zamfi

24 ms·

241.
by zamfi 3y ago
> Even under the anthropological point of view, red meat which has sustained humanity for hundred of thousands of years, to "cause cancer" smells like biased nonsense from a mile away How is this line of argument any better tha
242.
by zamfi 3y ago
I think you are underappreciating the placebo effect here. It is very strong, and it's likely one reason for the proliferation of "X solved my Y" anecdotes. It may well have -- but through the placebo effect, making it useles
243.
by zamfi 3y ago
No need to put words in my mouth -- yes, cured meats with nitrites are a pretty well-established human carcinogen. But it's not like other "processed food": we have specific causal mechanisms, and have been doing it for mille
244.
by zamfi 3y ago
...since the invention of agriculture, yes. But prior to agriculture, meat was a reasonably large part of diet in a number of places.
245.
by zamfi 3y ago
To be clear, this isn't an academic study, it's basically an op-ed, published in a magazine dedicated to position papers about animal agriculture [1]. I would not read very much into this one specific article. Unfortunately, the s
246.
by zamfi 3y ago
Not just societies frankly -- people individually believe this as well, psychologists call it the "end-of-history illusion". Quoting Wikipedia: > The end-of-history illusion is a psychological illusion in which individuals of a
247.
by zamfi 3y ago
Yes, gas cars would disappear very quickly at that rate of carbon taxation. "People in general" would absolutely use non-planet-ruining versions of basically anything, the problem is getting there -- most people do not even think
248.
by zamfi 3y ago
Of course a literal tax is politically infeasible, not least because we're not at all serious about actually internalizing the currently-external cost of carbon. But it's a mistake to consider a tax as something we can't aff
249.
by zamfi 3y ago
No one thinks infeasible miracle cures are the solution, so he's doing much more than "pointing that out": he's making an argument about the infeasibility of carbon capture. In particular, he's saying it's impo
250.
by zamfi 3y ago
Look, I think direct air capture (DAC) is as much “not the solution” as the next guy, but this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. Right now, DAC costs about $250-500/ton. The average passenger v
251.
by zamfi 3y ago
Oh, that's not a full TL;DR -- but sounds like you've read the paper. :) Shifting field: yes, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going to change and what isn't, at least in HCI (my field). LLM capabilities ar
252.
by zamfi 3y ago
LLMs will definitely get better -- and people will adapt too. But natural language contains inherent ambiguity, and that's not going to change. A large part of the paper talks about how the challenges of programming and developing ML s
253.
by zamfi 3y ago
That's a fascinating comparison. It's true that there are major differences in academia across different fields. NIH funding is typically so much more $$ than NSF[1] -- and I wonder if this has an effect on how these fields are st
254.
by zamfi 4y ago
Yes, implementing this kind of advice is much harder than merely reading it.
255.
by zamfi 4y ago
Not to be intentionally provocative, but have you considered that it might be you who has changed? But really, personality or interest drift on either side could result in this...
256.
by zamfi 4y ago
> In a twist few would have expected, however, many food companies have chosen to add small amounts of sesame flour to products that were previously sesame-free, instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesam
257.
by zamfi 4y ago
I can't speak to this particular paper, but the field of NLP is full of these kinds of tasks, it's in some sense a historical accident of where LLMs originated. These tasks are all noisy, all pretty messy, but the interesting part
258.
by zamfi 4y ago
It’s not hard, it’s just inconvenient and more time-intensive. For example, tiffin carriers, or dabbas, have existed for a very long time, but require frequent cleaning, and take up more space. When we decided that disposable packaging was
259.
by zamfi 4y ago
“in my social circles” suggests that they’re referring to knowledge workers. I would 100% believe that among highly credentialed knowledge workers, more men than women are in roles that make remote work feasible. You’re not wrong, of course
260.
by zamfi 4y ago
@Simon, I love this. And one day, in the not too distant future, a few old wizened graybeards, like you and I and the other folks on this site who have been writing code from scratch for 20 years, will be the magicians who walk the earth
261.
by zamfi 4y ago
Let me preface this by saying that I believe climate change and decarbonization to be one of the critical challenges of our time. That said… This article’s title and its content are completely at odds. Here’s a critical passage: > As the
262.
by zamfi 4y ago
Good news! You can literally go to chat.openai.com and sign up.
263.
by zamfi 4y ago
> But if machine learning can take my code, create a builder pattern based off the current constructor, make a config file that allow programmatic defaults, that's a huge time saver of manual labor, not at generating boilerplate, bu
264.
by zamfi 4y ago
In fact, the opposite!
265.
by zamfi 4y ago
Prepare to be blown away very soon.
266.
by zamfi 4y ago
I think...that's my point? You program at the level of architecture and design patterns, and Copilot and the like fill in the details. Do you need to keep a watchful eye on the details? Of course. The complexity will either be necessar
267.
by zamfi 4y ago
> I also just don't find asking a LLM in the "correct" way and having it spit out code trained on millions of other programmers interesting in the slightest. Think broader. Right now our only interface to these powerful mo
268.
by zamfi 4y ago
At Harvard, about 12-15% of recent classes are legacy. Zero are admitted on the basis of athletics alone, that is literally the tenet on which the Ivy League was founded. Even if you were right, though, it’d be an odd take — even if 25% (
269.
by zamfi 4y ago
Not the same — Oxford first means top third of the class, roughly. Summa at Harvard is top 5%, a much higher bar.
270.
by zamfi 4y ago
C is often the lowest passing grade — so, same saying really.

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