IsaacL

5 ms·

1.
by IsaacL 16d ago
Thank you for your kind words, I'm trying to write more these days :) I have a couple of articles up on https://intellectualsilkroad.substack.com/ but I should get busy writing more!
2.
by IsaacL 17d ago
Benajamin Franklin is a rather fascinating fellow. Most of us know him from the image that appears on biographies and in textbooks: Franklin with bald pate, round spectacles, and a grandfatherly expression on his face, dispensing homespun w
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by IsaacL 7mo ago
It was obvious to me as well that your comment was not AI-generated. I thought I'd reply as I like reading in-depth discussions online, so I don't want to see a future where everyone assumes long comment = AI. :)
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by IsaacL 7mo ago
There's too many incidental details, too much substance and complexity for this to be an AI-generated comment. (I know this is an 8-day old thread, but accusing a long comment of being AI-generated is a bad trend.)
5.
by IsaacL 2y ago
I commented about this on X. As a developer, "infinite scroll to get more digits" sounds really cool. It sounds conceptually similar to lazily-evaluated sequences in languages like Clojure and Haskell (where you can have a 'v
6.
by IsaacL 2y ago
This relates to what I wrote in reply to the original tweet thread. Performing arithmetic on arbitrarily complex mathematical functions is an interesting area of research but not useful to 99% of calculator users. People who want that funct
7.
by IsaacL 2y ago
I still maintain that this (originally from ancient China) is the clearest proof, and gives the best insight into why the Pythagorean Theorem holds. https://cdn.britannica.com/43/70143-004-CCB17706/theorem-dem...
8.
by IsaacL 3y ago
I agree with you politically and spiritually. However, Patrick Mackenzie is a person of the highest calibre (see, e.g., this: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca/ ). There is a need for laws,
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by IsaacL 3y ago
This is a terrible article that rambles on for far too long without offering an actually polite way to tell/request someone to do something. These are the best approaches: 1. "Please take out the trash." 2. "The trash ne
10.
by IsaacL 3y ago
Quotes from the Memo: "We will distribute tools to leverage the power of these white box models, and create a developer community around our trademark. This approach is an ideological differentiator from OpenAI; it is a very strong poi
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by IsaacL 3y ago
I didn't notice that line, but my immediate thought on reading the memo was that they were going hard after European capital. Seemingly both governmental and from VC firms in Europe that are well-connected to the traditional establishm
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by IsaacL 3y ago
In memory of the olden days when Hacker News focused on discussions for entrepreneurs, here's a question: I have no doubt that hundreds of millions of BS jobs exist, but isn't that what management consultants are supposed to fix?
13.
by IsaacL 3y ago
I asked a follow-up question: Where did Person get the spoon from? ChatGPT's answer: I apologize for the oversight. Here is the corrected version, including the step to get the spoon: Person: {The tea is ready. I need a spoon
14.
by IsaacL 3y ago
I ran an interesting session with ChatGPT. I don't think the following proves that it has a "world model", but it does seem to be able to emulate having a world model to an impressively high degree of resolution. I have to sn
15.
by IsaacL 3y ago
This looks like a very interesting paper that takes the rare approach of actually trying to understand what all the cool new language models are doing at a fundamental level. Does anyone with more knowledge of the relevant mathematics (grou
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by IsaacL 3y ago
I pretty much agree. The "scientific" approach the author pushes for in the article -- running experiments with multiple similar prompts on problems where you desire a short specific answer, and then running a statistical analysis
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by IsaacL 3y ago
Funnily enough, I was reading Minsky's book recently. I second the recommendation. I think he's missing many technical details*, but the basic approach seems to be correct. *(For example, the idea of a "hierarchy of feedback
18.
by IsaacL 4y ago
In the same vein, I was playing around with its ability to annotate code with explanations of the changing constraints on different variables (I thought this was a good proxy for deeper understanding of code). I asked it to write a moderate
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by IsaacL 4y ago
If they're willing to learn, GPT is a very powerful tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VznoKyh6AXs ["How to learn to code FAST using ChatGPT (it's a game changer seriously)"]
20.
by IsaacL 4y ago
Check out my comments higher up in the thread (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35197613 ), I really do believe that GPT4+ will be primarily useful as augmenters for capable and dedicated engineers, rather than replac
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by IsaacL 4y ago
I've been able to give it arbitrary blocks of code and have it explain how they work. (Asking this makes GPT more effective when I ask it make further changes. One reason I do this is when I start a new session with ChatGPT discussing
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by IsaacL 4y ago
> Reading this article I get the same sense about software engineering, if you haven't solved the problem, you don't really understand the code the AI is generating and so you don't really know if it is going to do what yo
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by IsaacL 4y ago
Fascinating story! It reminds me of William Binney and ThinThread ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread ). (ThinThread was a system developed by a small team at the NSA that basically performed more "targeted&q
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by IsaacL 4y ago
I'm very interested in stories like this. > I wrote software to automate all of this. It took a half an hour, with NO manual intervention. It was strangled in the crib. Can you say any more about why management at your company decid
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by IsaacL 4y ago
I messed up the last few entries in the thread, the complete thread is here: https://mobile.twitter.com/isaac_lewis/status/15994780455296...
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ChatGPT explains how a C function is executed, from assembly code to electrons(twitter.com)
2 points by IsaacL 4y ago|1 comments
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by IsaacL 4y ago
I'd say people who work as solo entrepreneurs or independent contractors are usually either "sociopaths" (of a particular kind) or some kind of sociopath/loser mixture, depending on how mercenary and ambitious they are.
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by IsaacL 4y ago
It's funny, I was rereading this article and Scott Alexander's review just now, before I saw that it had been reposted on HN. Scott makes some good points but I think he simply lacks experience in the kind of big corporations Venk
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by IsaacL 4y ago
No problem! My email is in my profile if you want to chat more. I'm curious about your background that led you to work on such an idea.
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by IsaacL 4y ago
It's a cool idea, but I strongly suggest you guys find a good ex-IB/consulting person who you really trust to give you some ideas of what an A-tier startup pitch deck looks like. Ideally, this person should have experience with st

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