I just thought about it, and honestly, from my surroundings of people aged 12-70s, across multiple continents, I can’t think of anyone who isn’t using some sort of LLM once a week.
American software engineer here, and I have only used LLM tools ~3 dozen times: tried at work a few times, and been unimpressed/actively frustrated; a few times to ask questions I would be normally survey blog posts about (social/lifestyle things); and the rest has been generating images with my kids.
But currently, aside from generating "creative media", I'd say I'm pretty much opposed to LLM tools. They have yet to demonstrate any value to me at work or with respect to the areas of research I am interested in, and given the kind of statistical mechanism that they are, I do not believe they are capable of doing so.
Interesting take, because I'm the opposite of it. My biggest use case is getting into a completely new topic, as it's the most frictionless starting point for most of the queries. Then I look around based on the rudimentary knowledge that I can gather from LLMs. However, I'm completely opposed to any sort of creative media created by LLMs and try to avoid it as much as I can (music, images, and etc.).
Also, it has become the natural workflow for me to throw bunch secondary priority work stuff to Claude and let it do its things, while I focus on the important stuff.
My point is, everyone finds a way to use it. Some are opposed to specific things, others are using other parts.
These takes feel like a failure compared to my daily usage, which is literally non-stop for ten hours a day. Want to construct a niche jq, curl, or find linux command? Can't remember the parameters for a function? Don't want to leave your terminal to search for something? ctrl+I and type in readable english.
I wonder if this is counting the "AI Summary" that is gratuitously included in a standard web search now?
That's the only AI I use anywhere near weekly. I have tried claude a few times, it was useless at helping me with my questions. I haven't really been back.
This opinion is not based in reality. The only way to understand that is to go outside and talk to real people who are neither techies nor managers, and, better yet, try to do their jobs better than they do.
Invest in candidates who will be ruthless about funding education and increasing the top marginal tax rate.
What's that? I'm hearing this guy doesn't want to pay taxes?
Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread:
Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.
> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.
Also, Huxley's Soma is very close to the medicine Soma (Carisoprodol), in my experience. It's a beautiful, relaxing, euphoric high. Probably highly addictive.
That's also what I thought - Wasn't Soma more of a way to make people question less and just remain in a blissed out but maybe sort of out of it state at all times ? Seems very different than amphetamines
The link (including the transcript of Huxley’s lecture) doesn’t seem to be about Soma, unless I’m missing something. Huxley produced a lot of work outside of Brave New World, lots of it concerned with drugs and altered states of consciousness (so much so that personally I don’t think I’ve done enough drugs to understand his perspective, as I find him distinctly, and almost uniquely among such high-profile authors that I’ve tried, unreadable)
You are vey correct—the talk and link have nothing to do with Soma.
I can only presume, based on timing of the talk being 1960, that his thoughts here link to mescaline and the practical utopia he talks of in Island, whose inhabitants make use of a local psychedelic. So whatever he must have said here had more to do with his later perspectives than his feelings around the island.
Fair enough, but I have read Island, The Doors of Perception, and BNW, and none of those books described using uppers or anything about efficiency. Island was psychedelics (fantastic book in my opinion).
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