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Sure. But neither do you. So are you really thinking or are you just autocompleting?

When was the last time you sat down and solved an original problem for which you had no prior context to "complete" an approximated solution with? When has that ever happened in human history? All the great invention-moment stories that come to mind seem to have exactly that going on in the background: Prior context being auto-completed in an Eureka! moment.


I think (hah) you're understimating what goes on when living things (even small animals) think. We use auto-compleition for some tasks, but it is a component of what we do.

Let's say your visual system auto-completes some pattern and detects a snake while you're walking, that part is auto-completion. You will probably react by freezing or panicing, that part is not auto-compleition, it is a deterministic algorithm. But then you process the detected object, auto-compleiting again to identify it as just a long cucumber. But again, the classification part is auto-completion. What will you do next? "Hmm, free cucumber, i can cook with it for a meal" and you pick it up. auto-completion is all over that simple decision, but you're using results of auto-completion to derive association (food), check your hunger level (not auto-completion), determine that the food is desirable and safe to eat (some auto-compleition), evalute what other options you have for food (evaluate auto-complete outputs), and then instruct your nervous system to pick it up.

We use auto-compleition all the time as an input, we don't reason using auto-compleition in other words. You can argue that if all your input is from auto-completion (it isn't) then it makes no difference. But we have deterministic reasoning logical systems that evaluate auto-completion outputs. if your cucumber detection identified it as rotten cucumber, then decision that it is not safe to eat is not done by auto-completion but a reasoning logic that is using auto-completion output. You can approximate the level of rot but once you recognize it as rotten, you make decision based on that information. You're not approximating a decision, you're evaluating a simple logic of: if(safe()){eat();}.

Now amp that up to solving very complex problems. what experiments will you run, what theories will you develop, what R&D is required for a solution,etc.. these too are not auto-completions. an LLM would auto complete these and might arrive at the same conclusion most of the time. but our brains are following algorithms we developed and learned over time where an LLM is just expanding on auto-completion but with a lot more data. In contrast, our brains are not trained on all the knowledge available on the public internet, we retain a tiny miniscule of that. we can arrive at similar conclusions as the LLM because we are reasoning and following algorithms matured and perfected over time.

The big take away should be that, as powerful as LLMs are now, if they could reason like we do, they'd dominate us and become unstoppable. Because their auto-completion is many magnitudes better than ours, if they can write new and original code based on an understanding of problem solving algorithms, that would be gen ai.

We can not just add 1 + 1 but prove that the addition operation is correct mathematically. and understand that when you add to a set one more object, the addition operation always increments. We don't approximate that, we always, every single time , increment because we are following an algorithm instead of choosing the most likely correct answer.


Fun fact, but also fake news. Emmethaler cheese has holes even in Switzerland. It's the only part of that cheese that tastes any good, so why remove them?


As a Swiss, confusing Emmenthaler and Gruyere is wild - they're soooo different in just about any property except both being called cheese. And I personally believe Emmenthaler to be the worst cheese produced in Switzerland. The only thing it has going for it are the iconic holes. Gruyere on the other hand is up there with the best of Swiss cheeses.


Sometimes cats just get lost: The go on a walk-about and can't find the way home. I have a hunch that's more common than animal abuse. How does your system address that?


I was thinking about all the stories of people moving homes, and their pets escaping to return to the place they just left, sometimes across continents


Also prison!!!


Unless you've already done projects in both. Then, it might seem trivial? Idk. I haven't looked at either. But if there is such a person out there, with the spare time to look into it, they might be ideally suited!


I often find myself leaving review comments on pull requests where I was surprised. I'll state as much: This surprised me - I was expecting XYZ at this point. Or I wasn't expecting X to be in charge of Y.


WTFs/minute is a good metric for code quality. Now your pair expressing that can be an LLM.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-coding-buddy/


I like to say that the reviewer is always right in that sense, if something is surprising, confusing, unexpected. Since I've been looking at the code for hours, I don't have a valid perspective anymore.


(canola oil i think is what americans might know it as. or something similar)


Yes, with the 'can' in canola being the first 3 letters of Canada. They though up the name as they reckoned the name rapeseed was problematic from a marketing point of view. I've heard that like all oils that require extensive processing canola/rapeseed oil is not good for you as it contains the wrong sort of fatty acids as a result of that processing. Olive oil, lard, butter, coconut and ghee are all far healthier.


Also almost any seed oils, even cold processed, are emitting toxic components when overheated - and who can avoid overheating in a pan? I think there was a HN discussion recently about a higher incidence of lung cancer related to hot oil cooking...


Do you mean reaching/exceeding the smoke point? Or just generally "heating up oil"?


Yes I meant above the smoke point. There are pans (Tefal?) which get red when the they get too hot, but as it depends a lot on the type of the oil and anyway the pan bottom is covered by the very food you're overheating... not helping. I understand there are better vegetal options (coconut, refined avocado) but still animal fat looks to be the safest. Or just pay good attention when frying.


Huh. I didn't see an Initiative / Referendum on that yet. Any pointers?



What an utterly depressing read.


I have a similar thing about the gait and I think it might have to do with me needing glasses, but it being mild enough (-1.0, -2.0) that I didn't wear them as a teenager and in my early twenties - so my NN just trained on the data it had ready access too: Gait, preferred colors, movement patterns etc.

The not recognizing people in unexpected locations is something I just mark down to "page fault" and move on. Nobody expects total recall anyway.


I didn't consider that - my eyesight wasn't checked before I was nearly five years old, then my father started suspecting something (I still remember him asking if I could see a crow a couple of hundred meters away, between two slanted poles. I couldn't separate the slanted poles). So, I got glasses, for astigmatism and hyperopia, and I could see. Finally. If that's related to how I so easily recognize gaits (better than faces) I will never know. (It's not that I don't recognize faces, it's just that I may have problems if they're in places I don't expect or if they change a bit - getting older, or a haircut etc).


Exactly, I have severe myopia, that was quickly developing during my teenage years so my glasses were often too weak. Beacuse of that my brain learned to identify people by gait too.


I didn't consider it might be myopia; I was diagnosed around 10, but already -3.5


as someone who's eyeing this combo (for a beginner) - does it need to be the iPad Pro or will i be able to get away with an iPad Air?


You will probably be very happy with the Air. I'd recommend the big one.

I use a 2018 13" iPad Pro and I love that size because it's basically the same size as a sheet of 8.5x11 (or A4) paper. It's the perfect size for reading and marking up PDFs too.

Last year I bought and returned the M4 iPad Pro because they didn't make a Smart Keyboard Folio for it which I prefer to the more heavy duty Magic Keyboard. So I'm still using my 7 year old iPad worrying about what I'm going to do when it dies. I thought for sure somebody would make a knock off, but nobody has made anything that I think is as good as the Apple product.

For me, Procreate and GoodNotes are a killer combination that justify owning the device.



About the same. The 120Hz on the pro feels very slightly better and has slightly lower latency. This does help a tiny bit for detail work. But you get used to not having it after about 30 mins.


Air works fine


And there's a big Air (same size as the Pro).

I do suggest splurging for the more expensive Pencil Pro, though.

If you want to go the other way, the Mini works with the Pencil Pro (I have both).


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