I agree. I’m using copilot more and more as it gets better and better, but it is getting better at the fun stuff and leaves me to do the less fun stuff. I’m in a role where I need to review code across multiple teams, and as their output is increasing, so is my review load. The biggest issue is that the people who lean on copilot the most are the least skilled at writing/reviewing code in the first place, so not only do I have more to review, it’s worse(1).
My medium term concern is that the tasks where we want a human in the loop (esp review) are predicated on skills that come from actually writing code. If LLMs stagnate, in a generation we’re not going to have anyone who grew up writing code.
1: not that LLMs write objectively bad code, but it doesn’t follow our standards and patterns. Like, we have an internal library of common UI components and CSS, but the LLM will pump out custom stuff.
There is some stuff that we can pick up with analysers and fail the build, but a lot of things just come down to taste and corporate knowledge.
As somewhat of an AI-agnostic, I disagree. Writing tests is one of the things I find most useful about copilot. Of course you need to review them first correctness, but (especially for unit tests) it’s pretty good and getting it right first-time.
It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, but: the idea is that racial differences are already enshrined, by racists. if racists weren’t pushing the idea, it would hardly be an idea at all.
Try explaining to a “go back to where you belong” racists that you’re not from Africa (or from Mexico, or wherever) - you have a different ethnic background, or you’re a natural born citizen - racists don’t care about the nuance, you’re coloured and they’re bigoted, and race differences are enshrined.
So if that’s the case - if you’re just going to be lumped into the same bucket as every other (say) black person anyway - then you’re only going to make yourself weaker by dividing yourselves - you need to organize to push back against racism, and that means your natural allies are going to be all the other people that racists are racist about - and by extension, all the other people bigots are bigoted about. Now it doesn’t matter if you were born in Egypt, or in the Sudan, or in Somalia or Jamaica or Haiti or Illinois- racists all treat you as ‘black’, and it’s on that basis, that shared identity as people oppressed for being black, that you struggle for justice.
And what is justice if not redress?
Anyway the point I’m making here is, it’s not DEI that’s enshrining race - it’s racists. The reason DEI is organized along racial lines is because that’s how racism is applied by the bigots who believe in that crap.
Very much along the same lines of why “all lives matter” in response to “black lives matter” is a very deliberately racist statement - because it’s mocking the struggle of oppressed people to get justice for themselves and to defend themselves from their oppressors.
Thanks for putting in the effort with that comment. I understand what you’re saying, but it seems like a local optima problem to me: enshrining race differences in corporate policy and law may be optimal right here, right now, but it’s antithetical to the long term goal of removing racism. How can you possibly get there from here?
There's also the problem that the logical basis is "two wrongs make a right" and the factual basis is unquantified personal anecdotes and disparate impact.
You are quite correct that it is the DEI racists enshrining race in hiring policies. They should all be thrown in prison for violating civil rights law.
Ibram Kendi wrote about how the only way to not be racist is to deliberately treat people differently based on their race. He was quite popular for this for a while.
But also for the DEI thing specifically, what's going on is that objecting to the implementation details is proof that you oppose the stated goal. Even if what you're doing is pointing out that the implementation is counter-productive to the stated goal. I think it might be some sort of tribalism thing.
Of course naturally “trim” people don’t count calories - they don’t have to. Just like I don’t have to monitor my blood glucose level, but my Type 1 diabetic friend does.
You can’t apply to habits of one physiologic group to a different group and expect the same results.
There’s a whole field of research on this (look up Floyd Toole) - while any one individual can have skewed taste, on aggregate people prefer speakers that are as close to neutral as possible.
The point about not setting a goal rings true for me. A few years ago I set a book-a-week goal and it definitely had a large influence on the books I chose to read.
I tend to read a lot of books simultaneously, but much I’m not convinced is the best approach (esp for fiction) but I’m undecided yet on if it’s a habit worth changing.
I just started reading simultaneously instead of sequentially and it really helped me get back into reading every night. The problem with one book at a time is that I'll get stuck or sick of one and then I just don't read.
Just ditch a book you’re not into. Life’s too short. I’m trying to write a book and I would hope a reader that isn’t into my book would just abandon it early
Often for me it’s not about not liking the book, but not wanting to read it right now. This is particularly true with philosophy, but also true of fiction (I’m currently reading and loving Infinite Jest, but I’m not always in the mood for it).
I'm still reading Infinite Jest. Started back in 2020, one hundred pages left. I doubt I will ever read it again if and when I finish it. I liked Wallace's shorter works and thought Infinite Jest would give me something to do over lockdown. I get some of the themes in it, like entertainment being a sedative, but some parts just don't grip me, like the Eschaton (which I feel should) or radioactive hamsters wandering through wastelands.
That's not it at all. I do ditch books I'm not into. The situation I'm describing is usually where the story has some tension or I feel like the next chapter might have tension, and I don't want to push on for the time being. I need some calming space, and another story is perfect for that. Edit: I said "sick of" in my previous comment when really I should have said tired of.
For me, just writing down the books I read into a list seems to have made me read more. (Well, I can't be sure, since I don't have a log from before I started logging, but I certainly feel like I'm spending more evenings reading!)
I don't want to "gamify" reading, that would make me choose short/easy reads. I love those challenging reads that stay with you, change you, give you new perspectives. (And I also love obsessive fun reads.) But I think often I don't read because I don't feel like I'm being "productive". So it's not lack of motivation, but this nagging feeling of "wasting time" (and so I'd open my laptop and click around aimlessly online as if that was more productive). However, simply being able to change an item in my org-mode file from "TODO" to "DONE" has mostly taken away that feeling, now I both read from enjoyment and don't feel like I should be doing something on the computer.
I use Manet as a music player an tailscale to have access to my home server. Before I tailscale set up, I’d just download what I wanted to my phone before leaving home.
My medium term concern is that the tasks where we want a human in the loop (esp review) are predicated on skills that come from actually writing code. If LLMs stagnate, in a generation we’re not going to have anyone who grew up writing code.
1: not that LLMs write objectively bad code, but it doesn’t follow our standards and patterns. Like, we have an internal library of common UI components and CSS, but the LLM will pump out custom stuff.
There is some stuff that we can pick up with analysers and fail the build, but a lot of things just come down to taste and corporate knowledge.
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