mirror_neuron

Good points, I’ll take it!

I think the source of our disagreement is in our answers to this question: is the USA many subcultures under a common umbrella (“American culture”), or is it many independent cultures mixed together?

I could be convinced of your position if you can name the common elements that justify the umbrella. It becomes even stronger if those common elements are the rotten ones.

Anecdotally: I married someone from a very different (USA) culture than my own, and their family feels as different from my own as some people that I’ve met from other countries, so that’s partly why I answer that question the way that I do.

The culture you were born into may very well be rotten, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s the culture of “this landmass”. The USA is enormous, and contains a huge number of cultures and subcultures. I grew up here, too, and experienced nothing like what you describe.

Live the rest of your life abroad if you’d like, but don’t do so believing that everyone in the USA is from the same culture.

As someone who is close to the aphantasic end of the spectrum: for me, it does not apply to audio. That difference is how I came to understand aphantasia better: I can very concretely hear sounds and music in my "mind's ear" in a way that I can't for vision.

Well said. I completely agree.

I think there's a key difference of perspective hidden in your response. You're a business owner; you sell outcomes to your customers. Even if we suppose that skill atrophy is real, it's easy to see how that tradeoff would be worth it to you, and not to someone who is an individual contributor in a corporate environment. For an IC in a corporate environment, the accumulation of portable skills is an important part of what makes the job worthwhile.

For what it's worth: I went freelance right around the time that agents were starting to become extremely capable, and I've never enjoyed my work more. I'd believe the claim that my hands-on coding skills are atrophying to some degree, but I'm also developing other skills that have much higher leverage in my new setting.

I still work like this, using Aider. What do you mean when you say you “miss” it? (Why not just keep using it?)

I’m a “LLM believer” in a sense, and not someone who derives joy from actually typing out the tokens in my code, but I also agree with you about the hype surrounding Claude Code and “agentic” systems in general. I have found the three positive use cases you mentioned to be transformative to my workflow on its own. I’m grateful that they exist even if they never get better than they are today.

I love this concept. Looks great, I will definitely check it out.

I’m curious to hear more about how you get useful performance out of your local setup. How would you characterize the difference in “intelligence” of local models on your hardware vs. something like chatgpt? I imagine speed is also a factor. Curious to hear about your experiences in as much detail as you’re willing to share!

That was my first reaction, too, but it’s not actually nonsense - it’s a depiction of Eminem practicing rhymes in a casual conversation.

It’s valid feedback for the author, though. I had to read the article to understand the image.

Count me among those that didn’t realize how much seed oil is used. But is that bad? I don’t have an axe to grind against cow’s milk, but I do have trouble digesting it (and besides, I like the way oat milk tastes).

Do I need to be worried about the fact that there’s a lot of seed oil in it?