The hottest Limitations Substack posts right now

Free speech is a core value of Western democracy and crucial for safeguarding other liberties.
Speech is essential for participating in societal and political life, fostering friendship, rational inquiry, and statesmanship.
Defending and promoting relatively free speech is crucial for upholding values like friendship, the pursuit of truth, artistic expression, and serving the common good.

Caching like Redis stores frequently used data for faster retrieval, improving response times, reducing database load, and leading to cost-effectiveness in running high-traffic applications.
Redis is fast due to in-memory storage, optimized data structures, reduced I/O operations, single-threaded architecture, and event-driven design, but has limitations like limited capacity and issues with data persistence.
Choosing the right caching system, like Redis, requires considering factors like data size, access patterns, consistency requirements, and fault tolerance for high availability and durability.

When adding numbers, there are basic properties like getting another number, having a special zero that doesn't change sums, and having partners that return to zero when added.
Mathematicians use abstraction to find essential properties, like in groups, to study various systems efficiently and effectively.
Seeking historical analogies in current events can be misleading; it's important to understand the limitations of models and not be overconfident in applying mathematical rules to real-world situations.

Large Language Models tend to produce more incorrect answers when primed with previous incorrect answers
Explicitly flattering the AI does not significantly increase the likelihood of it producing incorrect answers
Statistical tests show strong evidence that incorrectness cascades can occur in AI language models

The halting problem in computer science cannot be solved because of the limitations of predicting a program's behavior.
Prophecy and prediction face conceptual limitations due to the inability to fully control or predict the future.
The connection between the halting problem and prophecy reveals insights about self-understanding, unpredictability, and the quest for knowledge.

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Asking the right questions when learning something new can be challenging.
Making lists of components and asking experts about each part can help in understanding complex topics.
Using textbooks and tools can aid in quickly acquiring a comprehensive view of a subject.

The concept of understanding exists on a spectrum, not as a binary state.
LLMs might have suboptimal understanding in some areas, but they are not fundamentally limited.
LLMs can potentially develop a theory of mind and a world model, showing the ability to understand complex concepts.

The Tiny Language Model is a small functional language model that runs in your browser and learns based on a six-word customizable vocabulary, providing insights into more complex models like ChatGPT.
The Tiny Language Model's training involves a compact 'corpus' from the vocabulary, showcasing a scaled-down version of the training process compared to models like ChatGPT, enhancing understanding through patterns in text.
Observing the changes in weights (parameters) of the Tiny Language Model visually displays how the model is learning and can help identify areas for improvement in its training and performance.