As they say explicitly in the article, this is like criticizing the first rocket to reach the edge of space for not getting anywhere useful.

It seems like they went from lighting a candle to firing off some fireworks. Impressive, but there's still a long way to go until they can land a human on the moon - let alone travel to Alpha Centauri like some people are claiming.

I am not sharing a platform with people who want me dead.

That feel when a kid has better VCS practices than some people who get paid to develop software...

> Irmak believes we should start with our everyday notions. When we talk about software, these are the kinds of things we generally believe about it. The way we talk about software, we being the everyday folk, should inform our theory as to what kind of thing software is

While this view is often intuitively persuasive and reasonable, I think we should be careful with it. While you could argue that social constructs are by definition constructed by the beliefs of everyday folk, sometimes our everyday beliefs really do turn out to be fundamentally incoherent. In other words I believe that ontological error theories can be correct and/or persuasive.

In any case, people interested in this might enjoy reading the SEP page on computer science, which includes a section on the software/hardware distinction and the ontology of software more generally: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/

One aspires to be a hater of such high caliber.

We also live in the age of architecture. Should everyone who drives over a bridge or work in an office know how those things were constructed and how they are maintained? Should everyone be trained extensively on the infrastructure that gets water to their taps?

No, but if you directly use those things for your job, you probably should. For example, if you're a home inspector, you should have decent knowledge about plumbing. Even though you're not a plumber.

If you don't have at least some knowledge, you probably won't be a very good inspector. If you have more knowledge, then you'd be better.

If you require document versioning, you should know, at least a bit, how to use a Version Control Software. You don't need to know the internals, but enough to use it.

a home inspector inspects homes. a veterinarian inspects animals. she does not inspect computers.

you could restrict their software movements to the bare essentials for their work and they’d be happier for it. hell, i’m sure most would be happier with no gui if the interface provided them with only what they need. and most need just a place to create a document, type it in, commit the document, view it, and relay it to storage or another user. then a browser to look things up.

but we live in the age of general-purpose computing where people need to use general programs thoroughly unadapted for their specialized jobs, forcing the user to coordinate multiple contexts, which should really be coordinated by the machine. most jobs could be done with nano and sendmail. add an form input field editor and selector and it’s golden. if something else is needed, it should be one command away.

it’s not for them to inspect computers. it’s for devs and enterprises to create software systems such that the tech-naive user would have no need to ever touch anything outside of what they need.

A veterinarian should also be able to inspect their tools, to some extent. I expect a homebuilder to at least kind of understand how a hammer works.

A computer is a tool. I don't expect them to know everything, but I do expect them to know a little.

Exactly.

Ive started realizing that specialists who lack general skills like computer knowledge o the ability to learn things outside of their domain as needed are themselves tools.

If you can't understand things outside of a very narrow slice of specialization you're just a tool to be used by generalists.

You probably use a cellphone in the course of your work. How much do you know about building and operating a 5G RAN? How about modem and RF front end design?

I assume that if you're not a cellular network engineer, the answer would be "very little".

No, I know the basics of how the telephony network works and how wireless phones calls are made. I don't know specific technologies like what makes 5G different from 4G, but I don't need to.

I know that radio waves are sent by towers to me phone and back to create a connection. That's why I can't use my phone in an underground parking garage.

I know what a phone number is and why we need them. I know why international calls are more expensive.

That's basic knowledge about the tool that I have, and which I will utilize in my day to day life.

When I say "you need to have knowledge of computers", I don't mean "write an algorithm an operating system might use for scheduling running processes", okay? I mean, do you know what the internet is? Do you know what an email is? Do you know what shutdown/reboot means? Do you know what a program is? Do you know how to see what is running on your computer?

I don't understand why everyone is fighting me on this. To me this is pretty simple. If you're using a thing and that thing is integral to your job, you should have a high-level idea of how to fucking use it. Why am I blowing up people's minds with this?

A delicate dance of them, perhaps

It's like a symphony of watermarks, all playing in harmony.

It's annoying, I'd really love to export my chats. Any Anthropic PMs reading this, as a paying subscriber I command you to prioritise this feature, on pain of failed training runs

Why shouldn't they be? They achieved their goal. There is little shame in cloning something.