Ive been doing codeforces, Rosalind, codewars and leetcode casually in my spare time to detox from heavy daily agent use.
Ive been relearning a ton that either over-reliance on llms caused me to forget, or just lost due to time.
Its been extremely fun. I really missed the feeling of thinking really hard and arriving at a solution.
I hope we dont lose this desire as a species.
>I hope we dont lose this desire as a species.
I really think the rise of LLMs has demonstrated quite well that most people don't care. Only a minority of us have ever had this desire.
Learning to program at an early age because you enjoy it has always been the differentiator.
Even if that child doesn’t have as much raw talent, the desire itself (paired with extra years of experience —- especially when the brain is at its most malleable) will drive success in a way the pursuit of money alone never can.
Guns vs Martial Arts. There are absolutely benefits to doing martial arts that are not self defense, but when you have to defend yourself in a pinch a gun is pretty helpful.
guns are not suitable for every situation though. that dialog from the irishman 'guns you charge , knife you runaway'
in what situation is a knife better than a gun apart from cutting veggies and fruits?
Idk of the details of that quote, but it does spring to mind that a gun is far better at range than a knife. So, closing that distance could be better than fleeing if your opponent has a gun and there is no cover for you to use while you escape (depending on the weapon and the wielder! I'd take my odds running away from, say, an amateur armed with a flintlock pistol... If it is a trained marksman with a rifle you'd be dead trying to run, whereas, if you are close, trying to close the distance and get control of the gun might - might - work). Increasing the distance between you and a person with a knife is always a smart move.
In the martial artists' minds, of course.
The rise of a technology that reduces cost in all forms of knowledge work demonstrates a minority of humans have a desire to learn and have hobbies?
The majority prefers playing videogames, watching tv and porn.
That's a bit self-defeating given people pay to be challenged with video games. A souls game is harder than a lot of leetcode for me and it's not free. That said I'm not seeing anyone offering a causal link between the rise of LLMs and the human preference to less effort for the same outcome (with very important exceptions, see effort paradox).
I care about delivering results to my colleagues, and so my ideas plus an LLM lets me do what I care about.
You and the author care about software craftsmanship, which is wonderful. But might need to remain a hobby...
> I really think the rise of LLMs has demonstrated quite well that most people don't care. Only a minority of us have ever had this desire.
I think people care about the problems they have to handle. Not having to deal with a problem eliminates the incentive of training to fix the problem, because you don't waste time on problems that don't happen.
People also stopped caring about what machine code was generated by compilers. In the past people had to roll out asm to get things to work. Not anymore. With llms it's the same way.
I know people who routinely check the generated machine code of compilers to see if it is reasonable or buggy.
When it is bad they either rewrite their source code or write assembly.
A tool do a job good enough that people don't have to do the job by hand does not mean people stop caring about the quality of the job.
People also use calculators and gas grills and cars. As you point out, a tendency to desire the same outcome for less effort doesn't imply one, or society, does not care for effort. It's about utility and where that effort is spent.
It’s kind of like how in early aughts everyone was telling their kids to become nurses and now we have a surplus of nurses with absolutely zero bedside manner.
Is there really a surplus of nurses? https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nursing-and...
If you look in history this is perfectly normal.
Nothing new under the sun.
Idk, basically anyone who speaks candidly about this to me says their use of LLMs over the last year has stunted them in some way.
LLMs aren't comparable to anything thats come before, in my opinion. We had much more time to adapt and integrate with original forms of computing, as well as many other technologies from centuries past.
Sure you can use llms responsible and perhaps in a rewarding way (that isnt just related to making money), but very very few people are making that effort or even know how to.
Its more likely people use them irresponsibly like we do cars. Walk half a mile... nah I'll drive. Now we have endemic diabetes.
Obesity is trending back down and will continue to do so.
Machines have removed our need to work, this stunts our body, and the solution is synthetic work (gym).
AI removes our need to work with our minds (at least partly), this stunts our mind, and the solution is synthetic mind-work.
Sure it will take some time to get used to. But we will get used to it.
>Obesity is trending back down
It's trending down because researchers found a magic pill (well, peptide) that was clinically proven enough to become over-the counter. This trending down started in 2023. 40 years of policy barely did anything (partially because it never fixed the systems, but I digress).
So are we just going to pray in 40 years someone finds a solution to brainrot?
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