https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/invitations like so many visions, whether i’d actually like this or not depends on execution. AI-powered smart devices? no thank you. Interpretive “power tools” with lots of configurable options, that allow me to do a lot of media analysis and view embedding coordinates? i’d like that. AI tools to interface with bureaucracies, or to assemble a media diet based on custom preferences, or to resolve disputes, or to provide traditional governmental functions where those are absent or defective? I begin to be intrigued. but you need taste. and taste is a little orthogonal to being at the leading edge of the zeitgeist; the zeitgeist-surfer always wants to “embrace” the direction we’re going, whereas the tasteful person is opinionated and likes some new things but not others, and doesn’t always favor the new things that are destined to be the biggest.
https://psychcrisis.org/mania-guide/ this is the best guide to how to handle a friend or loved one with mania I’ve ever seen. It offers lots of options for getting professional help that are less risky & restrictive than “call 911” which is most people’s first and only thought about what to do when someone has suddenly “gone crazy”.
https://meltingasphalt.com/a-codebase-is-an-organism/ a clear intro to “what do people mean about code “rotting” anyway? (spoiler: big codebases, unlike school programming assignments, get used and changed by many people. this introduces many new problems because you can’t singlehandedly control everything everyone does.)
Data structures may be haphazardly constructed, or even next to non-existent. Everything talks to everything else. Every shred of important state data may be global.
why is this bad?
Claude explains:
it’s bad if “everything talks to everything else” or “all state data is global” because if you change one part of the code everything else may break
it’s bad if there are no data structures or if they’re chosen randomly, because the right data structure is much more time & space efficient to search/sort/etc than the wrong one
“complicated, convoluted” code that’s hard to read
does he apply this insight to himself? does he try to avoid over- focusing on the negative? i’m not sure...
possibly someone who’s constitutionally non-neurotic will never be able to really understand negative contagion risks. they’ll say things that they assume are fine, and have no real intuition for what stressed-out people are hearing.
links 01/23/2025: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/01-23-2025
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/invitations like so many visions, whether i’d actually like this or not depends on execution. AI-powered smart devices? no thank you. Interpretive “power tools” with lots of configurable options, that allow me to do a lot of media analysis and view embedding coordinates? i’d like that. AI tools to interface with bureaucracies, or to assemble a media diet based on custom preferences, or to resolve disputes, or to provide traditional governmental functions where those are absent or defective? I begin to be intrigued. but you need taste. and taste is a little orthogonal to being at the leading edge of the zeitgeist; the zeitgeist-surfer always wants to “embrace” the direction we’re going, whereas the tasteful person is opinionated and likes some new things but not others, and doesn’t always favor the new things that are destined to be the biggest.
https://psychcrisis.org/mania-guide/ this is the best guide to how to handle a friend or loved one with mania I’ve ever seen. It offers lots of options for getting professional help that are less risky & restrictive than “call 911” which is most people’s first and only thought about what to do when someone has suddenly “gone crazy”.
https://meltingasphalt.com/a-codebase-is-an-organism/ a clear intro to “what do people mean about code “rotting” anyway? (spoiler: big codebases, unlike school programming assignments, get used and changed by many people. this introduces many new problems because you can’t singlehandedly control everything everyone does.)
http://www.laputan.org/mud/ what do people mean when they say code is “sloppy”, “spaghetti code”, or whatever?
poor performance at large scale
Data structures may be haphazardly constructed, or even next to non-existent. Everything talks to everything else. Every shred of important state data may be global.
why is this bad?
Claude explains:
it’s bad if “everything talks to everything else” or “all state data is global” because if you change one part of the code everything else may break
it’s bad if there are no data structures or if they’re chosen randomly, because the right data structure is much more time & space efficient to search/sort/etc than the wrong one
“complicated, convoluted” code that’s hard to read
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/07/an-overly-simple-model-of-positive-and-negative-contagion.html Tyler Cowen: negative emotions are contagious & so focusing on the negative (even to critique bad ideas) has harmful externalities
does he apply this insight to himself? does he try to avoid over- focusing on the negative? i’m not sure...
possibly someone who’s constitutionally non-neurotic will never be able to really understand negative contagion risks. they’ll say things that they assume are fine, and have no real intuition for what stressed-out people are hearing.