wcfrobert

So the fact that we're ladder pulling entire generations of young people is both understandable and natural...

I self-identify as an introvert and don't much like social obligations. Nevertheless it's nice every once in a while that my wife drags me into them. If she's not there as a catalyst, I would probably be rotting at home with vitamin D deficiency.

Grateful for people who host and provide social opportunities even though I'm sometimes not outwardly social.

I like the quote from Hilbert that was brought up in the article: "we must know, we will know".

With AI, it might be the case that we don't know, we won't know, but the machine does.

The central question, namely whether humans should be in the loop, will be repeated again and again in the years to come for all industries, starting with mathematics.

Don't conflate your self-worth with your ability to produce in the economy, or your test score, or which college you went to, or how good of a programmer you are. It's such a tragedy that we are so obsessed with achievement and competence.

Why should I be measured by how well I do things. In fact do we think human value can be measured at all?

The modern world has way too much content to commit to memory. Our brains would explode. Maybe 2500 years ago it was still possible to functioned as an adult without writing things down.

Yes, pizza, after intense and scrupulous reasoning, is indeed a salad.

This goes to proves that you can reason your way out of everything.

It's like interest rates. I used to think it's weird why people are so obsessed with a couple percentage points. But it's turns out those couple of percent could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars difference for a 30 year mortgage

Completely agree! I find writing deeply memetic - in that I often catch myself imitating the flow, style, word choices, punctuation and grammar of whatever reading material I'm currently immersed in.

This unfortunately does not bode well for my writing ability as I read emails and Claude output all day. Recently, I've been reading a lot of building codes and compliance documents and I've develop annoying ticks like using "shall", "need not", "take no exception", overuse of passive voice, etc.

My hypothesis is engineers suck at writing by default unless they do extra-curricular reading. I read a lot! But sadly it's often textbooks, journal papers, documentations, and Claude. I'm envious of great writers, but I don't have time to read Keats. I'm immersed in Stewart, Strang, and whatever Claude is feeding me next.

Another reset tip I've implemented to great success is to drive in complete silence. No music, no podcast, no radio.

This way, I've turned my daily commute into a kind of meditation practice.

At first, you'll think about a million random things, and the 20 minute commute turns into a 40 minute commute mentally. Often you'll zone out and replay argument, write essays in your head. But if you try to relax and concentrate, after a while, you'll start to be more present and notice pedestrians, weird signs, potholes, restaurant you've never paid attention to, different types of overpasses, etc.

Another fun exercise: every once in a while, I flip a coin and if it lands head, I'll allow myself to listen to music, and the music becomes a treat again rather than random background noise! It's great and I've added so many more songs to my playlist because I actually notice them

My opinion is that juniors need time in the saddle to develop good engineering judgement and taste.

Outsourcing critical thinking is seductive and a slippery slope. LLM lures juniors into feeling productive, and molds them into ineffectual middle managers to be readily replaced when there's a bad quarter.

I like the _idea_ of reading continental philosophy, and then I opened up Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here is a random sentence from a random page verbatim:

"Spirit contains this actuality here because the extremes whose unity it is just as immediately each have the determination to be for itself its own actuality. Their unity is subverted into aloof aspects, each of which is for the other an actual object excluded from it. The unity thus emerges as a mediating middle which is excluded and distinguished from the departed actuality of the two aspects; thus it itself has an actual objectivity differentiated from its aspects, and it is for them, i.e., it is existent. The spiritual substance enters into existence, first while it has gained for its aspects the sort of self-consciousness which knows this pure self to be an actuality which is immediately in force, and therein it just as immediately knows that it is this actuality only through the alienating mediation. Through the former, the moments are refined into the self-knowing category and thereby are refined right up to the point that they are moments of spirit. Through the latter, spirit comes into existence as spirituality."

wtf is Hegel saying?

People say jobs with the "human touch" will stay relevant after AGI. And I'm like have you seen customer service? I can't even find the phone number anymore on amazon