Goals don't need to be fully realized to be useful. Ambitious goals are never fully realized. This is like saying a compass is only useful if you travel all the way to the north pole.
To offer a concrete example, mathematicians failed to unify mathematics. They discovered it was impossible. But that's an important result, and there were other valuable intermediate results (like set theory).
There was an article here the other day about how the Sagrada Familia is nearly finished. Gaudi's original vision would have involved bulldozing a bunch of surrounding homes and businesses. That's unlikely to happen. Regardless, the project is considered a huge achievement in architecture.
> Goals don't need to be fully realized to be useful.
Maybe you're thinking of an aspiration? Goals are achievable.
> Ambitious goals are never fully realized.
"Unreachable aspirations are never fully realized" is accurate. However, I've reached many actual "ambitious goals" in life, because whether easy or difficult goals are things you can fully realize.
> This is like saying a compass is only useful if you travel all the way to the north pole.
I have no idea where this example came from and it seems to only be half explained. But, a compass is useful because it gives you direction -- not because you expect to reach the North Pole every time you check direction.
An aspiration provides value in the pursuit itself and the valuable discoveries you make along the way.
Aspiration: A journey (still valuable, but you might not reach or even have an exact destination)
Goal: A destination (As in "achievable" -- see "A" in S.M.A.R.T. goals, a very common framework for understanding how to set and use goals effectively)
Let's not confuse the two concepts. It serves no purpose and might actually get in the way of your success.
To be honest this is splitting hairs. If our disagreement is semantic, then I don't really care to discuss it further, you can use whatever terminology you please and it isn't a problem or something that needs to be hashed out.
Presenting a disagreement as a "misunderstanding" on my part because I don't use your terminology is disingenuous. I assure you, differences in terminology will not interfere in my success. Just like speaking a different language wouldn't interfere.
I will leave you with a final thought. If an aspiration is a goal that can't be realized - then we only know this in retrospect. All goals are possible until proven otherwise. Russell and Whitehead thought mathematics could be unified. Who are we to judge them as fools? They didn't know what we know, because they taught us.
I am not responsible for the commonly understood meaning and definitions of words in the English language.
People learn something new every day. This is your opportunity to learn how goals (which are always achievable) are different than things like wishes, daydreams, hopes, or even aspirations.
If you'd rather not learn, that's OK. But it is not disingenuous to correctly define a word when someone else is misusing it repeatedly.
> I am not responsible for the commonly understood meaning and definitions of words in the English language.
Yet your are responsible for your own misunderstanding of commonly understood meanings and definitions.
Let's have a look, shall we?
goal (noun)
1 : the end toward which effort is directed : aim
| The goal is high-speed rail travel.
Synonyms:
purpose aim plan objective intention
intent idea object ambition dream
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goal
Do you see a requirement of "must be obtainable"? Even the synonyms would tell you you're wrong. Surely you've made plans that have failed. Surely intentions and ideas. But regardless, there is still ambitions and dreams, which you specifically state are not included.
Let's have a look at another word, just for fun...
aspirational (adjective)
: of, relating to, or characterized by aspiration
| aspirational goals
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aspirational
I am sorry, it is YOU who are lacking the understanding of common words. Don't be so smug when you're so trivially proven wrong. If you do care about being correct, as you try to convince us, your only "out" is to update your belief.
You had aspirations of proving us wrong, they gave you direction, but you failed.
Thank you for the active demonstration of the utility of unachievable goals.
Thank you for the lesson. If I could return the favor, you may be interested in linguistic descriptivism. You probably won't agree with it but it may be educational nonetheless.
I'm always happy to put a smile on someone's face, but I think if you reflect on it you'll find that you have evidence to support the impossibility of goals you believe impossible (in other words, they have been "proven otherwise" in the past). If you've made up your mind without any evidence, well, you do you but that may be a belief that hinders you rather than helps.
Guest: You know how sometimes you can pronounce the same word differently? Well—two things can be true.
Interviewee: Wait, what are you saying?
Guest: When you're from the Midwest, you say 'meeyulk' for milk or 'peeloh' for pillow, and that's not incorrect. It's just, you know, two things can be true. So, that's what I was saying.
Interviewer: Yeah. [wideyed confusion]
Guest: So, what's that all about?
(hint: it isn't linguistic descriptivism & I'm not the guest in this scenario)
All goals begin with imagination, daydreams, or wishes. Whichever you want to call it. Every single one of them begins in your head before they become reality. So what's your beef here? I know you're not that dumb, as you're actively demonstrating the capacity for metacognition. So what are you actually trying to argue?
Besides, so what if all your dreams don't come true. Do you still not have them? I'm sure you've settled for things. Did your idealistic dream not help you make those decisions? It'd be lunacy to suggest that they did not. There would be no compromise or settling if this higher desire did not exist. Similarly, in the other direction, the fear or dystopia.
Do you not have 5 year, 10 year, and other long term goals? Do these not change? I'd call you a liar if you were able to pursue precisely the path you thought things would take over a long period of time, because I know you're not omniscient.
*Your lived experience demonstrates the utility of wishful thinking.*
Good god, my pet cat has dreams and desires that she'll never obtain yet help her pursue her more realistic goals. There's the saying "Shoot for the moon, land in the trees". Shooting for the moon gave you direction and landing in the trees still gave you progress, right?
To be quite frank with you, you wouldn't be making tone arguments if you had a substantive point to make. And their use of italics is really not so different from your use of a "hint" parenthetical.
Reading between the lines, I'm pretty sure your real disagreement here is aesthetic. Perhaps it feels icky or touchy feely to you. And your semantic and tone arguments are reverse engineered from that perspective. But if I'm wrong I'd be interested to hear you answer GP's question.
The facts of the matter are that I went back and forth with you, patiently and in good faith, and tried to understand what your point was. And as you became more sarcastic, patronizing, and eventually outright insulting, I realized you simply didn't have one. You didn't like this idea on it's face and were never prepared to give it an earnest hearing. I can only speculate as to why (and no, I don't imagine I can read your mind and wouldn't be surprised to learn my speculation was incorrect).
You've every right to feel that way, but I'm as disappointed in that outcome as you are. Take care and I'll see you around.
I'm sorry, if you want an earnest hearing there's a triplicate form you need to fill out. Now you know for next time. I'm so sorry for your disappointment and hope you find a soothing corner of the internet that agrees with your worldview soonest.
For what it's worth, I've not yet met an LLM that both produces coherent text and will talk past you & try to get under your skin. I'm sure it could be done with an open source model and elbow grease but my read on the situation is that there's a person on the other side of the screen, who for whatever reason had some kind of mental block around this subject matter.
Oh well. Wishing you unachievably bold aspirations. To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching, the path that is clear does not go all the way.
Yeah that's kinda what got me too. But whatever it writing those responses (troll or machine) is becoming less coherent as we talk more. I'm not sure if LLM but it does remind me of that part where they get stuck on something and will correct for a split second before going back to whatever they were doing. But I'm not sure, it's just weird and I'm certain the writer is not being genuine
I'm not sure why they're trying to manufacture outrage but I've been seeing interactions like that appear more and more on HN.
You're right. I think that was mentioned a number of comments ago. We haven't been shy about noting that the conversation is going in circles and you've failed to address our points or present alternatives. You have absolute confidence in your solution, yet have not elaborated on what that is or how it solves the problems we've discussed. You've continued to hyperfixate on an alias. You've continued to complain about an inability to do things a certain way while we've stated that your way also works. I mean that's what an alias is...
The problem isn't that we disagree with you, the problem is you are not making an attempt to have a productive conversation. So we gave up.
This isn't about bots or mental blocks. It's about you needing everyone who disagrees with you to be defective somehow—artificial, mentally blocked, aesthetically driven, anything but right.
Your fortune cookie sign-off does no justice to the work you claim to be referencing. I guess if you spend your days working with agreeable LLMs, it is very inconvenient and upsetting when a person comes along who doesn't agree and polish up every concept you espouse.
Literally dehumanizing a person who doesn't agree with you always puts you in a good group of similar thinkers from history.
I also enjoyed noticing how you and the person you sense agrees with you is a "we" - but I'm not a person, apparently because I wasn't swept off my feet by your eloquent arguments.
