For the same reason you don't run "4+6" on a calculator.
External tool call has an overhead. It requires a round trip into an external tool. It requires an LLM to run in agentic autoregression - it can't be used in prefill.
Which means that having native arithmetic capabilities is useful. Forward pass arithmetics are an LLM version of quick mental math.
An LLM can read "#define SILLY_TIME_CONST (3*20*60*60*1000)" and have "SILLY_TIME_CONST is 60 h expressed as 216000000 ms" already cached by the end of the line, before it even emits its first token.
This is more how an LLM thinks about math internally - an LLM version of drilled tables being used for mental arithmetic "as humans do".
When humans stall on these tasks, they reach for pen and paper, a slide rule, a calculator, etc.
Mathematica is overkill for arithmetic, in addition it's licenced and can cost a bit extra.
If an LLM were to reach for a light cheap arithmetic tool something like bc would be a good first stop - a CLI tool with a language that supports arbitrary precision numbers with interactive execution of statements.
What's interesting is that one one hand LLM pumps are claiming a path to AGI.. while on the other hand, they are duct-taping in deterministic plugins for specific prompt types they find it better to offload...
In X years is it just going to be a thin OS-like layer where a majority of work is being handled by other "programs".
That doesn't seem very persuasive. The one example of a non-A GI we have, humans, does the same thing. We've been offloading arithmetic for at least 4000 years.
I was thinking the same thing. Why not call into a dedicated math tool?
But I don't as well, and I have some intuition about numbers that I would probably not have if I always relied on calculators.
Would the same sort of thing apply to LLMs? I'm probably anthropomorphising here...
These morons wasted over 1000 Tomahawk missiles within a couple of months to achieve nothing in Iran. And that's not even the worst part. The wasted PAC-missiles for the Patriot anti-air systems are.
I like the point about not doing a terrible thing not being enough if I am passively tolerating other people doing terrible things around me. We are all complicit by either active participation in evil or by inaction. Factory farming is evil, there's no argument about that. And it's industrial-scale evil: billions of conscious creatures living their worst possible lives. And there is no argument about them being conscious too: anybody who's ever owned a pet knows that these creatures have rich emotional lives, personalities, fears and joys. And it's not a necessary evil too - there is plenty of protein and calories without meat.
Exactly, our identity is the sum of our influences and I also agree if someone actually engages with the art and has their own views on it, that is a good thing.
My comment spoke more about how society just drip feeds us influences via marketing and with an external motivation. That means they are screwing with our very identity itself. My point is that curating those influences is important and shaping your own identity instead of basing it on universal acclaim, reviews, "what does the world think/what must be the right way to think".
> Three primary settings, three institutions, and three cults of surrender: discipline (ETA), substance (Ennet), ideology (AFR).
I don't think substance is right: I think it's about freedom from it, or maybe a "higher power" of some sorts, mysticism maybe.
I think it makes more sense, also in the context of what Wallace said elsewhere ("This Is Water"): "Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.(...)"
Ah this is a good catch! I think "higher power" would fit way better given how I framed this sentence. Ennet's members aren't surrendering to substance (they've already done that). Like you said, once in the halfway house, they're surrendering to the "higher power". AA groups, as the book covers, are conspicuously religious, and I know a lot of the AA passages were informed by DFW's research at AA meetings and his own experience in recovery. I'm going to change this line.
By the way, I really liked your article! I love Infinite Jest and I also have a thing for Sierpinski Triangles; first time I heard about them was from Robert Anton Wilson. Last year I even linoprinted christmas cards with simple christmas trees made from sierpinski triangles for my family and friends!
Also: do you know https://samizdat.co/digest/? Looks like an interesting project which ties nicely into your idea
Sierpinski Christmas cards is next level! Whoa, that site is beautiful! Thank you for sharing that, I'm going to be having a lot of fun with this today!
what is it? I've checked the link and some other ones on this website and I still can't really tell what it is, what it does, and how do I use it. Lot's of product (?) names, concepts, but very little straightforward or organized information for people who are completely new to it.
What "kit and training" is he even referring to? What let's you detect and destroy multiple small moving targets coming at you at various and unpredictable angles and speeds?? Oh and it also needs to be cheap and light-weight enough so you can equip infantry with it. AFAIK, currently there are no such systems. Unless he means shotguns and single-use net launchers, which are a last-resort thing you don't really want to rely on. And it's not for the lack of trying; it's just a very difficult problem to solve. And the problem will only get worse as drones are becoming quicker and gain more range. Already there are quadcopter drones reaching speeds of 500km/h; quadcopters with ranges of 50km+; quadcopters deployed from balloons at heights of 5km; remotely-deployed quadcopters from naval and ground drones ... and that's just one category of drones, not to mention wing-type mid-range drones now wrecking havoc at russian rear logistics at 100km+ ranges and long-range drone destroying infrastructure at 500km+ ranges. That's why the only ways of survival are concealment, digging deep underground, and turning anything that moves above ground into mad-max type porcupine monstrosities meant to absorb those fpv-drones, with varying success.
Very nice. I have no heart issues but have been experimenting with extended breathing/longer exhales to calm down my sympathetic nervous system. I believe intentional breathing is a big, mostly underutilized tool all of us have to be generally more relaxed and healthier and also to calm ourselves down in stressful situations
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