122 mentions · 13 chunks · 12 episodes
... moves from close-ended to open-ended. Before you cross that rubicon, there's a ceiling of what can be done in the system. After you cross it, anything is possible (with enough effort). That open-endedness is power… which is also dangero...
...on. If you happen to start at the foot of a small hill, you can quickly hit the ceiling. It's important to make sure you're at the basecamp of a proper mountain before you start iterating on what users tell you.
You want a system where the model quality is not the ceiling but the floor of possibility. Human ingenuity should have a floor to build off of, not a ceiling to hang from.
If the model intermediates every action you take then it sets the ceiling of what can be done. Can you connect the dots or do you have to wait for the model to? Does the model set the ceiling for what you can do… or the flo...
Great and good are different. Greatness is about the ceiling. Goodness is about the floor. If it's already great, being good as well is useful.
...tiveness of "work to rule" strikes implies that automation by LLMs could have a ceiling of effectiveness in complex domains.
Prompt injection sets the ceiling of potential of LLMs. Claude and OpenAI will build integrations into chat via things like MCP. Vibe coders will get stuck making dead end little isla...
...ce between mediocristan or extremistan. The determining question is: is there a ceiling or not? In the end there's a ceiling for everything, but sometimes the ceiling is so far away that it might as well not exist.
...willing to believe. They'll put up with anything. But when everyone can see the ceiling, they look around and see all the inescapable BS around them and they come crashing back to earth. "If this is all there is, is it worth all of the f...
...ushing themselves for its own sake, so they're more likely to naturally hit the ceilings of the system. When people are doing something because they're told to, they're more likely to just stay on the established paths. If you're trying ...
...: logarithmic and exponential. Logarithmic: starts off quickly, but then hits a ceiling it never surpasses even with infinite effort. Exponential: starts off slowly (compared to logarithmic), but then self-accelerates to infinity. Logari...
Systems scale without limit. Individual humans have a ceiling. As systems get larger, the importance of the system outweighs any hero in the system, no matter how heroic. There's only so many hours in the day fo...
Even if your ecosystem has a ton of momentum, if the ceiling is low it doesn't matter. For example, if your system requires users to take an action on the command line, you've set a ceiling. The ceiling of the ...