Interesting idea. How does it, or how should it, perform in huge monorepos, where git performance suffers? I spend most of my time in a repo that contains hundreds of thousands of files, where just a simple `git status` can take >3.5 seconds even on very fast consumer hardware. (Thank God for sparse-checkout.)
This is actually the exact scenario we just spent the last few weeks optimizing for. On a 71K-file TypeScript monorepo, sem was previously choking entirely (DNF), and now completes in 6.5s with the topology cache warm. On a 100K-file generated fixture, sem impact went from 90s cold down to about 1s warm. The key was building a SQLite-backed cache that stores the dependency graph structure so repeat runs skip re-parsing unchanged files entirely.
Yeah, I don't agree with the guy you're answering. I know plenty of great people who just don't want kids and don't find time with them to be rewarding or gratifying, and there's nothing wrong with that. Having kids most definitely doesn't guarantee that old age will be any better either. Even if it did, it's not worth decades of labor and costs that you don't want. Saving for retirement/end of life care is much easier when you don't have kids, too. If you don't want kids, more power to you.
My love for my daughter and my wife enrich my life and contribute more to my happiness than anything else, by far. As you wrote, the majority of the very, very hard work has fallen to my wife. I wouldn't fault any woman, or man, for not wanting it.
Still, my wife and I both feel that parenting is the best thing we've ever done or will ever do. It's everything I hoped it would be -- and much more besides. The benefits are innumerable for us.
Agreed. Another comment in the thread describes the author's horrible, abuse-filled upbringing as the child of young parents who both weren't prepared for children and, in at least one case, didn't want them and blamed him for their circumstances. I can't fathom any of that and my heart breaks for the guy and the kid he used to be.
It's really unfortunate that people who are likeliest to make terrible choices are probably also likely to make the choice to have kids. A lot of people who choose not to have kids generally know themselves well enough to make the right choice, which also means that they'd probably be better parents than a lot of the clueless people who wind up with kids they never should have had.
> Whether anything is conscious is about as important and amorphous as whether God exists
Whether something is conscious is important for many reasons, not least the ethical implications. You and I have internal lives, and we expect others to respect that somewhat, because ignoring it is hypocrisy (if you ignore my wishes, should anybody care about yours?) and cruelty (ignoring my wishes causes me to suffer).
Something doesn't need to be empirically verifiable, let alone scientifically, to be true. Neither of us can prove that we have internal lives, but neither of us questions it -- and we consider it important enough that most of us think it entitles us to certain rights.
Absolutely none of this is amorphous. It's precise and unambiguous, and has enormous implications. History also shows everywhere that we're better, kinder, and more responsible when we choose to care about it.
Whether LLMs are conscious matters in more practical ways, too, because beliefs about these things alter the way people use and think about them. If I think an LLM is conscious, then I think it's capable of something like knowledge or values. Human beings, moreover, are social creatures. These tools are dangerous and seductive precisely because they tap into that part of us. Denying LLMs are conscious and rejecting the parts of them that take advantage of our social-animal wetware is intellectual self-defense. I'm not sure how effective it is (it doesn't stop us from responding to the convincing social cues that the tools feed us), but I have to think it's better than nothing, and it's certainly less dangerous than the belief that the tools are conscious.
I wouldn't call this nitpicking. This is how people who are careful with money think. I learned embarrassingly late to stop justifying purchases by making predictions about future returns. I treat everything as having zero value as soon as I purchase it. Thinking otherwise is, for me, always a dangerous rationalization -- always a craving that's trying to outmaneuver sense.
> The reality is that a human will learn, given any materials including LLMs, but only if they truly desire to learn. We've had MOOCs, gigantic libraries, all full of free information. You can obtain a PhD level understanding in any technical field of your choice today just by consistently going to the library and consistently applying yourself.
Not true. In every field there is guild knowledge that a person can't acquire from a library. In technical disciplines PhD-level knowledge requires experience in collaboration, research, and frequently lab work, which is impossible to acquire without access to a lab -- or just direct experience with research methods, whatever those may be. Reading papers and absorbing information aren't enough. PhD-level knowledge comes from the process of writing and doing original work.
> The reality is that a human will learn, given any materials including LLMs, but only if they truly desire to learn.
Also not true. We require kids to go to school partly because exposure to the environment and work inculcates skills regardless of whether kids want to do the work -- and regardless of whether they want to learn.
LLMs are damaging to students partly because they provide an escape hatch from that work and thereby prevent kids from acquiring skills.
Think of it this way: most people who want to be healthy and eat a healthy diet still find easy junk food tempting. What they want does not change the temptation, because the body and brain gravitate towards easy, cheap fulfillment of basic drives.
People facing challenging tasks, similarly, are tempted to take measures that reduce the amount of effort they require. The availability of tools that reduce the required effort also help shape a person's understanding of the value of the challenge and the work: "why should I do this hard task when I have a tool that can do it for me?" You and I know the answer to this question when we're discussing something like writing an essay or solving a problem in a math or programming class. Students frequently don't. They are by definition ignorant. Children, moreover, lack maturity. Their brains are less capable of resisting the easy path than an adult's. That's partly why parenting is important: parents provide boundaries and limits that kids need but won't and can't provide for themselves.
Sometimes people, especially kids, really do need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, through something in order to receive the benefits it offers. Being dragged through it sometimes convinces a person of its value and benefits. In a kid's case, there's a decent chance that the experience will improve executive function, shape expectations in a healthy way, inculcate grit, and become appreciation -- or at least habit.
I would not have written essays on my own as a student in secondary school. My English teachers had to provide that structure for me and impose the demand. But LLMs make it much more difficult to impose the demands, and kids are ill protected against the temptations of the cognitive equivalent of junk food, but an order of magnitude worse and more damaging.
The comment isn't a diatribe, and your experience as a teacher and advisor does not make your argument correct, let alone make your request any less a nonsequitur. If I disagree with you, I will always, I promise, say so. Asking that I 'please refrain' is just supercilious and silly.
It's also arguably a violation of Hacker News' guidelines:
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