The major journals have absolutely no accountability. In any other market, if the product doesn't work or harms someone the company goes out of business or the maker is sued. Not so in journals. So, why do we accept it? Because there's no other way for the layman to determine what makes a good professor, because by definition, they are smarter than us (or at least they're supposed to be), and so we (the general public) are not able to tell if they are good at what they do or not.
So - the answer we have is peer review, which is just the foxes guarding the hen house. There's no other solution that's been proposed that makes any sense in a self reinforcing market manner. Having some post-docs suddenly become concerned about this and hire a bunch of undergraduates to start using to comb excel with spreadsheets will be useful until everyone loses interest. The price of a can of Coca-Cola isn't useful until people lose interest - it's market priced by millions of customers at every minute of every day.
Until there's a solution to this problem that makes sense this will keep happening over and over again.
Similar to how charities (ostensibly) can be rated by Charity Navigator, and colleges (ostensibly) can be rated by US News, the credibility of various studies (and the journals that publish them) can be measured.
This is an underrated idea. Putting a very smart and motivated person on the other side of the proble is better than any static set of incentives that can be gamed.
some sort of discount consultant rate might be justified... author pays the reviewers rather than the random publishing fees.... want your paper reviewed, pay $2k
It matters to people who are actually doing science because they replicate findings in their own labs before relying on them. Hopefully they will get control of this problem because it's incredibly wasteful to chase red herrings that were never actually true findings in any lab. Labs that try to stand on previous work without verifying it are standing on a house of cards
> In any other market, if the product doesn't work or harms someone the company goes out of business or the maker is sued.
Not strictly true, here in the UK you wont get refunds for drug treatments that dont work if seeing a private gp (or vet), thats why the NHS exists, its harder to sue the NHS in those conditions.
NICE who decide what drugs to use, is veiled in secrecy unless you can attend one of their public meetings, just like its impossible to attend every court case, its a form of resource burning which only the rich entities can afford.
IF you do challenge any drugs, you'll get passed from pillar to post until you under up in the govt's lap and they make the rules up as they go along, but its very hard to get any recourse unless you can afford expensive lawyers who know the technicalities to use as an approach vector.
This sounds like a puff piece and it's hard to be all that excited about the products that are being touted in the piece -
He decided instead to quit and pursue his idea to start Feasier, a platform that aggregates home furnishing listings from different stores into one place.
So...what's the moat? Why can't anyone build a clone sight and come in with slightly cheaper shipping and undercut his business?
Or this -
Zhu says she is working every day on Maida AI, which automates health care administration tasks like patient intake and note-taking.
From what I know of the current health care tech situation, everything uses EPIC which is terrible technology, but it's entrenched because it follows regulation and probably pays off some senators/regulators/insurance companies - much like every DOD government project. So unless her product can follow every regulation as well as EPIC (it can't) she can't win in an entrenched market that has a moat she can't cross.
I don't doubt there are a bunch of unemployed web developers out there (I'm one), and a lot of VC money that doesn't know what to do after crypto imploded, but these are uninspiring. Of the thousands of web dev companies maybe one will become popular, but it would be from random chance. This just sounds like a bunch of unemployed and desperate people buying lottery tickets, but with computers.
The people who are going to make money are the people who are able to corner the energy market or the server and computation market. The innovations will be from a few brilliant academics who make the next transformer model or the next quantum computing model and so forth, which makes up a few thousand people. The "democratization" of the internet just now means everyone is equally broke. Shit, you can make websites now by drawing them and then having an AI make the code (as edge-case clunky as that is). So anyone with a Bamboo pad and a "million dollar" idea can draw one up and buy a web address.
> So...what's the moat? Why can't anyone build a clone sight and come in with slightly cheaper shipping and undercut his business?
The dumbest dismissals of business ideas always start with this phrase. Moats aren't like some obvious thing where you pull up a ladder and no one can follow you. Usually just having a slightly better UX (or a UX that people are used to) is enough to be a moat. Users latch onto things they have good experiences with.
Of course, if you want to benefit from anticompetitive business practices (outprice competition, drive them out of business, hike prices), rather than value creation, you need a big pull-up-ladder-type moat, but not every company needs to be Uber/Lyft getting in winner-take-all funding wars.
I read a NY Times article by Ted Chiang today in which he made a kind of "stochastic parrot" argument for chatGPT - https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-.... I believe, on the other hand that chatGPT may eventually be able to generate AGI, but that this will occur emergently and spontaneously. In other words, it will be difficult to predict.
One of the conditions for this, is for chatGPT models to start being able to write their own code in order to produce models of themselves that are more accurate and more efficient. Given this ability, and some fitness criteria, genetic algorithms may be used to create new LLMs. This sounds like science fiction, but once the compute requirements come down for these models (by a couple orders of magnitude), I believe this may be possible.
To what extent does your model allow for semantic models to create semantic models that are themselves more efficient in relation to some fitness criteria? Can I tell a model "You (model) I want you to reproduce using interaction with these other models (some collection of other models) and have the child model offspring be more efficient according to this criteria [for example the resultant models will create short stories that are more likely to receive high ratings on a subreddit devoted to short stories]".
You would need to get around the "model pollution" problem in which LLM models pollute the space for which the models generate data because other models are producing web artifacts (Ted Chiang's Xerox of a Xerox problem). I call this the problem of alpha (direct experience). One of the ways I've thought of to fix this is to have models trained on direct user input (such as cell phone video and pictures from a single user) - I have to admit that I got this idea from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (see Gargoyle). If your platform can integrate with visual processing this may have a high information density - object detection in daily videos demonstrating how objects are related to each other in the real world of the user and correlating these into a semantic network.
I'd also suggest that Obsidian integration might be useful.
This is exciting, thanks for making the Fixie SDK public.
I'll believe aliens exist when little green men walk up to me, shake my hand, and start discussing the engineering particulars of faster than light travel. Until then...
If you want to end homelessness in California build affordable housing everywhere and hire the homeless to be go-fors on construction projects.
There is absolutely no reason that there should be sub five story buildings in downtown San Francisco when there are people living on the street.
Imagine if people could start building these cool buildings from AI: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-31/architect... but for large scale residential housing. You could have a whole new generation of architectural firms building the future of urban living.
Personally I'm holding out until 2024 so the Bell Riots can give us the utopia we've all been promised.
Sigh.
I'm not too worried. You'll all be standing out in the breadline with me soon enough. Keep building robots that automate your jobs out of existence. I find it amusing.
I'm homeless and living in the Tenderloin in San Francisco.
People here want you to
- Be in a gang (or a prostitute, thief, ex-con and so forth)
- Be on drugs (or in rehab for drugs)
- Have a mental illness (so you can go to therapy)
- Be disabled
- Find religion
There isn't a position for "I ran out of money and my family wouldn't support me, and at some point finding web development work became too hard as the technology became more complicated." People want you to "get better." I don't do drugs, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't steal or assault anyone.
I just don't have any money.
But people here are morons. They need to have a reason for why someone is poor other than "I'm a person of average intelligence that doesn't know how to find a paying job in this society." I don't want to be psychoanalyzed, be put into rehab, go to church or join any number of the lonely people who have to have a support group because society is awful. I don't have problems other than being poor - if you managed to buy into the crypto ponzi scheme at the right time then no one is asking you to "find god" or "get better".
People are social animals. If you put them in a position where those are the options (jail, crime, drugs, psychoanalysis, religion, disability) they'll take the least unpalatable. There's a whole lot of people who walk around here with canes they don't need because otherwise the San Francisco General Assistance office won't spring for them to have housing. Also known as an apartment with a bed and a door that locks.
If I make more than 1500 dollars I lose my health insurance through Medi-cal.
And I'm no defender of a lot of these people. The bastards that set up tents on the sidewalk and smoke meth are just awful. But on the other hand, I have absolutely no idea how to get a job. None. I've done construction before and all I ended up with was bad memories and scarred hands. I could work "security" by putting on a t-shirt and standing outside a soup kitchen, but that's just bullshit make work the charities give out so the poor can buy shoes and feel special about themselves. Real security jobs outside of bars are a good way to get killed. And that's about it. I'm staying at a homeless shelter and have the clothes on my back so how am I supposed to get a job?
There's your why.
So let me give you a when. When, not if, your industry is automated or the code becomes too complicated for you to understand anymore you'd better have enough savings or a social network so you don't become homeless. Or you'll have to crawl into one of the buckets that allows society to make sense of you.
And today I'm sitting in the San Francisco library looking to make a contribution to a software project for free and I just don't know that I care anymore. And if you tell me it'll get better, then I have to ask if you're about to be laid off or not and what your plans are.
If you check the comment history it is unlikely that anyone here wants to listen to what this person has to say, let alone provide them with work. I have skimmed through a few of the comments and IMO there is nothing in there that warrents the downvotes / dead comments, which appear to not even get replies (tut tut HN, breaking your own "rules" again)
I do wish this person well however, I hope luck smiles down on them soon.
This comment will go the way of the dodo soon enough .!..
:-)
I’m not sure why it’s getting praised. The guy hijacked a thread discussing drug addiction so he could get on a personal soapbox and drone on about his own problems while trying to diminish others.
It seems relevant to me in a discussion of a vaccine to prevent people inadvertently getting addicted to drugs and having their lives spiral out of control for someone to bring up what it's like when you're not addicted to drugs and have your life spiral out of control.
GP mentioned that it's expected he'd be addicted to drugs because then the system would be able to categorize and address his needs better.
It's not a 1:1 match for the article topic, but I come to HN for the comments, especially ones that engage my curiosity, like GP's did.
"The real issue here that people don't seem to want to face is the WHY."
They provided an answer to "why?". I think thats fair. Maybe I am wrong. I checked further on the comment history, it appears to me someone has it out for this person, as the other topics are not soapboxing at all, and most or dead without comments.
Upon second reading, I misinterpreted GP and I don’t think they had any bad intent. So apologies to them for that.
As for the shadowbanning I’m not sure either. It’s not particularly new and like you kinda mentioned they don’t really say anything egregious, at least that I saw. Some accounts seems to be shadow banned at creations and the user doesn’t seem super active, but I’m not sure how all that works under the hood. I guess it’s even possible the GP comment was already dead, and was later vouched.
I've been homeless and I think part of that is just for someone with no problems it doesn't make sense to be inner-urban homeless in these crim-ridden areas. I assume those people are all fucked up for one reason and therefore as a sane person I don't want to be around them.
I had a very strict rule when I was homeless. Stay away from other homeless people. Camp on the edge of town. Ride the bus into rural areas.
How did I get a job with just the clothes on my back? I hitch-hiked to north dakota in the oil fields where a man is a man and they don't give a fuck what you look like. They hired me to do day labor, and once you have enough money for a van or a short stay airbnb it only gets easier from there.
Get the fuck out of tenderloin, and san francisco at all costs. Hitch-hike if you must. If you want guaranteed housing you can also look into doing seasonal harvesting work for fisheries in alaska. They'll pay your flight from seattle and then cover your food/shelter while you're working.
Fishery: paid for transportation to the job, free housing and food on the job, and at the end of it you have a couple grand that hasn’t been blown on anything — free to do whatever you want with.
Tough work. You’re on a boat for 1-2 months. You work 12ish hours a day. If your body is able (or you can make it able), it’s good.
Next up is getting housing and cleaning yourself up for greener pastures. Oil fields is one. Lineman/tower climber is another.
Easy six figures. After a year of doing nothing but work, figure out what you want to do from there.
The work will distract you from your problems, and the change in environment will reset your mindset.
Lots of well-paid trades work in Washington for people that don’t have anything to lose.
I'm sorry for your situation, but you also have to realize, things are partly your fault. You mention you could be a bouncer at a bar, but you would have to go to the gym to develop enough muscle. And possibly start using chemicals to alter your bone density and muscle mass. In your situation, I'd say you have to go "all in" on something, whatever it is. If you just half ass it and complain that the world is against you, you will not go anywhere. That's just how it is.
`And possibly start using chemicals to alter your bone density and muscle mass.` Just when you think you've seen some depraved/inhumane takes you see someone suggest that actually this homeless person deserves to be where they are because they're not risking enough of their health by taking hgh/ped to get a meager paycheck as a bouncer at a bar where they could very well get stabbed or shot providing security for a bunch of tech workers that hate their guts.
` If you just half ass it and complain that the world is against you, you will not go anywhere` This man is homeless what are you talking about?
This isn't all that surprising. I mean, it's surprising a priori, but not post hoc when considering the social culture of the United States.
Construction is a job that you go into if you've been to prison, haven't gone to college, or are an undocumented laborer. It attracts those people who are the least skilled in the country because it's a hard job that's hard on your body, pays little, and is intellectually uninteresting (compared to most college educated middle class jobs). The people who make money in the industry have to go through onerous licensing requirements and have the skills necessary to run their own business and take on the risks of having that business fail, which most people (myself included) don't have. That's managing payroll, licensing, taxation (and avoiding taxation), sales, marketing, and all the rest of it while still being able to be a master plumber or what have you which can take 10 years or more. And even then you can be making 70+ hours a week or have to be on-call for emergencies (as a plumber), only be able to get work during certain times of the year (summer for a large amount of construction), or be away from home for long periods of time (if you have a specialized skill such as oil drilling or specialized skills in setting concrete and so forth and have to travel across the country to where the work is).
I've worked day labor in construction. After only a few months my hands are messed up to the point where some days it hurts to type after longer periods of time. Have you ever had to carry dry wall, lumber or sheet rock for 8 hours a day for minimum wage? It's boring and it hurts.
I'm currently unemployed and homeless. I'd rather be unemployed and homeless than do construction again. A year of that and my body would fall apart.
As a society we've made the industry as unattractive as possible so what do you expect?
So - the answer we have is peer review, which is just the foxes guarding the hen house. There's no other solution that's been proposed that makes any sense in a self reinforcing market manner. Having some post-docs suddenly become concerned about this and hire a bunch of undergraduates to start using to comb excel with spreadsheets will be useful until everyone loses interest. The price of a can of Coca-Cola isn't useful until people lose interest - it's market priced by millions of customers at every minute of every day.
Until there's a solution to this problem that makes sense this will keep happening over and over again.