And my partner and I are on the other side of that, we have like 12 packs of every price point and size accumulated over the years, I have a couple 20 years old, and I can’t think of a single broken feature. Im gentle on all my stuff so I don’t need ultra rugged high quality and expensive gear, and I suspect most people don’t (granted kids can be diff).
IME there’s a core set of very popular Java libs you can go very far without adopting obscure libraries you’ve never heard of. Eg apache-commons, spring, etc. the bar to adopt a 3p lib seems higher in some ecosystems than others.
Honestly I'm not sure. I think I include them under the same umbrella because how often they work together, plus all the systems integration that they have together.
They give you an IP address, maybe ipv6 or a static ipv4 address if you pay more. They compete on quality of service, network policies, backhaul capacity, price, necessary services like DNS, extras like email or bundled Netflix subscriptions, etc, etc.
Some of these qualities are more legible than others.
A systems purpose depends on its creator. Creators regularly fail to produce intended results. It’s absurd to say an unintended result is the intended result
How long is it ok to produce “unintended” results without changing anything, before you can say that’s now an expected part of the system? Because i think that’s the issue. It’s not that the US has a goal to criminalize poverty - the constitution doesn’t say anything about that - but since it’s been that way for so long it seems the system is unwilling to do what needs to be done to prevent that. It’s part of the expected behavior of the system.
Intent - what someone wanted or expected the system to do.
Purpose - what the system does in practice. The reason, or primary function for it.
Some classic examples -- post it notes were intended as a aerospace adhesive, but found their purpose as low tack papers.
If you want a classic systems example, standardized testing is a good example of difference between purpose and intent. It was intended to be a mechanism for measuring schools and ensuring every kid got an equal education. But now its purpose could be described as the metric schools game. It narrows curricula, encourages teaching to the test. Those outcomes are not the original intent. Or even desirable.
So I wasn't being flippant (maybe a little flippant) when I was saying intent and purpose are different.
Other classic examples -- the US senate, social media algorithms, animal bounties (paying people per head bounties on killed rats, frogs, or snakes results in people breeding those animals), war on drugs, zoning laws, etc.
It's very closely related to the idea that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".
But one last question to help me understand your position then I’ll leave you alone.
Why do people post this saying as if it has import? What point are they trying to make?
IME I have only ever heard this phrase used as a reaction against single failures as a way of maligning the operators of a system without any associated analysis or consideration of how the system actually works. Do you disagree this is the rhetorical purpose?
This quote says to me that we need to think about outcomes early AND late in the life of designing and operating a system. We have unintended consequences, and when we elect to not (or ineffectually) address the side effects of a system, we are making a choice to adopt the purpose of that system.
It's a way of reminding us that the behavior we ignore is the behavior we accept. That outcomes matter more than intent.
Personally, I think people are too permissive towards mistakes in large systems, categorizing them as "a few bad apples" or "an occasional error". Yes, i deploy this quote when single failings happen, but I also deploy it in broad critique of structural failings. It also prompts thoughts about why -- systems are built on top of systems, on top of systems.
As an example, our Justice system has both specific incidents (e.g. George Floyd) and structural failings (racial bias, high incarceration rates). Those are both cases where I would use this quote. It might seem that a single incident is wrong to deploy this quote, but the George Floyd incident doesn't happen in isolation. We need to look at the whole system. How are police trained? How are Americans trained to interact with police? How does the Justice system interact with minority and poor communities? How do we address mental health in this country? All of those questions are complex and nuanced, and are themselves contributors to the purpose of the police.
So, for me, it's not meant to be quippy or punchy or malignant. It's meant to highlight failures aren't isolated incidents, they are part of a system that is failing to prevent this outcome. Probably for complex reasons, but we as a society are choosing not to address those complex reasons.
See, this is the funny thing; I agree with everything you said, except that this phrase helps in those ways.
In other words, IME, the purpose of the system of the phrase “the purpose of the system” is to cause thought terminating moral superiority, even if _you intend_ for the phrase to highlight complexity and unintended consequences. ;)
Anyways, thanks for the full explanations of your position.
Why would bob only have time to promote llms? Strange strawman.
Many uni courses always had a level of you get out what you put in, it’s the same with LLMs.
Why would the university look at the amount of work a student get done, conclude the student can get 12x done because they can do a years work in a month and not make the student do 12x more work?
And it’s not strictly speaking university we’re talking about. The way we understand work is going to fundamentally change. And we’re not going to value the people who use LLMs to get 1x done.
But yes, university was always about how much work you put into it, and LLM’s are going to make that 10x more obvious.
The point is the Bob and Alice comparison is already a straw man, but I do squarely believe it’s the people with the best mental models and not the people who “get AI” who will win the new world. If you’re curious and good at developing mental models, you can learn “AI” in a week. But if you’re curious and good at developing mental models you’ve probably already lapped both Bob and Alice
Yes I’m sure I’m more productive. I have decades of experience before AI to compare to.
I can only speak to the engineering context not academia, but I would expect there’s similar patterns of busywork. Even the blog authors admit to using AI. AI cant replace thinking but it can replace menial labor, which is prevalent even among “knowledge workers”.
We’re years into the industry leaning into “chain of thought” and then “thinking models” that are based on this premise, forcing more token usage to avoid premature conclusions and notice contradictions (I sometimes see this leak into final output). You may remember in the early days users themselves would have to say “think deeply” or after a response “now check your work” and it would find its own “one shot” mistakes often.
So it must be studied and at least be proven effective in practice to be so universally used now.
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