Comment by RangerScience
2 days ago
I mean - going from “doable in a week with the right mindset” to “doable in a day when I’ve struggled before” is uhhh kinda worth being blown away by
2 days ago
I mean - going from “doable in a week with the right mindset” to “doable in a day when I’ve struggled before” is uhhh kinda worth being blown away by
Yeah, great, but also completely irrelevant. Is every post on Hacker News related to AI in any way a place to post anecdotes about AI?
I’m actually a huge fan of Brett Victor and I felt like he’s kinda missing the dynamic, adaptable nature of AI that allows non-technical people like me to finally access the system layer of computation for our creative ends.
In other words, in many ways, AI (or rather llms) is the very thing that Brett Victor has spent his whole career imagining and creating - a computing interface that closes gap between human imagination and creation. But here, he’s focusing on the negatives while neglecting, IMHO, the vast potential of AI to allow people to connect, create, and express themselves. As in truly having a PERSONAL computer.
At Dynamicland, he was attempting to build a system that non-technical people like me can interface in a way that makes sense to us.
Taking your unnecessarily disparaging microwave analogy - Using CHATGPT, I can understand it, reprogram it, and do fun stuff, like I don’t know - set up a basketball hoop that sets the timer based on how many shots I make, despite having limited or no technical background. Like I can tell chatgpt my crazy vision, and it will give me step by step approach, with proper resources, and respond in a way that I can grok to build this thing.
THIS is why I'm awestruck.
My anecdote is just my personal reaction to the post. Besides, what’s wrong with people expressing themselves freely here?
> I’m actually a huge fan of Brett Victor and I felt like he’s kinda missing the dynamic, adaptable nature of AI that allows non-technical people like me to finally access the system layer of computation for our creative ends.
To "grok" something is to understand it on a deep, fundamental level. Following a checklist from an LLM and the thing you're doing eventually working isn't grokking.
To be clear, I'm very glad that you and others can throw together new projects. Your excitement seems genuine, and more excitement in the world is good. And perhaps you'll be one of the miniscule minority who will use LLMs to really get to a deeper level of understanding with new things.
But I wonder if your excitement may be misleading you here and making it harder for you to grok Bret Victor's post - on any level. I don't think Victor is interested in computing in the way you think he is. There's a world of difference between being able to cobble a web project together, and the kinds of philosophical shifts a project like dynamicland is proposing and enacting.
In the interest of people expressing themselves freely, I'd go so far as to say it's particularly surprising to read all this from "an artist". There was a time when being an artist implied the person had reflected and read and thought about larger perspectives across a range of subjects - philosophy, science, religion, etc.
Here, in this instance, I can't help feeling there's some crunchy irony in the fact that a deeply radical (scientifically, artistically, technologically, socially) project like dynamicland is met by an artist excited to be able to plug web services into each other, strongly claiming from the very heart of the cultural slop wars, that the dynamicland people might be confused and maybe LLMs is the real answer.
Respectfully, consider that maybe the perspective from which they're viewing the problem is simply much deeper than what you've been able to grasp so far. I don't mean it disparagingly or cynically, in fact it's great news, you've vistas to explore here!
I suggest reading more from dynamicland directly, and bret's website too, a few of bret's talks, alan kay is very good, there's tons of stuff if you get into it. Don't neglect the history of computing, it's full of amazing ideas.
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