Because people have to compete just to have sand doing math for us? The why is that it's high time we stop worrying about how much compute we have. Certainly filling all solid planets in the solar system with computers is not nearly enough computation as we want (I'm not even talking about AI specifically).
Yep. I'm no fan of Elon - exactly the opposite, in fact - but this is just someone trying to look smart and eco-friendly by doing the simplest, least ambitious, most obvious and surface-level analysis.
The sentence you mention was indeed a give away, but there are many others.
Worst case scenario, nothing works and Elon burns a bunch of money, part of which goes into jobs and research. Best case scenario, we actually move away from technologies from the 50's and end up with daily, cheap earth-to-low-orbit (ideally something better than that - how about the moon?), no more whining about energy costs, and laser communication IRL. That's just the obvious stuff.
Being "realistic" and "having a budget" is what companies like Google do. That's all good, but we have enough of those already.
I...I am very interested in this subject. There's a lot to unpack in your comment, but I think it's really pretty simple.
> this does not support your conclusion that artificial systems are "computationally equivalent" to brains in any practical sense.
You're making a point about engineering or practicality, and in that sense, you are absolutely correct.
That's not the most interesting part of the question, however.
> This is like arguing that because weather systems and computers both follow physical laws, you should be able to perfectly simulate weather on your laptop.
Yes, that's exactly what I'd argue, and...hm.. yes, I think that's clearly true. Whether it takes 10 minutes or 10^100 minutes, 1~ or 10^100 human lifetimes to do so, it's irrelevant. Units (including human lifetimes) are arbitrary, and I think fundamental truths probably won't depend on such arbitrary things as how long a particular collection of atoms in a particular corner of the universe (i.e. humans) happens to be stable for. Ratios are closer to being fundamental, but I digress.
To put it a different way - we think we know what the speed of light is. Traveling at v = 0.1c or at v = (1 - 10^(-100))c are equivalent in a fundamental sense, it's an engineering problem. Now, traveling at v = c...that's very different. That's interesting.
Exactly this. I would argue that I believe doing it efficiently is "just engineering", but I would not claim we know that to any reasonable amount of certainty.
I hold beliefs about what LLMs may be capable of that are far stronger than what I argued, but stated only what can be supported by facts for a reason:
That absent evidence we can exceed the Turing computable, we have no reason to believe LLMs can't be trained to "represent ideas that it has not encountered before" or "come up with truly novel concepts".
I believe our definitions of "winning the IDE wars" are very, very different. For one thing, using "user count" as a metric for this like using "number of lines of code added" in a performance review. And even if that was part of the metric, people who use and don't absolutely fall in love with it, so much so that they become the ones advocating for its use, are only worth a tiny fraction of a "user".
neovim won the IDE wars before it even started. Zed has potential. I don't know what IntelliJ is.
It started as a modernized Eclipse competitor (the Java IDE) but they've built a bunch of other IDEs based on it. Idk if it still runs on Java or not, but it had potential last I used it about a decade ago. But running GUI apps on the JVM isn't the best for 1000 reasons, so I hope they've moved off it.
Android Studio is built on the IntelliJ stack. Jetbrains just launched a dedicated Claude button (the button just opens up claude in the IDE, but there are some pretty neat IDE integrations that it supports, like being able to see the text selection, and using the IDE's diff tool). I wonder if that's why Google decided to go VS code?
Uh, isn't that the regular Claude code extension that's been available for ages at this point? Not jetbrains but anthropics own development?
As a person paying for the jetbrains ultimate package (all ides), I think going with vscode is a very solid decision.
The jetbrains ides still have various features which I always miss whenever I need to use another IDE (like way better "import" suggestions as an easy to understand example)... But unless you're writing in specific languages like Java, vscode is way quicker and works just fine - and that applies even more to agentic development, where you're using these features less and less...
Jetbrains IDEs are all based on the JVM - and they work better than VSCode or the full Visual Studio for me. It's the full blown VS (which has many parts written in C++) that is the most sluggish of them all.
I don't know what it's based on, but it works extremely well. I use Rider & WebStorm daily and I find Rider is a lot faster than Visual Studio when it comes to the Unreal Engine codebase and WebStorm seems to be a lot more reliable than VSCode nowadays (I don't know if it's at fault, but ever since copilot was integrated I find that code completion can stop working for minutes at a time. Very annoying)
You clearly don't know how Swing or Eclipse SWT works under the hood.
Java's big strength is that it's a memory safe, compiled, and sandboxed low level platform with over a quarter century of development behind it. But it historically hasn't handled computer graphics well and can feel very slow and bloated when something needs that - like a GUI. That weakness is probably a big reason why Microsoft rewrote Minecraft after they bought it.
Since you last used IntelliJ "about a decade ago", what do you use instead?
> But running GUI apps on the JVM isn't the best for 1000 reasons, so I hope they've moved off it.
What would you recommend instead of Swing on JVM? Since you have "1000 reasons", it should easy to list a few here. As a friendly reminder, they would need to port (probably) millions of lines of Java source code to whatever framework/language you select. The only practical alternative I can think of would be C++ & Qt, but the development speed would be so much slower than Java & Swing.
Also, with the advent of wildly modern JVMs (11+), the JIT process is so insanely good now. Why cannot a GUI be written in Swing and run on the JVM?
Notice that INTELLIJ uses its own UI framework, really, which I don’t think has much Swing left in it after all these years. And Kotlin is the main language for a decade now.
I share your feelings - both the sadness about the path we seem to be going down and the wonder about what the Internet used to be.
I do believe, however, that the future does not "exist" in any real sense, but is constructed - every day, little by little, by each and every one of us. What the world will be like in the future is decided by us every day.
Put another way - this is a rhetorical question - can do we do anything about it? Maybe.
> What will the world will be like in the future is decided by us every day.
That's the problem.
This "us" you're referring to. People. They're the problem. They have no principles. They stand for nothing. They think they do, but the reality is their principles are easily compromised. They are highly susceptible to manipulation by way of emotion. Powerful emotions like terror and rage.
Conjure up some drug trafficking, money laundering, child molesting terrorist boogeyman and they'll compromise immediately. Suddenly freedom is being traded away for security. Suddenly free speech is no longer absolute. Then you see that these weren't principles that entire nations were founded upon, they were more like guidelines, thrown away at the first sign of inconvenience.
The harsh truth is that danger must not only be accepted but embraced in order to have true freedom and independence. The internet that connects us also connects criminals, the cryptography that protects us also protects criminals. There is no way around it. Compromise even a little and it's over.
People are the problem. They endlessly compromise on things. No ideal can ever be reached. It's an existential problem that cannot be solved.
To be an idealist is to be an extremist. Sadly people are not prepared to pay the costs of idealism. The ideal of a decentralized, encrypted and uncensorable communications medium, for example. It requires that they accept the cost that criminals will not only use it but be enabled by it. They won't accept it. Thus we march not towards the ideal but towards its opposite: centralized plain text surveilled and controlled communications.
Attitudes like yours are ones that "they" want us to adopt. Chat Control just got defeated by people power TWICE. Never ever think that you have no power. Why else would they try to control you?
Chat Control getting voted against had nothing to do with people power. It was always going to be the outcome, as long as we're lucky enough to have MEPs who are wiser than MECs. Social media outage had nothing to do with it - it was entirely up to who sits in the European Parliament.
Well they specifically called out the website set up for the mass emailing campaign as the (a) reason why they couldn't ignore the outrage. Never mentioned anything about social media, but the idea that parliamentary officials are immune to people power is just naive. They do not exist in a vacuum.
Interesting. I know in the USA each congressperson has a small team of people to filter emails, including deleting repetitive ones. I thought this was universal.
> Joachim's mass email campaign is unconventional as a lobbying tool, differing from the more wonky approach usually taken in Brussels. But the website's impact has been undeniable.
Ah, so this is completely new to them - for some reason. Possibly due to constituents having a fear of retaliation on other issues, as Europe has only weak free speech. Well, don't worry, soon the European Parliament will have filters in place to ignore its constituents just as efficiently as every other Western democracy.
Lol. They won't. A small team to delete repetitive emails has nothing to do with getting hundreds of emails a day from different people in your constituency. Also "weak free speech" is pretty much just a US-centred meme.
People get arrested in Germany for saying bombing little kids is bad, and I think it's the same in different countries. Each one has a few issues the leaders really want to get done, and you're punished for opposing those, but you're allowed to protest the ones they don't really care about.
In every country where I'm aware of it, emailing your MP does not email your MP, but emails a member of their staff who read most emails and delete them, unless they're actually something the MP actually cares about, like a bribe offer or something.
You "think"...well you're wrong...you're talking about the 15 year old arrested at the Palestine protest? hardly a EU phenomenon...again, go ahead and actually read the timeline of CC and the website which headed up the mass emailing campaign against it. There's no reason to be MORE jaded than we need to be.
The good news is that, I think, we don't really need - if fact, we probably don't really want - most people to accept anything, at least the specific context of this thread. It's about whether we can carve out a space - some space - for people like you and me.
> I've given up on trying to change the world.
I don't think you have.
Speech matters. Ideas matter. I'm not going to try to quantify such things, but looking at your HN submissions and your comments - including this one - I think you are actively changing the world, for better or worse. If nothing else, you believe in objective truth, I think. We have a surprisingly large number of people who don't.
> Believe in Truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
> It's about whether we can carve out a space - some space - for people like you and me.
Yes. Society at large is a lost cause but maybe we can select some number of known good individuals and form a microsociety inside it where we can enjoy the freedom we crave.
There is a name for that: elitism. I'm not against it. Those who don't make the cut certainly will be.
> If nothing else, you believe in objective truth, I think.
I've tried to debate politics with people so childishly stupid they thought just giving everyone a million dollars would make everyone rich and solve the world's problems. They thought the government just didn't want to give them the money, like it was a conspiracy to keep them down.
I'm tired of it, and I'm tired of people like that having a say in the future of nations.
I'm no super genius but I'm done being humble. Even a total pleb like me can rise above a good chunk of my "fellow citizens" because frankly the bar's pretty low.
I wish there was a country all those people could go and be happy, fat, and safe, and I could remain here with freedom. Maybe China or the UK would be nice places to suggest for these people to go? More closely aligned with their values
Even if you aren't malignant, or evil, then stupid is the only option left, because you've observed the structure of the problem space, understood the new problems and vulnerabilities and points of abuse introduced, accepted their existential nature, and then simply turned off your brain and ceased to continue processing to the inevitable conclusion. You can be evil/malignant. You can be stupid. If you choose to be stupid, none of us can separate you from the evil/malignant camp.
So if it makes you feel better. Cool. I don't see you as an evil mustache twirling person, but you're still a systemic threat from your refusal to take into account the threat these tools represent in terms of being weaponized by the first tyranny minded group of individuals to wander in.
There's differences of priorities that I have no compunctions having a spirited discussion around. What I refuse to engage in is argumentation with people intent on pissing on my shoes and trying to claim it's raining, or trying to get me to fit the Procrustean bed that makes them feel safer at my expense.
evil and stupid are certainly the wrong words. I agree this is a nuanced issue.
however, I think it is an objective fact that certain orderings of priorities - in particular, the relative priority of freedom, privacy, security, protection, "justice" (depending on how you want to define that word) are strictly worse than others.
and that assumes it's a zero sum game, which I don't think is true generally. It may be true in the limit, but...we're far from the limit, so to speak. we can have both freedom and privacy and safety. And I think giving up on any one of them is objectively bad, both individually as well as a society.
now, on a different tone - and perhaps this really is subjetive/personal - myself, I'd rather die by my own choices than live by others. literally. I think there's close to 0 value in living a life according to values that others chose.
> If only we could also agree that not everyone who thinks this is not a good trade is evil/malignant/stupid etc.
No. We cannot agree on that.
> it feels like a simple case of priorities. Freedom and privacy are not everyones
Then what is? Survival? People would accept anything if their betters kept their bellies full?
I see your point, I just want humans to be better than that. I want to be better than that. It's not about priorities, it's about basic human dignity. Without dignity, we're reduced to beasts.
People's moral fortitude is tested by crisis. Will they give up their principles or will they stick to them? If you ram two aircraft into the twin towers, will the USA remain the land of the free, or will it turn into a surveillance police state that violates the basic rights and dignity of its own population on a daily basis?
I see people fail this test all the time. I see entire nations fail this test. As such, my own beliefs that people are reasonable and principled are being tested. Is it worth it to have principles, to try to reach an ideal state of society, or is it all about money, force and power in an amoral world? My beliefs are trending towards the latter.
I do believe, however, that the future does not "exist" in any real sense
The future is an immediate result of the present, which is an immediate result of the past. The laws of physics dictate this with no wiggle room. It's complicated and functionally impossible to predict with any certainty, but the future is certain. It is as fixed as the past, and the present that arises from it.
Thank you, but I seem terribly out of my depth for that level of discussion.
If Claude helped me understand correctly, the error is on me for taking determinism as a base assumption and rejecting the assumption of "randomness" at a universal level? Is this something I would need to buff up on the quantum stuff to come around on?
All I have in my head is Laplace's demon, all I've ever observed is deterministic events: If you flip the coin the same way everytime, it'll come up the same way everytime?
Laplace's demon requires being able to tell velocity vectors of individual molecules, and tossing a coin predictably takes being able to throw it with equally enormous precision, correcting for the net effect of all collisions with molecules of air along the way, etc.
So in the end of the day posessing such knowledge, or rather having a mind with this much focus, depth and resolution would indeed mean a win of determinism over entropy. How can a cup break irreversibly if we know how to put back all of its shards so that they click in place at atomic scale without gaps and lost pieces?
But our reality is a battlefield between pure will/determinism and pure chance/entropy, and it's depicted vividly in The Matrix as the battle between The Architect and The Oracle. And we seem to be cursed/blessed to be Neos trying to balance that out or escape that Sisyphean task altogether.
Now I think we're having two different conversations again? If I understand your point about the "battlefield between pure will/determinism and pure chance/entropy" correctly, you're talking about more of a psychological, individual, "is there a meaning to life, the universe and everything" type direction?
What I was trying to drive at was really more of a "in the framework of Laplace's Demon, your choices in the present can be 100% predicted, no different from the movements of molecules. It follows that you have no more options of choosing than the molecule does and your future has been set in stone from the beginning of time."
In the framework of Laplace's Demon, no single human, the whole humankind nor any machine or algorithm it creates is capable of 100% precise prediction of anything at the level of operation of said Demon. If there's any experiment proving otherwise, I'd like to know.
If you insist that we talk about 100% prediction of my personal choices, let's play a simple game of guessing UUIDs. I generated one and changed a single digit in it at my free (or predetermined) will. Here it is, protected by another UUID which I'll post as soon as you make your prediction.
[nothing] is capable of 100% precise prediction of anything at the level of operation of said Demon
No see I actually agree. See my original post:
It's complicated and functionally impossible to predict with any certainty, but the future *is* certain.
I thought your disagreement was with my central point of strict determinism, meaning past, future and present are all set in stone, but you've agreed with this on account of the Demon. So I am entirely lost on what your point actually is.
Too late to edit: Learned about the Stern-Gerlach apparatus as relating to the uncertainty principle. That's a huge puzzle piece and I'm probably gonna shut up about determinism for a while as I stew on this.
I for one take every consumer survey opportunity to spell out why these things are a bad idea, and routinely contact my elected member of parliament to ask about this - she's sympathetic. The other opportunity to rebel is just to be difficult. Route all your traffic always through an anonymising VPN with defence against traffic analysis. If someone geoip blocks you from making a purchase, reach out to their customer support and gently reeducate them. Spend money on open source things, personally and professionally, and never buy DRM. Advocate for e2ee (I work partly in medicine - this is an easy sell) and highlight how decentralisation and encryption puts power in the hands of practitioners rather than big tech giants. If a large corporation breaks eg gdpr rules, report them to the regulator. Be the change you want to see in the world.
I don't like the way it's going either, but the array of technical solutions from mesh networks like zero tier and tailscale to briar, i2p and freenet right the way through to technologies such as wush, v2ray and x-ray, tor or daita all give me some hope that there will be a technological out for a long while yet. The social issues are best served socially though.
I dont think it's quite the same. The cases you mention are more like two alternative but roughly functionally equivalent things. People still argue and use both, but the argument is different. Even if people don't explicitly acknowledge it, at some level they understand it's a difference in taste.
This feels to me more like the horses vs cars thing, computers vs... something (no computers?), crypto vs "dollar-pegged" money, etc. It's deeper. I'm not saying the AI people are the "car" people, just that...there will be one opinion that will exist in 5-20 years, and the other will be gone. Which one... we'll see.
> People still argue and use both, but the argument is different
React vs no framework is at least in the same ballpark as AI vs no AI. Some people are determined to prove to the world that React/AI/functional programming solves everything. Some people are determined to prove the opposite. Most people just quietly use them without feeling like they need to prove anything.
It certainly helps, but in my experience you get 60-80% of the benefit just with code (except in legacy or otherwise terrible code, for example with misleading/outdated comments everywhere, bad variable/function names, etc - in that case more like 40%).
This is an interesting threads. There are many instances of "this is bad, doesn't work, don't like it", and many instances of "it works reasonably well here, look: <url>".
It’s a propaganda and psyop operation on HN if you ask me.
This stuff is laughably bad and I wonder who would actually use it for real work beyond a “huh this is cool” at first glance.
HN is super susceptible to propaganda in the AI age unfortunately; I think at this point a lot of the comments and posts on here are from bots as well
There was some article here on how llm's are like gambling, in that sometimes you get great payouts and oftentimes not, and as psych 101 taught us, that kind of intermittent reward is addictive.
Interesting point, never thought of it like that, and I think there is some truth to that view. On the other hand, IIRC, this works best in instances where it's pure chance (you have no control over the likelihood of reward) and the probability is within some range (optimal is not 50%, I think, could be wrong).
I don't think either of this is true of LLMs. You obviously can improve its results with the right prompt + context + model choice, to a pretty large degree. The probability...hard to quantify, so I won't try. Let's just say that you wouldn't say you are addicted to your car because you have a 1% chance of being stuck in the middle of nowhere if it breaks down and 99% chance of a reward. The threshold I'm not sure.
I don't know the specifics of this particular tool, I assume it's at most using a couple of passes of (some frontier model with specific system prompt + custom tools, for example code-specific rag + some form of "summarize"). By at most I mean "probably isn't doing anything crazier than that".
But it seems to be producing docs that are better than I tend to see with basic "summarize this repo for me"-style prompts, which is what I usually use on a first pass.
I feel you brother. Same boat. I've been able to do things I wanted to do for ages and knew how to do, but didn't have the time to type, essentially. I prefer to produce nothing than something half baked ("MVPs"), so I did nothing. Now I can do experiments, throwaway, start from scratch, design, redesign, throw away, and eventually have something I can be a little proud of.
Maybe, just maybe, there will a new era where crappy software (by crappy software I mean almost everything we see around us - open source and closed source) is not the norm anymore - because now a single, smart and knowledgeable enough person can write something like Kubernetes (which is my baseline for OK software) or even Linux in a reasonable amount of time. And maybe we won't be stuck with 40 year old (or more) technologies because "too hard to change". Did you ever try to add bottom padding - literally just bottom padding - to the command prompt in a terminal emulator (in my case, I tried Iterm and Kitty + tmux only)? It's near impossible. That is absurd.
Point is: bad software existed before (most of it), and good software existed before (very little). It will be the same in the future. It's just that now, less people coordinating are needed to right good software.
