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astrange

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An omnipresence in wired?

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In HN terms - it's never the compiler. Yes, very occasionally it might be the compiler, but you're better off assuming it's a bug in your code.

Conversely:

- if your company has an internal compiler team then it's likely the compiler because they broke it.

- if it's not the compiler, you're not pushing it hard enough.

The entire point of rationalism is to take your own beliefs seriously and follow them as if you were a robot.

(Except that they don't claim them to be "their own beliefs" but instead call them "priors".)

Managers often still have code and team-lead responsibilities IME. First-line managers, that is.

And then sometimes you report a memory leak and it gets fixed by a VP and you wonder if he doesn't have something better to do.

Therapists have specific techniques and programs that work. Well, some of them do anyway. If you have a real serious issue like PTSD or BPD it can be mostly fixed with the right sort of therapy.

It's like saying you only work with a personal trainer at the gym because you don't have a friend to go with. Sort of true sort of not.

I'm trying ADHD therapy now, but the thing about ADHD is that you can still do complex tasks like programming yet can't do simple things.

So the therapy is partly focused on emotional management, and partly about skills to do seemingly simple things like cook and put away laundry.

I haven't seen coaching for ADHD software engineers, but I'd be interested in it. (I'd rather take more cooking classes though.)

Atomoxetine's effect size is surprisingly similar to methylphenidate, though in my experience it treats different aspects of ADHD than stimulants. Some doctors (mine) are open to combining it with a long-acting stimulant, which actually can be a really nice setup, especially if you're sensitive to stimulants.

I tried this for several years and only afterwards realized it was bad for me - one because of personality changes, two because of high blood pressure.

It will give you a lot of stamina and ability to continue on the life path you're on, but I got metaphorical tunnel vision and basically wasn't able to do anything after the stimulant crash around dinnertime.

Intuniv gets a bad reputation because the patient has to be titrated up to the final dose and it takes a long time to see the full effects.

I went up, but then backed down because even 2mg was seriously affecting my sleep quality. I'm feeling much better at 1mg.

nb I think if I wasn't employed than I'd be best off with just this, but employment is best with stimulants. Unfortunately stimulants have side effects.

Me as well, which is a really "fun" time when my specific blend of neurodivergence also causes me to immediately resent said authority and external structure and view it as removing my agency.

I was never very bad at that, but it can happen in ADHD because you lose interest in everything you're "supposed" to do and get stuck on random other things like commenting here. Especially if the "supposed" tasks are hard or give you anxiety.

So I was quite surprised when going on Intuniv made that basically disappear.

My advice is that there are interventions for things like this, but they're never the obvious ones and you'll be surprised what might work. And it's worth trying meds.

I'm still trying to understand this new reality as I'm not used to it at all.

I'm having a similar issue with ADHD meds, which is that we randomly settled on one that made me feel incredibly "normal" (ie not nerdy) but now my lifestyle totally doesn't match that so I need to redo everything.

Still in progress, I've always had winter depression and likely need to be on something for that as well.

Also very important, try to sleep the best you can and do exercise... I remember reading here about exercise in some cases exceeding the benefits of ADHD medications...

Exercise is very true. I used to take walks but it didn't help; pushing myself at the gym (inc using a trainer) is a lot more effective.

Also, ADHD meds interact with sleep, both making it better and worse. I was on Intuniv 2mg and it absolutely ruined my sleep, but 1mg plus a sleep medication (25mg trazodone) are working very well.

I doubt deleting income tax is a popular view among economists.

Income and payroll taxes have the feature that you always have the money when it's time to pay the tax. That also means they're disinflationary. Whereas property taxes can be inflationary because they may require you to sell assets.

GPT-5.6 13 days ago

LLMs seem particularly bad at writing prompts for other LLMs for this reason

Claude is terrible at this! Probably for the same reason that its writing style in prose is so annoying and full of claudisms.

GPT-5.6 13 days ago

It might need the longer answer to think about the question, so one approach would be to ask it normally and then ask it to repeat itself shorter.

GPT-5.6 13 days ago

If that was the case in a non-trivial way you'd see mode collapse, but you don't, they come out differently.