> You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.

I have a hard time interpreting that as what geohotz is saying. If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system

> If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system

I was wondering if that would come up and HN delivers without fail. Anyway, you are free to interpret it as you see fit.

The guidance was for someone who was struggling with a moral dillema on facing relatives in war and undecided over action. It is not a diktat to work or provide unquestion labor.

For anyone who understood the whole story and backdrop of the situation, a reasonable interpretation is

- you are responsible for your actions but you cannot control the consequences of your actions due to many factors.

- When you detach yourselves from results, you can do your job without anxiety.

- do not let the fear over results be an excuse for inaction.

Give it a read and decide for yourselves if you are not convinced. Even without the teachings part, the whole story of Gita is actually an epic story/novel with some strong and conflicted characters with elaborate back stories.

What is the point of a job if not the results? How can you be responsible for your actions but not the consequences of your actions?

The point is worrying about results creates anxiety that takes away your focus from doing the job which results is lower performance -> subpar results - it is a recursive spiral. Also results are not "wholly" under our control. Hence avoid worrying about the results "while" doing it.

The final result of any action depends on a lot of external factors for e.g. one might develop a product, but whether it succeeds or not depends on other players, economy, luck and host of other factors that one does not control or know. This feeds into the first point about not worrying about the results.

> What is the point of a job if not the results?

The idea is to not fret over results and give your best with dedication. E.g. An athlete shouldn't be worrying about their results while playing and should focus on the play.

> How can you be responsible for your actions but not the consequences of your actions

I only mentioned control of consequences not responsibility. It doesn't mean you are absolved of responsibility from consequences of your actions.

Take driving. You can only control your actions but you cannot control what happens on the road. You are still responsible for your actions.

Should the fear of the unknown on the road stop you from driving? Absolutely not.

Yeah, I think GP is right and this all feels like word play to me.

Let's say you're making your ideal wood chair for your living room. You're "fretting" over getting the arms, legs perfectly aligned, surfaces smooth, identical chamfers, etc. But fretting is bad and makes it hard to get anything done so you stop. Then you end up with a roughshod chair.

You shouldn't "fret" too much, but you also shouldn't "fret" too little. You should "fret" exactly the right amount which is... tautologically true, and not particularly insightful. Giving your best is committing yourself to fretting.

(I'm not sure if you understood the Gita reference, if you did you can ignore my comment.)

A better analogy isn't so much a chair made by yourself, but say you're making a chair for a competition. The only thing you can control is your actions. What's out of your control is whether or not some other guy who's an absolute veteran is also planning to compete (making you likely to lose), or if almost no one else joined the contest (much higher chance of winning.)

Another example is in the workplace.

You control what efforts you put in.

But your promotion (or even firing!) depends on a ton of other things. If the company's doing poorly, they may not promote you even if you did a great job. Conversely, if the company desperately needs a new senior person and you're the closest fit, even if you just did a mediocre job, you may get selected.

What's common in both cases is - doing a better job is more likely to be better for you. But there are no guarantees you'll win/get promoted, so don't be attached to that outcome, but only your efforts/labour.

> You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.

> stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system

That verse is quite famous and the general interpretation as I understand is this.

You have control on your actions but not on its results. The results depend not only on your actions but on many other factors outside of your control.

Now, one can interpret that it is instruction to "stay in your lane", but I have not seen that interpretation so far in my life in India.

So, "have a go, do you best, shit happens, don't worry about it".

you realize that the caste system that currently exists is completely different from what it was conceptualized as right? you most certainly want to read the conversation between yudhistra and nahusha that talks about caste https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/30/

I don't think we actually know who conceptualized the caste system. Even Manusmriti seems to be not as old as we thought before.

However, even in Mahabharatha there are examples of Karna and Ekalavya who despite having qualities (as Yudhishtira claims) of Kshathriya, they were rejected by the society as being lesser.

It is possible that caste system is an extension and crystallization of nepotism. Typically professions and trade secrets are handed down the families and it is conceivable this was codified at some point far in the past.

To claim that caste system has a more philosophical foundation would be a bit of a stretch in my point of view, especially when it has been throughout the history being used suppress.

You need to understand the context. The quote in Gita was to motivate the best warrior of the time at the battlefront facing opponents who were mainly his cousins and uncles.

In that context the quote is about performing the duties you were born to do without overthinking the consequences.

the context makes it even worse. its a strange kind of tribalism that is being promoted here. "do what you are asked to without understanding the real consequences". btw war is actual zero sum usually.

War is often times even negative sum game.

Historically, no. It's like Tennyson: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

the problem is that there's good stuff in here but expressed in such a compressed way that it can be misused and misread.

i completely agree with you and the post you are replying too. both are correct.

If there is a 15 move sequence that leads to a guaranteed win, stockfish would not call it a 1 pawn advantage (given the sufficient calculation time) instead calling it a won position.

I think you may be mistaking your understanding of stockfish as shallow in that regard.

Where the big differences might emerge is in strategic mid game positions without any clear tactics or forcing moves. There lc0 can somehow "feel" that a position seems better.

Eh, this is the kind of pithy soundbite that sounds vaguely deep and intelligent but doesn't hold up.

In what domains have you had experience taking non programmers with domain knowledge and making them programmers?

OP did't like anthropomorphizing an LLM.

And you tried to explain the whole thing to him from the perspective of a duck.

I know, seems a bit silly right? But go with me for a moment. First, I'm assuming you get the duck reference? If not, it's probably a cultural difference, but in US English, "If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck..." is basically saying "well, treat it like a duck". or "it's a duck". Usage varies, metaphors are fluid, so it goes. I figured even if this idiom wasn't shared, the meaning still wouldn't be lost.

That aside, why? Because the normal rhetorical sticks don't really work in conversation, and definitely not short bits like comments here on HN, when it comes to asking a person to consider a different point of view. So, I try to go in a little sideways, slightly different approach in terms of comparisons or metaphors-- okay, lots of time more than slightly different-- and lots of times? more meaningful conversation and exchanges come from it than the standard form because, to respond at all, its difficult to respond in quite the same pat formulaic dismissal that is the common reflex-- mine included-- I'm not claiming perfection, only attempts at doing better.

Results vary, but I've had more good discussions come of it than bad, and heard much better and more eye-opening-- for me-- explanations of peoples' points of view when engaging in a way that is both genuine and novel. And on the more analytical end of things, this general approach, when teaching logic & analysis? It's not my full time profession, and I haven't taught in a while, but I've forced a few hundred college students to sit through my style of speechifying and rhetoricalizing, and they seem to learn better and give better answers if I don't get too mechanical and use the same form and syntax, words and phrases and idioms they've always heard.

for what it's worth, it didn't seem odd to me. I guess the missing article and phrase indicate it's a verb.

"So AI can ... developers" is begging for a verb, there is no room for an adjective there.

I disliked the pedantic nature of stackoverflow like the next guy but this seems like a naive take.

SO solved a problem, that problem is now gone

It's almost as if it depends on the context and there isn't a simplistic bumper sticker approach.

> Maybe Carnegie’s relatives decided the book could appeal to a 2x audience?

So if a book uses male examples it only appeals to males, but if it uses female examples it appeals to both males and females?

Huh? The revised edition doesn’t use ONLY female examples. It uses both.

> Some days I just can’t get over how we’re just the dumbest ##^*ing species to ever visit space

I also think we are pretty dumb. But what reference point makes you think we are either smarter or dumber than other spacefaring species

There is none. I just need to believe intelligent life trends much higher than this.

Any species able to visit us would be definitionally smarter than us, since they somehow break the rules of physics as we know them, so they either have way better math and data, or are magic, which frankly I would treat as "smarter"

> *But what reference point makes you think we are either smarter or dumber than other spacefaring species"

Us being the dumbest spacefaring species does not necessarily imply the existence of spacefaring species other than us.

Sorry but as a southern Neighbor you are painting a picture of Europe 20 years ago.

Taxes these days keep up the ponzi scheme of european pensions and an influx of low skilled migrants that are not incentivized to work.

There is a a lot of budget between ur citizens not going bankrupt when they get sick and taking 50% of their salary.

> influx of low skilled migrants that are not incentivized to work

Aka a low wage labor pool to plug the youth demographic gap.

If European countries had sustainable fertility rate, then they could be choosy about immigration.

At 1.3-1.5, well, people have to come from somewhere...

Folks spend so much time talking about second+ order effects of immigration, but it's the economy that's primarily important.

I don't know too many nativists / nationalists who agree with the statement 'I am fine with my country being poorer and worse off economically in exchange for getting rid of immigrants.'

Their political champions bill is as though removing immigrant labor will somehow make the economy better.

Because, yes, when has a smaller, more expensive domestic labor pool ever helped a country's economic competitiveness? /s

Sure, but the parts you still enjoy wouldn't even exist otherwise. Even the crumbling western european healthcare system is miles ahead of the american one for the average citizen.

It's always been a ponzi scheme, even 20 years ago when you enjoyed it and thought everything was perfect.

> low skilled migrants that are not incentivized to work.

Including all the FIRE people and tech migrants who come to take freebies while not chipping in