i can speak to this as i had my motorcycle stolen on NYE last year in Santa Monica with an airtag in it. the Santa Monica police said “smart, but it’s in LA so we can’t help you get it. tell the LAPD.”. it took me seven hours of calls to the LAPD while personally hunting down my bike in the shadiest areas of LA, and being a block away from getting it myself, did they come. so yes, if you’re in LA, you basically get it yourself.
in my case, the damage was so much i wish i had just left it stolen and taken the bigger insurance payout.
I don’t think it’s an extrapolation from the ML community into other industries.
This evolution of society is objectively happening - artisanship, care for the work beyond capital gain, and commitment to depth in a focused category - are diminishing and harder to find qualities. I’d probably label it related to capital and material social economics.
It’s perhaps more unfair and unjustified to not recognize this as a real societal issue and claim it only exists in the ML community.
She opens with an example of a bank. She walked in and asked for a debit card. The teller told her to take a seat. 30 minutes later, the teller told her the bank doesn't issue debit cards. Firstly, what kind of bank doesn't issue debit cards, and secondly, what kind of bank takes 30 minutes to figure out whether or not it issues debit cards? And this is just one of many examples of things that society does that have no reason not to work, that should have been selected away long ago if they did not work - that bank should have been bankrupt long ago - but for some reason this is not happening and everything is just getting clogged with bullshit and non-working solutions.
It's because people are commodities now. Human resources exists to manage the shuffle between warm bodies.
It's back to OP's point. There's no such thing as professions now. Just jobs. We put them on and off like hats. With that churn comes lack of institutional knowledge and a rule set handed down from the C Suite for front line employees completely detached from the front line work.
But even given that, how is it that everything doesn't work very well?
The normal functioning of markets would be that badly-working things are slowly driven out, while well-working things grow and replace them. Even without any reference to financial markets, this is simply what you expect to happen when people have a variety of things to choose from.
I could hypothesize that markets have evolved to the point where it's impossible for new things to grow unless they are already shit. Perhaps because everyone's too busy working for the shit things (which is partly because the government keeps printing money to the previously successful things in order to prevent the economy collapsing and therefore landlords got to charge exorbitant rent) or perhaps because they just don't have any money because of the above, and can only afford the cheap shit things (but a lot of the shit things are expensive?) or perhaps because people are afraid to start new things because they're afraid of the government (I've observed that not infrequently on HN, also something something testosterone microplastics) or perhaps because advertising effectiveness has reached the point where new things never become discoverable and stay crowded out as old things ramp up advertisement to compensate or perhaps we're just all depressed (because of the housing market probably).
Things might be shit in interesting and scary new ways, but there is no such thing as "the good ole days". Our mind wants to believe that things could go back to "how they used to be", "when it was better" but it's a fantasy.
It's an inability to face the cognitive dissonance and accept things as they are -- which is different than what we wanted! Boo hoo.
We all do this constantly everyday, some more than others :)
That said, humans are quite good at getting by even when things are shit. We've been doing it for untold eons.
Perhaps the only thing more impressive is how good we are at complaining about it all! Heh.
It's a poor extrapolation. The issues with the ML community have more to do with the exponential growth of the "AI" industry, the resulting flow of capital, and the outsized role these conferences provide for establishing a researchers value to the industry. These conditions are fairly unique.
I would propose that the evolution you speak of is more related to our technology (and I am not just saying AI, far from it) and how it is now possible to perform the very minimum requirements of a task with little effort.
I don’t disagree that technology is allowing a new low bar for minimal allowable effort. This is true in a world where the same technology could enable one to deliver amazing things.
I’m speaking more generally and I think you describe the exact problem in your clarification which boils down to “people are chasing money and doing whatever it takes in ML, where the money currently is”. I was stopping at the fact that “people […] chasing money and doing whatever it takes” has become the general personal pursuit, quality/depth/care be damned.
The law was amended to include invertebrates anywhere the term fish was used.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds as people go lobster/crab fishing so there is a fair amount of overlap when someone is talking about fisherman. Starfish, jellyfish, etc again blur the line linguistically.
But the fast they used invertebrates in the definition rather than aquatic invertebrates means it also covers non aquatic invertebrates.
as a person often on a motorcycle, apple maps has completely won me over for directions while riding. i have found it more natural to follow and more precise (eg. lane choices, light counts) with equivalent traffic information.
edit to add - google maps directions have felt (borderline?) dangerous at times. i haven't yet experienced that with apple maps.
Hoping that Gordon sees this, he’s a wonderful person.
helpful to the nth degree as his dedication to answering questions as is so demonstrated here in earnest.
all your recognition is well-deserved. it’s been a pleasure to work with you (and nice job solving the interview qs i give to others in pure sql from the other side of my desk)
I’m really happy that folks are digging into the perceptual outcomes of the AB testing from headlines. Frankly, it provides context to the NYT’s own research and development of the algorithms and human processes that go into such efforts.
If the narrative is entirely that if we dont actively consider capturing interest, we’d be doddering and hard to track, if we do we’re abusive, then media is forever doomed to be unsatisfactory. We all hope to improve.
In the world of headlines, the “spiciness” that’s been advanced as a function of engagement hunting is something that’s currently contended with through human intervention. All headlines are human created and the outcomes of AB tests are more about improving the understanding between author/editor and captured audience than manipulation or future interest conditioning.
[disclosure: i lead ML platforms and the algo related eng products at NYT. all thoughts are my own presentation of what i have experienced, and not company opinions]
you’re right! as someone who has built (and builds the future of) the testing/algorithmic machinery at the NYT, this is one of the “misses” in the post.
in my case, the damage was so much i wish i had just left it stolen and taken the bigger insurance payout.