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Interesting. I think this also explains in part why I prefer CDs to a streaming service for listening to music.

Would you side with the adjacent statement "expertise is not the bottleneck"? Didn't we recently discuss "LLMs reward expertise"?[1]

I suspect Discovery Loop will have to hire experts in each area they are targeting, to supervise and prompt their system effectively, much like the Terence Tao conversation with ChatGPT the OP cited[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161518 [2] https://www.seangoedecke.com/llms-reward-expertise/


I did not intend to imply that AI is not an accelerator, but am implying that there is a last mile that it is not equipped to address, at least not without robotics.


Article looks substantially AI written, and I find it difficult to get past that, especially on a topic like ethics[1]. We already have the following guideline for comments:

"Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans."

I for one will value a similar guideline for submissions. Maybe we can have a poll. @dang.

[1]maybe an AI written article is fine if it is e.g. documentation for some new gadget.


How is the average person supposed to know if an article is AI generated or not?

I've seen HNers accuse content of being AI... that was written in the 2015-2017 era. So we seem to be rather poor judges of authenticity.


How about speed and speedometers in cars? For some reason I prefer digital readouts of speed while I prefer analog faces for watches/clocks.


Well, maybe because digital is better at showing small differences in this case? Like on a 50kmh road, dropping below 50 is quite noticeable in digital, less so with a line above or below another line.

But for the revs, I think it's quite clear that the analog is better.

Maybe one way to put it would be how important an exact value is? For the speed, it is. For revs, the relative value and its change is much more important and humans track movement much better.


It’s because speedometers aren’t showing a fraction of a whole. Analog clocks work by showing how far through the minute/hour/12 hour period you are. Speedometers are just sticks pointing at numbers. Analog speedometers do however do a better of representing your acceleration than digital ones because the speed of the dial does show acceleration.


> They are not vocal because any political activism is not encouraged in China . Check jack ma story .

This is an under-rated comment. "Nice" seeming places in Asia might be so because the governments tightly control the narrative and brook no dissent. Citizens end up minding their own business and become apolitical. Society looks neat and organized; but if you don't conform, you get hammered down.


This is true, but of course ignores what happens historically when these societies open up more. They tend to get exploited.

Places like China, Vietnam etc. don't yet have institutions strong enough to withstand (Western) meddling. So they can either be stable and relatively prosperous, or (in their mind), poor and open.

If you go by example of India, China seems preferable.

The sad part is that in the West, instead of offering a good counterexample, we're increasingly 'inspired' i.e. Assange, Snowden, chat control etc. while lacking even the historical justification for doing so and having worse infrastructure.


Yeah, that's what dictators explain, different cultural references . Guess what, there are several countries that revert their democratic processes, because of china tech and their success. This is a real path towards absolutely crazy people like putin with unlimited power due to ai.


For what is worth, I don't think Russia is on the same economic success path as China, so I don't think the argument there is remotely convincing. I am not saying it's the right argument, I am saying the argument might work on a large chunk of the population if their standard of living is better than it was in colonial times.


I do not know what fraction of LLM-processed messages are due to posters not being confident in their written English. To the extent that it is meaningful, we can

a) be welcoming and indicate that we're OK with broken English (content and intent typically do get through), and/or

b) allow posting in languages other than English (does this even work right now?).

Above probably ahead of its time, but thought I'd just make the suggestion.


I doubt that we'd do (b) (though maybe? who knows) - but I agree completely with (a)!


A lawyer told me they might have felt they had no choice because enforcing a no-AI policy might be impractical.


Maybe we can distinguish craftmanship from creativity. This case can then be cast as one of deploying creativity without embodying the traditional craftmanship (ability to play guitar, sing low notes). I don't see that as illegitimate, so long as no false credit is taken about the said guitar playing, low note singing.

Can an artist be good if they can't draw a good circle by hand? Yes. Except they can't take credit for the goodness of circles that appear in their work, if not drawn by them.

[Edit: "responsibility" -> "credit"]


I think it’s also potentially a sense of taste, like being a music producer vs a music creator.

When AI art was nascent and stable diffusion came out, I put probably 1000 hours into really getting good at using it. I like to compare it to picking up pretty seashells on the sand. When working with those old models where many results were terrible, the prompt was akin to driving to a beach you know has seashells, then generating 100-200 pictures on an A100 was like combing through the beach to see if you find any good ones. Finally you could clean up the couple few that were real gems and get something that looked nice. It may not be artistry, but that doesn’t mean it has zero value at all.

Although let’s be real, most people aren’t going to make a living being a beach comber looking for pretty things that washed up on the shore, when even a kid can do it.


Her recent article about her illness and how she lived through it was quite touching and very sad. On the New Yorker, and posted on HN[1], though it did not get much discussion here then.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024709


Music is an interesting case. You can't slow down the consumption of music (you have to let it play at the speed the performer intended), but you can dial up the attention you give it. Listening with headphones, eyes closed, and phone+doorbell etc. switched off would be close to max. Sitting at a live concert (I am thinking classical) is up there too, because you've given yourself permission to not think of/work on anything else in that time. For music, we can say that the default settings are too LOW.

And similar to the point OP made, you get more out of it when you attend more closely. And similarly, most music does not withstand this level of scrutiny.


I've taken the time to rebuild a large music collection locally. I've adopted every CD collection my friends and family have set aside to rust. It's immensely satisfying to scroll a gigantic list of 40,000 tracks and just pick whatever feels good, knowing I'm not contributing to a profile on my listening habits and that the file will instantly play flawlessly.

I have some excellent garage band CDs that probably have two or three copies still in the wild at most. Unfortunately sometimes the 25 year old burned CDs are missing the TOC data, but even the recovery process is satisfying.

(Same with the DVD collections.)


You certainly do not need to play music at the speed the performer intended! There are whole genres (and subgenres) based on this. :) Personally, I have found that slowing a familiar piece down by ~5% tricks my brain into perceiving it as novel again, which helps me attend to it more closely and appreciate it more.


Them being entire genres, to me, implies they are no longer the same music. You are listening to a different song.


I was about to comment this as well.

I listen to a lot of music on the side, but Chris Boltendahl of Grave Digger said something that stuck with me. Btw, Grave Digger are not making Heavy Metal inspired by Heavy Metal, they were there making Heavy Metal in the 80s :)

Paraphrasing: With all of the streaming, and easy access to music, music has turned into a fast food. Eaten on the side, but rarely really fully appreciated this day.

And for new albums of bands I follow (or if I want to have a good time), I do exactly that: If the weather permits, get a hammock, a good drink, the good headphones (yes, I have several levels of quality of headphones), and just look at the sun, the trees and the magpies while listening to the music. Improving my own guitar skills has only deepened this appreciation.

> Sitting at a live concert (I am thinking classical) is up there too, because you've given yourself permission to not think of/work on anything else in that time

At least in Metal and to me, concerts are a different beast than the record. The record is usually the best and most perfect take of a song, often with additional effects, better mix. If you want to hear to the best version of a song, it's usually from the record.

Concerts are a party. It's always amusing how different concert cultures are there -- I know of some people who complain that they "can't hear the singer over someone next to them shouting". That's kind of the point of a live celebration of the band at the music in my world.


You actually can slow down music. A novel experience in itself. When you try to learn the song — once you get a grip – everything slows. That's why people play so much with metronome – once your brain "slows down", you will speed up naturally. Spent a few months learning how to get around it as a novice drummer. The only way around I found? It's to notice the slowing speed of time and slow the rhythm into it. Probably related: most drummers play with a click in their ears.

I noticed similar effects when "locking in" in games or sports. Time gets slower.

So when you slow down, you start to pay more attention. But if you pay more attention, the world itself will slow down. And the music would be slowed


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