learn that these are nice people too. like therapy. that is what i mean by education. not learning about the holocaust, but learning to get along. there is no other way to address this.
you keep telling me that my approach does not work, but i am still waiting for your proposal how to address the issue.
People/institutions didn't want to fix real problems. This unwillingbess/inability causes problems to spiral and more and more problems to appear. Including the clash.
Cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo weren't killed by capitalism or global climate change.
Personally, I consider the chilling effect of such events on freedom of speech and art quite a huge problem. This freedom was crucial to European prosperity.
Well, roots of everything are long. We are a long-lived species and our political attention spans decades or longer. People still think of the Roman Empire and write in Latin alphabet, after all.
But the actual short-term jumps in policy are absolutely wild now. That wasn't the case in the 1990s.
Imagine left leaning orgs being as organized and funded as the right.
GP made the same mistake by putting the AfD on the right and anything else on "the other side that ignores problems". This other side is not the left, its the center or the non-left, which gets good funding too.
The decades of political development were always meant to bolster the current power structures, and i am not talking about pol. parties or the interests of the many and their problems. From that angle, the current political swing is not suprising. Musk and Co are winning their war on the left mind virus, which is much older then them.
If you are left (I am not, but I have observed it) and you agree with 90 per cent of the ideas of some group, but disagree on the remaining 10 per cent, they will turn on you in fury, denounce you as a traitor, hate you more than an actual opponent. Deviation from orthodoxy is a capital sin.
(This is not new, see how Trotskyists were extirpated by their Stalinist comrades 100 years ago. Heresy is simply not tolerated.)
The right wingers of today are a lot more capable of building a bigger tent, at least right now. Personally, I am somewhat rightwing, but very secular, as usual in Czechia. I still get invited to Christian events even though they know that I am not a believer, and they won't grill me to convert.
The same can be said about the right, but you are correct, infighting is stronger on the left.
But...
Orthodoxy (or better: tribalism) is actually stronger on the right, the key difference is, the right has less political complexity to argue over. "Our pure native culture will fix our problems and the other left outgroups must be suppressed" is pure identity politics, which is imo the core of the right.
The left has, tribalism aside, at least identity independent topics like wealth distribution. Which, unfortunately, threatens the existing power structures.
I can confirm the left ostracizing their own. It happened to me too, but i still consider myself left, because my political ideals are based on more than a group membership.
I think you underestimate the complexity of the right. It is not just secular nationalists all the way down.
First, there are still religious people there, and this very wing is splintered among several groups at least. Famously, many Catholics including JDVance were in a value conflict with their own late Pope Francis. The actual religiously educated people tend to be very good at writing, because the schools that they graduated from are good at teaching persuasion.
Second, there are libertarians, not very numerous but somewhat influential, especially in tech circles.
Then, there still are some trigger-happy neocons, nowadays marginalized, but they may yet come to the fore in case of a bigger war that directly involves the US.
Then, there are reactionary types like Curtis Yarvin, who dismiss any nationalist ideas as blind alley of "demotism".
Even the practical question of "how many people from which country should get a visa yearly and under what conditions" will hit enormous ideological differences in the right-wing tent.
To me, religious people, simple racist and libertarians all suffer from a identity-based cognitive bias. "Our groups or my well being is the ideal to project onto the nation/world." (Neocons dont fit in here, i have to admit. Maybe its abuse of power pleasing the monkey brain, but resulting wealth certainly too.)
I think self-withdrawal is more frequent in left leaning individuals for this exact, more unbiased/intelligent/educated reason.
But you are correct again. There is a lot of complexity on the right, if you look deep enough. But this depth does not cause as much infighting compared to the left, because, again: tribalism taking over higher order reasoning.
How is that my mistake??? YOU came up with "left". I very deliberately did not say such a ridiculous thing, given that any "left" party has never in power.
I would also appreciate if you did not paraphrase what I wrote when what I wrote still is right there, or at least don't attribute your words to me.
I always find it fascinating, and quite disturbing, how people rewrite what other people wrote to base their "counter-"argument on their rewrite.
> On one side, the right preparing by slowly taking over positions, on the other side people ignoring the problems of many.
You bisected the political landscape, but not into left and right. I did this and, as you may agree on, the center is shifting right too. An aspect i wanted to bring up by adressing your "problems of the many" and where/why the political focus has been on in the past.
Maybe you are familiar with the whole lefty concept of "capitalism inevitably turning into fascism". The right and the status quo center have more in common, so you can group them together and i called it "your mistake".
The reality is that Northern Europe is the safest, most free and wealthiest part of this godforsaken planet.
People don't know how good they have it.
It is understandable that Germans voted for the Nazis in 1933. In 2025 they have no excuse.
When Germans get grand ideas inside their heads everything always goes bad.
The economic difference between rural former GDR and, say, Denmark, is pretty huge, and AfD mostly dominates in the former GDR regions, where local industries collapsed almost overnight and all talents got picked off by West German employers.
I traveled around most of Europe with a backpack. Former GDR is a dying country, and no amount of subsidies into fixing roads will help it. You cross the border to Poland, nominally you entered a poorer country, but everything is so much more lively there. Poles are so much more optimistic about their future than Germans in general, and East Germans extra.
This psychological difference cannot be appreciated if you only look at GDP per capita tables.
People don't compare themselves with countries on other continents, but with their neighboring countries or with the memories of their own country (how it was in the past).
Swedes look at the statistics of bombing and shooting incidents in this century, while Finns look at economic growth, GDP and salary growth in the last twenty years, especially compared to other Nordic countries.
> If you haven’t had a mind blown moment with AI yet, you aren’t doing it right
I AM very impressed, and I DO use it and enjoy the results.
The problem is the inconsistency. When it works it works great, but it is very noticeable that it is just a machine from how it behaves.
Again, I am VERY impressed by what was achieved. I even enjoy Google AI summaries to some of the questions I now enter instead of search terms. This is definitely a huge step up in tier compared to pre-AI.
But I'm already done getting used to what is possible now. Changes after that have been incremental, nice to have and I take them. I found a place for the tool, but if it wanted to match the hype another equally large step in actual intelligence is necessary, for the tool to truly be able to replace humans.
So, I think the reason you don't see more glowing reviews and praise is that the technical people have found out what it can do and can't, and are already using it where appropriate. It's just a tool though. One that has to be watched over when you use it, requiring attention. And it does not learn - I can teach a newbie and they will learn and improve, I can only tweak the AI with prompts, with varying success.
I think that by now I have developed a pretty good feel for what is possible. Changing my entire workflow to using it is simply not useful.
I am actually one of those not enjoying coding as such, but wanting "solutions", probably also because I now work for an IT-using normal company, not for one making an IT product, and my focus most days is on actually accomplishing business tasks.
I do enjoy being able to do some higher level descriptions and getting code for stuff without having to take care of all the gritty details. But this functionality is rudimentary. It IS a huge step, but still not nearly good enough to really be able to reliably delegate to the AI to the degree I want.
For some strange reason a lot of people were attracted by a comment that speaks about everything else BUT the actual topic and its the top comment now. Sigh.
If you think that carefully chosen anecdotes out of many many more are relevant, there needs to be at least an attempt of reasoning. There is nothing here. It's really just barebones mentioning of stuff intentionally selected to support the preconceived point.
I think we can, and should, do better in HN discussions, no? This is "vibe commenting".
Definitely citation needed. Such court cases usually come with a lot of important context. How can you just make such a statement and get away with not providing any context link?
> European authoritarians and their enablers in the media are misrepresenting GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones as if they're something for criminals. GrapheneOS is opposed to the mass surveillance police state these people want to impose on everyone.
How useful is the comparison with the worst human results? Which are often due to process rather than the people involved.
You can improve processes and teach the humans. The junior will become a senior, in time. If the processes and the company are bad, what's the point of using such a context to compare human and AI outputs? The context is too random and unpredictable. Even if you find out AI or some humans are better in such a bad context, what of it? The priority would be to improve the process first for best gains.
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