Claims of consciousness are untestable, since it is an undefined concept.
We think of ourselves as conscious because it is our lived experience— but we are always wrong to some degree. My mother has dementia and cannot be made aware of her situation, except momentarily.
We think of other humans as conscious not as the outcome of any test, but rather because we each share with other humans a common origin which suggests common mechanisms of experience.
Treating other humans as equivalent to ourselves is a heuristic for maintaining social order— not an epistemological achievement.
Altman’s moral flaw stems partly from an identity failure: he does not see himself as human. He sees himself as The Chosen One. He is transhuman. He can sympathize with humans but never empathize.
43 years in software development: I have not seen the SDLC that this guy claims is predominant.
What has ALWAYS happened is that teams of people come together and muddle through. We use concepts from the classic “SDLC” to discuss our processes, but we never followed it. We did have milestones, yes, which is simply incremental development.
When “Agile” appeared, the world was already pretty agile. It introduced a new vocabulary and some new values. But it didn’t fundamentally change the process— which is exactly why it was so widely “adopted.” A truly different paradigm would have been ignored.
DevOps represented a real phase shift in some respects, and agentic development does take that further.
But it’s always been people muddling through, and you ALWAYS have learning and design and testing. I don’t care how you spin it— you cannot evade it.
Here is an article from 26 years ago that relates:
No one in the whole world is boring, because “boring” is not trait, it’s a relationship. For any given person there is some set of people who are interested in him, and many others who are not.
Do you want to be loved? Then offer love and be lovable. Do you want to be valued? Then value things and be a valuable.
Another article claiming productivity without providing evidence of the quality of the work. How do we know these meeting summaries are accurate? And why are meeting summaries so great, anyway? I never had them before.
Well… I sometimes ask my wife to help me clean everything up. Somehow with her there, it eases the pain of erasing my haptic pan-spatial memory system.
My mother typed up the final draft of Jonathan Livingston Seagull for my father, Richard Bach. She always claimed that she had made editorial adjustments to it, along the way, without his knowledge.
He left her when the book became famous, so we (his children) never knew how much of Mom’s boast to believe.
As a young impressionable teen, I devoured all books and Richard Bach was one of my fav authors. Seagull, of course, but also One and the Adventures of the Reluctant Messiah (can’t recall the title). I loved his writing and gave copies to all my friends in high school / college.
Was especially popular among the girls, so that helped :)
Always wondered about his family. Would love to hear more about him if you’re willing to share.
Speaking of popular with the girls: my wife met me by targeting me specifically because I was the son of Richard Bach and she thought that meant I would understand her.
In a 35-year unpublished longitudinal study, I have confirmed her theory.
(I am always happy to talk to readers of Dad's work. my contact info is at satisfice.com)
Add Bulgaria too. I liked Illusions but a good friend of mine was simply in love with it, bought and gave copies to everyone. And for his birthday last year I almost gave him a signed copy of the Seagull I saw at a local second hand bookshop in LA. I hesitated because of the price and when I came back it was gone.
I reviewed a couple my father’s later books, at his request, although he didn’t much like my feedback. He thought of me as cold and aggressive, while he was trying to write about transcendent love.
But one phrase from a letter of mine made it into One, and that was exciting.
I also don’t believe the hype. The boosters always say I would believe if I were to just experience it. But that’s like saying all I have to do is eat a hamburger to experience how nutritious it is for me.
I love hamburgers, and nothing in my experience tells me I shouldn’t eat them every day. But people have studied them over time and I trust that mere personal satisfaction is insufficient basis for calling hamburgers healthy eating.
Applied to AI: How do you know you have “10x’d?” What is your test process? Just reviewing the test process will reverse your productivity! Therefore, to make this claim you probably are going on trust.
I you have 10x the trust, you will believe anything.
I never understand why smart people promote metric measurements. If you are smart, wouldn’t want to use the most complex and arcane version of everything?
We think of ourselves as conscious because it is our lived experience— but we are always wrong to some degree. My mother has dementia and cannot be made aware of her situation, except momentarily.
We think of other humans as conscious not as the outcome of any test, but rather because we each share with other humans a common origin which suggests common mechanisms of experience.
Treating other humans as equivalent to ourselves is a heuristic for maintaining social order— not an epistemological achievement.
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