I have also developed a similar system not focused on the exploratory refinement of prompt(s). But more focused on feedback loops cybernetic style, so focused on the maintaining of stability of the prompt outputs by a growing library of deterministic checks and autofixes. Anything that is a "problem" which isn't covered by that library is surfaced to the human driving the process.
I'm sure people will take this the wrong way, but a lot of the people who are on HN and who orbit technology circles in SF are really just not actually intellectually curious people.
They might like to think they are, they might try to pretend they are, but when pushed they're simply not.
Look at all of the groupthink that is perpetuated nonstop while they also proclaim they're creating, investing in, etc. so many unique ideas. Yet year after year it's the same thing in a different color.
What they actually are is interested in money and prestige. So give it a little time and they'll learn enough about biology to try and get some validation from their peers with comments. If money actually pours into bio that is.
I'd go even further: what happens in biology is antithetical to the way software people think.
The HN/YC crowd generally has software brain: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/917029/software-brain-ai-ba..., "when you see the whole world as a series of databases that can be controlled with the structured language of software code". Biology doesn't work like that most of the time, it's squishy and weird and unpredictable, and the models we have of biology (including genomics!) are faulty at best, misleading at worst. I've supervised PhD-students and it takes some time for people's brains to be comfortable with that squishiness, that random behaviour, that 'putting A into the system only rarely produces B and we don't really know why but we do it anyway' view of the world. Software engineers struggle, even abhor that kind of world, which is why you rarely see them being interested in it; and if they work in it, outcomes are sometimes amazing and Nobel Prize worthy, more often nonsense that silently disappears.
> Biology doesn't work like that most of the time, it's squishy and weird and unpredictable, and the models we have of biology (including genomics!) are faulty at best, misleading at worst.
interesting. i came to tech from a molecular biology background and my impression was the opposite. biology is predictable most of the time, but sometimes random and squishy. the trick is that we’re trying to learn why things work predictably and what causes the variations, and that why/how unknown is what is most uncomfortable for people outside of the disciplines.
i’m not fully disagreeing with you because it sounds like you have experiences that inform your perspective. i find it interesting because my own experiences bring me in from the inverse perspective.
The world of uncertainty and the idea that we might not be able to understand everything or control it as much as we'd like.
It seems to me a lot of the modern "tech-bro culture" is trying to control the future and reduce uncertainty: Stop death, merge with the robotic super intelligence, colonize Mars to escape Earth inevitable decay, etc.
I'm still waiting for the startups claiming to reduce entropy or solve the false vacuum decay
Biologists have a superiority complex about the “complexity” and “singular difficulty” of their field born out of a need for justification for the vast deficiencies of their field’s progress compared to others. Its an elaborate coping mechanism where the people in other fields which make envyable progress (eg software, cs etc)- sighted enough to have recognized and avoided the decrepitude of biological sciences- are in fact the ignorant ones who “struggle” , “incapable of grasping” the way that biologists think. Its an inversion designed to obscure the harsh truth that these outsiders in fact see quite clearly the way that biologists think and it is the reason they have so diligently avoided their field.
You're simply wrong. I say this as a computer scientist who ended up studying and working in bioinformatics for a period of time.
The reason I don't now? It's that people don't understand biology enough to understand the currently untapped potential and definitely not the advances that have happened. So they allocate money to yet another todo app, food delivery app, crypto wallet, or yet another finetune of a model to talk like a caveman.
a scientific engine for prediction, design, and discovery that can map proteins across the tree of life, predict their structures, and design new protein binders that function in laboratory experiments.
So, my issue with this is just like in a lot of the other areas of bio we're not able to explore outside the semantics of what is "known." Even a simpler task of just doing proper assembly is plagued by this. De Novo assembly of an alien/novel organism mixed with samples from other alien organisms would be impossible with what we can do today. Even with things that we're familiar we struggle with metagenomic assembly.
The US despite everything still runs a popular vote driven democracy that is clearly capable of implementing on short notice, sweeping changes to policy.
The problem remains that the US voter consistently demonstrates they don't actually care about these problems though, compared to using the state to intentionally inflict misery on subgroups they don't like.
The most radical thing the current administration proves is how unimportant taxes and cost of living actually were to its voters, given the broad support it retains despite overtly and continuously raising or making both those problems worse (read cares as: "understands" - for a group which wouldn't shut up about it, apparently significant changes aren't crippling enough to get them to change their vote in many cases).
I think this administration truly puts paid to the idea that billionaires control the US. Trump was _broke_ now he’s making billionaires the world over kiss the ring.
This happened because he’s consistently harnessed the power of the popular vote. Just today he flexed that muscle in Indiana.
I’m distraught that my fellow Americans keep falling for his circus barking and he’s made it clear that norms don’t matter and gerrymandering may be the end of the republic. But you can’t deny the power of the regular persons vote after him.
Trump was never actually broke, but his popularity comes from the fact that he took a bunch of public political stances that his political opponents refused to take because they genuinely thought those stances were immoral; and then won elections based on those stances because a lot of the electorate also liked them.
There isn't actually one monolithic class of billionaires that all share the same interests and want the same things; and even though an individual billionaire can be personally influential, they simply do not have the power to unilaterally determine the political direction of a country. But regardless of what political direction a country does go in, there's probably some billionaire who is more or less aligned with that direction. So anyone who dislikes that political direction can point to the nearest-ideologically-aligned billionaire and blame them for influencing politics in that way, despite the fact that if the tables were turned and their side was winning, someone else would point to whatever billionaire aligned with them as an evil influencer.
“Trump was never actually broke, but his popularity comes from the fact that he took a bunch of public political stances that his political opponents refused to take because they genuinely thought those stances were immoral”
Um, no. His popularity comes from a willingness to actually do the things that many other politicians said they were going to do, often while campaigning, and never did.
> clearly capable of implementing on short notice, sweeping changes to policy
well, as long as the policy changes in question can be implemented by executive order. good luck doing anything that requires actual legislation.
> The problem remains that the US voter consistently demonstrates they don't actually care about these problems though, compared to using the state to intentionally inflict misery on subgroups they don't like.
what does this mean, exactly? it sounds like you're trying to say that things would have been different, if only those pesky voters hadn't voted for Trump. but they _did_ vote for someone other than Trump in 2020, and that did very little to affect the issues mentioned in the article
If you’re trying to make the case that “sometimes violence is the only answer”, please stop.
It’s the responsibility of thoughtful people in a civilized society to find ways of solving problems, even very large and deep ones, without violence.
As soon as we think “there’s no alternative other than violence”, we need to think harder. All the worst atrocities in history happened because enough people allowed themselves to think “violence is the only answer”.
Please don't, in one comment, call me “naive and childish” then try this kind of switcheroo the next. The topic of “guillotines” relates to performative violence against fellow citizens over political/economic disagreement. National defense is a different topic. They're both important topics and if they’re going to be discussed they deserve to be discussed earnestly. Glorification of violence has never been within the guidelines or norms on HN.
This is a site for curious people who want to have intelligent discussions about interesting topics. My job here is to uphold the guidelines, not engage in political arguments. If your response to my moderation effort is to invoke a whole lot of topics that are unrelated to the HN guidelines, descending even to my own nationality, you’re showing some strong signals that you’re not interested in participating here in a way that’s aligned with the site’s purpose. Other commenters were trying to discuss the topic curiously and explore nonviolent ways of resolving political disputes and you kept trying to drag the topic back to violence. That style of discussion, and the rhetorical trickery you keep trying to deploy against me, do not belong on HN. This is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to raise the standards.
You're the one who inserted yourself in the discussion when I clarified my question. I wasn't dragging the discussion away from your preferred path any more than others were dragging it away from mine.
If you don't want to engage in political arguments then don't involve yourself in a subthread that wasn't even flagged.
In either case i'll leave and let you keep your echo chamber.
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