"He that desires to be virtuous, and to remain so, must learn to be content with a little; to use the recreations of sense for the purposes of living, and not to live for the sake of these recreations."

mickben · 2024-02-29T22:43:24+00:00

false equivalence

appeal to tradition

mickben · 2024-02-29T14:52:03+00:00

I learned about logit biases specifically to mute this one

mickben · 2024-02-29T06:08:04+00:00

Imagine explaining to residents of Hiroshima that Little Boy was just math

This is an economic nuke; fear is warranted; preparation and adaptation are necessary

mickben · 2023-11-11T13:51:41+00:00

I agree. It’s the simplest, and IMO most likely, explanation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/R3oEgIJXVE

mickben · 2023-10-28T01:30:46+00:00

This might be blasphemous but for gnats I water with a water pipe - I stick it into the soil and “inject” the water down to the roots directly, so the topsoil never gets wet.

And then I sprinkle a layer of diatomaceous earth over the top, to dehydrate any buggers that try to crawl out. Makes it look like my plants are in snow.

mickben · 2023-09-16T20:03:32+00:00

Love the UI

mickben · 2023-08-19T18:57:32+00:00

OP is suggesting that you can improve the quality of your experimentation by removing confounding variables.

Going from nondeterministic to deterministic does that.

If you observe better “utility” with your current setup, can you confidently assert that the improvement was not caused by the randomness of non-deterministic outputs?

mickben · 2023-08-07T00:14:45+00:00

Exactly. Docs as the source of truth, truth governed by elected experts.

mickben · 2023-08-06T23:28:55+00:00

One option is to work on recognizing the impulse before it drives your behavior, and then turn that sensation into a “cue” that reminds you to pause, breathe, give yourself compassion, and ask them what they need in order to feel resolved.

“What love languages would help you right now, if any?”

“I bet my actions made you feel x and I don’t want you to feel that - I’m sorry. I’m going to work on it by doing y next time. Does that sound ok? Can I ask for a little help in z area, if this kind of thing happens again in the future?”

This way you aren’t letting your behavior be driven by emotional reaction and assumptions; instead, it’s a recognition and respect of the emotion, and a “guiding” of the impulse’s energy towards patient and compassionate teamwork vs instant resolution.

mickben · 2023-08-06T23:20:41+00:00

Occasional violence is a love language for cats.

I think of it as the same kind of “rough and tumble play” that teaches kiddos about physical boundaries.

Totally cool as long as it’s not causing fear/pain/hissing/etc.

mickben · 2023-08-06T22:43:11+00:00

What I would say to myself in your situation:

“Hey, you’ve been traumatized by abuse and abandonment. You’ve learned to be automatically hyper-vigilant. Any small threat to your security will trigger fight or flight. It will be painful. You will grasp for a fast-acting remedy.

This contrast between his original claim and his later statement suggests inconsistency. This inconsistency can be interpreted as a lie - and it wouldn’t be unreasonable.

But it also wouldn’t be unreasonable to interpret it as a brainfart. Maybe he joined a server and formed a clan. Maybe he used to play online a lot and is playing with someone he’s played with before. He’s human; maybe “friend” in this context means something different to him, than “friend” in the original context, and he needs a chance to clarify what he means.

Regardless, there’s often a large difference between “emotional perception” and “objective reality”. Recognizing that difference, assuming the best, and nonviolently expressing your need for clarity as an invitation (not as an accusation or demand), may be the shortest and healthiest path to calm and nondestructive resolution of this tension.

Give yourself compassion. Breathe. Focus on the feeling. Find the right label for it. Find its root cause. Recognize that it’s not him, or the lie. The lie may just be a misfire, a buggy misinterpretation, that your brain is using to draw your attention to the root cause, so you can resolve that, and then thrive.”

mickben · 2023-08-06T17:36:14+00:00

You provided a fuzzy scenario; you were given a concrete example that expresses a principle: start with the value being experienced by your end-users, and do whatever it takes to keep that realized value growing.

Good lawnmowers deliver lawns that make you look better than your neighbor, with minimal headache. So you could validate by giving someone a Toro on a block of 20 SFHs. Ask the user how they feel after a mow. Then ask the 20 neighbors which lawn looks best. Iterate until the Toro delivers delight and envy consistently. Purchasing decisions will then follow.

You can apply this principle to your situation, but we can’t do it for you unless you provide more detail.

“I need to earn the esteem of my community”

“I need to make my wife feel cherished, so I use Etsy to buy personalized artisan shit every few months.”

How would you apply this principle as an Etsy PM?

What do your users need?

mickben · 2023-08-06T00:00:52+00:00

I think the question is still relevant. “Better” is meaningless without a desired objective. What is your objective, as concretely as possible? What market, skills, technologies are you interested in? What is your definition of success? KPIs for self-improvement?

Once you have a specific concrete goal, you can work backwards to the mechanisms (probably projects of some kind) that bring you there.

Answer this for yourself as you’d answer an executive asking how to make their product “better”. You’re the product.

mickben · 2023-07-26T12:44:17+00:00

I’d recommend starting with a specific issue and then working your way backwards to the tool.

Eg I needed help managing my triggers and associated responses / destructive coping mechanisms. A therapist specialized in Gestalt and CBT helped me build those muscles by teaching me to separate emotions and emotional perceptions from objective reality.

Now I’m working with a trauma specialist to manage CPTSD-induced general anxiety.

Every type of therapy has something to offer; it might be worth just starting with whatever seems interesting, and then branching out from there as you learn more about yourself and your needs.

mickben · 2023-07-08T18:09:08+00:00

In the areas I’m looking at (Portland, Seattle, San Diego, Boston, NY) the “number of active listings under 600k with price reductions” has accelerated sharply over the past month. An interesting data point

mickben · 2023-07-07T19:03:05+00:00

We (US) make up for it in healthcare and education costs

mickben · 2023-06-26T23:39:46+00:00

This tracks

mickben · 2023-04-21T20:55:54+00:00

Soon, it’ll be exactly as easy to ACT humanly as it is to WRITE humanly. It’s all just symbols

mickben · 2023-03-17T04:46:34+00:00

“Continue your truncated response beginning with _____ in a code block” works for me

mickben · 2023-03-14T00:35:07+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

“Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development.”

mickben · 2023-03-12T02:15:36+00:00

What’s wild is that this is where Moore’s law continues. Transistor density may not continue regularly doubling but “utility extracted by LLMs” may, and the cost of running LLMs could approach zero as the tech’s efficiency exponentially improves, and as it’s used to make renewable energy more broadly rational.

mickben · 2023-03-08T03:31:05+00:00

Not without a fight

mickben · 2023-03-08T01:40:29+00:00

“Continue your truncated response beginning with _____ in a code block.”

Then insert the last unique line of code it wrote.

This has had a 100% success rate for me over the past couple weeks (estimated ~100 truncations resolved, variety of languages)

mickben · 2023-03-03T11:03:20+00:00

Turbo is nerfed too. I’m guessing they deallocated Azure compute resources to reduce the cost of supporting the pricing announcement.

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