I have formative (to my interest in programming) memories of going to Barnes & Noble and cracking open those huge Graphics Gems and Game Programming Gems books. Just an amazing wealth of topics and tricks and I learned something new on every page. Red Blob Games [0] is the closest thing in spirit these days but I do miss those books.
If you create content that people like, with a distinct style, one can direct their LLM to it and copy the style. The more content you have out there the better the copy will be. I don’t think it’s really a differentiation you can rely upon
The world you are describing assumes nobody will produce anything anymore because of theft. I think there will be a reset and hopefully content producers like Mr Beast will lose out. But, I do not think people, similar to the original participants on the Internet, will refuse to make anything. I expect a return to Live journal similar content where we get actual opinions even if we sadly lose out on long tail content/production because people do not want to work hard for free. The return of the hobby style Internet isn't necessarily bad.
> The world you are describing assumes nobody will produce anything anymore because of theft.
I don’t believe that at all, and it’s not implied in my comments. What I’m saying is that the value isn’t in the style, that part can also be replicated. It’s not in the content, that can be replicated. It’s the same for >90% of startup ideas people come up with when discovering agent coding. You were able to create a cool SaaS project in a weekend? Congrats. Any other dev can point their LLM to your website/app and make a clone in even less time. The safe ones have a high barrier of entry, such as hardware, or similar, but the vast majority is trivially cloneable.
I don’t know what that will result in. I assume we will be chasing more human experiences, but I have no idea.
Note that's a US definition — Europe is stricter and draws the line at non-public information [0], aside from certain carveouts and safe harbors. Matt Levine describes this as "theft" (misappropriating nonpublic information) vs. "fairness" (using nonpublic information at all) — iirc if you're on a flight and overhear a passenger in business class talking about an upcoming merger they're working on, that's legal to trade on in the US but illegal in Europe. At least that's what I generally remember about "parity-of-information" theory.
Going to plug her Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Admiral_Cloudberg) here because her articles are extensively researched and consistently well-written, and I enjoy reading them, and hope to continue reading new ones in the future!
Despite my other comment in this thread I strongly agree with this! I have "stupid" schemes and do "useless" side projects purely for their own sake and for my own enjoyment, and I am very happy with them. Those things are expressed freely, and never came from a cave.
But I think this article is for people who may not be introspective and self-aware enough to know the difference between private, self-satisfied enjoyment and private, self-inflicted suffering. Some people fool themselves into thinking they do something for the joy of it, and remain unsatisfied, because they harbor higher hopes they never admit to themselves.
For Rimworld: some people like making hyperoptimized minmax colonies for their own satisfaction (haven't played it myself, but I do play Factorio so I get it). But you can imagine that some people who _think_ they play for fun, but also really want the validation of posting their killbox on Reddit and having people acknowledge how good it is, and if they don't get that then they retreat to their cave and work on an even "better" colony, and maybe this one will be the one that people will praise [0, maybe? looked for an example]. And so they get wrapped up in a whole meta-argument about their playstyle and how they choose to enjoy the game and can't just simply... enjoy it?
Reminds me of a couple things: Nils van der Poel (Olympic speed skater record holder) and his How to Skate a 10k [0]:
> It is not the one who suffers the most during preseason who prospers when the
winter comes, but he who gets the most aerobically fit.
and Tyler Cowen on Nervous Nellies [1]:
> Yes. Because ultimately the nervous Nellies, they're not philosophically sophisticated, they're overindulging in their own neuroticism when you get right down to it. So it's not like there's some brute 'let's be a builder' view and then in contrast there's some deeper wisdom that the real philosophers pursue. It's: you be a builder or you're a nervous Nelly. Take your pick. I say be a builder.
and the classic Teddy Roosevelt speech [2]:
> It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
The Cave is fine, but at some point you need to test the thing you're in there for. At some point, refusing to test an untested belief is just protecting a fantasy.
It reminds me of an old series of blog posts by Eliezer Yudkowsky[1] where he talked about how there's "doing your best" which is often more like just doing what's expected of you, and then there's really trying, like actually thinking hard about the best way to achieve something and carrying that out, and then even above that there are levels of effort that usually only come into play in extraordinary situations where you become willing to take desperate risks to achieve a goal.
>> you need to test the thing you're in there for. At some point, refusing to test an untested belief is just protecting a fantasy.
"One test is worth a thousand opinions"
Indeed, if the opinions are about yourself or your capabilities, not testing them soon is truly indulging in fantasy. (and nevermind how much you learn from the tests or competition itself)
Thank you for making it! This is an incredible project so I hope to see (and contribute!) more scans. Also just a really well-crafted website in general, functionally and aesthetically. You mentioned looking at "standard design conventions used for other web archives and for designing public signage for ADA compliant restrooms" in another comment — any interesting design decisions from that research?
Yeah! It lead me to design the UI to be very simple with a clear hierarchy, high contrast, and using a sans-serif font. Accessibility and legibility is key. I landed on using Arial as the font because it's arguably the most accessible. Beyond that, my research drove the language I use throughout. "Catalog", for example, used to be "Index". or calling comments "annotations". It's funny, something about the subject matter being so stupid made me want to go really hard on taking the archive itself 100% seriously.
Excellent work with the tiny cafe! I'm enamored of miniatures like these. Very different vibe but Alan Wolfson [0] makes gritty, grimy urban environments that I have a soft spot for, being from NYC.
[0] https://www.redblobgames.com/
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