I hated these sentences way before LLMs, at least in the context of an explanation.
> it's not just a website you go like Google, it's a little spirit/ghost that "lives" on your computer
This type of sentence, I call rhetorical fat. Get rid of this fat and you obtain a boring sentence that repeats what has been said in the previous one.
Not all rhetorical fats are equal, and I must admit I find myself eyerolling on the "little spirit" part more than about the fatness.
I understand the author wants to decorate things and emphasize key elements, and the hate I feel is only caused by the incompatible projection of my ideals to a text that doesn't belong to me.
> it's not just about the image generation itself, it's about the joint capability coming from text generation.
That's unjustified conceptual stress.
That could be a legitimate answer to a question ("No, no, it's not just about that, it's more about this"), but it's a text. Maybe the text wants you to be focused, maybe the text wants to hype you; this is the shape of the hype without the hype.
"I find image generation is cooler when paired with text generation."
It is not a decoration. Karpathy juxtaposes ChatGPT (which feels like a "better google" to most people) to Claude Code, which, apparently, feels different to him. It's a comparison between the two.
You might find this statement non-informative, but without two parts there's no comparison. That's really the semantics of the statement which Karpathy is trying to express.
ChatGPT-ish "it's not just" is annoying because the first part is usually a strawman, something reader considers trite. But it's not the case here.
Indeed, I was probably grumpy at the time I wrote the comment. I do find some truth in it still.
You're right ! The strawman theory is based.
But I think there's more to it, I find dislikable the structure of these sentences (which I find a bit sensationnalist for nothing, I don't know, maybe I am still grumpy).
Well, language is a subject to 'fashion' one-upmanship game: people want to demonstrate their sophistication, often by copying some "cool" patterns, but then over-used patterns become "uncool" cliche.
So it might be just a natural reaction to over-use of a particular pattern. This kind of stuff have been driving language evolution for millennia. Besides that, pompous style is often used in 'copy' (slogans and ads) which is something most people don't like.
Karpathy should go back to what he does best: educating people about AI on a deep level. Running experiments and sharing how they work, that sort of stuff. It seems lately he is closer to an influencer who reviews AI-based products. Hopefully it is not too late to go back.
I feel these review stuff is more like a side / pass time to him. Look at nanochat for example. My impression is that these are the thongs he spends most of his energy still.
After all,l he's been a "influencer" for a long time, starting from the "software 2.0" essay.
notcurses is probably the best option for getting the best you can out of a random terminal (see https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMIN... which details the status of most terminals people use), but the main thing is to choose a decent terminal that meets your needs. I personally use xterm (after using various other terminals, both "modern" and VTE-based), as I'm on Linux, and I need to connect to various devices (e.g. networking gear) where I need a reliable terminal that handles whatever those devices throw at it. The graphical mechanisms that work for me therefore are sixel and tektronic.
Je ne conçois même pas en quoi cela serait une marque d'irrespect que de ne pas le faire ?
Quand je peux aider quelqu'un qui échoue péniblement à trouver des interlocuteurs et qui ne parle pas français, je suis ravi de le faire et je ne m'en sens pas insulté par ailleurs.
L'absence de marque de respect ne constitue pas en soi un irrespect, ce n'est pas une variable booléenne. En revanche cette simple marque de respect change toutes les dispositions de votre interlocuteur, quel que soit le pays et la langue d'ailleurs. Visiblement vous avez eu la chance de ne jamais tomber sur des touristes balourds voir suffisant, tant mieux pour vous. Pourtant ils existent et peuvent être une plaie (oui, les français à l'étranger aussi peuvent l'être). C'est heureusement une minorité, tout comme les français qui refuseraient de parler anglais "par principe".
Je ne conçois non plus comment me parler en français devrait m'amadouer.
Je ne me sens ni respecté ni bafoué par avance, quelque soit la langue dans laquelle on s'adresse à moi.
Qu'un touriste soit stupide, balourd ou suffisant, sa capacité à parler français ne lui sera d'aucun secours s'il souhaite échapper au jugement que je lui imprime.
Vous savez, j'essaie principalement de comprendre qu'est ce qui peut faire exister le cliché sus-mentionné "les français font exprès de ne pas parler votre langue".
Quand je lis "Vous devriez parler français, nous apprécions cela comme une marque de respect" j'ai honte !
On appelle ça la déférence. C'est ce qui met un peu d'huile dans les rapports humains. Avoir honte de ça en dit très long sur l'époque malheureusement.
Je pense qu'il faut que vous soyez un peu plus explicite sur le fond de votre pensée parce que je trouve au contraire que ça peut être un archaïsme social tout à fait paralysant.
Le respect est un archaïsme social paralysant ? De mieux en mieux. Ou de pire en pire. Je crois avoir été parfaitement transparent et je ne vois pas bien ce que je pourrai ajouter d'utile à partir de là.
Je répète, car le message semble ne pas être passé:
Je trouve que "la déférence" est un mécanisme social dépassé, or cela n'a pas grand rapport avec la notion de respect, si ce n'est que c'est un témoignage forcé et niais de cette dernière. Je trouve l'honnêteté plus respectueuse que sa mise en scène, et je préfèrerai l'absence de déférence car cela signifie que je suis en présence d'un semblable qui m'est égal, qui m'invite à la rencontre plutôt qu'à ce rapport perclus de domination et de soumission.
Vous n'êtes pas transparent, jamais tant que vous n'expliquez pas vos propos plus en détail, c'est tout ce que je pourrais vous dire.
That's totally a cliche.
Everywhere in the world you can meet people that :
1. Only speak their native language.
2. Speak several languages but not yours.
3. Speak your language but are assholes.
4. Speak your language but are afraid of talking because they are afraid of sounding ridiculous.
5. Are very happy to speak your language.
6. Hate your country for absurd reasons.
7. Love your country for absurd reasons.
Nowadays young frenchs learn english by overexposition to the language through various medias (school is of no help) and in the past, even if english was taught at school, I think the majority of them didn't learn it properly beyond "my taylor is rich", "The cat is happy" and "I love you".
I didn't "learn" english and it is a mystery why I can express myself and understand others in this language, I guess I have been overexposed to the language when I was young.
That said, I worked in museums at a time in my life and was actually surprised by the huge amount of people travelling in the world with no knowledge of the language of the country they are in, expecting everybody to be able to talk their language like if it was universal, be them italians, frenchs, americans, chinese or whatever.
Eyes, hair, hands, feet, genitalia : this all becomes pretty weird if I look at it "objectively".
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