Zephyr
4d ago
I'd rather be talking to my agent than looking at code.
What type of developer are you if you'd rather be talking than coding? /s
More seriously, the situations I find AI is really useful is when I need some information, but have enough knowledge to fine tune it after the fact. I've tried to use it to write code, and it always produces code that is kind of messy and bad. I asked it to produce some builder interfaces from a set of DTO interfaces, and it would do weird things like put in defaults that I didn't intend, or return the wrong field occasionally*. What worried me about it is that the junior developer I was working with at the time was copy-pasting them into the codebase as is, and didn't have any comprehension about why they wouldn't work.
*For reference, the type of implementation I was talking about would be something like:
interface IAddress { function line1() : string; function line2() : ?string; function city() : string; function province() : ?IProvince; function country() : ICountry; function zipCode() : IZipCode; }
interface IAddressBuilder { function setLine1( string $line1 ) : static; function setLine2( ?string $line2 ) : static; // you get the picture }
It would give me something like:
interface IAddressBuilder { function setLine1( string $line1 ) : static; function setLine2( string $line2 = '' ) : static; function setLCountry( ICountry $country ) : static; function setProvince( string $province ) : static; }
Which was just not very useful.
Zephyr
5d ago
I really wish I could see in AI what other people do; I recently tried to use Cursor at the recommendation of a senior developer, and I found that it was actively trying to force me down the wrong path when I was coding (I had to write a one-off web page that was compatible with some very ancient technology, and it kept trying to suggest CSS rules and autofilling text that made no sense for the use case). This has been a very consistent experience for me whenever I try to use AI for literally anything.
It's possible that I'm just not very good at prompting it, but I find that every time I start relying on it for anything, it is subtly wrong in ways that are frustrating to track down and repair.
Zephyr
5d ago
I think you could honestly do it much more easily then that; for example, you could keep all of your existing assignments, but simply tell people that you will be asking some number of random students a question about their essay/assignment/whatever at the start of the class in which you return their assignments. There's been a recent study which shows a lot of people do not retain a lot of information when they use AI to write essays for them. This would catch a good chunk of AI submitted assignments with very minimal work.
If they "cheat" and use AI anyways, but memorize enough of their assignment to answer a question? Mission accomplished; the nominal goal is to teach students the information, so we shouldn't actually care about how they learn it.
Zephyr
7d ago
I believe that most people don’t actually think of Trump as a god emperor, but do be wary - every insane position on the left also started with “no one taking it seriously” (usually through being “just on tumblr” or “just some kids on campus”). Some people are definitely taking it too seriously, even accounting for the lizard man principle.
Zephyr
8d ago
The benefit of fortune telling is that it lets you understand yourself if you are too clever by half.
There’s a strategy you can use to make a decision where you flip a coin, and (while it is midair) think about what you want it to land on. Tarot is the same thing, but is complicated enough that you can’t outsmart yourself in the way you could with a coin toss.
To take a very simple example: if you draw the fool as your “problem” card, and have the upright 4 of swords as your “obstacle”, it can represent quite a few things.
The fool represents the start of a new journey, or it can represent naïveté, or it can represent letting go of problems. The 4 of swords can represent interpersonal conflict, intellectual conflict, or someone who limits your potential. So valid readings of the two cards are that you should forgive someone as they don’t understand what you are trying to do, or that you should avoid someone who is making your life more challenging, or that someone has your best interests at heart and you should reconsider a decision.
A good fortune teller will present the card meanings so that someone listening can make their own choices based on what they actually feel.
Also, if you are a dude - I mentioned once that I knew tarot to one of my female coworkers, then spent the next 3 months doing readings for a huge number of women my age, so…
Zephyr
9d ago
Sex used to create the expectation of romantic exclusivity, but we kind of bulldozed those expectations. If you want that, make it a condition of having sex with the guy (and if he doesn’t want that, move on).
Zephyr
11d ago
With a mental illness you can’t.
This should really be “With a mental illness, it is much more challenging not to.” I don’t give a lot of sympathy to people who use excuses like BPD or autism or whatever else to be a jerk.
Some people are dramatically helped by medication (see using Ritalin to make it easier to have executive function with AHDH) - the consequences of not having executive function should not be inflicted on others. If you struggle to remember to (for example) bring both children to school, then put a note on the doorknob, or the coffee machine, or wherever else you will definitely look. Too often, I see people who claim (for example) that they have to make a mess for their partner to clean up, but somehow the negative consequences of their actions never seem to land on themselves.
Zephyr
16d ago
For what it’s worth, I work in industry, and until you mentioned which industry you were in, I was wondering if one of my coworkers had found this site.
Timesheets are the worst.
Zephyr
16d ago
If it would help, I do code reviews as part of my job, and I have a very similar tech stack to what you do. If it would be something you’d be interested in, I’d be willing to take a look at some code you’ve written and give you my assessment of where you’re at and where you can improve at.
Zephyr
18d ago
As far as I can tell, he barely spoke with her - it is possible he heavily flirted with her when I excused myself to the washroom, but it seems unlikely with his partner there.
Zephyr
18d ago
Okay, just because everyone is focusing on this part - I have a girlfriend now, who I love very much. At the time I knew this person (we’ve fallen out of contact), I did not.
Zephyr
18d ago
Ehh, I disagree - he has a much higher success rate with women (I can say earnestly that I have never had a woman give me her number unsolicited, while I’ve seen him get a number from a waitress while out with his girlfriend).
Zephyr
18d ago
Mild spoilers (I believe it is mentioned in the first or second book, and confirmed in 3): There are locations where the spren won’t show up, even if people are feeling the emotions.
I really appreciated you writing this - it feels like it matches up well to my own experience.
There are two things I’d add on to this. First, I think one major problem that we are seeing with a lot of…everything… is that the ability for people to extract more “value” out of the average individual. You touched on this with your point about the housing crisis, but I think it applies to more than just that; landlords take a higher percentage of your income, taxes eat away at more, income inequality leads to your boss making more off of your back, and working harder is not really something that gets you promoted anymore.
Which leads me to my second point - I think the unfairness of, well, everything is one of the major drivers towards people being unhappy with buying into the system. I’ve mentioned this in my past comments, but I recently bought into the property market. I am the owner of a two bed two bath condo, which cost me $500k CAD. My parents, at my age, bought a 5 bed 3 bath house for (inflation adjusted) $350k CAD. My boss works about 20 hours a week, and makes around $200k a year - I work overtime in a leadership position for $85k a year. I spent a very long time unable to get a girlfriend, while I know a guy who’s primary profession seems to be beating his girlfriends have both a steady long term partner and several affairs going on at a time (see Radicalizing the Romanceless and Untitled). Edit: People seem to be focusing on this part, so I’ll say that this was intended past tense - I have a girlfriend now, and I am very happy with her. You do not need to provide me with advice on this front.
I don’t know that I have a solution - all I can say is thank you for putting into words something that has been frustrating me for a long time.
Zephyr
21d ago
You misunderstand - I’m not claiming that jobs are a fixed number, but I am claiming that they do not track 1-to1 with population change.
To take an absolutely toy example - say 1 farmer can serve a population of up to 50. If you have an initial population of 20, you will have 1 farmer. If you add an additional 25 people to the population, you will still only need a singular farmer. If 5 of the people added are only qualified to do farming, you will have fierce competition for the farming job, as the population can’t support 5 farmers.
What I am saying is happening here is that there is a percentage of the population that is currently employable as manual labour. The manual labour jobs are kept cheap by having this population supplemented by immigrant labour. Removing the immigrant population that is currently taking these roles reduces the number of total jobs, but by less than the number of immigrants removed.
Even were the number of jobs 100% tied to the population (which I dispute, based on the percentage of the population that is NEET), you’d still see a temporary advantage for the workers - jobs are sticky. Picture it like pulling a bucket of pudding out of a bathtub - the area where you pulled out the bucket will temporarily have a void, which slowly gets replenished by the area around it, until the entire tub is back and level. This would give employees in that market tremendous leverage, as they can name their price while the employers are recovering from the shock.
Zephyr
21d ago
Unless you are saying that there is an exactly 1-1 correspondence between jobs and potential employees, I don’t believe this is accurate. I don’t think you’ve done the work to prove that there would be 500 jobs for 500 employees if there were 30 jobs for 30 employees.
Zephyr
21d ago
Supply and demand?
If there are 500 employees who can each do any of 30 jobs, then the employees will need to distinguish themselves from the others in order to get the position. If there are 3 employees who can each do any of the 30 jobs, then the jobs will need to distinguish themselves from the others in order to get an employee. Pay and benefits are excellent ways to do that.
Zephyr
21d ago
Speed limits are maximums; in theory if someone is going 60km/h in an 80km/h, you are allowed to pass them.
You can also think of it as a common knowledge problem; if everyone knows that they're supposed to be in the left lane if they're fast, and the right lane if they're slow, it can reduce the number of accidents by simply reducing the number of lane changes (if I know I'm 'slow', I'm going to use the left lane to pass extremely slow traffic, but otherwise stay in the right; if someone knows they're 'fast', they're going to stay in the left lane, and use the right lane occasionally to pass slow traffic).
Zephyr
25d ago
So I walk, cycle, and drive about equally whenever I’m going someplace, and I’d agree with you entirely.
As a driver, I get most annoyed with cyclists, then buses, then other cars, then pedestrians, in that order. Cyclists tend to weave in and out of traffic and go slowly enough to make it unsafe to be anywhere near them.
As a pedestrian, I get most annoyed by cyclists, then other pedestrians, then any vehicles. Cyclists jump up onto the sidewalk and speed by at what feels like breakneck speeds without giving me any space, and I’ve been struck by cyclists who don’t understand things like crosswalks numerous times.
As a cyclist, I am most annoyed by other cyclists, followed by vehicles, followed by pedestrians. Other cyclists will either be biking incredibly slowly (which is challenging to safely pass in a bike lane) or instead speed by me unsafely in said bike lane (I’ve actually been shoved over by a cyclist who forced me into the curb). I do recognize the irony in my complaints, to be fair.
Zephyr
26d ago
My apologies, for whatever reason I thought they were a type of raccoon (and I have no excuse for thinking that, this was resolved prior to my birth).
I mean, if you want to make the overarching category “women,” but allow for the subcategories to be defined as “cis” and “trans,” I think that’s acceptable, as long as people can use this as an actual distinguishing factor (cis-women only bathrooms, attracted to cis-women, cis-women only sports, etc.)
Even under that mindset, I’m not sure I agree with you saying that trans women are a type of woman; in a lot of ways, they are much closer to men (larger, stronger, have traditionally male interests). The only reason we’re calling them a subset of women at all is that is the term that the activists coined. Do you consider sea horses to be a type of horse? Or panda bears to be a type of bear (edit: I have been informed that they are a type of bear; pretend I said “Koala” instead)? We could easily have said the term is “trans men” (for MTF, as they are a man who is transitioning).
The problem is that the cis/trans distinction matters a lot for most people - it isn’t like green vs red apples, more like peanut vs cow butter.
Conservatives in Canada have a really really hard time not being seen as the most regressive of the US republicans (and it doesn’t actually even matter what they say or do). There was an expression that went something like “When America sneezes, Canada catches a cold.”
I know intelligent people who were absolutely convinced the CPC was coming for gay rights and their uteruses (the leader of the CPC grew up with two dads). Combine that with our culture of TDS and you are going to have people doing anything to keep the CPC out.
Somewhat interestingly, the CPC actually got a fairly respectable percentage of the vote (around 41.5%, last time I checked) - it isn’t uncommon for the CPC to win with a percentage around 37%. Most of the reason they lost was because the NDP absolutely torpedoed their party, and most of those votes went Liberals.
Edit, because I just saw this today. https://torontosun.com/news/national/donald-trump-brags-that-he-cost-pierre-poilievre-federal-election. Take it with a bit of a grain of salt, as the Toronto Sun is definitely right wing (and honestly veers a bit hard in that direction for me personally), but it implies that Trump, at least, believes he did.
So we don’t actually know that they reduce overdoses either. There is a plausible mechanism for them to do so, but there are also a few mechanisms in which they could not.
I would also caution in believing that the three items in your list can exist simultaneously - although there is no physical reason that they cannot, there are political reasons they will not, and that is much harder to change.
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