lofatdairy

It's interesting that up until the 1970s, viral infections were the predominant theory for the cause of cancer (this is before my time so apologies if I'm exaggerating). This was due to discoveries like src, ras, EBV, etc, so a lot of these carcinogenic pathogens were well known and studied. It wasn't until several discoveries in the 70s and 80s that we started focusing more scientifically on genetic drivers. But it's not like these infectious drivers went away, even if they are no longer as strongly associated with the disease in the public conscious.

I mean its fair to say that its deliberately on the nose. However, I would argue that despite being definitionally correct, Palantir still represents a misinterpretation by discarding the works in their whole. I brought it up because postmodern does correctly imply a reaction to what is "modern", but its also a body of work in its own right.

This is not to say that Tolkien's authorial intent is final, nor necessarily discernible, but we are obligated to examine the palantirs' presentation as not just a passive object with certain, defined qualities, but as devices that have their own consequential histories within the narrative. Thiel naming his company after a tool presented textually as fallible, misleading, and myopic (in addition to its obvious power) with ostensibly no desire to attach such connotations to the company requires, in my mind, at least a superficial reading. We can even disregard the fact that these were mostly tools for an evil opposed by Tolkien, and not make the (valid) argument that their presentation within the text is could be considered direct argument in opposition to their creation. I personally think that to build a company and name it after a work that argues against that company's mission/purpose requires misinterpretation of the reference material, both in terms of poor comprehension of metaphor and as a poor response to the text and the body of discourse that surrounds and infuses it.

>Postmodernism did indeed follow modernism and come into being as a reaction to modernism.

I definitely agree that, strictly speaking, postmodernism is a somewhat loose label for an eclectic set of ideas and expressions following modernism. My issue was not with the label being denotatively incorrect – that postmodernism implies a deliberate and retrospective relation to what is labeled "modern" – but rather that the term invokes a spirit that is utterly missing from the project.

There is no rejection of teleological narratives, and in fact by misapplying this term acts to reinforcing them. It doesn't meaningful critique the projects its in conversation with except in terms that reinforce the underlying assumptions that motivated their production. It critiques Vim in terms of codebase complexity and multiplexity, and these concepts are nothing if not deeply familiar. Even with regards to the concept of coding as the composition and production of language, Helix only looks to make that process more efficient, rather than examine how this process reproduces itself, or how intent is masked and produced through abstraction and reference to the work of other programmers/authors.

I am not saying that it should have done that. It is by all means a perfectly good editor. But a perfectly good editor does not a postmodern editor make.

If anything, one could argue that the process of vibecoding is more recognizably postmodern, especially as a strict rejection of the modernist belief system that produces that process of coding. Its nondeterminism rejects efficient, coherent processes. It requires one to reimagine production as its ends, rather than by beginning with conventional initialization rituals. Its discursive rather than dictatorial.

Not to say vibecoding is the end of coding or even the way "forward", just as to say postmodernism is not the teleological end to thought.

This is only tangentially related, but regarding:

>>Post-modern?!

>It's a joke. If Neovim is the modern Vim, then Helix is post-modern.

It's interesting that postmodern is so often used by people, perhaps less familiar with the arts and the humanities, to mean "an update to modern" or a progression thereof. They use it in a strictly literal sense, eschewing the precise meaning of the term they're referencing by mere addition of discontinuity as incremental difference.

Obviously, there's little impact to this. The term is hardly degraded by engineers advertising to other engineers. It looks a touch unread, but then again we have people like Thiel and Luckey misinterpreting Tolkien, so again it's hardly the most egregious example. I guess it just jumped out to me because I was hoping to see something creative truly postmodern.

There's a weird intersection in ultra-elitism where true blue-blooded snobbery is indistinguishable from middle-class envy.

Completely agree, I think that an abundance of caution is extremely important to practice when engaging with these systems, especially given the political climate. I just think that discussing counterfactuals in this particular case is unproductive and the original comment needlessly insensitive.

You're missing the point. Obviously people need to be careful right now. But framing this situation as the fault of victims rather than the fault of bad policy makes it seem like bad things things only happen in response to conscious decisions and to an extent it absolves the policymakers from responsibility. It dilutes productive discussion regarding bad policy and instead frames all injustices as the consequence of breaking the law.

Like HN users probably would broadly agree that advising people to "just don't act shady" doesn't make the PATRIOT act okay. Nor is it particularly helpful because both the scope of what can be considered suspicious or unlawful is well beyond what a normal person can be expected to considered their actions. The average person commits 3 felonies a day, the enforcement of which is essentially discretionary and means that anyone can be made subject to arbitrary punitive measures.

Certainly there's a frustration with how impotent one can feel about the law and politics, I don't disagree that we should try to control what we can and avoid putting ourselves into compromising situations. But that said I don't think criticizing the victims of injustice helps anyone or is ever the right thing to do.

I think this is placing the blame on the victims rather than the policies that are actually allowing these things to happen. Like the PI clearly made a mistake, but it's a minor one whose consequences have been made wholly disproportionate due to xenophobic policy.

He's even quoted as admitting as much in the article:

>No one at Harvard feels worse than Dr. Peshkin. Again and again, he has asked himself why he allowed Ms. Petrova to take the risk of carrying the samples. He rereads the text exchange he had with Ms. Petrova while she was sitting on the plane.

Also Dr. Peshkin didn't send her, she was already there for vacation:

>Dr. Peshkin worried she would burn out. He was relieved when she told him she was taking a vacation to France, where the pianist Andras Schiff was giving a concert. She bought theater tickets and planned trips to see friends from Moscow, now scattered across Europe.

>“I said, ‘Well, you’re there,’” Dr. Peshkin said. “Why don’t you get this package?”

So not only is this lack of empathy it's also mischaracterizing the situation.

I mean I still think this is a good idea. Seems like a combination of poor communication and probably an incomplete understanding of edge cases but illegal parking is a huge problem in NYC and even though there's a snitching program I think the scale can't be addressed without some level of automation. Obviously there are concerns with these sorts of things like misuse of data and whatnot but I don't think we're living in 1984 just because red light cameras exist.

To be clear, I don't think anyone distrusts the benchmarking work nor even the reported architecture, but also no one should need to operate on faith when it comes to work that presents itself as groundbreaking. Probably the first thing everyone did when they tested the model was run a sequence w/ a known cryo structure, but that's insufficient for how deepmind knows researchers will use the model.

> Also, for work of the highest art (of which AF3 is an example), publication in nature really is the fundamental unit of scientific currency because it ensures all their competitors will get hyped up and work extra-hard to disprove it.

IDK about disproving it, again nobody is distrusting the work, but let's also not pretend that a prestige journal is necessary to promote AF3. They could publish in the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal and get the same amount of press. And to be clear the controversy has largely center on Nature for allowing AF3 to get away with more than they would most other projects, and the wasted time and effort it's taking to reimplement the work so people can add to it. FWIW an author did state that they're attempting to release the code but that's not like a binding vow.

Finally, AF3 strictly speaking didn't win CASP (it almost certainly would) but again this isn't necessarily the point when people talk about validation. The diffusion process does seem to result in notable edge cases (most obviously in IDPs and IDRs but also non-existent self-interactions), it's not a straight improvement in that respect.

I mean it shouldn't be enough to publish in nature. The whole point of science is that it can be validated. It's totally fine that they're hosting their models for free on closed servers with limits, even though it's not exactly the most ergonomic.

I meant complicated as in not necessarily good/bad. I agree it's not complicated in the general sense that it's an intrinsic part of supply and demand.

That said it's definitely more complicated in how to article is discussing it. The article is clearly talking about a Braess's Paradox-like situation where an individual's optimal decision incentivized by changes in the system is worse for more participants than the previous system, due to anticipatory and dynamic effects. This is inherently more complicated to measure and predict.

I didn't see anyone saying induced demand in and of itself is the thing being avoided, just that induced demand for driving caused by highway construction is being avoided, as this implies that traffic won't be alleviated by increased capacity.

Induced demand can be positive, yeah, but I think induced demand is more complicated. It concerns a positive feedback loop phenomena that leads to the saturation of a system beyond its intended capacity. Like more people taking the metro is good, but more people taking it than it can handle can degrade their impression if it.