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Weird suggestion but have you tried chatGPT? I've found it useful for discussing my side projects when I can't find someone who is willing to read what I've wr

Weird suggestion but have you tried chatGPT? I've found it useful for discussing my side projects when I can't find someone who is willing to read what I've written and engage with me. As an example, https://i.imgur.com/afXNZaR.png https://i.imgur.com/afXNZaR.png here I am having an extended conversation about lore for software I am writing. I thought I would easily tell chatGPT about a plot device from a book, but I did not realize that my understanding was limited. In failing to convey my idea to chatGPT I realized I needed to dig deeper and switched from explaining to learning. Ultimately, I realized that I was trying to describe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector#Cat_whisker_detector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector#Cat_whisker_d... which, while not directly identified in the conversation, was something I was able to surface by having had the thought-provoking talk.

mentos 4y ago
Sounds like ‘rubber duck debugging’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
slillibri 4y ago
Yes, you should always talk to Friend Computer. Friend Computer is here to help, citizen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nonninz 4y ago
Have you read Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky? The idea of ants using a crystal for radio wave detection is in that book as well :)
- SeanAnderson 4y ago
  I have :) I enjoyed it so much I decided to try and incorporate the idea into some software. And thanks for this, I reached out to Adrian to promote awareness of my idea based on this feedback since it's so apparent where my ideas are drawing from :)
- SeanAnderson 4y ago
  I heard back from him, surprisingly! Nothing fancy in a response, but so cool to hear back from an author within minutes! Here's the email thread: Go for it with my blessing, sounds like a great project! Adrian --- My name's Sean! I'm reading Children of Time. It's amazing and thought-provoking, thank you for all your hard work. I'm also really big into ants and was stoked when I read about ants on your world and their interactions with the crystal / messenger. I'm writing some software as a hobby. It's going to be something like an online Tamagotchi meets mental health app. I'm trying to get people journaling and meditating by having them nurture a virtual pet. To that effect, I decided the virtual pet would be an ant colony. I then started trying to build some lore around it. A daily-check in means there's a window of time when the check-in occurs, kind of like when the satellite had LOS to the ant colony. The satellite had a biologist on it. Makes sense that biologist would take notes on their ants and I can draw parallels to that to promote journaling, etc. I just wanted to be respectful of your work and let you know that I was planning on building something that honors a small sliver of the lore you outlined in one of your books. I'm not ripping verbatim, taking any of the names, there are no spiders, etc. If you felt incredibly strongly about wanting me to avoid this then I'd respect that. Conversely, if you were curious to hear more about how I am riffing on your idea, then I'd be happy to elaborate or share more. Anyway. Hope you are well over there. Thanks again for all the content. Cheers. Sean
O__________O 4y ago
Agree, though funny how one comment suggesting ChatGPT is the top voted comment [2] and another is the most downvoted [1] — says a lot about how rational HN really is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33921604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33921604 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33922637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33922637
- SeanAnderson 4y ago
  I saw this. My take was that your response was seen as parroting a popular concept. "Everyone" is forming opinions on ChatGPT, but some are forming those opinions by talking to others and some by talking with ChatGPT. I feel that by referencing a concrete example of a conversation I had with GPT that others elevated their perception of my response from mere gossip to ~fact.
  - gremlinsinc 4y ago
    The people who aren't amazed by it, are either afraid of it's misuse and I can see that, like the inability to ever know if written word is truly unique to the user. I do not envy teachers right now lol. The second group just haven't groked how it works or found good things to ask it, once you find something and it blows you away with like it helped me write flutter code and i've hardly touched flutter except for a small tutorial here/there. I literally was able to build an android app that interfaces with chatGPT, I'm thinking it might be cool to also create some sort of web scraper that scrapes many pages, for instance all of the 'how much have you earned with sideprojects pages' on HN, then summarize data from 50+ webpages into bullet points. It doesn't have access to the internet but that doesn't mean you can't GIVE it access to the internet, through the prompt...
    - SeanAnderson 4y ago
      I'm finding that I have a much higher expectation of technology invalidating my knowledge than some of my friends. This makes sense because I'm in tech and tech moves quickly. Others are in fields which, typically, haven't moved as quickly and so different opinions have arisen around the expectation of the longevity of a career. Some people are afraid of misuse, but others are just surprised that the advancement of tech is now applying to them. I empathize with the feeling, but I don't know how to be genuinely sympathetic as it seems to be the nature of the beast. I don't think ChatGPT can hold 50 webpages in its short-term memory, but maybe. I have found it starts to lose shape of specific details we talked about after I drench it in information.

mentos 4y ago

Sounds like ‘rubber duck debugging’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

slillibri 4y ago

Yes, you should always talk to Friend Computer. Friend Computer is here to help, citizen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nonninz 4y ago

Have you read Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky? The idea of ants using a crystal for radio wave detection is in that book as well :)

SeanAnderson 4y ago
I have :) I enjoyed it so much I decided to try and incorporate the idea into some software. And thanks for this, I reached out to Adrian to promote awareness of my idea based on this feedback since it's so apparent where my ideas are drawing from :)
SeanAnderson 4y ago
I heard back from him, surprisingly! Nothing fancy in a response, but so cool to hear back from an author within minutes! Here's the email thread: Go for it with my blessing, sounds like a great project! Adrian --- My name's Sean! I'm reading Children of Time. It's amazing and thought-provoking, thank you for all your hard work. I'm also really big into ants and was stoked when I read about ants on your world and their interactions with the crystal / messenger. I'm writing some software as a hobby. It's going to be something like an online Tamagotchi meets mental health app. I'm trying to get people journaling and meditating by having them nurture a virtual pet. To that effect, I decided the virtual pet would be an ant colony. I then started trying to build some lore around it. A daily-check in means there's a window of time when the check-in occurs, kind of like when the satellite had LOS to the ant colony. The satellite had a biologist on it. Makes sense that biologist would take notes on their ants and I can draw parallels to that to promote journaling, etc. I just wanted to be respectful of your work and let you know that I was planning on building something that honors a small sliver of the lore you outlined in one of your books. I'm not ripping verbatim, taking any of the names, there are no spiders, etc. If you felt incredibly strongly about wanting me to avoid this then I'd respect that. Conversely, if you were curious to hear more about how I am riffing on your idea, then I'd be happy to elaborate or share more. Anyway. Hope you are well over there. Thanks again for all the content. Cheers. Sean

O__________O 4y ago

Agree, though funny how one comment suggesting ChatGPT is the top voted comment [2] and another is the most downvoted [1] — says a lot about how rational HN really is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33921604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33921604 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33922637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33922637

SeanAnderson 4y ago
I saw this. My take was that your response was seen as parroting a popular concept. "Everyone" is forming opinions on ChatGPT, but some are forming those opinions by talking to others and some by talking with ChatGPT. I feel that by referencing a concrete example of a conversation I had with GPT that others elevated their perception of my response from mere gossip to ~fact.
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  The people who aren't amazed by it, are either afraid of it's misuse and I can see that, like the inability to ever know if written word is truly unique to the user. I do not envy teachers right now lol. The second group just haven't groked how it works or found good things to ask it, once you find something and it blows you away with like it helped me write flutter code and i've hardly touched flutter except for a small tutorial here/there. I literally was able to build an android app that interfaces with chatGPT, I'm thinking it might be cool to also create some sort of web scraper that scrapes many pages, for instance all of the 'how much have you earned with sideprojects pages' on HN, then summarize data from 50+ webpages into bullet points. It doesn't have access to the internet but that doesn't mean you can't GIVE it access to the internet, through the prompt...
  - SeanAnderson 4y ago
    I'm finding that I have a much higher expectation of technology invalidating my knowledge than some of my friends. This makes sense because I'm in tech and tech moves quickly. Others are in fields which, typically, haven't moved as quickly and so different opinions have arisen around the expectation of the longevity of a career. Some people are afraid of misuse, but others are just surprised that the advancement of tech is now applying to them. I empathize with the feeling, but I don't know how to be genuinely sympathetic as it seems to be the nature of the beast. I don't think ChatGPT can hold 50 webpages in its short-term memory, but maybe. I have found it starts to lose shape of specific details we talked about after I drench it in information.