MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by coolKid721 | 2025-07-07 00:14:38+00:00
Anthropomorphizing LLMs is just because half the stock market gains are dependent on it, we have absurd levels of debt we will either have to have insane growth out of or default, and every company and "person" is trying to hype everyone up to get access to all of this liquidity being thrown into it.

I agree with the author, but people acting like they are conscious or humans isn't weird to me, it's just fraud and liars. Most people basically have 0 understanding of what technology or minds are philosophically so it's an easy sale, and I do think most of these fraudsters also likely buy into it themselves because of that.

The really sad thing is people think "because someone runs an ai company" they are somehow an authority on philosophy of mind which lets them fall for this marketing. The stuff these people say about this stuff is absolute garbage, not that I disagree with them, but it betrays a total lack of curiosity or interest in the subject of what llms are, and the possible impacts of technological shifts as those that might occur with llms becoming more widespread. It's not a matter of agreement it's a matter of them simply not seeming to be aware of the most basic ideas of what things are, technology is, it's manner of impacting society etc.

I'm not surprised by that though, it's absurd to think because someone runs some AI lab or has a "head of safety/ethics" or whatever garbage job title at an AI lab they actually have even the slightest interest in ethics or any even basic familiarity with the major works in the subject.

The author is correct if people want to read a standard essay articulating it more in depth check out https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Is%20the%2... (the full extrapolation requires establishing what things are and how causality in general operates and how that relates to artifacts/technology but that's obvious quite a bit to get into).

The other note would be something sharing an external trait means absolutely nothing about causality and suggesting a thing is caused by the same thing "even to a way lesser degree" because they share a resemblance is just a non-sequitur. It's not a serious thought/argument.

I think I addressed the why of why this weirdness comes up though. The entire economy is basically dependent on huge productivity growth to keep functioning so everyone is trying to sell they can offer that and AI is the clearest route, AGI most of all.
by supportengineer | 2025-07-07 00:14:38+00:00
You mention a resistance to pathologizing normal human behaviors. That could stem from early experiences where you were perhaps judged or misunderstood for simply being yourself by caregivers, teachers, or peers. If, as a child, you were expected to conform tightly to rules or suppress emotions, you might now feel protective of traits that others try to label or correct. Therapy can be a space where that defensiveness is explored gently, not to shame you, but to give voice to the younger parts of yourself that may have gone unheard.
by _benton | 2025-07-07 00:16:09+00:00
You can also schedule code to run each "tick" of the event loop, which is a non-blocking version of a while loop.

Or you could promisify the send function and use normal async/await.

let q = Promise.resolve(), sendAsync = (p) => new Promise(r => send(p, r)), sendOnce = (p, c, ms) => setTimeout(_ => q.then(_ => sendAsync(p)).then(c), ms)

Or you could actually spin up a new worker thread and get multithreading :P
by MITSardine | 2025-07-07 00:16:19+00:00
This idea is also at the core of the Finite Element Method (and other Galerkin methods, such as DG) which are probably the most widespread methods to approximate the solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs) used everywhere in physics and engineering.

Basically, define a finite dimensional function space V_N of dimension N, in such a way that you could grow N to be arbitrarily large. Solve not the PDE (originally defined over an infinite dimensional function space V, such as H^1), but its discretization as if it dealt only with functions in V_N rather than all functions. The PDE is then simply a linear system, easy to solve. And you can prove, for instance in the case of elliptic PDEs, that the solution to the discrete problem is the orthogonal projection of the true solution of the PDE (in V) onto V_N (Céa's Lemma). Finally, you can produce estimations of the error this projection incurs as a function of N, and thus give theoretical guarantees that the algorithm converges to the true solution as N goes to infinity.

(N in this case is the number of vertices in a mesh that is used to define the basis functions of V_N)
by VladVladikoff | 2025-07-07 00:17:23+00:00
Yeah. You’re right. I should have spent the time to write out my thoughts more succinctly. I appreciate your comment. It’s what I really enjoy about discourse on hackernews.

My main problem with it is that we put all websites behind a single point of failure. One with large corporate interests. It is the antithesis of the free and open web.

Also I dislike it from a technical standpoint. It makes response times from the server much worse. And I spend a lot of time improving the performance of my sites, to throw that all away because I’m afraid of hackers seems like the wrong solution to me personally.
by MSM | 2025-07-07 00:18:05+00:00
3 years ago people understood LLMs hallucinated and shouldn't be trusted with important tasks.

Somehow in the 3 years since then the mindset has shifted to "well it works well enough for X, Y, and Z, maybe I'll talk to gpt about my mental health." Which, to me, makes that article much more timely than if it had been released 3 years ago.
by brookst | 2025-07-07 00:20:01+00:00
Thank you for a well thought out and nuanced view in a discussion where so many are clearly fitting arguments to foregone, largely absolutist, conclusions.

It’s astounding to me that so much of HN reacts so emotionally to LLMs, to the point of denying there is anything at all interesting or useful about them. And don’t get me started on the “I am choosing to believe falsehoods as a way to spite overzealous marketing” crowd.
by andyferris | 2025-07-07 00:20:45+00:00
I've personally described the "stochastic parrot" model to laypeople who were worried about AI and they came away much more relaxed about it doing something "malicious". They seemed to understand the difference between "trained at roleplay" and "consciousness".

I don't think we need to simplify it to the point of considering it sentient to get the public to interact with it successfully. It causes way more problems than it solves.
by Havoc | 2025-07-07 00:21:09+00:00
> But something shifted.

The powers that be realized an anxiety riddle fearful workforce can get stuff done too just fine as long as they don’t have a better option and you dangle the occasional carrot.

So as long as all corporations move roughly in lockstep you can drastically change conditions without much consequences

It’s a bit like the first big news website implementing a paywall was outrageous and deemed suicide. But if everyone does it…
by Azek | 2025-07-07 00:21:22+00:00
Mirroring this, I have ADHD and experienced a lot of harsh judgment as a kid for my behavior at home, and in school. And the resulting shame from that judgement stuck with me for a long time, I was even diagnosed early but didn't accept the label until adulthood, and didn't work through the reality of my differences, and remedy the shame until recently. The label of ADHD helped me immensely, to connect with others and to understand and be sympathetic to myself.

If labels make you uncomfortable maybe that aversion itself is something worth holding and looking at.
by derbOac | 2025-07-07 00:21:38+00:00
... So we're supposed to see ourselves as static objects, unable to change or without causes of our behavior?

It won't be long before we see our genes as something that happened to us. At some point there will be questions about why our parents didn't change them, or why the government lets some change or select their genes but not others.

I guess this essay rubbed me the wrong way. Where they see — I'm not sure what it is they see, maybe embracing responsibility or self-actualization — I see people wanting to improve themselves, understand.

Personality is labeling, it's just labeling without explanation or goal.
by colechristensen | 2025-07-07 00:22:06+00:00
>Could this be because modern women have far more social expectations placed on them than boomer men did, and are thus struggling generally speaking more than boomer men had to?

No. "Mental health" concepts have just become prominent in the mythos of young women. Everybody has their struggles and competing over who has the most is not a productive area of discussion. Contemporary young women really like talking about mental health and have their own culturally shared version of psychology diagnosis and treatment. It's not necessarily any better or worse than any previous as psychology has always had a tough time with rigor.
by gatticaland | 2025-07-07 00:22:21+00:00
Fake views already happen. You can pay to have your views bumped just like anything else. They just have to make it look realistic.

Trying to automate it in a way they won’t notice is harder than described here, though.

But you have to have human-looking user histories and behavior, and that isn’t trivial.

Before going to do this sort of thing, know that the data collected already sucks. The “algorithm” is not something perfectly tuned to suck humanity in. And if you were going to try to alter something, why not choose a system that actually is tuned, like TikTok.
by szvsw | 2025-07-07 00:22:46+00:00
Yeah, I think I’m with you if you ultimately mean to say something like this:

“the labels are meaningless… we just have collections of complex systems that demonstrate various behaviors and properties, some in common with other systems, some behaviors that are unique to that system, sometimes through common mechanistic explanations with other systems, sometimes through wildly different mechanistic explanations, but regardless they seem to demonstrate x/y/z, and it’s useful to ask, why, how, and what the implications are of it appearing to demonstrating those properties, with both an eye towards viewing it independently of its mechanism and in light of its mechanism.”
by madcaptenor | 2025-07-07 00:24:59+00:00
A "calque" is a word that's been brought from one language into another by translating the individual parts. A "loanword" is a word that's been brought over by just taking the word with little modification.

For example, "calque" is a loanword, while "loanword" (from German "Lehnwort") is a calque.
by markerz | 2025-07-07 00:25:10+00:00
I don't think your response is very productive, and I find that my understanding of LLMs aligns with the person you're calling out. We could both be wrong, but I'm grateful that someone else spoke saying that it doesn't seem to match their mental model and we would all love to learn a more correct way of thinking about LLMs.

Telling us to just go and learn the math is a little hurtful and doesn't really get me any closer to learning the math. It gives gatekeeping.
by coyleandrew | 2025-07-07 00:25:13+00:00
The notion that AGI’s rise will stifle creativity is, in itself, a misreading of history. Technology has always been a force that enhances human ingenuity. The printing press didn’t kill creativity; it multiplied it. The rise of personal computers didn’t make writers obsolete; it created entire new industries. AGI is simply the next chapter in this narrative, enabling creativity on a scale never before possible.

Rather than fearing the loss of traditional employment, we should embrace the explosion of new roles that AGI will make possible.
by armchairhacker | 2025-07-07 00:26:11+00:00
IIRC a "disorder" is a personality trait that is extremely strong; specifically, strong enough to significantly negatively affect one's life and relationships without medication or therapy (real therapy, not "talk to someone" therapy).

For example, sometimes people talk about lowercase "t" and capital "T" trauma. Lowercase "t" is when something affects you enough that recognizing it elicits an emotion, e.g. some people fell uneasy when smelling saline because they associate it with getting shots when they were young. Uppercase "T" is when the emotion is overpowering, e.g. soldiers who wake up screaming or experience lifelike flashbacks when they see military equipment, or people who can't visit a location without panicking because it reminds them of a negative experience. Only uppercase "T" is diagnosed PTSD, although that doesn't mean lowercase "t" is never a problem, it's just not life-altering and can be worked around without medication or therapy.

We have regular adjectives for the manageable "lowercase" version of disorders. "Obsessive" for OCD, "antsy" or "trouble focusing" for ADHD, "strange" or "peculiar" for Autism. I do think someone can be "manic" or "depressed" without having diagnosed Bipolar or Depression. Unfortunately, language is defined by how it's used in practice, so if most people call themselves "ADHD" when they don't have real diagnosed ADHD, you'll have to use their meaning to understand them, and eventually it'll become the norm; but you can speak and write the non-disorder adjective to help counter it. Worst case, we still have "diagnosed X" to distinguish from "X" (unless people start using it like "literally" to mean figuratively...)
by techjamie | 2025-07-07 00:26:24+00:00
For Steam users, a reminder that you can go to a publisher's page and "Ignore" that publisher. The option is a little bit hidden, it's in the settings cog on the right-hand side of the page. It'll stop steam from recommending their games to you, and when one does show up, like in the Top Sellers list, it'll have a message on it saying that it's by a publisher that you ignored.

I have Ubisoft, EA, and Sony marked as such, personally.
by PartiallyTyped | 2025-07-07 00:27:05+00:00
They allow for more flexible risk management (ie hedging), especially when dealing with margins or not very liquid tickers because they give you exposure to 100 units (%δ * 100) without requiring you to buy or sell them.

If you own stock, you can sell calls against it — especially if premium is high to hedge against drops. If you are short stock, you can buy calls to hedge against short term movement.

I personally don’t think they improve price discovery because market microstructure through options and mm exposure affect pricing.
by SpicyLemonZest | 2025-07-07 00:27:55+00:00
Am I misunderstanding what you mean by "malicious"? It sounds like the stochastic parrot model wrongly convinced these laypeople you were talking to that they don't need to worry about LLMs doing bad things. That's definitely been my experience - the people who tell me the most about stochastic parrots are the same ones who tell me that it's absurd to worry about AI-powered disinformation or AI-powered scams.
by rtpg | 2025-07-07 00:28:10+00:00
I think "normal" is the tough part.

I dislike the "you don't have adhd, you live in capitalism" meme in general, but there is a big difficulty in knowing how much you might be overloading yourself, trying to get to an unattainable normal because your actual material conditions are not normal.

If you're working 60 hour weeks for most people there's not much saving you from having a very messy life! But your peers might all also be in that environment, and you will see people who navigate that somewhat successfully.

Of course you could be working much less and simply "be lazy" and suffer downstream of that. You might be two mindset changes away from being a lot less stressed.

Or you might have a medical condition that makes certain things harder! Or you might not.

At the end of the day there are medical conditions that exist and are fairly scientifically proven to exist in some form and have treatment. And plenty of people who spend time saying that stuff doesn't exist, so there's vocal pushback against that which rubs some people the wrong way.

But there's also just human introspection (which is part of how we grow). The new thing is that this introspection often happens more in the open, a lot of times with the whole world watching.

Even 20 years ago you might talk with other people around the world but it would at least be in more closed spaces.
by benreesman | 2025-07-07 00:28:20+00:00
The lesson here, and from pretty much any page of any history book you care to flip to, is that sooner or later there's a bill that comes due for advancing the worst people to the highest posts.

If you're not important to someone powerful, lying, cheating, stealing, and generally doing harm for personal profit will bring you to an unpleasant end right quick.

But the longer you can keep the con going, the bigger the bill: its an unserviceable debt. So Skilling and Meriwether were able to bring down whole companies, close offices across entire cities.

This is by no means the worst case though, because if your institutions fail to kick in? There's no ceiling, its like being short a stock in a squeeze.

You keep it going long enough, its your country, or your entire civilization.

You want the institutions to kick in before that.
by babymetal | 2025-07-07 00:28:34+00:00
I've been confused with the AI discourse for a few years, because it seems to make assertions with strong philosophical implications for the relatively recent (Western) philosophical conversation around personal identity and consciousness.

I no longer think that this is really about what we immediately observe as our individual intellectual existence, and I don't want to criticize whatever it is these folks are talking about.

But FWIW, and in that vein, if we're really talking about artificial intelligence, i.e. "creative" and "spontaneous" thought, that we all as introspective thinkers can immediately observe, here are references I take seriously (Bernard Williams and John Searle from the 20th century):

https://archive.org/details/problemsofselfph0000will/page/n7...

https://archive.org/details/intentionalityes0000sear

Descartes, Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein are older sources that are relevant.

[edit] Clarified that Williams and Searle are 20th century.
by charleslmunger | 2025-07-07 00:28:52+00:00
I've implemented multiple production versions of this problem (but not in JavaScript)[1], so maybe my view of this problem is miscalibrated...

This feels both too easy and too hard for an interview? I would expect almost any new grad to be able to implement this in the language of their choice. Adding delays makes it less trivial, except that the answer is... Just use the function provided by the language. That's the right answer for real code, but what are you really assessing by asking it?

[1] https://github.com/google/guava/blob/master/guava/src/com/go...
by pyman | 2025-07-07 00:28:58+00:00
Most of the human moderators hired by OpenAI to train LLMs, many of them based in Africa and South America, were exposed to disturbing content and have been deeply affected by it.

Karen Hao interviewed many of them in her latest bestselling book, which explores the human cost behind the OpenAI boom:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222725518-empire-of-ai
by tom_m | 2025-07-07 00:29:13+00:00
It's also heavily subsidized in products like Cursor and Windsurf. In fact, these tools are literally marketing vehicles for the LLMs if you do the math and look at who the investors are.

This stuff costs so much, they need mass adoption. ASAP. I didn't think about it before, but I wonder how quickly they need the adoption.
by timmg | 2025-07-07 00:29:38+00:00
Interesting. I think the key to what you wrote is "poorly definined".

I find LLMs to be generally intelligent. So I feel like "we are already there" -- by some definition of AGI. At least how I think of it.

Maybe a lot of people think of AGI as "superhuman". And by that definition, we are not there -- and may not get there.

But, for me, we are already at the era of AGI.
by lazystar | 2025-07-07 00:29:42+00:00
sure, it is a different approach than the old model - but i think it's only a guess when you visit a place for the first time. personally, i tip high on my first visit to a new place, any tips i give on my followup visits are based on my previous experiences with that restauraunt. workers remember good tippers, and when they go the extra mile on my followup visits, i keep tipping well.
Ask HN: Has AWS ever surprised you with a bill?
by noway_bro | 2025-07-07 00:30:16+00:00
I’m validating a small tool that could’ve caught a $42k DynamoDB spike before it snowballed — within 10 minutes, via Slack alert.

Trying to talk to 10 devs or engineers who’ve been hit by unexpected AWS charges (Lambda loops, S3 egress, log retention, etc).

Not selling anything. Just want to understand:

- What caused it? - How you found out? - What you tried after? - Would a $15/mo tool with IaC cost-diff + Slack alerts have helped?

If that’s you (or your team), I’d love to hear from you.
by ajr0 | 2025-07-07 00:30:29+00:00
I find this interesting, there was a briar app that was spoken about a few months ago that was only for android citing that iOS had issues [0] with apps running in background, wonder if/how this was solved here.

Also, I have not seen unlicense before -- guess I'm one of todays lucky 10,000

[0] https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#will-t...
by syntaxing | 2025-07-07 00:30:35+00:00
Whoa this is really neat. I’ve been trying to get into Meshtastic but it’s hard to convince others when you need special hardware. Would be super neat if Apple did something similar. Shouldn’t be too hard since the AirTags use the same idea?

Would also be neat if there was a way to build a LoRA proxy to extend the range. I might give this a try with my meshtastic devices.
by Aurornis | 2025-07-07 00:30:36+00:00
> Why do all such articles never talk about the meat of the solution? Why do I always feel like I'm being sold something.

The topic itself is broad, but I agree that posts like this (please subscribe to my substack so you can get the info…) are almost always a prelude to some monetization play that comes later.

In this case, there are numerous existing resources on the topic (as linked by others already) from people with actual academic research experience in the topic that could have been linked in the post.

The claim about having quit a tech job and sold his house to “work on chronic pain” is also a giveaway that some monetization motives are at play.

I’m not opposed to people earning money from their work, but everyone reading this should know that monetization motives inevitably conflict with giving you the best access to information. The more you get from existing resources, the less interested you will be in following this specific author and paying for whatever products or services they are pushing.
by FridayoLeary | 2025-07-07 00:30:37+00:00
Harsh but that rings true. In it's defense i'll point out that English is exponentially more useful in the modern world and even French has started borrowing nouns from English. Also English has more words then any other language which in my mind makes it the best. (to clarify i know a little of other languages and i understand that there are concepts which English is not even equipped to express properly but i stand by what i write)

I'm still learning, English is huge and it can be a delight to discover.
by degun | 2025-07-07 00:32:58+00:00
The explanation you gave is already contained in the cited Wikipedia article. I think this "ghoti" example is more of a tongue-in-cheek mocking of pronunciation inconsistencies. If you want a jarring example, consider laughter and slaughter. I know, i know, they have different origins, but still, it confuses foreigners like me while learning the language.