That background really captures the look of a dirty laptop display. I was actually taken aback at first, thinking that I must have somehow sneezed over my screen without realising!
I'm 24 and I've used internet heavily completely unsupervised since around 7-ish years old. As I've grown older I notice myself using my phone and be on the web less and less, it is a conscious decision. My access to youtube is blocked except on my laptop, though I have noticed not watching any videos for weeks now. My phone is B&W and has it's browser disabled. Being more mindful of technology use is definitely a positive trend within my generation.
But as I near parenthood, I feel conflicted. I'm still young enough to remember my state of mind in the early teen years. I remember being surprised at the amount of attention the level "No Russian" from MW2 got. I thought - "It's just a game, why would anyone be offended by this?". Now, having seen similar things happen in my lifetime, it seems very distasteful to me. Even seeing a kid with a realistic looking toy gun gives me mixed feelings. The idea of having my kid being on tiktok for 6 hours unsupervised with all the people feeding their agenda to young impressionable minds makes me uneasy. And I was the one who spent good portion of his day being on 4chan.
My question is to parents of HN - how does one find balance within their parenting? I don't want to be a helicopter parent who blasts their child for not falling in line with all their demands, torturing them with endless extracurricular activities for their own good. At the same time I want them to learn a little discipline and not hate me for forcing things on them. I had zero limits on my screen time, and I'd say I turned out perfectly fine, though I did poorly in school and was a troublemaker. I found my love for studying only after I turned 18 and had some time with my thoughts after I moved out and stopped hanging out with deadbeats. Frankly, I'd say my upbringing was a little too lax.
Younger me would feel betrayed by my changing attitude towards raising kids , and that's what worries me - the disconnect that leads to the repeating cycle of parent-kid conflict. I don't think a parent usually thinks that they'll try to be the world's shittiest parent, yet so many of them are.
How does one begin to educate oneself on the way LLMs work beyond layman understanding of it being a "word predictor"? I use LLMs very heavily and do not perceive any differences between models. My math background is very weak and full of gaps, which i'm currently working on through khan academy, so it feels very daunting to approach this subject for a deeper dive. I try to read some of the more technical discussions (e.g waluigi effect on lesswrong), however it feels like I lack the needed knowledge to not have it completely go over my head, not taking into account some of the surface-level insights.
