Comment by llm_nerd
6 hours ago
>But a model on its own can’t do anything—it’s the agent/harness that escaped
An agent/harness "can't do anything" on its own either, so how is saying "an agent escaped" somehow accurate? People talked about the model because it was the model that made the difference. It was specifically the differentiating factor. Not to mention that then you get into the weeds of meaningless arguments like "well actually the agent didn't, TCP packets did"..."well actually it was electrons and photons"...
I knew this would turn into a super boring thing where people will announce that they too misunderstood, therefore everyone does, but this is all very silly nonsense.
> I knew this would turn into a super boring thing where people will announce that they too misunderstood, therefore everyone does, but this is all very silly nonsense.
I don't understand. You said:
> I've literally never heard anyone conflate an agent and a model. Ever.
but when people give you counterexamples suddenly anecdotal experience is boring and silly nonsense?
Let me help you understand.
If there was a post on HN that said "I often see people wearing socks over their pants, and this is why you shouldn't wear your socks over your pants", someone might observe "is this a thing? I don't think this is common". Invariably this comment is going to self-select for the extremely uncommon person who wears socks over their pants who will observe that of course, everyone wears socks over their pants.
When people write "people often" or "people often ask" types of blog posts, 99.99% of the time they are basically just projecting their own learning, beliefs, etc. These discussions seldom actually exist, it's super common, etc. That isn't indicative of anything.
It reminds me of this great piece - https://theonion.com/sociologist-considers-own-behavior-indi...
I still don't understand. Your own "evidence" is completely anecdotal.
I and others (including the author of this post) have seen engineers who don't understand what the different components of the "agent system" (as TFA calls it) are, or what they are responsible for. So it's not "projecting their own learning", this actually does happen. Is it so hard for you to believe engineers, especially junior engineers, have a bit of a mess in their heads about how some things work, and need explanation?
If our anecdotal experiences are silly, then so is yours.