I love this analogy and am going to use it.
This is a fantastic article. In the end, everything is still, and will always be, about people. We ignore and forget that at our peril.
Thanks!
In modern German, "Sache" is one of the words used for a matter before a court. Its meaning overlaps, but is not the same, as "Ding" ("thing").
> It happened astonishingly fast; within about five years a knowledge skill that I had completely taken for granted as a basic requisite in an undergraduate was diminished beyond recognition.
Then the second half
> A good way of writing documentation for human beings today will still be a good way to do it in a few years’ time.
Don't these contradict each other? Documentation that worked well for us who grew up pre-Internet is not working well for "web natives".
Contrast that with the second quote. Good documentation could be in a dusty book in the library or in a SPA. What makes the documentation good isn’t, however, related to people’s ability to navigate information spaces.
Then what's the point? If nobody can use the documentation properly, then the term "good documentation" is meaningless.
You might reasonably ask "in what way".
> this is how documentation is, because this arrangement is part of its integrity, and this is how you must learn to use it and work with it.
The word "integrity" comes up six times. Something about integrity.
Luckily, unlike web natives, LLM's have read lots of documentation cover to cover. Likely a good way to teach LLM's about your product is to write good documentation.
You don’t hear that said much anymore, but in the 20th century it was said fairly regularly.
It's still somehow used.
Gegenstand is in the middle of the page: "lat. obiectum", it says - "translation of Latin obiectum into philosopher-speak".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:German_terms_calqued...
A nice example (of many!) is überleben, calqued from supervivere (literally, to over-live).
For instance: circumstance => Umstand, or depend => abhängen, or expression => Ausdruck, or participate => teilnehmen.
German looks unfamiliar for English speakers mostly because all the words that English has borrowed as such from French or from classical languages have been translated into compound German words.
The Latin objectum has a directional vector (figuratively, it's thrown at us), while Gegenstand is much more inert. It's like a world view of active exploration versus a tableau of the world around us.
The directly-recognizable ones are usually "learned borrowings", because Germans have been very enthusiastic about learning Latin as scholars for a long time, and often consciously chosen to use Latin (or Greek) words.
My favourite though: Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher. It's one of those things that you never knew you needed.
That's not actually what they're called, it's an overly descriptive contrived way to get a long word, like "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän". Imagine someone in english saying "Ink-to-paper-writing-implement" instead of "pen".
You'd call it an "Eieröffner"(Egg opener) or "Eierköpfer"(Egg beheader).
You can go on Amazon an order a Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher.
The reason I know about this is from eating at the breakfast table in Germany.
In the end I'm hopeful about this because it means there will be more concise and navigable documentation for me to refer to (though I might be slightly offended to be reading the AGENTS.md instead of the README.md, lol)
Adding an AGENTS.md was as easy as running our single-page static HTML output through Pandoc with a separate context header section stapled to the frontmatter.
My fiancée recently remarked that she'd been doing more writing on paper because it made her more productive. She theorized that she takes an editor's mindset in the face of WYSIWYG renditions of her spelling mistakes. The same goes for her design work. The industry tools make it too easy to recognize "wrong" as it's happening. That sounds like a singing endorsement of these tools, but our experience working with lower-tech tools has informed a different conclusion. You're not being "helped" to see "wrong" in what you do, you're being cut off. Your generative, creative mode is being inhibited.
I find myself redrawing the same like like 12 times when doing digital, but only once with a pencil. So there's definitely something about "worse" tools being better sometimes, just because sometimes the wrong things get made easy.
I guess the fact that I've purposefully aimed for a style where I don't rework things influences that. If left to my own devices I will rework a single detail basically forever. Instead I'm forcing myself to use confident sweeping lines. I keep eraser use to a minimum. I ink with a dip pen directly overtop the sketch. With the dip pen especially any touch to the paper is permanent. I color with alcohol markers, again so I don't get stuck trying to get things perfect.
No take-backsies seems to be what works for me. Otherwise I just get stuck polishing turds all day.
In my case, I find revisions useful as a sort of deliberate practice. I eventually find the right way to do something, after many attempts. Polishing turds is a great way to see where I make mistakes and how to fix them.
In german we have some of those -stand words.
Some seem to have an obvious explanation, for other it feels long-sought and more obscure. I would not over-interpret words.
Wider = gegen (against)
Wieder = noch einmal (again)
Kinda important to get the spelling right in context of "Gegenstand"
While thinking about this I had a curious thought that maybe the word "against" derives not just from "agegn" but from a two word phrase "agegn standan". Google is not helpful. Claude AI suggests that the "st" ending actually developed later, likely through analogy with other prepositions ending in "-st" like "amongst" and "whilst."
Just makes me happy.
> Objects aren’t just inert stuff – they do something.
...while many words in Germany are just "stuff" (Zeug). A plane is a Fly-Stuff (Flugzeug). A lighter is a Fire-Stuff (Feuerzeug). A vehicle is a Drive-Stuff (Fahrzeug). A toy is a Play-Stuff (Spielzeug). And the list goes on!
A “stand against” would be a Widerstand, which also exists.
Update: Interestingly the etymology is really “ stand against”, you always leans something here.
It took me a while to learn how to pronounce it. It's not really harder than "industrial estate" but it looked very exotic to me back then.
I should also note that "Ausfahrt" is the largest town/city in Germany - its everywhere according to the autobahn signs!
Paderborn, I think.
literally "over asked"
ich bin überfragt => no clue on how to answer this
"doch".
I love that it can stand alone. To the best of my knowledge there is no word in English with the same function that can be used as a standalone answer.
When used in a sentence it usually stands in the middle and nicely sandwiches the criticism.
"Ich hab's Dir doch gesagt!"
You can put it in front if you want to get straight to the point:
"Doch, ich hab's Dir gesagt!"
It is never at the end like in the English equivalent:
"I told you so!"
The appended "so" feels much like kicking someone when they're already down.
Obvious real world usage example for standalone "Doch!":
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WJlZLG9UXSY&pp=ygUMbmVpbiBkb2NoI...
EDIT: A quick search says "Non? Si! Oh!" and indeed "si" seems to be pretty much equivalent to "doch".
Bon
No etymologic connection but seems to serve similar function
Wille cannot connect directly to another; it can only be connected through Vorstellung. Some may excel at connecting the Wille behind the Vorstellung, while others do not.
But LLMs excel at this; they can grasp the Wille behind almost any text, which is essentially a form of Vorstellung.
> The LLM has no drive towards survival or continuity...
This may be true for an AI Model(LLM) in isolation. But once it's embedded within a real body—say, a robot that can walk, talk, act, and encounter conditions of survival or failure (e.g., like our body)—then the boundary begins to blur.
"Tremble and sin not: examine your own heart upon your bed, and be still."
In many deep nights, I find the mind working exactly like an LLM—one Wille unfolding into words, and then another, each emerging in sequence, shaped into thoughts.
However, I diverge from his pessimistic view: that the Wille is a blind impulse condemning life to a tragedy. I believe all wills originate from love—whether for the ego or for the world (other egos). This doesn't create a cycle of suffering, but could be a drive towards peace and happiness. In that sense, I feel that Wille has mutated and evolved a bit.
P.S. If you're interested in Schopenhauer, check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-djIdl8WO4 SCHOPENHAUER Explained: The World as Will and Representation (ALL PARTS) by Weltgeist—he really did a great job of representing that Wille.
(Can't remember now where I chanced upon this.)
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