> we do both text and voice (roughly 70% of data collection is typed, 30% spoken). Partly this is to make sure the model is learning to decode semantic intent (rather than just planned motor movements)
Both of these modes are incredibly slow thinking. Conciously shifting from thinking in concepts to thinking in words is like slamming on brakes for a school zone on an autobahn.
I've gathered most people think in words they can "hear in their head", most people can "picture a red triangle" and literally see one, and so on. Many folks who are multi-lingual say they think in a language, or dream in that language, and know which one it is.
Meanwhile, some people think less verbally or less visually, perhaps not verbally or visually at all, and there is no language (words).
A blog post shared here last month discussed a person trying to access this conceptual mode, which he thinks is like "shower thoughts" or physicists solving things in their heads while staring into space, except "under executive function". He described most of his thoughts as words he can hear in his head, with these concepts more like vectors. I agree with that characterization.
I'm curious what % of folks you've scanned may be in this non-word mode, or if the text and voice requirement forces everyone into words.
I agree that thinking in words is much slower than thinking in concepts would be -- that's the point of training models like this, so that ideally people can always just think in concepts. That said, we do need to get some kind of ground truth of what they're thinking in order to train the model, so we do need them to communicate that (in words).
One thing that's particularly exciting here is that the model often gets the high-level idea correct, without getting any words correct (as in some of the examples above), which suggests that it is picking up the idea rather than the particular words.
> ideally people can always just think in concepts
Are you pursing an idea of how to help people like this author* access this mode that some of us are always in unless kicked out of it by the need for words?
Very needed right now — the opposite of the YouTube-ization of idea transfer.
It doesn't seem clear this is accessible without other changes in wiring? The inability to "picture" things as visuals seems to swap out for "conceptualizing" things in -- well, I don't have words for this.
An attempt from that essay:
This is not what Hadamard is talking about when he describes the wordless thought of the mathematicians and researchers he has surveyed. Instead, what they seem to be doing is something similar to this subconscious, parallelized search, except they do it in a “tensely” focused way.
The impression I get is that Hadamard loads a question into his mind (either in a non-verbal way, or by reading a mathematical problem that has been written by himself or someone else), and then he holds the problem effortfully centered in his mind. Effortfully, but wordlessly, and without clear visualizations. Describing the mental image that filled his mind while working on a problem concerning infinite series for his thesis, Hadamard writes that his mind was occupied by an image of a ribbon which was thicker in certain places (corresponding to possibly important terms). He also saw something that looked like equations, but as if seen from a distance, without glasses on: he was unable to make out what they said.
A couple of this author's speculations aren't how I'd say it works when this is one's default mode, but most are in the neighborhood. He comes the closest of what I've read by people who do think the way the author thinks — which seems to be most people.
I'm pretty sure they not only show up with a PowerPoint file, but one with missing/nonembedded fonts, web images, perhaps even a video in there somewhere. At least that's been my experience with people sending me stuff to print.
When I did IT work for my university, I was in charge of a big plotter printer that the science students used to print posters with summaries of their research for conferences. The only format I ever got was PowerPoint. Based on the number of search results for "powerpoint research poster template", it looks like this PowerPoint is still the format of choice.
I never really thought about it, but it is kind of odd that the same community that loves using LaTeX for document formatting and typesetting research papers is also using PowerPoint as a desktop publishing substitute.
It would be neat if Valve would fund having Steam Client run on Apple Silicon without Rosetta 2 so arm games like Baldur's Gate 3 can be fully supported.
> Deep work with an open office? Dont make me laugh. Please for the love of god bring back cubicles.
Or doors.
25 years ago, Microsoft Redmond had a slogan: "Every dev a door".
In early 2000s, it began to be two devs per room. We all know what happened since. Open offices save facilities concrete money per seat. Productivity lost from lack of deep work is not a line item anyone knows how to track.
The "every dev a door" plus "pair programming" was shown by studies from groups like Pivotal Labs as being optimal for working code, but ... and a big but ...
Companies intentionally optimize for things other than working code. You get what you measure and they measure what's easy instead of measure what matters.
He joined Car and Driver in 1980, became Editor-in-Chief by 1993, retired in 2008. His byline would get me to read an article even if I didn't think I'd like the car.
> I wish there was a service like steam for videos: not subscription but high confidence purchase of video content available "forever" (even if they remove it from the purchasing options, license would remain).
In general, iTunes content purchaselicenses are owned in perpetuity.
You do need to download the bits and have the files on hand, as (a) Apple may lose the right to re-deliver the bits to you, or (b) you may change regions (e.g., move from Australia to Canada) and find the re-download isn't available in the new region.
A good deal of stories were published in 2018 about Apple revoking or removing content, but when threads are pulled, the examples generally fell into these two camps. If you had kept the content yourself, you got to keep enjoying it.
> Personally I watch so little tv/movies that any subscription was always overpaying
Agree there's a good chance many households could purchase their preferred shows for less than the "watch throwaway stuff" subscriptions -- and then own them. This suggests a more ideal pairing is purchasing, plus something like Pluto.
This web app is especially useful for finding places to live at the intersection of two commutes in dense cities. Do travel times from each office as their own shapes and look into the overlaps.
For the approach in the video, it seems likely "it can't work" thanks to the problem is noted at the very end. As he says, you'd need another dimension to correctly capture the differences in speeds between modes of transportation and connections.
This is easy to imagine: just picture an expressway loop and with the proximity of its off ramps to each other, and then the stretch necessary to displace addresses in the center of that loop. To his point, you'd have to lift that center out of the plane to get it far enough from every point on the circle surrounding it.
Great, now can it stop requiring Rosetta on Apple Silicon?
From Baldur's Gate 3 FAQ:
Rosetta is a software that allows Baldur’s Gate 3 to run on systems with Apple silicon, and ARM64 will launch the game natively on Apple silicon, without additional software for compatibility.
ARM64 marks a performance increase when playing Baldur’s Gate 3, however at this time Steam and GOG Galaxy do not support ARM64 so the ARM64 game version can not use platform features such as Cross-Save, Steam/GOG Galaxy overlay, friends lists and multiplayer invite features. Please use the Rosetta option in the Launcher to continue having full Steam and GOG Galaxy integration.
Both of these modes are incredibly slow thinking. Conciously shifting from thinking in concepts to thinking in words is like slamming on brakes for a school zone on an autobahn.
I've gathered most people think in words they can "hear in their head", most people can "picture a red triangle" and literally see one, and so on. Many folks who are multi-lingual say they think in a language, or dream in that language, and know which one it is.
Meanwhile, some people think less verbally or less visually, perhaps not verbally or visually at all, and there is no language (words).
A blog post shared here last month discussed a person trying to access this conceptual mode, which he thinks is like "shower thoughts" or physicists solving things in their heads while staring into space, except "under executive function". He described most of his thoughts as words he can hear in his head, with these concepts more like vectors. I agree with that characterization.
I'm curious what % of folks you've scanned may be in this non-word mode, or if the text and voice requirement forces everyone into words.