It's pretty easy to do, a Pi (of any kind) and an IR LED that sends the power button codes for the common TV brands will do it (since it's often a toggle, it'll also turn TV's on if they are off).
RF remotes are harder to hack together but similar principle. Whether IR or RF, the codes are common across all devices of the same model/protocol.
In a similar vein, many years ago I helped someone with a similar problem with a neighbour who had the volume too loud. As the aerial cable was accessible, I suggested he stick a pin through the neighbour's cable whenever the volume got too loud, and pull it out when the volume went down.
Sure enough, after a while the neighbour learnt their TV only worked if they kept the volume down in the evening.
I wish there was an easy solution like this for smoking "neighbours". Some sort of detection device that instantly closes my windows automatically and then "explodes" a nasty "stinking bomb" outside (e.g. automatic opening of a container with butyric acid or similar), so it smells worse than their smoke. Eventually their brains would connect smoking with nasty stinking and stop doing it.
"Noftsker also shared the hacker aversion to cigarette smoke, and would sometimes express his displeasure by shooting a jet of pure oxygen from a canister he kept for that purpose; the astonished smoker would find his or her cigarette bursting into a fierce orange blur."
No smokers in my neighborhood, but people use their goddamn fireplaces too much and it’s kinda impossible to get fresh air in winter evenings and often during the day. Not sure how to train them. And unfortunately, there are too many. Burning wood should be forbidden in residential areas. It’s similar to smoking in restaurants, except you can’t escape them.
My romantic views of wood smoke hit reality when I first camped in Canada's Banff-Jasper national parks, where you could buy unlimited firewood for the night for $5. Everyone bought it, it seemed. Trying to breathe downwind of a campground was a rude wakeup call. It should definitely be restricted in denser residential areas. I can't imagine some of the towns in Germany or Poland where residents depend on wood fires for heat.
Where they depend on wood for heat they are more likely to have efficient stoves that completely burn the wood. Smoke coming out of the chimney is "firing for the crows" and wasting fuel.
The stink remains even for efficient fires. Smoke is often correlated of course.
I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand which gets winter smog,. The city council enforces rules and woodburners need to meet strict emission standards. They regularly tighten the rules so that if you want a woodburner you need to replace it every 15 years or so.
But they do still smell.
The rules have radically improved the air quality here and we now get much less smog than when I was a kid.
Outright banning open fires and coal years ago made a big difference too.
I'm not sure what happens if you don't follow the rules. A neighbour can make a complaint and there will get taken seriously and I believe they have a van sometimes checking too. Although I've personally never heard of anyone actually getting caught.
It achieves cleaner air, which I personally like, and which is especially great for anyone with lung problems like asthmatics.
I suspect part of the rule tightening is to slowly squeeze to get rid of fires altogether (the outcome with the cleanest air).
> what do you do if you build your own woodburner/fireplace?
You couldn't afford to do it legally (I expect emissions testing is expensive). I don't know what the penalties are for illegal woodburners/fireplaces. My personal experience is that it isn't enforced. I'd guess penalties can be avoided unless you're a repeat offender with a complaining neighbour.
Note that outdoor braziers are legal AFAIK. Although Outdoor fires have some restrictions - especially if very dry and high fire risk.
Firewood is not cheap for heating. Even if you have free trees then it costs a lot of time (in my experience) and often equipment or transport is expensive too.
>You couldn't afford to do it legally (I expect emissions testing is expensive).
An honest answer at least and something i hope we don't see here.
But I think similar legislation is going to become common trough the EU (something is already on the books i believe) and is already a thing in Germany.
It's silly too in a time when most still heat with fossil fuels, pumping up more and more that could be avoided and i can build a fireplace with outside air intake or get a damn near ancient finish masonry heater that's far more efficient than anything one can get at the store.
>Firewood is not cheap for heating. Even if you have free trees then it costs a lot of time (in my experience) and often equipment or transport is expensive too.
I live in Western Europe but it's been cheap.
If I counted up the time invested and compared it to equivalent time worked for money to spend on other heating with fossil fuels then it comes out far far cheaper.
Even if i add some egregious estimates for the cost of a chainsaw, trailer and wheelbarrow it's still only a fraction of the cost.
Christchurch doesn't use much fossil fuels. Coal, Coal gas[1], Coke, and LPG were used in the past for home heating. Electricity generation can come from coal when hydro lakes get dry. Utility Solar will replace that usage.
I use firewood for heating when I'm using the living area but I'm not sure I'd replace the current woodburner. I currently use gas for hot water for showers but LPG is getting more expensive so when the gas califont fails it will be replaced with electric heating.
I have access to free trees, but I've been slowly finding that my "free" firewood is expensive (because I value my time highly). I'm not sure how to account for the risks of hurting myself, or the benefits of exercise!
We had a massive problem with smog, and although the regulations definitely have some bad side effects, the regulations have worked.
No one is forcing you to get/build one that doesn't far exceed the current regulations to the point where it is expected to exceed them until the end of its useful lifespan.
We have a very nice Jotul stove that we use occasionally during winter to supplement our minisplits (e.g. when it drops to -10C or colder overnight). I've been told it's one of the best wood stoves you can buy.
But we burn Siberian Elm wood that grows (and dies) on our property, and even when the stove is working at its best ... jeez, I feel embarrassed for how much we stink up the neighborhood. Burning elm wood is just inherently nasty in terms of the smell.
It's particularly embarrassing because a lot of neighbors use pinon in their stoves and that makes parts of the village basically like walking into a cafe with the best smelling chili you've ever eaten (while remaining outside!).
People have romantic ideas about heating with fire and burn the most awful green wood in their fireplaces, stinking up the whole neighborhood. I understand burning bad wood because you have no options -- I witnessed a chimney fire or two as a kid that resulted from burning too much wet pine -- but I cannot fathom the mindset of someone who does it recreationally.
100% agree, many people don’t realize just how harmful wood smoke is. It’s also the main source of pollution in the Bay Area during the winter. Unfortunately energy costs are high enough here that people resort to burning wood to save money, so collectively beneficial policies are likely to face resistance (understandably).
The purpleair map has been awesome to at least make the problem visible. I hope they are using it to aid enforcement on spare the air days.
“domestic wood-burning is the largest source of particulate pollution in the UK. Only 8% of the UK’s homes burn wood, but this accounts for around 21% of the total PM2.5 emissions, whereas all traffic on the UK roads produces 13%” https://medium.com/the-new-climate/why-the-environmental-mov...
presuming your suggestion is correct (that forum goers are indistinguishable from walking echo chambers) , wouldnt screaming at forum goers just end up with a scream being returned right at you ?
> a full 1/3 of lifelong smokers never develop any kind of cancer,
That's "true" in the sense that it's the CVD (Cardiovascular disease) and COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) that are way more likely to take them out first.
Lifetime Smoking History and Cause-Specific Mortality in a Cohort Study with 43 Years of Follow-Up
Sure, you absolutely can be 98 years old sucking back on a deathstick, just like you might find yourself screaming "suck it" as you take home that giant lottery cheque with some winnings.
Pachinko's a hell of a game .. but still the house wins.
The atmosphere above Christchurch, NZ tends to form layers in winter that trap the smoke and make this worse, and new fireplaces have been restricted to clean-burning log burners and dry wood by law.
It seemed like the biggest change in air quality in recent years came from the tragic earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 knocking down all the unreinforced-masonry chimneys, though.
Well, it's not the burning of the wood as such, but the lack of flue gas treatment.
I too wish we had much stricter imissions rules for fires in residential areas.
> people use their goddamn fireplaces too much and it’s kinda impossible to get fresh air in winter evenings
Not a problem with a properly designed HEATAS approved wood burning stove and properly seasoned beach wood.
Being daft enough to buy an inefficient, unapproved stove and/or and burn unseasoned green wood is ridiculous. Not to mention its illegal to sell small quantities of unseasoned firewood in Blighty; large amounts to season yourself are fine.
EDIT: If you disagree with the above, then get off your arse and write a rebuttal saying why! Downvoting simply because you disagree (rather than because the text doesn't add to the conversation) simply turns arguments into a popularity contest and is turning this place into another Reddit. (A statement of fact, no matter what the old HN guidelines say about Reddit).
Good neighborhood = keep your emissions low. Be it sound, light, or smell. These rules apply to almost all public places. If you want to be loud, burn shit or have floodlights, move to a place outside of the city.
i see both sides, having lived with both super sensitive and petty neighbors, and also inconsiderate, loud neighbors.
There are definitely sensitive people who have either misophonia rage, or PTSD from something, and they can't handle normal levels of city noise.
on top of that, some apartments simply allow smoking inside. If they always use the balcony, they're really doing you a favor.
if you are worried about emissions, you really have to think about cars and refineries and jets, and even restaurants. These are incredibly out of control when it comes to pollution and disease.
in my experience, if you're buying machines and building devices, and your target refuses to play that game, then it's clear who the adult is, and who the child is.
I don't mind the gunshots near my house during hunting season, because I have good neighbors. Those shots mean my freezer is getting stocked with venison.
I live far enough out that the gunshots are usually people hunting NFS land.
A huge swath of it borders my property, as I'm the last house up the road on my mountain.
I don't mind 'em at all, though. I think it's locals, just folks I haven't met. They keep it clean and they go up far enough I can't hear anything besides the rifle crack.
I had this problem ... a smoker who would religiously sit on their patio and smoke so much that it would smoke us out of our house.
After speaking with them didn't help ... my next response was to religiously water the garden at the same time with my jet spray ...
I have amusing videos (from our CCTV) of our neighbour regularly diving for cover from an "accidental" spray of water.
"Sorry. I'm just watering our plants, sorry about that".
I wish I could say this solved it ... but the subtlety of the point that their smoking was impacting the enjoyment of our home, in the same way as my water spray was impacting his enjoyment of his garden was lost on them ...
We eventually settled it the old fashioned way. Not with pistols or swords ... but an old-fashioned chat after reporting them to the local council.
Luckily the problem is resolved ... but largely due to the threat of the Council taking action against their landlord.
We had a similar problem and used to spray those air freshener sprays towards the source of the smoke whenever we noticed it. The advantage is that those sprays can travel downwards unlike other sources of smell (our neighbor lived below us). And they can be quite strong and linger. And depending on your local laws, you can't just pollute the air with anything you choose, but it's hard to argue against air freshener ("I just wanted my smoke filled balcony to smell nice!"). Whether it worked for us, no, not really, I don't think the neighbor was even sensitive to strong smells.You could hypothetically build some kind of smoke detection system that would automate this, but I think any cigarette smoke detectors won't work better on outside air than your nose.
People who smoke on the balconies of multi-unit buildings are awful people. It’d be a beautiful day but I can’t keep my windows open because there’s always somebody smoking to make my unit smell disgusting if I just want to enjoy a cool breeze going through.
Thank goodness smoking is becoming rarer here and is no banned pretty much everywhere indoors and near entrances.
I don’t mind if people have a vice (I’ve got mine) but keep me out of it.
Smoking tobacco got rarer here, but smoking marijuana has gotten much more common. I don't know if it's just that I grew up with tobacco, but the skunk-like smell of marijuana bothers me a lot more.
Inhaling any particulate seems like a pretty bad idea. I knew a Jamaican guy who thought people were silly for smoking it and said tea was the best. I have no opinion, not my vice of choice.
> There is no such thing as "gluten intolerance", for example
[citation needed].
I have celiac disease and a wheat allergy, which presented at the age of 3 comorbidly.
If I ingest gliadin, my immune cells take the gliadin, run a nice little check on it, and then raise holy hell and destroy my gut villae.
If I come into contact with wheat, I get a histamine response. Even a bag of (organic, locally produced) wheat flour opened in the same room as me used to be enough to make my airways close up.
> There is no such thing as "gluten intolerance", for example--there is only glyphosate intolerance.
This is absurd if you know anyone with a gluten intolerance. They have an immune reaction to organic wheat (so no glyphosate) but not to any other non-organic non-gluten produce (like oats, chickpea flour, etc. which have glyphosate).
You sound just delightful. A wonderful blend of ignorant and weird-but-not-in-the-good-way. Smoking anything is bad for you, including the thing you like. PM 2.5 contamination is enormously harmful, and it doesn't magically go away if it's weed.
I'm agnostic as to the harms vs. benefits of smoking marijuana, it's the smell that bothers me. I personally love the smell of frankincense, but I would understand if my neighbors objected to me burning it regularly.
I did read their post history. I guess it's nice to understand that people who rant like morons don't believe they rant like morons. I always wondered about the self awareness of it.
I never claimed to be polite, although I definitely temper my writing because I've been reprimanded by the mods before.
You didn't write anything to argue about. You wrote that you like the smell of weed. Well I think most people don't when they're not enjoying it, but that's only my experience with people, I haven't run a poll on the subject. I would certainly be bothered by it if it was constant.
Then you started the rant, in the most stereotypical way, X is all lies. There seems to be plenty of evidence that any particulate pollution is detrimental to health, so this is not even about your particular vice: people don't want to breathe shit you're burning.
> Since they smoke on the balcony, rather than near roommates/family, many are likely more mindful and pleasant to coexist with than what you displayed.
They’re more pleasant to coexist with because they let their smoke drift into my home instead of their own? What? They’re just externalizing the negatives of their own vice.
Yeah, it's a bit worrying that some people don't seem to understand that just because you enjoy smoking, doesn't mean the rest of the units downstream of you want to breath it in too.
a) are aware that their smoke isn't dispersed enough by the breeze / open space to be unnoticeable.
b) know there is someone close enough who isn't like them and other smokers, and is really bothered by the smoke.
They do, however, go smoke on their balconies since they were made aware smoking inside is bad for their roommates/family.
So, many of them are more likely than not reasonable people. They _could be_. While you _proved_ that you aren't, by not communicating it (or at least not mentioning it as if it isn't the most important reason why they are "awful people"), just judging them and holding a grudge.
In this very comment you again showed that you don't care enough to understand others who you might disagree with, because I am just rephrasing what I already wrote, since you replied like I didn't.
I don't disagree with your general intent. Let's not put cocaine and amphetamines on the same level as caffeine though. Some drugs are orders of magnitude more harmful than others. Alcohol would have to be erased from human society before caffeine ever entered our crosshairs.
Also, you should remember my comment was about the route of administration. A drug you take is your choice. An airborne drug works its way into your system whether you want it or not.
It stinks, it has a reek. People don't like the way it smells, and smoking it around others who aren't smoking is just plain rude. Smoke your sacred herb, but do it where it won't make people wonder why it smells like a skunk died nearby.
You make a lot of very strange assumptions about who I am and what I've done with my life.
And you'll note, I don't stop them, nor complain - I merely WISH they were a little more considerate in their partaking of the herb, I'd be less irritated.
Additionally, they don't have "every right" it's entirely illegal here, but I've no interest in calling the police over it - as again, I just wish they were naturally a little more considerate over their use of shared space than having a desire to punish them over it.
I've no desire to persecute anyone, yet once again you assume I do.
All I ask is that my neighbours use a fan, it doesn't bother me enough to interfere with them, I just WISH they could be a little less selfish. They aren't, and in the grand scheme of things it's fine.
You seem to intentionally misrepresent what I state and play the victim.
Indeed cannabis is fully legal in many jurisdictions and it's becoming more and more common - I'm not convinced by your "life and death" narrative here in the slightest.
No - I don't care much what happens to you, I don't know you from Adam. However, nor do I care how much or how little of your sacred herb you smoke.
I merely ask that if you find yourself around others, have some consideration for them. Wishing someone would put a fan on while they smoke, out of good will is hardly a conspiracy scale persecution.
If you can't grant others this courtesy, I'm still going to leave you alone. I may however post a vague post on the internet indicating displeasure for certain people's lack of manners and respect for others.
While I do enjoy both sex and travel, this doesn't seem the appropriate forum to discuss it in.
No, because the noise of people just living life is not comparable to cigarette smoke. You can also use earplugs if you’re that sensitive to regular noises of people living around you. That kind of sensitivity is not normal though.
I can’t stop cigarette smoke from seeping in to everything in my home if I leave the windows open. Also, smoking is not a necessary part of life. You can’t live silently.
> I don’t know, I’m not the one smoking. That’s their problem to solve.
It’s your problem not theirs. It bothers you, not them. They probably don’t even know it bothers you. Are you really surrounded by smokers and cannot open a window all day and night? Dude, let me tell you… you’re making your own life difficult. There are full buildings where smoking is forbidden. Make your own life easy, don’t harass others with your truths. If you don’t care why do you expect others to care.
> I don’t think they’d like it if I left a bucket of rotting fish on my balcony.
Are you comparing a cigarette smoke to full infestation?
Maybe. Go and ask them. Maybe they are truly awful people, maybe they are old or ill, or disabled. Go and talk to them, then start labelling them x and y. See? No one got the idea. All “you” want is that nobody bothers “you”. But thinking from the perspective of others? No, that’s too difficult. The best realisation I had in life was that I am pissing others off for some reasons, as they piss me off for some other reasons. Unfortunately the majority of the lovely “society” doesn’t have that realisation.
So does poor hygiene, smelly dog, a strong perfume you like but maybe not everyone, a newborn poop smell. And for all of those we have washing machines.
If your neighbours have so many kids that the newborn poop smell is filling your home if you
open the window for a while and making your curtains and clothes stink of it because it’s that strong you are well within your rights to complain.
Do you smoke? These comparisons are quite odd unless you don’t realise just how strong the smell is.
A full range of scientific evidence, extending from the molecular level to whole populations, supports the conclusion that secondhand smoke causes disease. The scope of this evidence is enormous, and encompasses not only the literature on secondhand smoke but also relevant findings on active smoking and on the toxicity of individual tobacco smoke components.
You want to have children? Cool. Made a mistake? Deal with it. Don’t make it sound like you are doing others a favour by having children though. “The society” will be fine without them. There are plenty out there nobody cares about.
Yeah, it’s simply pissing me off that no person noticed the only abnormal behaviour here is the dude labelling the whole category of human beings as “awful” without trying to understand their motives. Selfish and entitled on a boss level.
Are those who smoke on a top floor balcony also awful? Are those who smoke on a balcony of a multi-storey building they live alone in also awful people?
It makes me a little sad to see a lot of peoples comments here about how they're annoyed by xyz thing someone does that doesn't stop at there fence line or unit. So many are being downvoted.
A spinning mirror is certainly an option, there are many projects around using them as projectors e.g. [0]. It would need precision faces and be a larger volume than the flapping mirror approach. Because the mirrors are spring-mounted and designed to resonate at ~50Hz they actually take very little power to drive - there's an optosensor on the back used to stabilise the oscillation amplitude, which is why the VB and Private Eye display widths vary during startup.
Can't see the video from this location, so may be just restarting stuff in it.
Unfortunately you can't get the LEDs any more - they were originally from LED printers and those all now use infrared LED arrays. I'm actually working on something similar, and am even using a few VB scanner mechs in development (driven by a raspberry Pi).
For further background, they were developed from an earlier system called the "Private Eye" - still a few references to them on the web e.g. [0]. I've built a circuit to drive one from a Pi Zero - amazing gadgets for 90's tech.
Here's my realtime Bluetooth heart rate monitor for linux, with text output and web interface.
https://github.com/lowrescoder/BlueHeart
This was 100% written by Claude Code, my input was limited to mostly accepting Claude suggestions except a couple of cases where I could make suggestions to speed up development (skipping some tests I knew would work).
Particularly interesting because I didn't expect this to work, let along not to write any code. Note that I limited it to pure C with limited dependencies; initial prompt was just to get text output ("Heart Rate 76bpm"), when it got to that point I told Claude to add a web interface followed by creating a realtime graph to show the interface in use.
Every file is claude generated. AMA.
edit: this was particularly interesting as it had to test against the HRM sensor I was wearing during development, and to cope with bluetooth devices appearing and disappearing all the time. It took about a day for the whole thing and cost around $25.
further edit: I am by no means an expert with Claude (haven't even got to making a claude.md file); the one real objective here was to get a working example of using dBus to talk to blueZ in C, something I've failed at (more than once) before.
It's a good demonstration of when agents still don't get everything right when you place things into Markdown documentation. You have to be really valiant and verify everything from top to bottom, if you want to control how things are implemented to that degree, otherwise the agent will still take shortcuts where they can.
In https://github.com/lowrescoder/BlueHeart/blob/68ab2387a0c44e... for example, it doesn't actually do SSE at all, instead it queues up a complete HTTP response each time, returns once and then closes the stream, so basically a normal HTTP endpoint, "labeled" as a SSE one. SSE is mentioned a bunch of times in the docs, and the files/types/functions are labeled as such, but that doesn't seem to be what's going on internally, from what I could understand. Happy to stand corrected though!
Yes, I haven't even read most of the files, just threw it up there as an example for the OP (I too am tired of the lack of examples, so stepped up to the plate on this one).
As a personal bit of development last weekend. I can see inconsistences myself, some of which result from scope creep during development (starting with the idea of a text-only app and then grafting on the web side) - it literally only started because I wanted a working example of bluetooth and dBus in C, the rest of it just joined the ride.
As for the SSE, no expert on that myself, however if you watch the messages in the browser console it appears to push updates with sporadic notes about using polling instead.
> Yes, I haven't even read most of the files, just threw it up there as an example for the OP (I too am tired of the lack of examples, so stepped up to the plate on this one).
Right, kind of like an LLM skimming and missing the core points :)
OP didn't ask for "Anything you've vibe-coded" but explicitly asked for code written with LLMs that is high quality and structurally sound, and "creates more value than it creates technical debt". That's why I felt like reviewing the code in the first place, and why I gave the feedback.
I understand now that maybe it felt like my impromptu code review came out of nowhere, but I thought you were actually trying to give OP a accurate sample, so sorry if it felt like it came out of nowhere :)
NP, and the exact definition of vibe-coding is, I think, yet to be determined. This wasn't a yolo, it was read all the prompts and generally accept them. Overall I'd say the code and web page are at least of a quality I've seen in many commercial settings; the code itself looks reasonable and if I was to do anything to it for a real 'release', I'd update the documentation which has suffered due to the extensive scope creep during implementation.
> the exact definition of vibe-coding is, I think, yet to be determined
Huh? No, that's been established since Karpathy coined the term; you don't review the code, only use the agent and don't care about how it was done, just about the results.
The actual interesting stuff is how to use LLMs together with a human, to build high quality code. More "augmenting the human intellect" rather than "autonomous robots building for you".
Overall I'd say if someone handed you a specification that named SSE specifically, you created files with SSE in the name, and the implementation talks about doing SSE, yet it doesn't actually do SSE in the end, it's pretty much on par with code in commercial settings, yeah :) But maybe our bar should be slightly above the ground at least? :)
> Huh? No, that's been established since Karpathy coined the term; you don't review the code, only use the agent and don't care about how it was done, just about the results.
However, nowadays it is used as a synonym for everything that is somehow generated by an LLM. Regardless of whether it is a spec-driven, carefully reviewed and iterative piece of software or some yolo-style one-prompter with no idea how it was done.
Yes, by people who don't actually understand what they're talking about, doesn't mean we need to fall to lowest common denominator here on HN too.
Most people understanding "hacking" differently than us, but we've made that work, we can talk about hacking here without other HN users believing we're cracking passwords, why not the same for other terms?
Have you reviewed the code? What were the problems with it? Where did it do things better than you'd expect of humans? Have you compared the effort of making changes to it to the effort required for similar, human-written software?
I don't think anyone says it's not possible to get the LLM to write code. The problems OP has with them is that the code they write starts out good but then quickly devolves when the LLMs get stuck in the weird ruts they have.
Far short of a proper review, however I have scanned the code. Bear in mind this was a purely personal project, never intended to see the light of day and initially just done to create a small but operable chunk of dbus/blueZ glue code for another project.
I have no doubt that a C developer with sufficient knowledge of dBus, bluetooth, the HRM profile and linux could have written the C code in a day. Adding the HTTP server again would be easy if the developer also had experience of that (n.b. there was a minor compiler error when I tried it on another system due to a slightly different version of libmicrohttpd). Adding the API would be straighforward (but tedious) and similiarly the web page (the web page was an one-shot after Claude wrote the API, vis. "Create a web page to display a real time plot with history using the API").
So overall I'd answer that that human developers would could have pulled that off in a day are few and far between (and likely to cost a lot more than $25 plus a day of my time).
And do I think the code is good enough? Yes, more than good enough. I could take it and run with it, against that because it ended up 100% AI-generated I feel a bit like leaving it as a monument to "pure AI".
After all, I never intended to release it - it was this thread that made my throw it up on Github as an example for the OP.
Thank you for actually posting an example that people can look at; I think most other responders misunderstood the post as asking for more pointless anecdotes filled with superlatives and "trust me bro" sentiments.
I didn't ask for a style, it's just what Claude came up with by default. Here's what happened just now when I asked it:-
What was the inspiration for the CSS styling of this web page?
● Looking at the CSS styling in live_plot.html, the inspiration appears to be Tailwind CSS and modern minimalist design trends.
Just as a heads up, LLMs doesn't actually understand why they do what they do, you asking about it will make them reason about why it happened, but it's not the "motivation", it's essentially guesses with no anchoring to reality.
Just thought I'd clarify as I've seen prompts like this and people thinking this is the actual motivation from the "inside the LLM" or whatever, which is a bit far away from the truth.
Fair enough, I did ask for "inspiration" through rather than "motivation" - mainly because I recall a comment on here a few days ago that LLMs are carefully trained to never reveal where the training material came from. So the prompt was aimed at working around that.
Yeah, inspiration, motivation, justification etc are synonyms in this case, the point I was trying to make was something like "LLMs don't know why they do what they do", and asking for them to provide it, will make them come up with it on the spot afterwards, not actually share what the inspiration/motivation/justification was at the time the tokens were sampled.
AI following the Libet ([0]1983) paper about preconscious thought apparently preceding 'voluntary' acts (which really elevated the question of what 'freewill' means).
The prima facie case for free will* is that it feels free. If you can predict the action before the feeling it removes that argument (unless you want to invoke time travel as an option)
*one of the predominant characterisations of free will, anyway. I'm a compatiblist, so I have no issue with caused feelings of decision making being in conflict with free will. I also have a variation of Tourette's, so I have a different perception of doing things wilfully when compared to most people. It's really hard to describe how sometimes you can't tell if something was tic or not.
I don't see why having some latency in the path of free will makes it no longer free. Before my arm moves up, there is a motor neuron that fires that is always correlated with my arm moving up; doesn't that just mean the free will occurs earlier in the process than the motor neuron firing?
The signal preceding the feeling is not an argument against free will. It is an argument against the feeling of free will being evidence for free will.
There are a lot of things I feel that end up not being "real," like embarrassment, a failure. and anxiety. Why should free will not be like any of those?
Yes, my point is that our senses often portray a reality that doesn't exist. Why should we assume free will is any different?
We don't even have a coherent and agreed upon definition. Every attempt at operationalizating it, results in it not being detectable. It's time we admit that there is no scientific basis for free will. It's not a scientific belief.
That's kind-of where compatibalism comes in. For most definitions of free will, it is fighting the feeling that we would like to have it because it feels like we have it, and the evidence that says that the feeling that we have it does not provide any proof.
Sapolsky takes the approach to come up with a definition that can't be met and declare that it can't be met. Compatatablisim is more about finding a definition that is consistent with the feeling because without the feeling there isn't really anything to anchor the idea to anything meaningful. It doesn't use the feeling of making decisions as proof of any power as such, it is treating the feeling more like a measurement of the concept. Doing what we feel like doing is free will. What we feel like doing can be caused by anything and it still wouldn't matter.
Considering the inverse situation makes it seem like any other definition of freedom would be intolerable. If you 'freely' chose to do X but consistently had the perception of wanting to do not-X, it seems like you would not have a happy life. Similarly considering the alternative to determanism for your decisions seems like literal chaos. If something has no cause, it is literally random. Any pattern you can discern would indicate that it has a cause.
Then of-course you get into the nature of what is a cause and consequently considering the nature of time itself. Something travelling backwards in time interacting with something that you see appears uncaused because there was literally no preceding event that indicated it was going to happen (because it wasn't preceding, it came from the other direction)
That's one of those weird things I wonder about when people ask why is there more matter than antimatter, or why does times arrow mainly point in one direction. It feels like riding the crest of a wave wondering why all the water is going the same direction.
There is no single definition for all scientists. However if you define free will as choices that are completely free of deterministic or even statistically deterministic causes that science could in principle predict, then most scientists would say: no, that kind of free will probably doesn’t exist.
In some early computers, the bootstrap was actually a matrix of diodes where you'd remove a diode to get a one and leave it in for a zero. I had a bunch of these boards sometime in the mid 1970's and found you could program a fully populated board with a 9V battery - basically connect it across a diode in a bit position where you wanted a '1', there would be a small but pretty flash from inside the glass case as a zero turned into a one.
When things like the 74S188 were available, we had so much fun squeezing bootstrap code for PDP11's into 2 of them; 32 words by 16 bits was more than enough (later I got code that would boot five different devices into 256 words).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_of_death
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