> What Moravec was describing was a difference in how skills are stored, not how complex they are. Physical skills are encoded in the body, almost impossible to put into words. But knowledge work, the analysis, the diagnosis, the strategy, the legal argument, is stored in text. Humans wrote it all down. Every framework, every protocol, every insight accumulated across every profession for centuries, captured in documents, papers, books, case files, and reports.
I don't think this is true. Text is a lossy form of communication. There's no way to get the sum of my knowledge from my brain over to your brain purely through text.
Also, anyone who has ever had to deal with incomplete documentation knows that humans did not, in fact, write it all down.
All communication is inherently lossy, and text is extremely so. Knowledge, insight, etc., is never captured in its entirety in communication. Indeed, there is no direct contact between human minds, not in the models we currently have.
Communication builds on simplified shared maps over ineffable territory of human experience. It always presents a particular model—a necessarily wrong one (as all models are), good for one purpose but neutral or harmful for another.
However, models and maps is not the only way in which humans attend to reality. Even though it is compelling to talk as if it was the only way—talking is communication, and naturally it likes communicable things—we also have the impossible to convey direct experience. Over the past thousand or two years, as humanity becomes more of an interconnected anthill, this experiencing arguably increasingly takes a backseat to map-driven communication-driven frame of attention, but it still exists and is part of what makes us human.
LLMs, as correctly noted, build only on our communication. What I don’t think is noted, is that this means they build on those (inevitably faulty) models and maps; LLMs fundamentally have no access to the experiencing aspect, and the territory-to-map workflow is inaccessible to them. What happens when wrong maps overstay their welcome?
Trump has been the protagonist of US politics for ten years. Maybe this "actually he really has this all planned out" idea was viable in 2017. But in 2026? We've got years and years and years of examples of how Trump makes decisions. He is not playing 4d chess.
I'm guessing that one reason we got Trump is that the Democrats presented two poor alternatives in a row.
It was clear that Biden was mentally slipping. Even if you were a fan of his general politics, 4 additional years of mental decline while in office was a scary prospect.
And then Kamala Harris was given very little time to sell herself to the voters.
I'm wondering if Trump would have won had the Democrats presented someone more appealing earlier in the campaign.
If you were worried about Biden’s mental decline but looked at Trumps behavior and statements as from someone mentally competent and not also slipping into dementia, then you just wanted Trumps politics and vibes your way into thinking it was ok.
I’m so excited for the future where nobody apparently voted for Trump and never backed him, the same way everyone mysteriously didn’t vote for GWB after his fuckups got too big to ignore
I believe Trump would have won 2020 had the COVID pandemic not happened. Things were very chaotic in 2020 America. Biden and his extensive experience in the federal government looked reassuring to a lot of Americans. Biden would have had a tougher time against Trump had 2020 been more like 2019. I believe Biden would have had a tougher time against Bernie Sanders in the primaries had COVID not happened, though a counterargument is that Super Tuesday happened on March 3, before shelter-in-place policies were in effect in California.
A big reason for Trump's success despite his polarizing nature is the polarizing effects of the platforms of our two parties, which distinguish themselves on "culture war" issues such as abortion, gun rights, immigration, LGBT+ rights, and race relations. There are many Americans who love the MAGA agenda, and there are also many Americans who are not in 100% agreement with MAGA but who'd never vote for a Democrat since they feel that a candidate with the opposite cultural views is anathema. If third parties were more viable in America, the latter group of voters could vote for a candidate that is more to their temperament instead of voting for whomever the GOP nominee is.
Had COVID not happened, Trump might not have gone batshit crazy with a vendetta against the entire concept of independent federal agencies. Actively rejecting the advice coming from Fauci et al would seem to be a large part of what sensitized him to the larger pattern rather than just writing each instance off as an interpersonal issue.
(by "Trump" and "him" I mean the person himself plus his symbiotic ecosystem of enablers and followers)
I'm not a politico, but IMHO Harris didn't have enough time to clarify her positions, and to address the points raised by her opposition.
Also, I wonder if the way she was chosen by the Democratic Party rubbed some people the wrong way enough for them to abstain from voting as a form of protest.
I interpreted the clause “two poor alternatives in a row” as Biden + Harris in the 2024 presidential election, and not Clinton + Harris, since Clinton was the 2016 nominee and Harris was the 2024 nominee after Biden dropped out, but the 2020 nominee was Biden, who did successfully defeat Trump that year.
In my opinion, Clinton’s and Harris’ losses had less to do with their gender and more to do with the candidates themselves:
1. Clinton was facing strong anti-establishment headwinds, and Clinton is a very establishment politician. Many people in 2016 were piping mad at establishment politicians. Trump was able to win the GOP nomination on a platform of “draining the swamp” and pursuing an aggressively right-wing agenda compared to more moderate Republicans, and Sanders, who also had an anti-establishment platform, proved to be a formidable opponent to Clinton. Despite Clinton’s loss, she was still able to win the popular vote. Perhaps had there been less anti-establishment sentiment, it would have been a Clinton vs Jeb Bush election, and I believe Clinton would have won that race.
2. Harris never won a presidential primary election. The only reason she ended up becoming the nominee is because Biden dropped out of the race after his disastrous debate performance against Trump, which occurred after the primaries. Since it was too late to have the voters decide on a replacement for Biden, the Democratic Party selected a replacement: Harris. She only had a few months to campaign, whereas Trump had virtually campaigned his entire time out of office.
3. Let’s not forget the Trump factor in 2024. During Biden’s entire presidency, Trump was able to consolidate his hold on the GOP and his voting base, and in some ways he even expanded his base. The conservative media was filled with defenses of January 6, and Trump was able to convince enough Americans that he and his supporters were persecuted in the aftermath of the 2020 election and January 6.
Look, after lurking through that submission about the Olympics a few days ago I get HN is divided on sex/gender identity, but I'm pretty sure that Joseph Biden is absolutely a man. "Cisgender", if you must.
His approval rating is at a historical low for any president at this point in their term, I think. People don't like ICE, pedophiles, or wars in the Middle East.
> I'm guessing that one reason we got Trump is that the Democrats presented two poor alternatives in a row.
Oh please.
Are you seriously comparing the disaster that is Mango Mussolini to the likes of (practically any) alternative candidate?
The sad reality is that the American people wanted Trump and _voted_ for him. TWICE! The rest of the world has come to terms with this and knows there is no going back to the old hegemony (put simply, the American people may vote for another Trump; we now know the USA can no longer be trusted as a good faith partner). The world has changed, and many in the USA who didn't vote for Trump have yet to realise this and still think they can go back.
Besides, if all candidates are crap, you vote for the one that will do least harm. And then look at reforming a political system which leaves voters with such a poor choice.
All software that’s popular has hundreds or thousands of issues filed against it. It’s not an objective indication of anything other than people having issues to report and a willingness and ability to report the issue.
It doesn’t mean every issue is valid, that it contains a suggestion that can be implemented, that it can be addressed immediately, etc. The issue list might not be curated, either, resulting in a garbage heap.
For what one anecdote is worth: through casual use I've found a handful of annoying UI bugs in Claude Code, and all of them were already reported on the bug tracker and either still open, or auto-closed without a real resolution.
If I took a photo off your photography blog and used it on my corporate website without your say or input, I don't think it would be unfair to call that stealing.
Doing that on a mass scale with an obfuscation step in between suddenly makes it ok? I'm not convinced.
I think my job is a lot of fun and I'm not enamored with AI. Why would I want a robot to do the fun part for me? That's what makes it fun -- that I'm the one doing it.
You don't have to automate all of it, just whatever parts you do not consider fun so you can get to the fun parts with less friction.
But I suppose it depends on what you consider fun. I genuinely know people who love to meticulously write many many unit tests. I think that's great as a craft, but you probably can not expect to get paid for it, similar to how you likely can not be profitable by selling handmade shirts now unless you are already independently wealthy and well known.
By migrating to another code forge and paying them so they're sustainable.
Which doesn't answer your question at all, but it is the metric they'll pay attention to. And it is the the thing that actually addresses the underlying problem.
The best way to have a big picture view of a project is to build a mental model of that project in your head. Coding with LLMs removes that ability, and replaces it with an illusion.
Well if you have experience reviewing other people’s code, it is not that different than finding an idea, asking copilot to do it, and then review just as if you had a ton of junior engineers to write code for you, which also can go too far in one direction before asking for feedback.
So it really depends on your reviewing ability how maintainable code you will get. It is a bit of effort to review something “you have done” as thoroughly as something a colleague have done. Somehow I still feel sense of ownership even though the LLM did it.
I like reviewing using GitHub’s interface, so I often do a thorough review in that familiar interface while the PR is still draft, and before I have invited others to review. If I review my own code directly in my editor when the agent is done, my brain isn’t in the right context and can get distracted or skip over something.
Does the thing work like I want it in the end? Is it fast, reliable, enjoyable to use, maintainable, cheap, efficient, resilient, etc?
If so, I don't care if I wrote it by hand or with an LLM. People who think that building something with an LLM somehow dooms the something to mediocrity are engaging in magical thinking. I can simply use as much or as little LLM as will allow me to meet my quality criteria.
You listed "maintainable", but how do you know your project is maintainable, if you yourself have no understanding of the code base? Presumably the reason is that the AI has managed to maintain the project so far, so it follows that it will be able to do so in the future. But that's not a given. It's more of a prayer.
I don't think this is true. Text is a lossy form of communication. There's no way to get the sum of my knowledge from my brain over to your brain purely through text.
Also, anyone who has ever had to deal with incomplete documentation knows that humans did not, in fact, write it all down.
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