wubrr

That is a pretty convincing and intuitive take, thank you.

What does reading a great novel or starting a garden specifically accomplish?

It accomplishes many things - specifically granting entertainment, pleasure, etc that practitioners like.

It seems to me that you are starting from the viewpoint that everything has to prove its worth before you accept it

I'm starting with the viewpoint that there are literally thousands of various different practices out there have have existed for a long time and have been practiced by many people. Many of these are complete bullshit. How do you filter out the good from the bad/useless?

even if millions of people before you have found it fulfilling and worthwhile

Millions of people have found many many different things fulfilling and worthwhile over the ages, some of these things we've since realized are bullshit/bad. Do you accept every single belief/practice based on how popular it has been?

If you had never read a book before, and someone was trying to convince you to try it, what could they point to that would fulfill all your criteria?

They could say: it's entertaining/interesting/pleasurable, they could say that knowledge/insights are contained in books, that different/interesting perspectives and other people's thoughts are contained in books (which are objective facts), etc. Saying 'it makes you smarter' is vague and unconvincing.

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So many allusions and claims such as your 'yes' in this thread, and yet, not a single actual link/reference to anything actually scientific/verifiable...

Maybe you should actually share a link if you're so sure, instead of crying about being antagonized?

There is a lot of scientific research/results based on actual measurable results and biology which supports the benefits of strength training. Can the same be said about meditation?

Many things have been practiced/studied for thousands of years - that alone isn't interesting or valuable imo.

What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish?

I can see how being in a silent reflective state and similar practices could have various effects and benefits (not that I know specifically what those are) - but what separates me zoning out in the shower/on the bus from actual meditation? How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing?

Whenever I ask my meditating/'spiritual' friends about these things the response is basically vague undecipherable gibberish and allusions that it is unexplainable to someone like me who is not ready to accept the truths lol.

The more explicit/detailed your plan, the more context it uses up, the less accurate and generally functional it is. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing, but on a complex problem with large enough context it will consistently shit the bed.

It's ability to test/iterate and debug issues is pretty impressive.

Though it seems to work best when context is minimized. Once the code passes a certain complexity/size it starts making very silly errors quite often - the same exact code it wrote in a smaller context will come out with random obvious typos like missing spaces between tokens. At one point it started writing the code backwards (first line at the bottom of the file, last line at the top) :O.

You can run a web UI locally, without exposing it to the public internet, and access it remotely via SSH.

which works equally well on everyone’s machine

Why are you so sure it runs equally well on everyone's machine? Even big popular TUIs like Claude Code do not really accomplish this.

I've generally had better luck when using it on new projects/repos. When working on a large existing repo it's very important to give it good context/links/pointers to how things currently work/how they should work in that repo.

Also - claude (~the best coding agent currently imo) will make mistakes, sometimes many of them - tell it to test the code it writes and make sure it's working - I've generally found its pretty good at debugging/testing and fixing it's own mistakes.

Gemini weirdly messes things up, even though it seems to have the right information - something I started noticing more often recently. I'd ask it to generate a curl command to call some API, and it would describe (correctly) how to do it, and then generate the code/command, but the command would have obvious things missing like the 'https://' prefix in some case, sometimes the API path, sometimes the auth header/token - even though it mentioned all of those things correctly in the text summary it gave above the code.

I feel like this problem was far less prevalent a few months/weeks ago (before gemini-3?).

Using it for research/learning purposes has been pretty amazing though, while claude code is still best for coding based on my experience.

Pure greed is stupid greed.

Also, if the current level of AI investment and valuations aren't justified by market demand (I believe so), many of these people/companies are getting more money than they would without the unreasonable hype.

Which is entirely unreasonable, and there's no need to make excuses or explain away this borderline psychopathy.

Communication is not hard, it's very easy, but there are actors who's goal is to obfuscate communication and prevent others from participating.

At the end of the day it comes down to who the decision makers are and how they are incentivized to act. As a simple example - company X has product C, and they set a goal of increasing usage of feature F (of product C). Currently this feature F completely sucks and users don't want to use it - so the idea is to improve it and thus increase usage.

There are 2 ways of increasing usage:

1) Make the feature F more useful/better.

2) Force/push your users to use feature F, by aggressively marketing it, and pushing it within the product surfaces, making it non-optional, etc. and other dark patterns.

Option (1) is hard to do - it requires deep understanding of the product, user needs, the related tech, etc. It requires close tactical collaboration between product and engineering.

Option (2) is easy to do - it requires ~zero innovative thinking, very surface-level understanding of the problem, and relies purely on dark patterns and sketchy marketing tricks. You can almost completely ignore your engineers and any technical debt when following this approach.

If your decision makers are imposter PMs and marketing/sales people - they will almost always choose option 2. They will increase the 'apparent usage' of this feature in the short term, while reducing overall customer satisfaction increasing annoyance, and reducing the company's overall reputation. This is exactly how many 'growth' teams operate. Short term benefit/gaming of metrics for long term loss/reputational damage. Their success metrics are always short-term and linked directly to bonuses - long term effects of these kinds of strategies are ~always completely ignored.

The disconnect is more between long term business value, and short term benefit for the most parasitic and manipulative actors within the business.

Engineering and business value go hand-in-hand in a healthy tech/engineering business.

A business that was built on great/innovative engineering, became successful, and then got taken over by various impostors and social manipulators, who's primary goal is gaming various internal metrics for their own gain, is not a healthy business.

Apply that logic to any failed startup/company/product that had a lot of investment (there are maaaany) and it should become obvious why it's a very weak and fallacious argument.

I don't know what you're basing your 'minority' and 'most people' claims on, but seems highly unlikely.

Also it doesn't count if the numbers get worked out over email but the handshake was in person.

It doesn't count if 99% of the meetings/negotiations happen remotely if the last one happens in person? ok

cope harder

Yawn

This is your original statement exactly:

"The Bay Area is special because of said history/staying power - which has systemic downstream advantages that *cannot be replicated*."

There was only one of those, and consequently there is only one Shenzen.

Really? There was only one rapidly developing, densely populated region with a financial hub nearby (why does the proximity of finance even matter?), in the entire world in the last 50 years (why 50 years)? Are you sure about that? (you are 100% wrong)

I intentionally schedule my meetings in person because I find that to be significantly better than a video call.

Sounds like a you problem. Also the fact that you are 'partially remote' and you still schedule your meetings to be in person tells me: a) you do not have very many meetings b) you work with a fairly narrow scope of people who you can physically get into the same room on a regular basis.

I meet with founders, investors, tech leaders, and many various stakeholders on a regular basis. It would be absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to have these meetings in person.

for startups it is even more advantageous to physically be in the same room as the entire rest of the company.

If you say so, but the record number of fully remote startups that keep popping up at ever increasing rates says the opposite.

Why don't you try using that logic on someone you're convincing to give you a large sum of money and report back?

Been there done that. If you need to meet in person to make final agreements/sign you can travel. Vast majority of communications/negotiations around fundraising and related happens digitally today.

I'm giving you a specific example of why it's not necessary to be in any particular location to work in tech, or network, collaborate, communicate with other tech people.

Directly contradicting your baseless assertion about how you have to be in SF for those reasons.

Literally a specific, physical example and you're talking about 'defining networking to a disingenuously generalization' ...

You are disingenuous.

You said tech hub.

No, you said tech hub. Which is short of 'technology hub', which is not just limited to mobile apps.

You tend to do this a lot. "Many Stanford alums leave California" and "talent is being outsourced at ever increasing rates". Just vague generalizations that offer nothing to the overall conversation.

Those aren't generalizations, those are very specific statements, which go directly against your vague generalizations ('oh but there are good universities in the area for tech talent therefore its impossible to replicate'), and which you apparently can't disagree with because they are obviously true.

I made the argument that being close to these universities gives the region a constant flow of world class engineers and researchers.

Nope, what you said is that because these universities are located in that area - no other region could possibly compete. And I gave you very specific examples of why that's not true.

You just named universities from 5 different states/regions? Please keep up.

Yeah.. some of the leading universities for tech talent in the world... which are not in California... (which according to you is impossible)... please keep up.

makes SV the premiere tech hub that is consistently on the forefront of burgeoning technologies

I never said SV is not a major tech hub. I actually said the opposite. What I disagreed with is your baseless assertion that no other region could possibly compete, or that tech companies have to be in SV to succeeded (which is obviously false, and which I see you shifting the goalposts on now)

Are you also confused as to why NYC is the finance capital of the world?

Maybe you should rewind to back when NYC wasn't a major finance hub, then apply your same reasoning - 'NYC couldn't possibly become a finance hub, because London is the finance hub'.

Your arguments are self-contradictory and not logical.

Places where technological innovation and development happen have existed long before the internet and semiconductors. The industrial revolution didn't originate or center around the Bay Area.

The makeup of tech companies employees doesn't remotely tell the full story...

What? You made the argument that Bay Area has some kind of special access to tech talent because of Stanford - I simply pointed out that the vast majority of Bay Area tech employees are not from Stanford (not to mention many Stanford alums leave California).

UC system, Stanford, and other universities in CA through research that feed into SV as the leading tech hub that cannot be replicated

Really? MIT, Harvard, Yale, Georgia Tech, Waterloo don't exist?

I mean hell, 4 UC alum won nobel prizes this year alone, one of which was the chief scientist at Google's quantum AI.

And several google/deepmind employees from/educated in UK won a nobel prize in 2024... what's your point?

Kind of a boring insight.

Nah, the same old 'bay area cause bay area' insight is what's boring.

It was more true (but still very boring) 10 years ago, not anymore.

Yes, that makes it nearly impossible for other places to become Shenzen. Even within China it's special.

You're skipping n = 1 and jumping straight to k. How did modern Shenzen become what it is? Through specific reasons like infrastructure investment, or because it was always a 'manufacturing cluster'? By your logic Shenzen must have been the manufacturing hub of the world since before the dawn of time... since it's 'impossible for any place to become Shenzen'.

Right, because if you're doing business you can get by with a single investor meeting a year, right?

Because the only way to meet and communicate in 2025 is in person?

There's no downside in time lost, money spent, ease of access, etc.?

All of these are better remote/digitally in most cases.

No one is arguing the historical & material reasons as to why Bay Area is the birthing place of many technological revolutions.

You're kinda missing the bigger picture - the fact that Bay Area was not always a tech hub, and became one at some point for various reason - which can happen in any other place (and has).

which has systemic downstream advantages that cannot be replicated.

Seems like a very baseless and meaningless statement.

Being surrounded by Stanford, Berkeley, etc gives the region a constant flow of world class engineers.

Except for the fact that the vast majority pf Bay Area tech talent does not come from Stanford or Berkeley, and is being outsourced at ever increasing rates.

Theres just no other region like it and won't be for a very long time.

If you say so.

You seem to assume dinner parties and in-person social engineering is the key to success.

I guess I have a different opinion - the tech, the product, the efficiency is the key to success.

I live a lot further from SF than Texas, yet I've been working fully remote for SF tech companies (among others) for 10+ years.

If I need to meet someone in person, I make a trip (~few times a year)

It's true that I can't brownnose/service random tech talking heads in person on a daily basis tho, which is what I assume you mean by 'relationships and connections' lmao

It's not at the same level as other large frontier models from American companies

Cool story

The value of goods manufactured in the US has never been higher... Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff.

You're seriously going to try to argue how US manufacturing (which was the greatest share of global manufacturing by far) didn't decline, to support a point about how China (Shenzhen) is apparently an unreplicable manufacturing hub due to 'cluster effect'? It's funny that you don't see the contradiction. For the record, US manufacturing as a share of global manufacturing has significantly declined over the years. [0][1]

" > The United States' share of global manufacturing activity declined from 28% in 2002, following the end of the 2001 U.S. recession, to 16.5% in 2011

China displaced the United States as the largest manufacturing country in 2010

Manufacturing output, measured in each country's local currency adjusted for inflation, has been growing more slowly in the United States than in China, South Korea, Germany, and Mexico "

You do generally have to physically be present to make deals.

If you need to be physically present for a meeting, you make a trip. There is absolutely zero benefit to living in close proximity to investors the rest of the time.

It is obviously theoretically possible to run a world-leading software company fully remote.

It is obviously not just theoretically possible, and many companies do so.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... [1] https://www.bcg.com/press/21september2023-north-american-com...

Exhibit A for Covid having not changed this is the continuing supremacy of Silicon Valley (tech)

You mean like when China built chatgpt 4 in a weekend and open-sourced it for giggles?

Shenzhen (manufacturing)

..or you mean how US manufacturing 'clusters' almost completely disappeared/replaced by Chinese ones?

Proximity to investors. Proximity to customers. Proximity to a skilled employee pool. Proxomity to acquirers.

Right, cause you have to physically pet every investor on the head to fundraise, your remote employees must be in san fran cause network latency interferes with their windows remote desktop workflow, and, for some reason, you have to be physically close to your customers when you're selling your web-only llm wrapper saas.