How can you possibly not understand? You really are flummoxed about people who devote themselves to supporting their families economically and thus invest great energy into that pursuit?
That’s like going to the Olympic Village, among all the athletes, and being unable to understand why athletes ask each other “What’s your sport?” They are in the Olympics, man! They put everything into getting there. Ask them about their obsession, for crying out loud.
And ask me about how I am trying to make it in the world. I am happy to talk about it! Why aren’t you?
It's what everyone other than pedantic jerks think AGI means. Read a book. Watch a movie. Every depiction of AGI is essentially a depiction of a human. Sometimes a human without substantial emotions. That's sentience.
The focus of AGI is on achieving human equivalence in cognitive tasks, or to surpass it ("intelligence"). That's where the money and the research is. Making a stupid machine that happens to be aware ("sentient") isnt the goal.
This article commits exactly the sin that it claims to warn against. It has obligatory positive statements about the value of critical thinking, surrounded by highly disparaging comments about how people practicing critical thinking in good faith are not adding value. The net effect will be to discourage the healthy development of critical thinking practice.
Taking generic potshots at critical thinking is not a skill.
The article has good advice. The idea of postponing critique for a little bit to give an idea a chance to breathe, for instance. But then it also comes in with insulting BS like “Shooting down ideas is not a skill.” The whole article is obviously about improving one’s skill at the positive practice of culling bad ideas. Why throw such shade with the title?
The ignorant practice of refusing to consider an idea is not the same as critical thinking. Critical thinkers already feel bad about bringing rain to the parade. Do you have to make them feel even worse about it?
That's fair. The title is provocative and probably overstates my actual position, which as you note is closer to "the way people practice critique in meetings is low value and here's how to do it better". The point about making critical thinkers feel worse is taken too. The people I'm describing in the post aren't the careful, thoughtful critics, but instead the reflexive ones. I could have drawn that line more clearly.
I read it as "shooting down" implying low-effort "I'm going to kill this because it makes me uncomfortable" type responses, not legitimate critique. Well-calculated rejection is indeed a valuable skill, but also hopefully won't come across as "shooting down".
It's tough to write any article about any part of this topic, because there's so much nuance and the nuance matters. Yet none of us would read a post that captured the nuance, it'd be way too long and probably cover too much that is obvious. (But maybe now I'm shooting down someone who might attempt to write such a thing... please do, it's worth a try!)
I wrote a couple of books about testing. Yes, writing nuance is really hard. One of my readers noticed I contradicted myself across two different sections, due to a single missing word.
‘There is a confirmation bias at work here: every developer who has experienced such a remarkable outcome is delighted to share it. It helps to contribute to a mass (human) hallucination that computers really are capable of anything, and really are taking over the world.”
This is survivorship bias, a form of sample bias.
Confirmation bias is a form of motivated reasoning where you search for evidence that confirms your existing beliefs.
In the software business, if a product doesn’t do what you want it to do we call that a “defect.” Defects get fixed. Defective products that can’t be fixed are discarded in favor of better ones.
“If it’s truly intelligent…” is an empty condition. And anyway, no one wants intelligence from their tools— or employees. They want gratification.
The line is “It’s not necessarily helpful to be clear about lines.” combined with “who the hell are you to tell us how to live, kiddo?” with a little bit of “let’s all silently agree that each human should be defensive and prickly at all times instead of ever being soft and accommodating to their friends and family and colleagues.”
Some will downvote this comment just because I am being trying to be clear about my lines right now, which proves my point. If popularity matters to me, I need to do more smiling and shrugging.
That’s like going to the Olympic Village, among all the athletes, and being unable to understand why athletes ask each other “What’s your sport?” They are in the Olympics, man! They put everything into getting there. Ask them about their obsession, for crying out loud.
And ask me about how I am trying to make it in the world. I am happy to talk about it! Why aren’t you?
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