I thought this was a funny statement too. Text is the most powerful, original medium. It's difficult to overstate how powerful and valuable it is. Of course, text won't necessarily be the only UI exposed for interacting with these "Large Language Models." But that UI can be built on top of the text -- which wouldn't work in the other direction.
I think the point is that a "chatbot" is, by (the author's) definition, a UI with only a bare text prompt. Once you start building more UI on top of that, you're ... doing what the article suggests.
I re-read the post. The author is arguing against a statement that no one made and then uses the rest of the essay to outline their work. It is a bit of a setup.
An LLM-Chatbot is an extremely flexible tool, but I haven't seen anyone argue that all of our UIs and applications should be replaced by chat. That is ridiculous.
This is from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. They're with Slartibartfast driving onto the factory floor for creating planets. Slartibartfast, as you recall, is a famous "world designer" who won an award for designing the Fjords of Norway.
On the seal: "melius simul quam solus" means: "better together than alone." On the scale of extravagant perks and celebrations of success it is a fairly minor and inexpensive one.
Oh, that was removed by the famous Julie Ann Horvath who made allegations of sexism and discrimination against Github (who hired an investigator and said they did not find grounds for the claims).
Lots of comments about small improvements to typing efficiency. It is an important topic.
One thing I do, is turn the key repeat speed up as fast as I can stand, and turn the delay to repeat down as low as possible. I have always done this and over the years I've experimented to find the fastest possible settings.
After getting so used to these fast speeds, when I see folks attempting to type with the slow default speeds ... it is quite hilariously slow and I must confess I feel a little pity for them.
machine (n.)
1540s, "structure of any kind," from Middle French machine "device, contrivance,"
contrive: to form or create in an artistic or ingenious manner
According to these definitions a machine is something that humans create.
We understand what we create. When trying to understand complex things, we form metaphors based on our actual understanding.
Whichever is the most advanced thinking of the age is used at a metaphor to describe life and nature. When it was steam, we used popularly understood concepts of steam engines to describe life. When it was electricity, we used electrical metaphors. Now that it is computers, we use those concepts.
We are also very overconfident regarding how well we understand and control the world. Having achieved smashing success in some areas, we then think we have total control. Chronological snobbery, if you will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery
The danger is then, at a popular level, we take the metaphor literally and turn it around to be something reductive: "Life is no more than a machine." That is frankly not true: this is where the metaphor falls apart & it's the danger the article describes. Life is more than a steam engine, it's more than electrical circuits, and it's also not a computer.
Life may be a purely material phenomenon (i.e. no more than atoms, void, and time), but that does not mean it is "just a steam engine / computer" etc.
Yes -- my wife and I are both from the northern midwest. We live in San Francisco now. We are actually colder here in the winters, then we ever were in the midwest, because houses in San Francisco are not insulated, and don't have good heating systems. Whereas houses in the midwest are essentially little heating plants.
Life in the midwest is organized around staying warm and it works very well.
We do appreciate the blue skies and the sun of California, however. In the midwest in the winter, you can often go weeks without seeing the sun.
We also like the houses in California. They're historic and beautiful and in many cases greatly elegant. Also, easy (arguably continuous) outdoor access is a beautiful thing. But there is great irony in paper maché houses being, relatively, so much more expensive.
It's even worse: the views that folks are getting all worked up about, aren't their own personally formed opinions -- they are being programmed with these opinions via media, advertising, etc.
Then we hold these opinions so strongly that if we disagree about anything at all -- any nuance, out of the infinite menu of "correct" opinions -- we argue bitterly ... driving apart friends, families, etc.
We must learn to hold opinions more lightly and to value direct experiences & physical relationships with real people, more than virtual experience.
It's sad because at the end of the day we all have so much in common, but we are becoming convinced that we're so different and what's more, that others are in fact evil people. Great pain and trouble might come from this trend.
This. Talking to people on both sides, it's all just regurgitation of headlines and pundits. Most people know how to deal with people who are "with" them or "against" them, but don't know how to react to someone who partially agrees, or agrees on issues, but not solutions. Anything outside of mainstream rhetoric is immediately labeled conspiratorial. Which is strange to me. Most people on both sides seem to recognize the media is rigged by big money, but they don't seem equipped or encouraged to form their own opinions that incorporate this knowledge.
Also I think experience has been devalued because its anecdotal. Only facts from an omniscient source are accepted, no matter their often dubious original.
It seems crazy to say but I think it may all boil down to a massive influx of inexperienced readers. That plus the fact that most content on on the internet is not to be taken quite at face value.
Counterintuitively I believe there are more people reading and communicating textually than ever before. Way more! That would be good except they are doing it all via the Internet which is an absolute free for all of weaponized content, created for commercial or political purposes.
Critical reading and thinking skills are needed to navigate the internet.
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This book is kind of funny: [The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind](https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicame...) ... but it is good for hypothesizing about how consciousness has evolved. The relevant part to this discussion is when he writes about people literally being driven insane by the birth of writing. They were just unable to integrate the new influx of information quickly enough. Imagine your dog for example, learning to read. It would be quite the experience for poor Fido.
The printing press, in time, caused the reformation, the enlightenment, etc. But it was a bumpy road along the way.
My point is that, everyone having the internet in their pocket will have a larger impact than anyone anticipates today.
I agree it's not crazy. To me the best explanation is that Facebook introduced many inexperienced people to political topics, and they had trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Someone told me something similar happened when radio first got popular. Hopefully our societies will get better at filtering information as these technologies mature.
It actually does make me wonder if we can see a connection between what's happening now and what happened when Protestant Christianity started spreading with the whole "priesthood of the believer" deal where everyone can read the Bible in whatever translation and interpret it just as well, supposedly, as those who are trained in Greek/Hebrew/Latin and actually studied the historical context of it. Seems very similar, in some ways, on a rough look.
I think you nailed it there. Forgot where I read it but there's a similar principle/observation of software devs where every year the number of new developers grows exponentially larger and so as we move into the future, the industry racks up an increasingly larger share of novices compared to experts.
Seems to be a similar phenomenon playing out in larger society - we who've been around the block know where the potholes are and how to deal with them appropriately but the flood of newcomers fall prey to them in increasing numbers every day.
I think it’s a function of information overload. It’s all just too much for people, so they look for the quickest “conclusion” in the truest sense of the word, i.e. the interpretation that allows them to end the discussion and no longer be bothered about it.
The internet, it seems to me, is the primary cause of this information overload. And it also makes it so much easier to just “swipe left” on people. In the real world, in a local community, you would not have been able to just walk away from conflict. But in the internet, you almost have to do it to stay sane.
I agree with this, and I would add that groups interacting under the influence of such rapid, impersonal dismissals, has the effect of removing all nuance and subtlety from their language. I have a fear that if I were to take a time machine forward, Jules Verne style, I would see emoticons have entirely supplanted the alphabet.
almost feels like there's no room for nuance, but I know that there is, just not in public. i have a conjecture that every public platform where people are even slightly concerned about their opinions being attached to their identity turns into an echo chamber dominated by the vocal group. its crucial that people understand that identity is not just about the opinions you hold and you can agree on some things but not on others. its very simple if you think about it, but that's precisely what's missing when you constantly consume content mindlessly. try consuming content you don't agree with at all. for a week. a month. a few months. then you'll find yourself surprisingly slipping into agreeing with the content. it happens. its happened to me when I purposely did this as an experiment. the only way out is to THINK and listen to all sides
> Anything outside of mainstream rhetoric is immediately labeled conspiratorial. Which is strange to me. Most people on both sides seem to recognize the media is rigged by big money, but they don't seem equipped or encouraged to form their own opinions that incorporate this knowledge.
I propose that if you think of a human mind as a neural network that is trained by the information it ingests, much of the mysteries of human behavior makes almost complete sense.
"people on both sides seem to recognize the media is rigged by big money" is a bit of a hanging chad, but I suspect that is explained by something like this:
What you say seems to be the case. I've been thinking a lot about it lately.
It's pretty easy to see this programing in others, but remarkably more difficult to perceive regarding oneself.
The thing is (in my opinion) we can't really get by without some level of automatic programming. If we had to stop and weigh each decision and figure everything out from first principals we would have immense trouble operating. So we get cultures, religions, customs and ethical "hard facts" to help us get by. They work in a limited time and space but often break down as circumstances change and many (most?) people have a very hard time adjusting to the new reality.
I still think people should be a bit more critical (and cynical even), looking at who benefits from masses holding a belief and trying to determine "truth" from first principals more then they do now, but think I understand why this isn't the general case.
> they are being programmed with these opinions via media, advertising, etc.
The opinions of peers and social media seems to power most of the clichéd responses, from what I see.
It is less clear where those clichés originate or who are the originating amplifiers/influencers.
I hear people regurgitate canned memes, but it isn't obvious where they were programmed. My mum repeats some memes that I think she learnt from her peer group, even though the memes are conflicting with the underlying beliefs I know her to have.
I think you are implying traditional media and advertising has an outsized influence. That is weird to me, although I agree their influence definitely exists as a background swamp.
Edit: Is using the word “tropes” like this common? (“tropes” as used in this thread). Meme or stereotype or cliché seem better word fits for some of the usages I have read so far. I’m guessing “meme” has been stolen for visual gags.
The media is the only source of anyone's information about anything beyond our immediate personal relationships and direct worldly interactions. For the vast majority of people, the scope of direct worldly interactions is extremely limited.
Take a moment to think about what we believe to be the fundamental facts about the biggest topics in the world at the moment. How many of those facts have originated outside of our own minds?
This set of basic facts are almost all sourced from the media. It's interesting to think about whether this same set of facts also set limits to the scope of opinions that could be formed to explain them.
And yet here you are sharing opinions on a social media site.
> The media is the only source of anyone's information
Citation please (perhaps using Fox News?). I am being cheeky, but you are being black&white absolute, and stating your opinions as facts (which I don’t like).
There are plenty of people that don’t watch TV, don’t listen to radio, and don’t read traditional media sources. Talk to a teenager - where do their opinions come from? Not traditional news sources.
The guy at the pub that is bashing me with QAnon and “do your research” has not picked that up from any traditional media in New Zealand. I see the same pattern with plenty of other memes (left or right), where the meme has definitely not been transmitted by big media. Memes that are too far out to be publicised on our local media (due to stronger laws against bullshit).
I don't think I need a citation to back up the full statement. You chopped my sentence in half, then argued against that half.
I'm happy to discuss the full idea with you, and I'll try to reiterate it again more clearly.
The facts relating to topics and events that exist beyond our own experience, and the direct experience of the people we interact with in our lives have to come from somewhere. That somewhere is always a form of media (social or traditional).
The set of facts that we receive about these topics may also set limits on any independent ideas we, and others with the same set of facts, can come up with to explain them.
When the QAnon guy at the pub is delivering his ideas and talking points, he is doing so using a different set of basic facts that he has received about the topic. The set of facts that he has been exposed to are quite different to yours. So different that there isn't much overlap at all in the set of ideas and opinions that each of you can generate to explain them.
The interesting thing to think about is that we all place some trust in the media we consume (social or traditional) to deliver us the set of facts that accurately describes topics we have no direct exposure to. That includes the QAnon guy at the pub.
You have a good point. It doesn't necessarily need to be consciously programmed into people. Maybe it's just the hive mind forming memes. All those minds reading, thinking, looking, creating ... causes strange ideas (myths?) to percolate throughout society. Similar to the birth of religions perhaps?
This is a point Scott Adams talks about at length in his podcasts.
"People don't have opinions. People are assigned their opinions according to their choice of media that they opted to consume."
(obviously phrased as an absolute for punchiness. the context here is "unless you're the kind of person who makes it their business to observe media on different sides and analyse the differences", which is generally the focus of his podcasts these days)
> It's sad because at the end of the day we all have so much in common, but we are becoming convinced that we're so different and what's more, that others are in fact evil people.
Divide and conquere is the working management strategy. It helps a lot to increase control over population in the country.
Traditionally it was 'ideology' now it's 'populism'.
To take a 'very sensitive' concept, even the framing of a subject creates dissonance i.e. 'pro choice' or 'pro life' etc. - the literal framing of the issue from 'either side' goes right past the other argument.
Personally, what do to move past that is ask myself the question 'when does life begin'. That's a difficult question, and all but the most ardent ideologues would have to at least ponder that. And FYI I'm not even hinting at an answer to it etc. just illustrating how a simple question, which kind of speaks to the hart of the matter can 'reframe' away from slogans.
Most people have 'radar' for 'people in the other group' and tend to diminish everything, i.e. assume people are acting in bad faith, when this behaviour itself is acting in bad faith.
In the last 20 years or so, my persona 'radar' now is for people who are caught up in memes, populism, bubbles etc..
Being outside of a bubble doesn't mean information in those bubbles is necessarily 'wrong' but it helps to contextualize.
American media in particular is a bit pernicious, the capitalist element of it, the fact the stakes are so high (America has power and influence), my god.
I'm so extremely grateful that almost my entire family is 'non aligned'. You could never really tell the 'side' that people are on, often, they don't even have a 'side'. I can't imagine what living in a bubble situation i.e. family, work, local politics might be like. I wouldn't want to move the 'state that shares my values' so much as the 'state that isn't wrapped up in everything being a social war'.
You want to know what's funny? Even on the 'most sensitive issue' of abortion, you are right 'we have more in common' than not. Vast majorities of Americans believe that 'abortions in 3rd trimesters are problematic' while '1s trimester' are not. That's oversimplifying a bit for sure, nevertheless, there is a very crude kind of consensus except at the margins.
But the way the parties deal with each other is not equal. The right wing is conservative and holds by its definition “conserved” ideas, aka not up to date.
A majority (which runs in the millions) already knows what it wants and voted accordingly, and a minority conservative SCOTUS voted against it. So now the states can vote on it, but the information I am getting that some states find all abortions being illegal is just as a fundamentalist a position as any. Aka for one party in particular there is no grey. This has largely to do with the power/voting dynamics of the right.
One side is not equal in its approach to issues by its nature (conservation)
It would be a lot more interesting if conservatism would mean “skeptic” in practice, but we all know it has gone far beyond it.
Not to say I welcome curious conversations with anyone, but to say the two sides are equal in their approach and methodology is not true (in my experience)
You say “information I am getting”—are you not US-based? I can tell you the two parties are pretty much the same in their approach (other than some minor differences in organizational structure). It’s professionalized and data-driven. They are just trying to win elections.
Party dynamics in the US evolves a lot. GOP is nothing like what it was 10 years ago, and nothing like it was during the 1990's. Democrats used to be the 'Party of the South' etc.. SCOTUS confirmation has changed.
Also, it's really not quite appropriate to say conservatives are even 'conservation', even if that were true, it doesn't make the posture inherently unfair etc..
Finally, you say 'both sides' - there are not '2 sides' that's a myth. The GOP is utterly divided between Trumpers and non, and the Left is divided between the Woke and Classical socialists. A lot of people in private have ideas across the spectrum.
Do you have a breakdown on numbers approximately between the divisions? It’s also interesting you say “in private” , so what people say and do differs from what they believe at home?
Bob Woodward on TV yesterday said that 20% of Republicans want Trump gone, 50% support him, and 30% just want to 'win'.
More than 1/2 of GOP Senators probably despise Trump, they see him for what he is, but he's popular. Meaning, he can 'have them fired' like he's 'firing' Liz Cheney by supporting her attackers. That's how politics works. Mitch McConnell utterly despises Trump, but he'll come out publicly and support him if he's he man.
All 'public' politics is posturing and populism, it's just a bit worse in the USA.
No, 50% of GOP voters are beholden to Trump and will do what he says. Liz Cheney is being ousted by him right now. Trump is backing candidates who support him against those who do not, making a lot of GOP afraid to speak out.
Oddly, if he does announce he's not running, he may lose influence.
Trump has to keep the appearance of power otherwise the structure will eat him alive, they hate him.
He'll have to keep fighting all the way to the grave.
The 'people' are stupid and put their egos before reality.
They are also inclined to support people over ideas, and many of them legitimately believe the election was rigged because Trump and Newsmax/Foxnews told them so. So in a weird and perverse way, they are 'acting in good faith'.
'The Big Lies' are possible when people are already sensitive about it and 'want to believe it' i.e. they just need a reason to believe.
I don't see how it makes sense: the electricity has to be generated, which is almost always via burning something to heat a boiler. Then the electricity is sent to houses via the grid, which involves further losses. So you burn something, make heat, make electricity, send the electricity though wires, to make heat. Vs, just making heat directly in the house to accomplish the job.
If all our electricity came from renewable power then sure, I agree. But most does not. So, this seems like putting the cart before the horse. Why not focus on improving how we generate electricity before we tear out all the gas?
My undergrad degree was electrical engineering. Basically, it seems visible to everyday people, and theatrical, but not that helpful or practical. Happy to hear how I'm wrong. I am certainly very concerned about the environment.
> But most does not. So, this seems like putting the cart before the horse. Why not focus on improving how we generate electricity before we tear out all the gas?
What percentage should be from renewables before we start switching? What if it takes 10 years to get 90% of stoves replaced? It's surely not a "wait until the grid is 100% clean" situation.
Then add in the fact that induction stoves (and I believe electric stoves) are significantly more efficient than gas. With gas stoves, a ton of the heat just goes out into the kitchen, whereas induction gets much more directly into what you're cooking.
There's also the climate impact of unburned gas leaking into the atmosphere, though I don't know how significant this is. Ideally, we want to get to a place where we don't have to build gas transmission infrastructure to every building. This will take ages, so if it's important, we should start now, not after everything else is in place at the generation side of things.
Outside of climate concerns, there are also some significant negative health effects of gas stoves. e.g., much higher rates of asthma in households with gas stoves[0]
I have a strong preference for cooking with gas, mostly due to familiarity, but there are major downsides to the technology.
Thank you. I appreciate your comments. It does make sense that most of the heat from a gas stove does not go into the cooking vessel. In fact I often use the electric kettle to speed cooking by pre-boiling water, then adding it to the cooking pot. And I also can see that the unvented exhaust from the combustion of the gas is unhealthy. And also, that leaks of gas into the atmosphere from poorly maintained pipes adds significant further greenhouse gases, as we know natural gas is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
Regarding, the timing of it all, I guess at the root my attitude here, is one of frustration, where ... we have known about this for literally 100 years, but we just don't care. Now we make theatrical laws, but current events are more of the same: warmongering and blowing one another up is more interesting than actually addressing our biggest problem: climate change.
But by all means I am all for whatever we can do and I agree we should do all the helpful things ASAP.
My concern with the law was that I honestly wasn't entirely convinced it's actually the right thing to do. But I certainly appreciate those three points you made above.
Do you feel this law makes sense as well for colder areas that require homes to be heated?
My initial reaction to the gas stove thing when NYC started on it a few months ago was definitely "this is not the big culprit in climate change". There are clearly other laws and policies that are more important that we're not doing, and that's frustrating.
But gas stoves, much as I love 'em, are a problem, so we should be addressing that. I do think it's the right time to start shifting people over to electric/induction stoves. I'd favor taxing natural gas or gas stoves rather than outright banning, (and ideally we'd just do a "carbon tax" that covered all greenhouse gases), but political realities might mean the ban is the best we can do.
As for heating in colder climates, from what I understand, heating is also almost always more efficient using a heat pump, so in general I think it holds true that we should be weening off of natural gas everywhere.
Somehow it looks to me like it will take much more time to rump up our electricity production, especially from renewable sources, than switching at some stage to electric stoves and cars. Not that I mind improving the situation in all fronts but it certainly not the main issue that we need to focus on. I don't even believe climate change is such an issue but I also don't mind trying some improvements to appease people who are worried, it is just that we need at least to focus on the main problems and make it in a way that will not be too costly and bankrupt us all.
You are forgetting how much of the heat coming from the gas stove is simply heating the air around the pot instead of heating what is in the pot. The efficiency of gas stoves is pretty crap-tastic. Induction heats only the pot, and thus heats only what is inside.
(setting aside tiny losses from heating the pan, etc...)
Technology connections did a video on this recently showing an electric kettle required about 100wh to heat a volume of water and his gas stove took over 300wh to heat the same volume. And it was even worse when he used the large burner.
We're in enough of a climate crisis that we need to be be doing all these climate actions possible immediately all at once in parallel.
At the same time that cities are updating the building code and zoning to phase out CO2 intensive home heating, the state and fed governments can be moving to shift electrical generation away from CO2 intensive methods.
The problem isn’t the gas being burned, it’s the gas not being burned. Natural gas is a much stronger greenhouse gas, to the point where leaks make up more of the greenhouse effect of residential gas than the CO2 from burning said gas.
> Why not focus on improving how we generate electricity before we tear out all the gas?
It's incredibly simple. We can, at will, change how the "single" source of energy is generated. There is no time that is too early to have all energy consolidated to one source.
Not only because the plants that generate the electricity are more efficient and cleaner than everyone burning their own fuel (even when they are gas or coal), but because if we are prepared already, as SOON as we make the change to renewables or nuclear, suddenly everything is more clean.
I don't want to be rude here, but I HAVE to assume fully functioning adults are arguing from bad faith here, rather than "not understanding" this concept.
Don't be coy, tell us why you really don't understand this.
The internet has successfully changed my mind! A very rare event. No need to appeal to bad faith. I simply received an engineering education which taught me that a great deal of energy is lost along the way to delivering electricity to houses, so that, for the purposes of generating heat, it's usually best to simply generate the heat via the primary route. I also grew up in the Northern Midwest & had to pay electric bills of $800 / month for rentals heated via electric baseboards.
However -- thanks to the free further education I have received here, I now understand the argument for electric stoves (gas stoves less efficient due to heat loss around the sides of the pot and also unhealthy due to combustion in a living space).
Going a step further, do you think that heating houses (e.g. furnaces) as well should be exclusively done via electricity?
I am aware that these laws are for urban areas in California (which don't require much heating). But, I am curious to what extent the argument for greater efficiency & health holds up for the heating of houses and for colder geographic areas, considering that quantity of heat required is much higher, and also that the furnaces are vented much more aggressively.
For heating the promise of heat pumps is even greater, with "efficiency" of over 300% (possible since the heat energy is transferred from outside). This means it's even more efficient to just burn gas for electricity and use a heat pump for heating.
There are currently quite a few limitations for heat pumps, especially for retrofitting, but for new homes the main argument is initial investment price. A heat pump is initially usually much more expensive than the alternatives (although cheaper over time).
I'm not aware of any health arguments in regards to gas vs. heat pumps.
From what I've read, natural gas power plants have much higher efficiency than point of use. Powerplants try to squeeze every last drop of energy out of the inputs and their byproducts, whereas a home stove just lets energy and byproducts into the atmosphere.
> I don't see how it makes sense: the electricity has to be generated, which is almost always via burning something to heat a boiler. Then the electricity is sent to houses via the grid, which involves further losses. So you burn something, make heat, make electricity, send the electricity though wires, to make heat. Vs, just making heat directly in the house to accomplish the job.
This argument seems to assume that all power generation has equal impact on climate change, which clearly isn't true. Am I misunderstanding?
Interestingly enough, dinner hours are the times when California relies the most on natural gas for electricity production. Hopefully that changes in the future, but I wonder if all this ordinance does is further centralize natural gas usage at a single point of failure.
That's still a benefit. Pipes leak, so by burning all the gas in the same place, you lose way less gas to leaks, and you also gain efficiency since big generators have less waste than small ones.
