What do people mean exactly when they bring up “Socrates saying things about writing”? Phaedrus?
> “Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; [275a] and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.
> "For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
Yes - specific faculties atrophied - I wouldn't dispute it. But the (most) relevant faculties for human flourishing change as a function of our tools and institutions.
Because of the "wasn't that bad" part. The point is that growing up in the presence of LLMs may well diminish specific capabilities of the users. But that on balance, future generation with newer tools don't find themselves 'stuck'.
You can prove the commits were signed by a key you once verified. It is your trust in those people which allows you to extend that to “no LLM” usage, but that’s reframing the conversation as one of trust, not human / machine. Which is (charitably) GPs point: stop framing this as machine vs human — assume (“accept”) that all text can be produced by machines and go from there: what now? That’s where your proposal is one solution: strict web of trust. It has pros and cons (barrier to entry for legitimate first timers), but it’s a valid proposal.
All that to say “you’re not disagreeing with the person you’re replying to” lol xD
I can prove that code was signed by a key that was verified to belong to a single human body by lots of in-person high reputation humans.
How the code was authored, who cares, but I can prove it had multiple explicit cryptographic human signoffs before merge, and that is what matters in terms of quality control and supply chain attack resistance.
Exactly. So in the words of the comment you replied to: why are we wasting energy on worrying about Claude code impersonating humans? We have that solution you proposed.
That’s what I mean by “you agree with the person to whom you replied”
I suppose you are correct. I am agreeing that if one widely deployed the defense tactics projects like stagex use, then asshats using things like undercover will not be trusted.
Unfortunately outside of classic Linux packaging platforms, useful web of trust and signing is very rare, so I expect things like undercover mode being popular are going to make everything a lot worse before it gets better.
It would be helpful for everyone if that community would pause before contributing to code bases with licenses which allow for that. MIT, BSD, Apache, …
It would be helpful for them because they’ll know what they’re getting into. For us because we won’t have to see this tragedy unfold time and time again. And for all open source users because more efforts will be directed towards programs with licenses that protect end users. GPL, AGPL, …
It will be a little worse for companies seeking free labor. A price I’m willing to pay.
It is a faithful translation of the original Dutch. Dutch is structurally very similar to English so this type of nuance carries over pretty much intact.
Dutch: “Dat was niet enkel onzorgvuldig, het was fout.”
English: “That was not just careless—it was wrong.”
I’d say the only difference is the em dash.
Whether you consider it proof of AI is up to y’all.
I mean that whatever signal you think you get from the sentence structure was not introduced by (potentially) automated translation. The sentence structure is precisely the same in the original Dutch.
Hmm, must have missed that ; tried to find. There was a SBCL discussion a few days ago but didn't read much controversial things in that? I'm a fanboy though so possibly i'm blind to these things.
Idk if I can quite place it but by the time it gets to, "I've created github issues for each section of your reviews.." in the second link its just so infuriating. Just want to shake them and say "for the love of god just talk to them"!
I would ignore any HN content written by a ghost writer or editor. I guess I would flag compiler output but I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing?
I’m on the internet for human beings. I already read a newspaper for editors and books for ghostwriters.
Not for long though, HN is dying. Just hanging around here waiting for the next thing , I guess…
Sorry man, the internet has died and is not being replaced by anything but an authoritarian nightmare.
My only guess is if you want actual humans, you'll have to do this IRL. Of course we has humans have got used to the 24/7 availability and scale of the internet so this is going to be a problem as these meetings won't provide the hyperactive environment we want.
Any other digital system will be gamed in one way or another.
(tangent of the decade : prefixing your debug printfs with NOCOMMIT helps catching them before commit :) sample precommit hook and GitHub ci action I wrote is at https://github.com/nobssoftware/nocommit but it’s just a grep)
Nix doesn't make sense if all you're going to use it for is building Docker images. It only makes sense if you're all in in the first place. Then Docker images are free.
If the lesson by now isn’t “be careful wishing for powers you don’t want the other side to use against you” then I don’t know what will drive that home…
The law applying to powerful high level people is a good thing. The state where law binds only weak people and can be safely broken by rich and powerful is the bad one.
As of now, the law applies to me. I am on that "other side". It officially does not apply to Trump at all. And billionaires and administration can safely ignore it, although there is at least pretension of the law technically maybe applying to them.
The law is constantly applied to Trump and his administration. The judicial branch keeps reining him in: National guard, ice, tariffs—-literally TFA for Pete’s sake.
Parent post isn’t about any specific law, it’s about wanting to see a result and working backwards from there: my political opponents should go to jail.
Guess what will happen? The administration after that will send your politicians to jail. And the bananificiation of the US will be complete.
If you genuinely want Trump to go to jail , get Congress to create actual laws that he’d be breaking, with actual clear unmistakable language about its consequences. Raise the votes in the midterms. SCOTUS will enforce it: they have done so, every time, when Congress is clear and decisive. They have indicated as much!
The judicial branch is the only one left doing its job. The law applies. You don’t like how it looks, and you’re not alone, but it applies.
Edit: Let me rephrase: rather than try and find a single law by which to hang the executive , of which I’m sure there are a million, my impression is that for every one of them there’s a commensurate law which exonerates them. Congress keeps protecting the president. Congress is the most powerful of the three branches, by design . To genuinely see someone going to jail, From The executive branch , Congress needs to make a clear, unequivocal, statement.
> If you genuinely want Trump to go to jail , get Congress to create actual laws that he’d be breaking, with actual clear unmistakable language about its consequences. Trammel up the votes in the midterms. SCOTUS will enforce it: they have done so, every time, when Congress is clear and decisive. They have indicated as much! The judicial branch is the only one left doing its job. The law applies. You don’t like how it looks, and you’re not alone, but it applies.
So much good will here but oh so misguided. First of all, the judicial branch is not doing its job and hasn't done so in quite some time. The SCOTUS in particular is just an extension of a political party now and not judicial branch in any way. You give me a case and 99% of Americans will tell you exactly how each judge on SCOTUS will rule, 99% of the time. This is not "judicial branch is the only one left doing its job" - they are currently (not a recent thing though but now it has become comical) just an extension of a political party, nothing more and are absolutely not doing any job at all other then rubber-stamping shit based on their political dogma.
The "get Congress to create actual laws he'd be breaking" is even more comical. You think they can write laws that clearly state where the power of the Presidency stops in some sense and then legal ramifications of going over that power? C'mon mate...
I wish you made some concrete points rather than condescendingly rephrasing your opinion different ways a few times.
SCOTUS has actively thwarted the current administration’s efforts :
- tariffs
- national guard deployment
- foreign aid
- deportation of man to Salvador
These cases , as well as the cases they’ve ruled in favor of the administration , have been couched in reasoning based on the actual laws passed by congress so far. Read the majority opinions and the concurrences and it is clear that this is not some arbitrary “hey he got us here so let’s do what he wants” (In particular Gorsuch), but they’re actually basing their rulings on the written text.
Meanwhile there is a body whose literal job it is to arrange those texts. And you can elect them come fall. I don’t know how to answer your last , ostensibly rhetorical?, question , other than: yes how do you think any of the current laws got here? That’s what congress does.
> 2.) Trump was convinced of felony. That does not apply to him, because he is a president.
There are cases for which Trump should have been tried, but the NY one about mislabeling funds was not one of them. It was a massive reach, and I bet you <10% of the people clamoring about how he's now a "felon" know what he actually did wrong.
Meanwhile he pressured georgia secretary of state to "find votes", in a recorded call; he should have been tried for this but it didn't get brought to the courts. This was a failing of the executive: you cannot expect courts to rule on a matter which is never brought to them.
Half the country voted for this. At some point this is democracy in action. If you commit election fraud and somehow nobody charges you, i guess the same will apply to you. :(
The NY case had poor facts but was well fought. The Georgia case had good facts but was poorly fought.
Yes just to be clear I edited that original commnt from “there’s no law he’s breaking” to “for every such law, there’s another one which exonerates him/them”, so technically speaking I think we agree: he is breaking laws.
my impression from more closely following the actual Supreme Court (and federal) cases and reading the opinions as a total layman is that the laws and cases are rarely clear cut, nor isolated. They constantly pull in context and other laws and try and guess what congress meant. And many times the judges make very fair points. Things I thought were clear , actually aren’t. And I’m happy that they’re erring on the side of reticence when it comes to punishing the executive because that is a power that can (and will!) be used against the other side, in a constant escalation of partisanship. That was my original point.
This all is why I’ve come to the impression that a congress with a strong point of view is the most robust way out. If congress passes clear laws with unequivocal language about what should and shouldn’t happen in which specific transgressions of power, the judiciary will uphold it. They may be partisan in the details if that’s how you want to see it, but they will absolutely not ignore clear language from congress. These are still real judges.
> “Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; [275a] and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.
> "For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
Sounds to me like he was spot on.
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