> Humor often comes from the weird thoughts and emotions involved in a situation, as opposed to the simple facts. The best fodder for humor can be communicated by a simple description of the situation and then saying "So then I was thinking..."
There is a great deal of orientalism --- it is genuinely unthinkable to a lot of American tech dullards that the Chinese could be better at anything requiring what they think of as "intelligence." Aren't they Communist? Backward? Don't they eat weird stuff at wet markets?
It reminds me, in an encouraging way, of the way that German military planners regarded the Soviet Union in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa. The Slavs are an obviously inferior race; their Bolshevism dooms them; we have the will to power; we will succeed. Even now, when you ask questions like what you ask of that era, the answers you get are genuinely not better than "yes, this should have been obvious at the time if you were not completely blinded by ethnic and especially ideological prejudice."
Back when deepseek came out and people were tripping over themselves shouting it was so much better than what was out there, it just wasn’t good.
It might be this model is super good, I haven’t tried it, but to say the Chinese models are better is just not true.
What I really love though is that I can run them (open models) on my own machine. The other day I categorised images locally using Qwen, what a time to be alive.
Further even than local hardware, open models make it possible to run on providers of choice, such as European ones. Which is great!
So I love everything about the competitive nature of this.
Good point, I was assuming the GP was running local for some reason. Hard to argue when it's the official providers who are being compared.
I ran the 1.58-bit Unsloth quant locally at the time it came out, and even at such low precision, it was super rare for it to get something wrong that o1 and GPT4 got right. I have never actually used a hosted version of the full DS.
Early stages of Barbarossa were very successful and much of the Soviet Air Force, which had been forward positioned for invasion, was destroyed. Given the Red Army’s attitude toward consent, I would keep the praise carefully measured. TV has taught us there are good guys and bad guys when the reality is closer to just bad guys and bad guys
I don't think that anyone, much less someone working in tech or engineering in 2025, could still hold beliefs about Chinese not being capable scientists or engineers. I could maybe give (the naive) pass to someone in 1990 thinking China will never build more than junk. But in 2025 their product capacity, scientific advancement, and just the amount of us who have worked with extremely talented Chinese colleagues should dispel those notions. I think you are jumping to racism a bit fast here.
Germany was right in some ways and wrong in others for the soviet unions strength. USSR failed to conquer Finland because of the military purges. German intelligence vastly under-estimated the amount of tanks and general preparedness of the Soviet army (Hitler was shocked the soviets had 40k tanks already). Lend Lease act really sent an astronomical amount of goods to the USSR which allowed them to fully commit to the war and really focus on increasing their weapon production, the numbers on the amount of tractors, food, trains, ammunition, etc. that the US sent to the USSR is staggering.
I don't think anyone seriously believes that the Chinese aren't capable, it's more like people believe no matter what happens, USA will still dominate in "high tech" fields. A variant of "American Exceptionalism" so to speak.
This is kinda reflected in the stock market, where the AI stocks are surging to new heights every day, yet their Chinese equivalents are relatively lagging behind in stock price, which suggests that investors are betting heavily on the US companies to "win" this "AI race" (if there's any gains to be made by winning).
Also, in the past couple years (or maybe a couple decades), there had also been a lot of crap talk about how China has to democratize and free up their markets in order to be competitive with the other first world countries, together with a bunch of "doomsday" predictions for authoritarianism in China. This narrative has completely lost any credibility, but the sentiment dies slowly...
They did, but the goalposts keep moving, so to speak. We're approximately here : advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, reusable rockets, quantum computing, etc. Chinese will never catch up. /s
Not sure how the entire Nazi comparison plays out, but at the time there were good reasons to imagine the Soviets will fall apart (as they initially did)
Stalin just finished purging his entire officer corps, which is not a good omen for war, and the USSR failed miserably against the Finnish who were not the strongest of nations, while Germany just steamrolled France, a country that was much more impressive in WW1 than the Russians (who collapsed against Germany)
"It reminds me, in an encouraging way, of the way that German military planners regarded the Soviet Union in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa. The Slavs are an obviously inferior race;
..."
Ideology played a role, but the data they worked with, was the finnish war, that was disastrous for the sowjet side. Hitler later famously said, it was all a intentionally distraction to make them believe the sowjet army was worth nothing. (Real reasons were more complex, like previous purging).
> It reminds me, in an encouraging way, of the way that German military planners regarded the Soviet Union in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa. The Slavs are an obviously inferior race; their Bolshevism dooms them; we have the will to power; we will succeed
Though, because Stalin had decimated the red army leadership (including most of the veteran officer who had Russian civil war experience) during the Moscow trials purges, the German almost succeeded.
> Though, because Stalin had decimated the red army leadership (including most of the veteran officer who had Russian civil war experience) during the Moscow trials purges, the German almost succeeded.
There were many counter revolutionaries among the leadership, even those conducting the purges. Stalin was like "ah fuck we're hella compromised." Many revolutions fail in this step and often end up facing a CIA backed coup. The USSR was under constant siege and attempted infiltration since inception.
> There were many counter revolutionaries among the leadership
Well, Stalin was, by far, the biggest counter-revolutionary in the Politburo.
> Stalin was like "ah fuck we're hella compromised."
There's no evidence that anything significant was compromised at that point, and clear evidence that Stalin was in fact medically paranoid.
> Many revolutions fail in this step and often end up facing a CIA backed coup. The USSR was under constant siege and attempted infiltration since inception.
Can we please not recycle 90-years old soviet propaganda? The Moscow trial being irrational self-harm was acknowledged by the USSR leadership as early as the fifties…
These Americans have no comprehension of intelligence being used to benefit humanity instead of being used to fund a CEO's new yacht. I encourage them to visit China to see how far the USA lags behind.
> And yes, ChatGPT is kinda like an addictive drug here. If someone "can't work without ChatGPT anymore", they're addicted and have lost the ability to work on their own as a result.
Come on, you can’t mean this in any kind of robust way. I can’t get my job done without a computer; am I an “addict” who has “lost the ability to work on my own?” Every tool tends to engender dependence, roughly in proportion to how much easier it makes the life of the user. That’s not a bad thing.
>I can’t get my job done without a computer; am I an “addict” who has “lost the ability to work on my own?”
It's very possible. I know people love bescmirching the "you won't always have a calculator" mentality. But if you're using a calculator for 2nd grade mental math, you may have degregaded too far. It varies on the task, of course.
>Every tool tends to engender dependence, roughly in proportion to how much easier it makes the life of the user. That’s not a bad thing.
Depends on how it's making it easier. Phones are an excellent example. They make communication much easier and long distance communication possible. But if it gets to the point where you're texting someone in the next room instead of opening your door, you might be losing a piece of you somewhere.
There's a big difference between needing a tool to do a job that only that tool can do, and needing a crutch to do something without using your own faculties.
LLMs are nothing like a computer for a programmer, or a saw for a carpenter. In the very best case, from what their biggest proponents have said, they can let you do more of what you already do with less effort.
If someone has used them enough that they can no longer work without them, it's not because they're just that indispensable: it's because that someone has let their natural faculties atrophy through disuse.
Are you really comparing an LLM to a computer? Really? There are many jobs today that quite literally would not exist at all without computers. It's in no way comparable.
You use ChatGPT to do the things you were already doing faster and with less effort, at the cost of quality. You don't use it to do things you couldn't do at all before.
It’s not the cues that get you. That is an idea promoted largely by treatment centers and the rehab industry, who need to be able to plausibly claim they are teaching their customers how to avoid relapse. I’m a recovered alcoholic and I can assure you, my “cue” for drinking was being alive and awake at the same time.
Your reaction is a sane and normal one: you remember a good time, and you have some inkling to recreate it. Certainly. And to most people that makes sense. But alcoholics are different from most people, and their understanding that is an essential first step to recovery.
Totally understand. With any luck, you and I have played two sides of a dialogue that’ll be read by someone else, for whom it might be quite useful. For that I thank you.
For reasons of personal history, stimulant medications like Adderall are a hard no for me. I am curious, though, about non-stimulant options like atomoxetine, if anyone has views.
Stimulants are a front line defense because they pretty reliably treat the symptoms in just about everyone. There are many other medications that _can_ help with symptoms, but their effectiveness is largely dependent on your body chemistry. It can take trialing several drugs to find one that works best with you.
Methylphenidate was a no-go for me too, was emotionally unstable and burnt out at the end of the day.
However, this is my second month on atomoxetine and so far, I have only words of praise. There are one or two months to go for full effectiveness but I am satisfied so far. Focus is better, my mind is much more quieter, I've been able to kick some dopamine seeking behaviors and am working on new habits. I really feel positive and ready for change in life -- speaking this as an anxiety ridden person for more than ten years.
The only negative is that it slightly increases heart rate, but I think this is supposed to go away too.
I'd note that I am on some supplements as well and beforehand I did a simplistic dna check to see my methylation/detox profile (wanted to see why methylphenidate was a no-go).
I started reading DF when I was a college student, probably in 2002 or 2003. I listened to every iteration of The Talk Show that I can remember --- both runs with your former host, and the current edition from the very first episode. When I moved to Los Angeles and had no friends and felt lonely as hell all the time, I used to put on the keyboard episode of The Talk Show to give me something pleasant to fall asleep to.
But John, your cheerleading for Israel's genocide --- man. Way before the election of the current cheerleader-in-chief for that effort, you were ahead of the game.
You said that students who protested this genocide should be expelled from college (you've got a friend in the White House now, John!):
> These students should be expelled from college, not placated.
And, most sickening of all, you cheered the indiscriminate pager attack that maimed children, which your friend in the White House has now got a golden pager memorializing:
> This whole operation sounds like it would make for a great movie.
I could go on, but the effect was heartbreaking. My old friend, the voice in my little Pasadena apartment all those years ago, clapping for the maiming of children and howling for the expulsion of students who disagree with him? Who was this guy? Who is this guy? Had I read him wrong the whole time? Had I changed --- would I have loved those blown-up Lebanese kids back in 2002, and now I'd gone soft? I don't know. But if I'd visited DF for the first time in 2003 and found content calling for the expulsion of Iraq War protesters, I don't think I'd have made a second visit.
At the end, there's one of the craziest Venn diagrams I've seen in a while. The diagram asserts that --- by definition --- you aren't good at your "mission," the world does not need your "profession," you can't be paid for your "passion," and you can't love your "vocation." Grim!
That's not what it's trying to imply. It's saying that if you chose a job based on what the world needs and what you love doing, you're in the realm of completing a mission. Then you look at the diagram to see what you're missing to reach Ikigai. This is a very "glass half empty" look at a literal diagram lol.
There's this diagram, and there's David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs.
"What you love" and "What you are good at" certainly have a non-empty intersection, but that's mostly a distinct set from "what you can be paid for". "What you are good at" and "What you can be paid for" also have a non-empty intersection, but that set is again (mostly) distinct from "what you love". In brief, you can enjoy work, but then it will pay shit, or you can make money, but you'll hate it.
The most interesting part however is the right hand side. "What you can be paid for" and "What the world needs" have a practically empty intersection. Regardless of both personal skill and drive, there is effectively zero money available for the sorest needs of society. (Public healthcare (including mental health), public education, public infrastructure, etc.)
The obvious question to ask about this purported "pick two" triad is, why must that be so?
- If one is good at their job, why does that imply that either they won't be paid well, or they'll hate it?
- If one enjoys their job, why does that imply they must be paid poorly or suck at it?
- If one is paid well, why does that imply they will be eaten alive by work or terrible at their job?
The assertions such diagrams make just don't stand up to scrutiny when viewed in reverse. They should stand up to symmetry, and clearly do not; the veneer of logic is peeled away. Instead it reveals the underlying issue: they serve only to elucidate a cynical outlook.
Perhaps in general, I'll admit, there is presently a shortage of opportunities working for the public good; but I'm reluctant to even give an inch on that because it lends itself to a cynical belief system about the world which the statement alone does not imply: it is not necessarily a true inference to say that, if there is a shortage, there will never be; or, that if one wants such a job, they will never be able to get it and best give up early.
Don't let cynicism take you. It will take, and take, and take, and leave you only table scraps of joy.
> The obvious question to ask about this purported "pick two" triad is, why must that be so?
It is not a law of the universe, so the answer to your question is "it isn't necessarily". But even if it isn't always true, it's usually true. And thus it's a useful metric to keep in mind. Being lucky enough to get all three qualities in your job is rare, and you can't expect that it'll happen.
> The diagram asserts that --- by definition --- you aren't good at your "mission,"
This is a misreading of the Venn diagram. Ikigai is the only section where Passion, Mission, Profession, and Vocation all intersect. The "Passion" etc sections are not bounded to the 2-layer overlaps where the labels sit, they extend into the 3 and 4-layer overlaps also.
But I'll grant you that the Venn diagram is crazy and overpacked.
