Sandeep
@sandeep
Sandeep
LOOP: Partial efforts should result in partial benefits with partial blast radius if it goes wrong. KEY SRE philosophy
The brutal math of compounding errors
Why focus so intensely on 99%? Why not settle for 95%, or even 90%?
Because the math gets unforgiving quickly. At 90% per-step accuracy, a 10-step task succeeds only 35% of the time (0.9^10 ≈ 0.35). At 99%, those same 10 steps succeed 90% of the time – the difference between “sometimes works” and “mostly works.”... See more
Why focus so intensely on 99%? Why not settle for 95%, or even 90%?
Because the math gets unforgiving quickly. At 90% per-step accuracy, a 10-step task succeeds only 35% of the time (0.9^10 ≈ 0.35). At 99%, those same 10 steps succeed 90% of the time – the difference between “sometimes works” and “mostly works.”... See more
Just a moment...
- Emergence and optimization are in tension.
- Emergence comes from the space between.
- Optimization removes the space between.
Bits and Bobs 1/22/25
A new paper: "The more unequal income distribution is in a democracy, the more at risk it is of electing a power-aggrandizing and norm-shredding head of government."
Bits and Bobs 1/22/25
- A big threshold in a system: Not “I can do it” but “I’m not not going to do it.”
- That’s the difference between demo and usable.
- When you cross that threshold, doing things inside the system is easier and better than doing it outside.
- A positive boundary gradient that makes people want to use it.
Bits and Bobs 1/22/25
How Complex Systems Fail
adaptivecapacitylabs.comWe might move toward a “signed reality.” Just as we use SSL certificates to prove a website is genuine, we may soon demand that cameras and microphones cryptographically sign their content at the moment of capture. If a photo of a car accident doesn’t have a digital chain of custody proving it came from a specific lens at a specific time, insurance... See more
Sam Schillace • We are going to need proof of work for everything
Proof of work - solutions?
BlockChain, which is more Proof-Of-Ownership than Proof-Of-Work, is NOT energy intensive, but it does require a chain of trust, which in BitCoin's case required scale, to compensate for the lack of a central authority, which therefore requires more energy, but not like the other one...
We may need apprentice, probation, small projects… That said, I don't really care about who wrote the homework or did the job interviewee really do everything he said he did. Those, as you mentioned, were always proxies for the real questions - in this case, what did you learn and can you do the job. We just need to get better at getting to the real questions. (And if they can use AI to do the job, why not AI on the test/interview?)
What I really care about is when people use AI enhanced lies to steal or manipulate us into doing things we wouldn't do if we knew the real truth. When people can crank out believable lies at 10-100x faster than verified truth, that's a problem. We become inundated with lies and, as you mentioned, that erodes trust and leads to paranoia
The idea that hit me this morning is that society has always relied on its own implicit version of Proof of Work for all kinds of things. We have operated on the assumption that if a document, a photo, a technical report, slide deck, student essay or any “cognitive artifact” was complex, it was hard to produce. That difficulty was our proxy for... See more
Sam Schillace • We are going to need proof of work for everything
Proof of work
We Share 99% of our DNA with Chimpanzees
In business, as in biology, sometimes it is just the 1% that is different that matters, and you can ignore the 99% that is the same. It doesn’t matter if we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, because the difference is all in the 1%.
Successful entrants often only change a tiny percentage of the business... See more
In business, as in biology, sometimes it is just the 1% that is different that matters, and you can ignore the 99% that is the same. It doesn’t matter if we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, because the difference is all in the 1%.
Successful entrants often only change a tiny percentage of the business... See more