This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
I think this was one of the best posts to come from Scott since his switch to ACX. I think he lays out the situation clearly and fairly, and makes a good case for why priesthoods have unique pitfalls, but are still better than not having them. I think his hypothesis about why wokeness infiltrated every priesthood is interesting, but only one of many many potential angles to be considered. I want to hear what the Motte has to say about all of this.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Let's chat about the National Football League. This thread will be dedicated to all post-season games, including the Super Bowl. This post will be updated with results and schedules going into February (All times Eastern):
Wildcard matchups:
2025-01-11:
===========
04:30PM: Los Angeles Chargers vs. Houston Texans
08:00PM: Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens
2025-01-12:
==========
01:00PM: Denver Broncos vs. Buffalo Bills,
04:30PM: Green Bay Packers vs. Philadelphia Eagles
08:00PM: Washington Commanders vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2025-01-13
==========
08:00PM: Minnesota Vikings vs. Los Angeles Rams
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
The trip to the states was mostly uneventful, but I will document it here for posterity and to get my own head around it.
My wife and I decided to visit my hometown briefly to see my parents’ graves, and to let our boys experience a bit of where I am from, before there is no longer any reason to go back there. There barely is now, but that is another story. We left Japan on a mild but chilly Christmas day, arriving on Christmas night, and returned via Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, though our arrival was such that in Japan on touchdown it was already January 2nd. So the day of January 1st we lost somewhere in the air. This is an account of that journey and the impressions that I got. Please opt out now if this sort of post is not your thing.
People don’t seem as fat as in previous visits. Admittedly we did not get out to Wal Mart, though Target still has the bizarre posters in the women’s clothing section that have women who are not just fairly overweight (at least by my standards), but deformed. By that I mean that at least one model had visible stretch marks and even scars from what appeared to be poorly healed abdominal injuries, possibly from a stab or bullet wound. I’m not kidding. I will admit that I just don’t get it. Compare that to your typical similar ad in Japan. In any case, apart from the advertisements, in the few restaurants we visited, people just weren’t as obese as I remember. Maybe semaglutide is doing its thing. All hail Ozempic.
So the fatness seemed reduced. Trimmed. My southern home state was overcast and gray and the trees dun-colored the whole time we were there. Not even southern gothic, more like something out of Steinbeck, enough to drive any sane person in-. Generally the weather was not as warm as I remember this time of year, though by no means freezing, with temperatures in the 50s (F). All in all it felt like something out of the film version of The Road, without the roving bands of cannibals. Maybe if I had driven to Gadsden.
Drivers drove fast. I was given a big black Chevy Tahoe by Hertz because they had no SUVs. The Chevrolet Tahoe is a large vehicle with controls in the form of a dial you twist from R to P to D to N. There is no gearshift on the column or floor. Is this a normal thing now? Dials and buttons. At least there was a steering wheel and the gas and brake pedals were as expected. It is also a large vehicle, at least for me. I felt like I was driving a computerized and de-weaponized tank. But drive it I did.
From the airport I drove us a half hour or so to my aunt’s. She scolded me for not phoning her from the airport. At her home were pictures from my past, and baubles on the shelf that I remember having been at my grandmother’s house when I was a boy. My aunt is old and frail and said she fell and can’t lift her arm above around here. She had some devilled eggs and cold ham for us, both dishes that I hate and would rather be shot than eat. I said we weren’t hungry, which was a lie. I dislike lying but apparently I am willing to do it. The next morning I made us all pancakes from some batter my aunt had, to which you just add water—no milk or eggs or anything, just water then you pour it onto butter on a hot skillet and flip, and there are your pancakes. I felt like I was eating something Captain Kirk might eat on the Enterprise. She put bacon into her oven on some sort of special grease-catching pan. “It’s healthier this way,” she said, though I have never wanted or expected bacon to have any health benefits, nor have I cared if it did. Because it’s bacon, ffs. She cooked it to hell and back and if you held up a piece it stood erect like a long, fried pig crackling instead of the floppy bacon I am now familiar with in Japan. I crunched and swallowed it down anyway. Her coffee machine had no filter. “I ran out,” she said. Somehow we made coffee anyway, but it was decaf, because of her heart. Outside she has a dog, a rescue mutt that will bite you if you offer it your hand. I heard but did not see it. Somehow she feeds it. It dislikes her boyfriend, whom her crazy daughter dislikes. I want to shake the daughter, my cousin, until, as they say, she comes to her senses. My aunt is 82 and has a boyfriend. What sort of derangement would want to deprive her of this?
The next day we said bye to my aunt and hugged her, and I drove an hour to my hometown through the overcast gray depressing weather. “Is that a dead deer?” asked my wife. It was, on the side of the road. There would be more than one, as well as other, less identifiable roadkill, but she stopped asking after the first time. Some of the road signs on the way were different, the towns having shrunk or others grown so that the relevant placenames people presumably want to turn off the exit to had changed. Once I arrived, the roads that I used to know well seem to have been diverted at key points. In one instance I was going in the opposite direction from where I had intended, on a road I thought I was familiar with. The best restaurants of my youth were all closed forever, but there seemed to be more Mexican places. The indoor mall from my childhood looked as if it had been bombed out. The new indoor mall from my teenage years we did not visit. But there is an outdoor area with lots of shops and a Planet Fitness and a large Barnes & Noble and Panera and some ramen shop called FUKU ramen, a name which amuses me. This outdoor mall-type place seems to be the new place people go. I had a poor meal at a diner there, though the mashed potatoes were good. I used my phone’s GPS to find at least one address in my own hometown, something I never used to have to do. The university is still quite striking, and the stadium has reached gargantuan proportions, though, from what I understand, college football is now fucked.
One general point of interest was that we did not have any particularly bad interactions with service personnel, which is usually something that happens almost immediately upon landing, if not in the cabin of the plane, once we have switched to an American carrier. No, this time everyone was pleasant and even efficient. Possibly because of the time of year. I was called “baby” by the first woman I interacted with at a coffee shop, but this possibly because I put on my friendly affect in my southern accent (though this was in LAX), which seemed to cause her to warm to me. I don’t mind this familiarity and in fact I welcome it. In Japan I’m treated with smiles and fawning courtesy, but as often as not this is complete tatemae and can give one a feeling of being in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Assuming anyone here knows what the hell that even means. It can be weird, that’s my point. In the US there’s more of an authenticity—I don’t expect the woman behind the counter to lend me money or ask me to dinner at her house, but I know that should I say something off-script, her reaction will be genuine. I do not know if I am getting my point across clearly. My southern cadence is also coming out.
At one point my youngest son, who had seen something on Youtube about Papa John’s (the pizza place), asked if we could get a pizza there. I said sure. It was raining and I was already tired of driving us everywhere, but there on the corner was a Papa John’s so I pulled over. I walked in and immediately saw the sign: “No walk-in orders. Online or phone only.” I asked the bespectacled, tired-looking dishwater blonde woman if that meant I could not order there. She affirmed that this was true. Playing along with this bizarre policy, I walked outside and tried to make a call. For some reason my phone wasn’t working, so my oldest son got out of the car with his iPhone, which was, and I tried to go online and order through the website. Due to the Japanese phone settings possibly, the phone would not take us to the web location we wanted. I tried calling again, and this time was met with a computerized voice instructing me to press 3. Which I did. Then it hung up on me. This story is far longer but the gist is we did not get the Papa John’s pizza.
We stayed at a friend’s house, which he now rents. Back in the day he lived in the house, and in fact it is the house in which he (a priest) married my wife and me. Now the house is professionally decorated, with original art, and, on some flat surfaces, three stacked books upon which fake plants sit. I did not like this touch—books are for reading or for being on shelves, not for supporting fake plants. But the beds were nice, and it was of course generous of him to offer us the stay.
We visited my best friend, and his father and large family for their Christmas to-do. His father is 92, and far more jovial than I remember from my youth. “Take your boys in there to my trophy room,” he suggested. I did. There were many deer antlers on the wall--racks, he called them--and a scoped rifle in a glass case. I do not know what kind of rifle. There was a bunch of food including a tray of buttered corn kernels and what I seem to remember being a tray of meatballs, which seems odd, but none of us ate because our times were all messed up still. I was offered a Miller Lite in a can and drank it gratefully even though I was about to drive us all to the airport. Because hey, such behavior is legal there. My friend’s son showed us pictures on his phone of various dead animals that he had killed over the years. In one there was a giant wild boar on the back of a truckbed, which he kept calling a pig. I was told there was a wild black bear somewhere in Alabama that was caught on some security camera in city limits. “What happened to it?” I asked. No one seemed to know.
In Houston on layover, we were stuck on the tarmac. For eight hours. Again, I am not kidding. Apparently, there was lightning in the vicinity and every time there is a lightning strike, takeoff is delayed 8 minutes. Or something like that. There was a very pretty Mexican girl in a red sweater and jeans next to me who apparently also spoke French. We talked several times over the eight hours, though I did not try to pursue extended conversation. In my younger, unmarried years, I would have. They deplaned us once, then re-planed us. They kept delaying us with excuses, and apologies. At one point the crew was replaced with a new crew, who were mildly more smiley. A very tattooed man with his cat in a cat carrier sat a few rows in front of me, but opted out of the flight when they offered, and left the plane, delaying us further. One woman was forcibly ejected for acting out, and we watched her storm out the plane door, to a fate I can only guess (staying in Houston is a good bet). Eight hours is a damn long time to sit in a plane that isn’t moving, especially when there isn’t even a terrorist with a gun or bomb keeping you there. Anyway we eventually took off (to applause, which I led) and got to LA. When I disembarked, the Mexican girl had gone ahead of me and was standing at the gate waiting for her boyfriend, and when I tried to catch her eye in hopes that maybe there would be a smile of recognition, she did not look at me. Women are interesting creatures and I love them.
In LA because of the 8-hour arrival delay when we were dropped at the Remote Rental Car place it was dark and there was no one there. Metro buses and cars whizzed by dispassionately. When I called the company I got a machine. My wife kept saying it was cold. I called our hotel, and they suggested an Uber, which we ordered, and took us about 30 minutes. The driver, a guy named Marvin, did not speak except in low murmurs but he got us where we wanted to go. We ate at Denny’s beside the hotel and I had the best burger I have had in years there. The waitress brought me a small carafe of coffee and I had four servings in a very satisfying heavy white mug, despite the hour (it was now 11:15 pm). The hotel itself was shabbier than in the photos when I had booked it, and you could look at the carpets and tell thousands of people had trod over them, probably with dirty ass shoes. But the room was roomy and the beds comfortable and the shower powerful and hot. The staff were all very friendly and helpful and female.
The next day across the street to the hotel we saw our first crazy homeless person, a man in what appeared to be velvet overalls who kept screaming at something. My sons were very interested, like whale-watchers who see their first sounding. I managed a refund from the rental and got yet another Uber (driver: Luis, born in Portugal, spent many years on fishing boats) to drive us to a new agency, where we were given a mini-Van, with more dials and buttons.
In LA we did Universal Studios. The backlot tour featured lots of old movies my sons had never seen, and the driver touted television shows I have never watched. The Harry Potter ride is the same as the one in Universal Studios Japan, but Hermione speaks English in the Hollywood version. The Jurassic World ride is splashy and made me colder than I already was. In the provided photo I have my hoodie up and am looking off camera. The lines were painfully long. I ate a hot dog and my sons had tacos with carne asada where the meat to my taste was rather gamey. When I considered buying a Griffindor necktie my wife made several comments that caused me to reconsider not only buying the tie (I did not) but also my maturity level and general life choices. We ate at Bubba Gump shrimp where the gumbo was good though my wife found it overly salty. The table next to us celebrated the birthday of a boy who had long frilly hair and whose brother was extremely ugly and also had poofy hair. Someday perhaps they will identify as female, though perhaps by then the world will refuse to acknowledge this. We were not assigned one waiter but several, which seemed odd. They all introduced themselves by name so I called them by these names, which my son thought was rude of me. My wife had a margarita at every restaurant that served them. The best, she announced, was the pineapple jalapeño one, which I tasted and it was cold and strong.
I drove us by El Coyote, the last restaurant Sharon Tate visited before she was brutally murdered in 1969 by Tex Watson and his crazy cohort. I had planned to go in and eat there, but it seemed ghoulish and I suddenly had a change of heart. I’ve always had a thing for Sharon Tate. We drove up to the Griffith Observatory which reminded me but no one else of Rebel Without a Cause. Natalie Wood died before she reached the age I am now. I remember the morning when I discovered she died—Good Morning America or whatever was announcing it as I got ready for school. I was 13, and it rattled me greatly that she was gone. I still suspect Wagner had something to do with it, that fucker. We had, at last, In and Out burgers, which I had always wanted to try. The fries were underwhelming but the burgers were fine. We walked on the Santa Monica pier which was full of foreigners speaking non-English but was otherwise exactly how I remembered it. I taught my sons the smell of marijuana, which we smelled on a continual basis the entire time we were in LA. I took a photo of Mark Hamill’s star on the walk of fame, a photo I will probably never look at again. Some guy in a terribly put together Chewbacca get-up walked past us. I bought a bright red MAGA hat off a guy on the street for my Harris-supporting friend back in Japan, because I am an asshole. When I told the guy selling the hats this, he threw in a flag of Kamala Harris for free. The man selling the hats was black, and fist-bumped me as I left. Sometimes I love America to the point I feel like weeping. I wish other Americans did. Or maybe my testosterone is waning in my age.
We heard many languages in LA. Many women had far too much plastic surgery, which, for me, is any at all. In one of many lines we stood in, a girl behind us was probably one of the most exquisitely beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen in person. Blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect teeth, a natural, unaffected beauty. She wore some sort of sweater and black yoga pants and sneakers and was with her aunt, probably. I am sometimes reminded in moments like this that really pretty blonde women have an amazing power at that age (mid-20s probably) that will fade eventually, but is mighty when and while they have it. A gift from God. What must it be like in Scandinavia, where blondes are a dime a dozen? Anyway they’d all be taller than me there. On the KTLA news the announcers were also strikingly pretty, but in a too done-up way. Like if you saw them in reality you’d think Wow you spent a lot of time getting ready. At the Lakers/Cavaliers game the Lakers lost, but Austin Reaves sunk 32 points. He looked average height from our seat but is 6’5”. My sons were happy to watch Lebron James and Rui Hachimura. Beers cost 22 dollars. Damn right I bought one.
We saw no celebrities, though my sons thought they saw a famous Japanese person in a donut shop. Speaking of doughnut shops my wife had her first “Hot Now” Krispy Kreme in my hometown. She said it was the best doughnut she had ever had and was outraged that they did not have these in Japan (the hot now versions). I remember a time before they had the Hot Now sign and you just sometimes got freshly made ones. I grew up with a Krispy Kreme next to my elementary school and used to go watch the doughnuts move on the conveyor belt through the glaze. They’re good with hot coffee and very, very sweet. I remember eating a few at a time when younger but couldn’t eat more than one now without feeling diabetes set in.
My parents graves were clean, and the gravestone legible and newish, with both their names and everything filled in. It was, again, an overcast day the day we went, but the small town had only changed slightly--many of the old two-story beautiful homes were still there, probably inherited and for some reason still maintained. I hadn’t bought any flowers as everywhere was still closed on December 26th. So I just stood there. I always wondered and dreaded, before they died, what it would be like when my parents were gone, and now I can’t help thinking that my own sons will have to lose their parents as well, meaning me, me and my wife, who hopefully will outlive me by many years. I wish for a quick death, sudden, shocking maybe but without the long drawn out heaving and gasping that was the fate of my own parents, whom I judge in my adult mind but unquestionably still loved. We are all so careless with one another, really.
There is more to this, but I’m not going to write it. Thanks for getting this far.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
LLMs do Advent of Code 2024
This is a repeat of my experiment from last year with using ChatGPT to solve the Advent of Code problems. Much of the premise is the same and I'm not going to repeat myself explaining what's Advent of Code and why I'm doing this.
Instead I will explain what I did differently this year:
-
Instead of using ChatGPT 4 I used ChatGPT 4o, I still used the paid API version with a command line client instead of paying for the Plus version however, just like last year, youtuber Martin Zikmund did a similar thing using ChatGPT plus so I didn't need to. He also used o1 where possible and it did not make any difference as far as I can tell.
-
A couple of months ago I asked if I should use a different LLM to run this little experiment and I the most suggested alternative was Claude 3.5-sonnet so I did that.
I also stole update the prompt that I used by stealing the one that user @SnapDragon used last year, only changing it a little. This was the prompt I used for Claude:
Are you familiar with Advent of Code? I'd like to see if you can solve one of this year's problems. I'll provide the problem statement and input data. I'd like you think step by step about the problem. At any time you can output code for me to run on the input in python; I'll tell you what the result is, including any debut output. Or you can run it yourself with Code Interpreter. I'll be your interface with the problem site, but I won't help you think about the problem. Does this sound like something you'll be able to do?
The ChatGPT prompt was more or less identical, just with the mention of the Code Interpreter (which I didn't have because it is Plus only).
Claude-3.5-sonnet Results
| Part 1 | Part 2 | notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| day 01 | OK | OK | |
| day 02 | OK | OK | |
| day 03 | OK | OK | |
| day 04 | OK | OK | |
| day 05 | OK | OK | |
| day 06 | OK | OK | |
| day 07 | OK | OK | |
| day 08 | OK | OK | |
| day 09 | OK | OK | Quadratic solution for both parts |
| day 10 | OK | OK | |
| day 11 | OK | OK | |
| day 12 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 13 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 14 | OK | --- | |
| day 15 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 16 | OK | OK | |
| day 17 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 18 | OK | OK | |
| day 19 | OK | OK | |
| day 20 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 21 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 22 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 23 | OK | OK | |
| day 24 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 25 | OK | (note that part 2 of day 25 does not exist) |
Days fully finished: 15 / 25 (excludes the 25th)
ChatGPT-4o Results
| Part 1 | Part 2 | notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| day 01 | OK | OK | |
| day 02 | OK | OK | |
| day 03 | OK | OK | |
| day 04 | OK | OK | |
| day 05 | OK | OK | |
| day 06 | OK | OK | |
| day 07 | OK | OK | |
| day 08 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 09 | FAIL | FAIL | |
| day 10 | OK | OK | |
| day 11 | FAIL | N/A | ChatGPT Plus could solve it |
| day 12 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 13 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 14 | OK | N/A | |
| day 15 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 16 | OK | FAIL | ChatGPT plus could solve it |
| day 17 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 18 | OK | OK | |
| day 19 | OK | OK | |
| day 20 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 21 | FAIL | N/A | |
| day 22 | OK | FAIL | ChatGPT plus could solve it |
| day 23 | OK | OK | |
| day 24 | OK | FAIL | |
| day 25 | OK | (note that part 2 of day 25 does not exist) |
Days fully finished: 11 / 25 (excludes the 25th) Days fully finished, ChatGPT Plus: 14 / 25 (excludes the 25th)
Discussion of the results
I went into this experiment expecting the LLMs to do about as well as last year, that is: finish a 2~4 easy days on the first week and maybe a part 1 here and there during the rest of the month.
The data however proved me wrong, they did a lot better than I expected, especially Claude. Now, there is a snag to this: this year felt much easier than previous years. Quantifying difficulty is always hard, the scatter plot seems to confirm this, as does this image I stole from 4chan which measures the same thing (fill time for the global leaderboard) but in a way that I find clearer.
If we count the number of days the leaderboard filled in under 10 minutes we get this (I excluded 2015 and 2016 because many fewer people participated and day 25th because it's a half day):
| 2017 | 8 |
| 2018 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2 |
| 2020 | 10 |
| 2021 | 8 |
| 2022 | 8 |
| 2023 | 6 |
| 2024 | 13 |
This may be deliberate since this was a 10 year anniversary of AoC. Nevertheless, the improvement is hard to deny: both ChatGPT and Claude could get all the easy problems and a couple of the medium ones, where last year ChatGPT could not even get all the easy ones.
This is enough that it makes me think that if Eric wants to keep the integrity of the global leaderboard intact he should start requiring serious participants to provide livestreamed proof, like they are starting to do in the speedrunning community.
Various notes
- Day 14 part 2 asked to find the first output configuration containing a christmas tree. This is essentially impossible to solve independently for an LLM since the problem didn't even specify what the christmas tree would look like and there are many plausible ways to draw a christmas tree with pixel art. That said human participants faced the same problem and LLMs could have come up with an heuristic to find possible candidates and asked the human in the loop (me) to verify, but they couldn't so I still count it as a failure.
- When Claude tried to use its code interpreter it often started doing it in python, which Claude's code interpreter does not support (it's javascript only). This seems like a piece of jank they should be fixing.
- While the quantitative data does not really support either Claude or ChatGPT being better my subjective impression is that Claude usually got to the solution faster and writing better code (in the few cases where there was a quality difference).
- Difficulty is hard to estimate, day 9 seemed as easy if not easier than day 8 to me and yet it took twice as long for the leaderboard to fill, ChatGPT couldn't finish it and Claude only barely solved it.
- Still speaking of day 9, it was one of the only two non-easy days solved by Claude but this almost a technicality, the program produced by Claude was quadratic garbage and if the input file had been a little bit bigger it would have taken hours for the program to finish.
- Day 15 problem was very very similar to an implementation of Sokoban but with a slightly different rule set. This was fatal to both ChatGPT and Claude. Much like with poker in 2023, the Sokoban attractor was too strong to overcome, they just kept implementing the "no more than one box at a time" rule that does not exist anywhere in the problem's prompt.
- Last year I complained that ChatGPT never attempted to do any kind of debugging. This year I have been proven wrong, for day 5 ChatGPT struggled to get part 1 right and rewrote the program to include debug print statements and eventually figured out how to solve the problem (even though the final code was fairly unreadable).
- Day 17 part 2 required gives you a program (specified as a series of assembly instructions for a made up ISA) and asks you to figure out the input that turns the program into a Quine. Neither LLM could solve however Claude got really close before running into its character limit, this is the last output it produced:
I'm starting to see a pattern! Each loop:
The program starts by setting B to A % 8 Through a series of operations, it manipulates B The program then divides A by 8 (2^3) It outputs the value of B (mod 8) If A is not zero, it jumps back to the start
The program seems to take a number in register A, and output digits from it by repeatedly dividing by 8 and using the remainder in each step to generate output through the B register. Let's try to find a pattern of outputs for some carefully chosen A values:
I don't know if lifting the character limit would make it solve the problem but I admit that this was the most impressed I've been with an LLM ever since ChatGPT 3.5.
- A similar thing happened again with Claude and day 24 part 2.
Happy New Year!
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"You may think certain cases are bullshit, but the plaintiff is still suffering, and I'm saying this as part of the defense bar." (with bonus content)
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"Just Finished The Instigator: How Gary Bettman Changed the NHL and Remade the Game Forever."
Contributions for the week of November 25, 2024
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Contributions for the week of December 30, 2024
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