3 ms·

This is astrology for devs.

by knivets 4mo ago

embedding-shape 4mo ago
Unless you can somehow provide some arguments against it, I feel like you're the one who is trying to cargo-cult stuff here. Say what you will with proper reasoning or arguments if you feel compelled, tired reddit-commentary like that helps no one.
- johnnyanmac 4mo ago
  > Unless you can somehow provide some arguments against it, We're year 4 into this discussion and camps have only gotten more bifrucated. There's no 1-1 discussion to have about this as of now, at least not before the crash. Your only hope in such discourse is not trying to convince the other party how wrong they are, but appealing to an as of yet undecided party. Be it with reason, or simply pointing out how absurd some comments sound to the average person.
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    > Your only hope in such discourse is not trying to convince the other party how wrong they are I don't care about convincing anyone, the ones I reply to or others, but if you take the time to leave a comment, at least make it something to read and think about instead of soundbites like "This is astrology for devs", it's plain boring to read and makes HN worse.
    - johnnyanmac 4mo ago
      >I don't care about convincing anyone That's fine. Others will care for you. >it's plain boring to read and makes HN worse. I chuckled at the joke. Surprising amount of layers to it. Though I never strove to be a comic nor writer, that kind of terse, compact punch makes me envy those of such literary talent.
      - embedding-shape 4mo ago
        > I chuckled at the joke. Surprising amount of layers to it. What joke?
- keeganpoppen 4mo ago
  i legitimately cannot divine what you are saying at all with this. there are so many dangling antecedents and modifiers that it is completely impossible. and i say this out of a genuine desire to understand what your argument is, knowing full well that i likely disagree with it.
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    Alright, let me explain, hopefully simpler: GP made told us their experience with working with LLMs, and some pointers to what they found to be working. The comment I replied to just says "This is astrology for devs" which basically is a cheap putdown without any reasoning nor arguments for why the commentator believes so. My comment is urging them to actually participate in the discussion, not just post their soundbite they thought of in five seconds, so HN as a whole can remain good instead of devolving into reddit (which is a tale as old as HN, I know). Hopefully it's understandable now, and hopefully you don't disagree :)
    - beepbooptheory 4mo ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills
      - satvikpendem 4mo ago
        Indeed, with the corollary of, please don't write Reddit-tier comments on HN either, then one wouldn't have to say it's turning into Reddit.
        beepbooptheory 4mo ago
        Two wrongs don't make a right, as they teach us as children.
      - embedding-shape 4mo ago
soloto 4mo ago
Do they have a golden calf to dance around? Without that success will be hit and miss.
- keeganpoppen 4mo ago
  i mean, maybe the golden calf people were right the whole time lol
  - Pay08 4mo ago
    Right about what?
keeganpoppen 4mo ago
as someone who is about as llm-forward as anyone out there, this is a brilliant analogy. was equally true of all the “prompt engineer” hype as well from a couple years ago (which i admit i still think does matter)… it kinda makes me feel like an audiophile / hi-fi person talking about how 24bit/192kHz is the one true encoding format and anything less is a willfull (cynical, “Quality”-hating, satisficerist, etc.) compromise. which i freely admit to being one of those people as well. and in both cases i both “know” that i can tell the difference and “know that i cannot tell the difference”. what anyone takes from that in terms of what it says about me, personally, is a bit of a Rorschack test, but Astrology is about as apt a description as there is… xD
- kimixa 4mo ago
  For higher than audible frequency sample rates there's a good chance you can tell the difference. It often causes weird aliasing and harmonics in the more audible frequencies on "real" playback equipment. You can train yourself to recognize some of these and often pretty accurately identify the higher sample rate examples. You might even mentally associate those signs with "Higher Quality". But it's arguably less accurate to the original recording.
raincole 4mo ago
People though asking LLM to output the reasoning steps was astrology until it's standardized and made ubiquitous.
- andai 4mo ago
  Didn't multiple studies find the reasoning traces didn't have much to do with the final output? And even that outputting placeholder tokens during reasoning has a similar beneficial effect on benchmark scores? (I don't think that's the full picture but, there's definitely something fishy going on there.)
  - tensegrist 4mo ago
    reasoning itself just affords the model a ton of extra forward passes / "time to think" the, como se dice, "misalignment" between the content of reasoning tokens and the actual output following the end of the reasoning is a separate problem, extensively studied by e.g. Anthropic

This is astrology for devs.

by knivets 4mo ago

This is astrology for devs.

Unless you can somehow provide some arguments against it, I feel like you're the one who is trying to cargo-cult stuff here. Say what you will with proper reasoning or arguments if you feel compelled, tired reddit-commentary like that helps no one.

johnnyanmac 4mo ago
> Unless you can somehow provide some arguments against it, We're year 4 into this discussion and camps have only gotten more bifrucated. There's no 1-1 discussion to have about this as of now, at least not before the crash. Your only hope in such discourse is not trying to convince the other party how wrong they are, but appealing to an as of yet undecided party. Be it with reason, or simply pointing out how absurd some comments sound to the average person.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  > Your only hope in such discourse is not trying to convince the other party how wrong they are I don't care about convincing anyone, the ones I reply to or others, but if you take the time to leave a comment, at least make it something to read and think about instead of soundbites like "This is astrology for devs", it's plain boring to read and makes HN worse.
  - johnnyanmac 4mo ago
    >I don't care about convincing anyone That's fine. Others will care for you. >it's plain boring to read and makes HN worse. I chuckled at the joke. Surprising amount of layers to it. Though I never strove to be a comic nor writer, that kind of terse, compact punch makes me envy those of such literary talent.
    - embedding-shape 4mo ago
      > I chuckled at the joke. Surprising amount of layers to it. What joke?
keeganpoppen 4mo ago
i legitimately cannot divine what you are saying at all with this. there are so many dangling antecedents and modifiers that it is completely impossible. and i say this out of a genuine desire to understand what your argument is, knowing full well that i likely disagree with it.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  Alright, let me explain, hopefully simpler: GP made told us their experience with working with LLMs, and some pointers to what they found to be working. The comment I replied to just says "This is astrology for devs" which basically is a cheap putdown without any reasoning nor arguments for why the commentator believes so. My comment is urging them to actually participate in the discussion, not just post their soundbite they thought of in five seconds, so HN as a whole can remain good instead of devolving into reddit (which is a tale as old as HN, I know). Hopefully it's understandable now, and hopefully you don't disagree :)
  - beepbooptheory 4mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills
    - satvikpendem 4mo ago
      Indeed, with the corollary of, please don't write Reddit-tier comments on HN either, then one wouldn't have to say it's turning into Reddit.
      - beepbooptheory 4mo ago
        Two wrongs don't make a right, as they teach us as children.
    - embedding-shape 4mo ago

soloto 4mo ago

Do they have a golden calf to dance around? Without that success will be hit and miss.

keeganpoppen 4mo ago
i mean, maybe the golden calf people were right the whole time lol
- Pay08 4mo ago
  Right about what?

keeganpoppen 4mo ago

as someone who is about as llm-forward as anyone out there, this is a brilliant analogy. was equally true of all the “prompt engineer” hype as well from a couple years ago (which i admit i still think does matter)… it kinda makes me feel like an audiophile / hi-fi person talking about how 24bit/192kHz is the one true encoding format and anything less is a willfull (cynical, “Quality”-hating, satisficerist, etc.) compromise. which i freely admit to being one of those people as well. and in both cases i both “know” that i can tell the difference and “know that i cannot tell the difference”. what anyone takes from that in terms of what it says about me, personally, is a bit of a Rorschack test, but Astrology is about as apt a description as there is… xD

kimixa 4mo ago
For higher than audible frequency sample rates there's a good chance you can tell the difference. It often causes weird aliasing and harmonics in the more audible frequencies on "real" playback equipment. You can train yourself to recognize some of these and often pretty accurately identify the higher sample rate examples. You might even mentally associate those signs with "Higher Quality". But it's arguably less accurate to the original recording.

raincole 4mo ago

People though asking LLM to output the reasoning steps was astrology until it's standardized and made ubiquitous.

andai 4mo ago
Didn't multiple studies find the reasoning traces didn't have much to do with the final output? And even that outputting placeholder tokens during reasoning has a similar beneficial effect on benchmark scores? (I don't think that's the full picture but, there's definitely something fishy going on there.)
- tensegrist 4mo ago
  reasoning itself just affords the model a ton of extra forward passes / "time to think" the, como se dice, "misalignment" between the content of reasoning tokens and the actual output following the end of the reasoning is a separate problem, extensively studied by e.g. Anthropic