Here are just a few examples of how I have used them.
My fountain pen stopped working, so I tried the common solutions recommended, but they did not solve the problem. Claude told me to try using a mixture of window cleaner and water. It worked! (The solution must have been in the corpus used to train Claude.)
I switched from W2 to consulting, but I didn't know anything about taxes. ChatGPT gave me the right recommendation, saving me hours of research.
I wanted to evaluate the quality of some shirts I have, so I used ChatGPT to estimate stitches per inch and the quality of the buttonholes and other details.
I planned my diet using ChatGPT. I had it calculate calories, macros, and deficit. Could I have done it without an LLM? Of course, but it made the planning much faster.
"Asking why smart people aren't happier is a bit like asking why people who can jump high aren't more empathetic. There's no direct link between the two"
- I disagree. If we consider happiness, as we should, as something that can be achieved and not simply granted (for example, the ability to walk is granted, it is not something that humans, apart from pathologies and special cases, have to develop through conscious effort), there should be a positive correlation between intelligence and happiness.
To jump higher than you currently can, assuming there is no coach to develop a program, you need to understand what the limiting factors are and train to improve the functioning of the “mechanism,” for example, by losing weight, increasing maximum and explosive strength, using the correct jumping technique, etc.
I believe that often the most intelligent people tend to enjoy thinking more than doing, and thinking too much does not lead to being happier or jumping higher. The limiting factor, more often than not, is not thinking, assuming sufficient intelligence, but the execution part.
I remember reading on Twitter a few years ago about an academic researcher explaining how they had come to the conclusion that exercise would improve their quality of life. They cited a series of articles, reasoned in terms of life expectancy and biomarkers, and concluded that exercise would be a net positive factor in their lives. A lot of neurotic reasoning that needs to quibble over the obvious before taking action.
I agree with this. I quibble with the wording "enjoy" thinking. It's probably also true, but it's not always the enjoyment of it, but a general propensity to overthink or dig into the weeds more, with the resulting less actual doing.
And if you dig into the weeds enough, you can find alternatives and counterarguments which can lead to analysis paralysis.
I add that most problems are solved, assuming possessing the average (maybe even sub-average) intelligence needed to execute on them.
Think about weight loss: it's a solved problem, except in extremely rare cases of particular pathologies. Or think about being more attractive to the people we want to attract.
But you can't help but notice that the smartest people are the ones who invoke the laws of thermodynamics and the problems that arise from them, that a calorie is not a calorie in humans, for example, instead of simply eating less, as many less intelligent people intuitively know they should do, and do.
The most intelligent are those who refer to the findings of evolutionary biology, or to largely irrelevant social trends and mores, when pondering why they cannot get laid, instead of working to be more assertive, confident, outgoing, and fit, as the less intelligent are more likely to do, without thinking about it too much.
Or the endless conversations and debates, mostly online because in real life basically nobody cares, about God and religion and atheism, leading, as usual, to nowhere, while the less intelligent intuitively believe or not and that works for them.
As usual, there are selection effects at play, and we notice what we want to notice, ignoring, for the most part, other portions of the distribution of outcomes.
Nowadays, it is fashionable to say "you can just do things". And what some of the intelligent people miss is that they can just be happy. "But how can I be happy if nobody looks at me?" -- See above.
I can tell you I do not enjoy thinking. I hate it. It is a compulsion that I cannot avoid. I know that it makes most interactions in my life more difficult. I know it's a source of unhappiness. I cannot stop thinking.
I want to do. Not think. I fail to do. I think about failure.
Two things. First, not all smart people are overthinkers and not all overthinkers are smart.
Second, I find that a great way to change one's self-damaging behavior is, rather than the therapy that is often recommended, to try to be as much as possible, relatively speaking, in the company of people who behave the way we would like to.
For the person who wants to exercise, but for some psychological hang-ups, can't, the company of people who exercise tends to be much more effective than finding out the root causes of the behavior. The same for thinking too much, eating too much, not being able to talk to other people.
Meditation teaches that your thoughts are uncontrolled expressions of your subconcious; as are your worries, your fears, your anxieties.
To meditate is not to stop thinking thoughts, but to observe them as they spontaneously appear, and - just as quickly - disappear. To recognize that you are not the thinker of your thoughts. To view them from a place of detachment and curious observation, instead of a place of investment and worry.
May I recommend an alternative to Eastern Meditation practices?
The alternative is Autogenic Training (AT), a method invented by Dr. Schultz a century ago. It is a well-tested scientific approach, and the outcomes are generally very positive, if not life-changing.
AT does not involve interpreting obscure texts written thousands of years ago in other languages and referring to ways of life that have long been forgotten.
AT does not require silent retreats or attending workshops and seminars at the end of which you are more confused than before. It is simple and just requires following the steps outlined by Schultz and his students.
I am surprised that it is not popular at all, but its strengths are also its weaknesses. Most people long for the esoteric and unexplained, while AT is clear, easy to understand and practice.
Like people refer to meditation and don't explain all the process involved in one of the traditions because there is a wealth of information available, I would much prefer to answer to specific questions on the practice instead of copying and pasting from Wikipedia, which I am doing now.
"The technique involves repetitions of a set of visualisations accompanied by vocal suggestions that induce a state of relaxation and is based on passive concentration of bodily perceptions like heaviness and warmth of limbs, which are facilitated by self-suggestions.Autogenic training is used to alleviate many stress-induced psychosomatic disorders"
The formulas are six: heaviness, warmth, heart beating regularly and strongly, calm breath, warm solar plexus, and cool forehead.
There's no vocal suggestion (the Wikipedia article is wrong in that regard), the formulas are repeated silently. It's a much more effective practice of the hocus-pocus that is often meditation of the Eastern tradition, especially the bastardized variety adopted in the West, and there are plenty of books and papers available on the results of scientific studies that measure the effect on soma and psyche of AT.
I am interested in languages and have learned a few. It takes time to learn a language. When asked how much time, one can look at the estimates from the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center on how long it takes to become proficient in a language, starting from an English-speaking background.
Those estimates sound reasonable and make sense. Then you travel the world and see people learning languages much faster, and others never learning.
I was listening to the audiobook of the book "The Empire of the Summer Moon", and it was reported that Bianca “Banc” Babb (age 10, to be fair), learned the "[she] learned the [Comanche] language quickly and so well that, after only seven months of captivity (which she believed was two years), it was hard for her to “get my tongue twisted back so I could talk English again to my folk and my friends.”
She was 10, and we know that the ability to acquire languages decreases with age, at least until puberty. But she was not a 3-year-old kid, and we would expect a 10-year-old to take longer to pick up a language so different than the one she was using up to that time.
As we know, there is huge variability in aptitude; nothing surprising there.
But there is also variability in confidence in oneself, and there is variability in trying to be better as quickly as possible, using our aptitudes and confidence and effort to their full extent.
So, instead of saying, on average it takes x time to do this, when there are no physical/physiological limits involved, we should strive, if we want, if our interests and needs are there, to see how fast we can go, instead of accepting the average as our destiny manifested.
I was laid off, and only a couple of my former colleagues reached out to me. People I had talked to for years and helped, some significantly, didn't even send me a message.
Consider that at one point, I had put myself out there to ask for more promotions and higher compensation for my colleagues.
I didn't feel particularly offended, but in my next job, I will definitely not help my colleagues as much and will think about myself 99% of the time.
It's disappointing to see grown adults who are so fearful, ungrateful, and reveal themselves to be rather miserable people, but that's the way the world works.
Funny thing is that i had a negative experience helping someone who was laid off. I reached out, offered help, provided excellent reference for them, covid hit and hiring froze for that particular company, followed up a few times, ghosted, never talked again.
It's you last phrase, that's the way the world and people works. It's people with their own troubles, insecurities and character. The most important bit is be yourself. If you are "built" to think and help others, keep doing it. If not, whatever.
I don't think there have ever been any particular incentives to become a full-time writer. Most of us have read articles or books (Graydon Carter's) that have recently talked about the huge sums paid to some journalists 20 or 40 years ago, but the ratio of aspiring writers to well-paid writers has always yielded very high numbers.
It's the same in all creative professions, and even more so for those that grant visibility. I think most would be fine considering this activity as a part-time commitment, instead of chasing something that has little chance of coming true. Of course, you can't be a part-time athlete and aspire to greatness, but I don't think the same applies to writing, for example.
Now, we are in the realm of anecdotes, but the novel “Il Gattopardo,” which I consider to be among the top three Italian, and perhaps European, novels of the 20th century, was written by an amateur who did not even send the manuscript out to be considered for publication. It was discovered after Tomasi di Lampedusa's death by Giorgio Bassani, a talented writer who did not write full-time and who had incredible success with some fantastic novels, such as "Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini" (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis).
The post-humous discovery and promotion of previously unknown works by unpopular Authors has always represented a major component in 19th-21st Century Publishing.
John Kennedy Toole is probably the exemplar of this, in that 'A Confederacy of Dunces' was unpublishable during his lifetime, but became the picaresque national narrative after a large push by Walker Percy to get it published a decade after Toole's death. It ended up winning the Pulitzer the following year.
Stoner, a novel by the American writer John Williams, is a lesser known but no less apt example. In 1963 Williams' own publisher questioned Stoner's potential to gain popularity and become a bestseller. It sold fewer than 2000 copies, and was out of print a year later.
After subsequently being discovered and championed by literary luminaries like John McGahern, it was republished and translated into several languages, selling hundreds of thousands of copies across 21 Countries. By 2013, the book had achieved international best-seller status. I'd urge anyone with a love for academia, literature, or modern bildungsromans to give it a go. To me it's effectively 'American Gothic - The Novel'
Society's desire for regulation of behavior ebbs and flows.
Not limited to the US:
prostitution was legal and then it was not and now there is a laissez-faire of some kind in some places, in others there are brothels, in others you cannot, strictly speaking, but in practice it is whatever;
The consumption of alcohol was initially allowed, then forbidden, and later allowed again. Nowadays, some "thought leaders" are again somewhat pushing, if not for regulation, for public condemnation;
Abortion, same-sex sexual relationships, gambling, drugs, they all follow a similar pattern of regulation-liberalization-regulation- (random order), answering to "society" or some prominent voices within or the ever fleeting vibes of the times.
In other words, it does not make, strictly speaking, sense that certain behaviors are regulated or prohibited, and others are not.
I don't know how long people will be willing to pay so much for something that is complex and expensive to develop and test, but extremely cheap to produce, to the point that we are talking about a few dollars a week when buying peptides on the gray market.
In terms of safety, empirically, it seems extremely safe for a molecule with such a strong and reliable effect. I bought some peptides and the most frustrating part of the whole endeavor was buying 5 ml syringes: local pharmacies require a prescription, but I managed to buy them on Amazon.
When something is so easy to produce and distribute, we will have many more people buying peptides on the gray market (cheaper) and syringes on Amazon (faster).
I expect there will soon be a crackdown on the gray market, or at least an attempt at one, but how effective can the government be when no one has ever said, “I can't find cocaine tonight”?
I am referring to the gray market: you buy the peptide in powdered form, reconstitute it using bacteriostatic water, store it in the fridge, and inject once a week. The protocols are well known.
Some people titrate (adjust the dose up every two weeks), others stay at the same dose as the initial one (1-2 mg per week), and some fit people use half of the initial dose (0.5 mg per week). Retatrutide/GLP-3, which has yet to be approved for human use (FDA is expected to give the thumbs up by the end of the year), is used, I'd venture to guess, by millions of people at this point.
I don't think that the "I drink wine because it is healthy", is the main driver of people's drinking--not even the fifth.
After all, I have yet to see a sober person picking up drinking wine because it is good for their health.
Let's have a sober conversation on this: I drink a glass or half a glass of wine most nights because I like it.
I think some people who like wine, would drink less often if they considered it bad for you. But since "it's good" you might as well drink every night.
I have never heard of them, those are the mythical beings nobody has ever seen.
If it were true, the opposite would be likely true as well (I don't like red wine, but I drink if because it is good for my health).
The negative effects one could operate on are putting on weight, not sleeping as well at night, bad breath, sleepiness, but not a fear-mongering article in which it is said that any amount of alcohol increases the risk of dementia.
I am talking about a glass of wine; if the current regime is a bottle of wine a day, the whole equation changes.
It's the same as cigarette taxes, abortion laws, and so on. People claim nobody changes their mind because of it, but statistically the impact is significant.
You cannot compare the cigarette tax to a study saying that even minimal alcohol consumption increases the risk of dementia. If you increase the price of wine 5x, I am sure fewer people would drink, but that's a very wild extrapolation, context-wise, of this conversation.
The same applies to abortion laws: not even in my wildest dreams would I compare their effects on abortion rates to the effects on behavior that the results of the study discussed in this thread would cause.
I guess I was imprecise with my language and did not think about the father-in-law effect. He surely responded extremely quickly to the study just published. However, I would advise waiting for further studies, replications, etc.
Let me rephrase it: I doubt that the results of this study will change the minds of a significant number of people who enjoy drinking a glass of wine every now and then.
It is even more worrying that what is defined here as "growth", and in other contexts can be interpreted as "quality", when absent or reduced, leads to a vicious cycle of ever-decreasing quality over time.
Contemporary novels, especially those depicting modern times, are mostly terrible. I recently read a review of one such modern novel in the Financial Times—-the review was very promising—-and decided to buy and read it. Meanwhile, I am listening to audiobooks of classic, mostly forgotten novels from the last 100 years in my native language.
What a difference! One could say that there is a selection effect at work, and that would be fair, but the prose, ideas, and creativity are of such superior quality in those classics compared to modern novels that I wonder how and why people read them. Some of the classics are certainly dated, but you can still understand their purpose, their vision.
I see the same phenomenon in music and movies, most of which are pseudo-creative works designed to make money in the short term. Movies and music that is quickly forgotten, shared on social media for a couple of weeks and then gone, forever.
Although it may be natural to say “kids these days,” I have the impression that the easiest fruits to pick in terms of creativity have been picked in the last 100-150 years, during which more people have participated in creative fields, and in the end, there is not much else to say or experiment with. I mean, one of the most popular film genres today is the biopic, which often features people who are still alive or have recently passed away. In these films, screenwriters and directors sometimes feel the need to tweak certain facts and timelines to make the whole endeavor a little more creative.
I recently commented on a video in which one of today's most popular singers did not sing during their concert, but simply danced (badly, half-naked) with playback doing 90% of the work. Some were surprised by my astonishment, saying that this is how concerts by these new artists are today. That's the vicious circle: people don't even expect singers to sing anymore.
Technology, on the other hand, continues, at least for now, to push the boundaries.
In the moment, you can be easily mistaken that something is good, or the best even if the marketing team of that something is really going hard at your wallet. But the only way, and they know it too well, to assess quality is to simply...wait and see later.
In fact, I wrote about the selection effect, but that "it was better before" is not holding up in my example, at least the one I had in mind.
Some decades in the past were not particularly good in terms of literary output (I am very familiar with literature in my native language and know much more than average in two or three other languages), but the last decade has been incredibly poor. And I suspect that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find original ideas. As time goes by, the average technical competence of artists almost inevitably increases, but the same cannot necessarily be said for creativity, for example.
>And I suspect that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find original ideas.
That is a bias in itself, as originality should naturally grow with the number of people alive. The best time to catch one in a million ideas should be when we are more and more billions, no ?
No, they are different things. Physicists of today are technically much better than those of 50 years ago; basketball players, soccer players, musicians, they are all better, on average, than their colleagues of decades ago, for obvious reasons.
I was imprecise when using the term "creativity"--what I wanted to say is that the human experience is varied but not infinite. How many more Mission Impossible, special agent, whatever, can be perceived as "original"?
The interesting part of the James Bond movie is who is the next Bond, the costume, maybe the Bond-girl or the location, but the plot is of very little interest; it is all already watched.
I have seen 2,000 kidnappings in movies, one million people dying in all sorts of ways (and never seen a shooting irl), I don't know how many affairs, failed marriages, aliens coming and going I have watched; it becomes increasingly difficult over time to propose plots and ways of narrating that don't evoke a "already seen" feeling.
After the peplum films of the 1950s, there was a hiatus in terms of ancient Rome settings. Then came Gladiator, Rome, and Spartacus, which were exciting. Now, when you watch Gladiator 2, it feels like you've seen it before, at least to me. Maybe if they stopped making these films for a couple of decades, they would become novel again.
The comment is fairly condescending, and I don't think it is up to the standards of HN.
Of course, you may like whatever you want, but if you compare Pink Floyd and Zeppelin to the current landscape, I don't think we find an equivalent quality and vision today. And not because current musicians (outside the playback- and autotune-heavy artists of today) are bad, but because of the hanging fruit I was referring to.
Movies today? Books? I am not finding great quality, but it is possible that, compared to others, I have a more refined palate.
But since we don't know where those false negatives are, we want radiologists.
I remember a funny question that my non-technical colleagues asked me during the presentation of some ML predictions. They asked me, “How wrong is this prediction?” And I replied that if I knew, I would have made the prediction correct. Errors are estimated on a test data set, either overall or broken down by groups.
The technological advances have supported medical professionals so far, but not substituted them: they have allowed medical professionals to do more and better.
Here are just a few examples of how I have used them.
My fountain pen stopped working, so I tried the common solutions recommended, but they did not solve the problem. Claude told me to try using a mixture of window cleaner and water. It worked! (The solution must have been in the corpus used to train Claude.)
I switched from W2 to consulting, but I didn't know anything about taxes. ChatGPT gave me the right recommendation, saving me hours of research.
I wanted to evaluate the quality of some shirts I have, so I used ChatGPT to estimate stitches per inch and the quality of the buttonholes and other details.
I planned my diet using ChatGPT. I had it calculate calories, macros, and deficit. Could I have done it without an LLM? Of course, but it made the planning much faster.