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He is a great educator, not only for ML. He taught speedcubing under the badmefisto pseudonym.
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Oh my god, my two worlds just had an insane collision.

I learned speed cubing from badmefisto when I was in middle school, ~16yr ago (today my ao100 is ~15s).

I never knew it was Karpathy. What an insane knowledge drop. Thanks for sharing!

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Guess these prodigys have brains that are cross functional. Like Magnus Carlsen predicting premier league.
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i still probably have my paper print outs of OLL/PLL pdfs somewhere...
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> Its a bit concerning when someone supposedly intelligent still speaks somewhat highly of someone so clearly not.

Have you considered the possibility that someone you regard as extremely intelligent is speaking from real-life experience and direct proximity when they say another person is smart?

Or perhaps your bias toward Musk make that impossible to even consider.

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That was probably the first thing they considered. Afterwards, you usually reflect on other "totally smart" executives like Gates, Jobs, Altman... all of whom are both criticized and appraised by their peers in equal measure.

In hindsight, it's easy to assess that Gates was a charming moron, Jobs was an overeager egoist, and that Altman is a sociopathic liar. All of the white knights defending their boy genius narrative are contradicted by their asinine philosophies, and in Elon's case he's simply undermined by all of his broken promises, random accusations and manic paranoia.

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Him being a nazi, or at least enough of a sympathizer to make a salute is not related to him being an idiot.

He is both, but it’s irrelevant in this context.

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Yes, the world absolutely needs more purity tests. Would you like to take the lead? Oh, and shaming. We should definitely be shaming more people because it has proven to be so productive.
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It’s Manichaeism. A proselytizing religion for those without religion.
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You can still respect the work of someone who is a complete pos. The same way you can criticize the bad work of a very nice person.
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What does PoS mean?
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in this context, "piece of shit"
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Musk being a PoS is a separate issue. My main concern is Karpathy taking about Musk as someone who is smart and makes good technical decisions.

From all the interviews and stuff that came out within the past few years, its pretty clear that Musks only contribution to anything is just throwing money at stuff while also scamming suppliers, governments, and so on. The dude has no technical knowledge of his own, he just lies and lies about what actually happens, and takes credit for accomplishments that aren't his.

When you hear someone who is supposedly smart talk about a dumb person like he is smart, it raises questions on whether that person that is doing the talking is actually smart.

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I have the opposite impression. I have consumed tons of hours of interviews with Elon and he comes off as more technically sound and speaks more substance than any other large org CEO I can think of. Karpathy worked directly under him. I haven’t worked for Elon but know people that did and experience is similar. What makes you think you are right?

edit: typo

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I think that's being unfair and I really don't like Elon Musk.

But I don't think it's fair to say Elon is stupid / a bad engineer. When John Carmack speaks well of his talent, I take that seriously.

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There’s a lot of nuance to this. Regarding the former, what if someone used unethical or illegal means to produce the work? And regarding the latter, we can choose to provide constructive criticism out of kindness. Apathy or silence is a disservice to others in some cases.
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Do you have examples of these points?
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Publicly disavowing Musk is going to be a bit difficult when his new employer just leased an entire datacentre from Elon Musk's SpaceX. Anthropic and Elon Musk seem to have quite warm feelings towards one another lately.
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