I cannot wait for a quake engine book. I'm sure a few hundred of us would be happy to pre-pay so you can take some time off work and write it all up :)
My gut reaction is something like: "don't wait around to be picked, get out there and do great stuff"
Want to help the world get the most out of claude? Go out there and do it at an ability and velocity beyond what others think is possible. Go so hard friends think you're mad. That devs consuming your stuff think you're mad.
Create so much amazingly useful/helpful content and help so many people in so many ways that looking back in 1-2 years at the idea of working for anthropic would seem insane to you.
Hmm, it's more that LLMs can be used for population -> candidate solution generation, e.g. operators in a GA.
The innovation is novelty search, e.g. divergent rather than convergent optimization, paired with the capability that LLM genetic operators and representations unlock.
At least, that's my high-level take. google's alphaevolve is the same kind of thing but focused on convergent ga's (i think).
Chewing is the worst. Any mouth noises. Throat clearing. Tounge clicking. And on.
Mother had it. Sister has it. Father told off my mother for being so hard on us for our "noises" telling her she was going to give us "a complex". I guess she did. Behavioral + genetic most likely.
It sucks. I'm too hard on my own kids, even after having clear-headed/rational conversations about it. It's not rational. Pure emotion boiling over.
I secretly wish to be deaf. I use headphones all the time. For decades. Too loud.
My kids read plenty and I am indeed always telling them to "go talk to the LLM". It's more work than reading (I suspect), they have to engage more with the topic - ask good questions.
This tripped me up too until point 3 in the piece:
> If you are wondering whether or not something counts as weird nonfiction, consider its weirdness. Modern mockumentaries do not work because there is no uncertainty; the documentary element is used to advance the plot, mug at the camera, key the viewer in.
I read this as: non-fiction elements in service of advancing the plot is a strike against.
Really, "weird nonfiction" is whatever the author wants it to be. The examples are a total grab bag IMHO.
1. Trello with columns for the week, month, and quarter, year.
2. Open notebook next to mouse
2a. Left page: daily todo checklist with pen and paper. (2-3 rows per day)
2b. Right page: scratch, sketches of plots, sticky notes, etc.
3. Typed dev journal to capture research, URLs, papers, thoughts, ideas, progress, and extensions. (every github project has a dev/ folder for these notes, filename yyyymmmdd-n.txt) New file per project per day, as needed.
4. Yellow sticky notes for ad hoc ideas (end up on the bottom of the screen, notebook or whiteboard). Typically maxims to keep me pointed in the right direction for a project (e.g. "no one ever will rtfm")
5. Whiteboard, column per project, printouts + magnets (monthly plots of project progress), sticky notes, ideas for future projects, all kinds of stuff
I try to overcommunicate with my future self. It helps to get my current thoughts straight re expectations, progress, sticking points, etc. I'm the roadblock, not the work. The work is typically paint by numbers after a "hard think" about it.
Working like this solo for 8 years.
Been using a /dev dir and .txt files for live development journal since my PhD days in early '00. Saved my ass countless times (grep).
Oh, and doing the same things every day. Mostly. E.g. customer support, then promote, then writing, then code, then... No thinking required, just do the next thing we do after this...
I built a similar alife simulation but as a Quake 2 mod using the monsters as the agents and plants and stuff with neural nets and genetic algorithms. My piece was titled "Ecosystem: Constructing a simple self-perpetuating society of adaptable agents" [1].
This was 2003, not for school but for fun. I submitted it for an ai writing comp on ai-depot.com but the comp failed for lack of entries. I have some pics on a repo backup of the project [2].