We're approaching the definition of magic here aren't we. And I think this is what really divides this discussion. There is one set of people who insist that things must be explainable. And if something is explainable, it yields to science and is no longer magic.
On the other side, you have people who insist that there are things which do not yield to science. So whether they admit it or not, they insist upon the existence of magic.
In fact, the definition of magic might as well be, that which does not yield to explanation. The only question once you believe in magic is, what alternative epistemology do you accept? Scripture? Tradition? Divine revelation?
Not at all. Saying that science does not yet explain some observed phenomenon is precisely how one starts to make scientific progress. Saying that qualia don’t exist because they are “magical” is like someone telling you lightning doesn’t exist before the understanding of electromagnetism.
> On the other side, you have people who insist that there are things which do not yield to science. So whether they admit it or not, they insist upon the existence of magic.
This is a really valuable framing for this sort of conversation.
But the sensation in a sense is a lie. Cold strictly speaking isn't real. And for much of human existence we spoke of it as if it was a substance due exactly to this specific sensatation.
I would caution outright categorizing this as paranoia stemming from a mental illness. The problem with delusional paranoia and justifiable paranoia is that clinically they can present the same.
> Just keep in mind all the dangerous people who these groups investigated that they did nothing about that went on to do bad stuff.
There are numerous people that America's intelligence agencies have intimidated, harassed and yes drugged for similar reasons.
OP, I hope you have been seen by a mental healthcare professional. They can help you determine the nature of these experiences. I hope you have extensively documented these experiences. Sharing that documentation with your family or others who you know to be sober in judgement is probably the only mechanism you have to distinguish if your experiences are based in reality.
That's fair. I like the way you phrased this. It's a roadmap to staying and feeling safe but also possibly getting some help if it makes sense. Everyone needs a little help once in a while, and society right now is very isolating.
Based on the stories of actual whistleblowers, what really happens is that they either get arrested or nothing happens. Unless OP has real firsthand knowledge of crimes and isn't just repeating information spread by other mentally ill people, I very much doubt something that was aired in a Netflix documentary is going to make the CIA follow him targeted-individual-style. If everything you are talking about can already be found online, you're not special. It's narcissistic.
There are plenty of laws on the books that can be used against people sharing classified information (whether or not they are effective is another question) so why would they need to follow you around and poison your food?
That's not to say that whistleblowers don't get followed, they certainly do but in an inconspicuous manner. Real intimidation comes in the form of two guys knocking on your door explicitly telling you to knock it off or else they'll arrest you, beat you, kill your dog, etc.
LLMs have single handedly turned the hardest part of this job into entire job. The hardest part of this job is troubleshooting, maintaining and developing on top of an unfamiliar code base. That's not a new experience for anyone who has lived the production code life. One of the first production engineers I was tutored under used to love to say, "the code should tell you a story."
I love C. I came up on C. But C does not tell you a story. It tells you about the machine. It tells you how to keep the machine happy. It tells you how to translate problems into machine operations. It is hard to read. It takes serious effort to discern its intent.
I think any time you believe the codebase you're developing will have to be frequently modified by people unfamiliar with it, you should reach for a language which is both limiting and expressive. That is, the language states the code intent plainly in terms of the problem language and it allows a limited number of ways to do that. C#, Java (Kotlin) and maybe Python would be big votes from me.
And FYI, I came up on C. One of the first senior engineers I was tutored by in this biz loved to say, good code will tell you a story.
When you're living with a large, long lived codebase, essenti
I guess I'm very confused as to why just throwing an LLM at a problem like this is interesting. I can see how the LLM is great at decomposing user requests into commands. I had great success with this on a personal assistant project I helped prototype. The LLM did a great job of understanding user intent and even extracting parameters regarding the requested task.
But it seems pretty obvious to me that after decomposition and parameterization, coordination of a complex task would much better be handled by a classical AI algorithm like a planner. After all, even humans don't put into words every individual action which makes up a complex task. We do this more while first learning a task but if we had to do it for everything, we'd go insane.
There are many hopes, and even claims, that LLMs could be AGI with just a little bit of extra intelligence. There are also many claims that they have both a model of the real world, and a system for rational logic and planning. It's useful to test the current status quo in such a simplistic and fixed real-world task.
The sneering and nihilist tone is very off putting. But not nearly as much as the boomer brained conception of the world's information model pre 2004, which was not nearly as good as those who invoke Murrow and Cronkite believe it was.
I guess maybe the tone would be less noxious if the core coceit of the satire felt more legitimate. I mean, Wikipedia was kind of a shit show back in the day. It's had 20 years of maturation which is more what makes it useful today.
And yes, the media is full of blatant and bald faced lies but is that worse than the credulous and uncritical way the media basically endorsed the war in Iraq?
I get that it's a joke but the joke kinda only works if there's some truth behind it. And I just don't think there is here. I think people are lamenting old media now, not because the information sphere is genuinely worse today but because it was a comfort to have a consensus in public opinion regardless of how true that consensus was.
On the other side, you have people who insist that there are things which do not yield to science. So whether they admit it or not, they insist upon the existence of magic.
In fact, the definition of magic might as well be, that which does not yield to explanation. The only question once you believe in magic is, what alternative epistemology do you accept? Scripture? Tradition? Divine revelation?