I have to disagree with both. I help a colleague teach a class in which students often read necromancer, and it often has a deep impact on them. The cloned ninjas and laser weapons are uninteresting to them for the reasons mentioned above, but the Necromancer + Wintermute dynamic and central plot is fascinating to them.
Same for my shop - we manage a large pool of cost driven by partially forcastable factors; we've repeatedly rejected methods purely on explainability grounds. Our accountability requirements do not allow us to point the finger at an LLM if we get it wrong.
Second this recommendation. Blindsight hits much harder and faster than Egan - and in my opinion the writing is much tighter. Similar focus on science-based idea exploration, particularly in regards to theories of consciousness, brain structure, probability, and vampires. If you like Egan I'd be shocked if you didn't like watts. He is one of the hidden gems of science fiction and an absolute gift to humanity.
But other scenes, like the squishing of the literary agent between the floor and ceiling of a building that had been, up until that moment, supported but some kind of energy field, would be spectacular.
But more generally I completely agree with your comment. I also think the religious symbolism, like the cruciform parasite and the tree of pain, were a bit cheesy and overwrought in the writing, and would come across cheesy in a film, too.
This guy PSEs. I've worked in tertiary education policy for 20 years and this is about the best summary of structural issues possible to fit in a tweet-length post, well done.
All I can find is Porn Star Experience, which I'm guessing is what's intended, but doesn't strike me as the most natural usage of the term (which, admittedly, I've never used).
EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes...I still can't tell if this is correct or not. The reply that says "post secondary educations" doesn't make sense to me because it this appears to be used as a verb, and that doesn't scan for me.
HN can be frustrating, you'll get voted through the floor by the initial rush of dopamine addicts frustrated questions don't contain info.
Then, you'll be told you got voted through the floor because you complained you got voted through the floor.
Over the 14 years I've been here, I've gotten enough training data to A) wait it out and/or B) make an edit showing humor about it? "wow, -4 for an innocuous take you'd find at any coffee shop!?"
On the net, it doesn't matter much unless you're a new account, things always trend positive as long as you don't _always_ show up with takes explaining everyone is committing group think and you're the only one who gets it. (p.s. that's not even close to what you're doing here! just illustrating the only situation in which I think people get persistently negative votes)
This piece would be a lot better is it didn't spend half the time piling ad-hominem attacks on "doomers". If you see this episode through an AGI-safety lense, it realized/reflects a type of risk that has been very extensively articulated/predicted by the safety community.
Same here. I commute 3 days per week, 15 km each way. It takes me 35-40 minutes, but I enjoy it and get great exercise. I spend the time thinking about my day, and am happier and more productive if I've gotten that exercise.
I do get the occasional flat, but I learned to change it myself, and can get a new 4$ tube on in about ten minutes.
I pack rain pants and a shell and just put them on if a bit of rain comes. I only give up when the roads are snowed in and haven't been cleared yet, which is only a few days per year.
Most complaints about weather and maintenance are easily dealt with with a few basic skills and simple preparation.
It might sound like year round commuting is extreme - but ive found it far easier and far more enjoyable than I expected.
I'd be willing to bet this isn't the case: even in unsafe areas dogs need to go outside to do their business. I doubt there's a natural experiment out there that could demonstrate causality...
