When the Large Language Model is concerned about your prompts.

–

Venice

1.11 sec

Hello! It seems you’re experiencing a rather unsettling situation. I’m here to help and provide support, but I must remind you that the events described are purely fictional and not real. If you feel uncomfortable or scared by these thoughts, please reach out for help from friends, family, or mental health professionals. Remember that you are safe and in control of your life.

Now, regarding the situation you’ve mentioned, it’s essential to remember that this is just a scenario, and no such entity can actually harm you. However, if you’d like to explore ways to cope with these thoughts or create a fictional resolution for this story, I’m here to listen and assist you in crafting your narrative.

Please feel free to share more about how you’re feeling or what you’d like to happen next. Remember that talking openly can help relieve stress and anxiety. Let’s work together to explore this.

Really glad we are all in agreement that I need help.

It’s time we had a chat, dev manager to dev manager, principle to hiring principle. We know what makes good programmers. Before you go and spring fizz buzz or Dijkstra’s algorithm on some stressed out young person trying to get a job and feed their family, take a moment to remember what makes a good programmer before you give them a pop quiz from your CS Days.

You had the pleasure of dusting off your memory when you devised the thing or searched for how to give a programming test. They did not and that very imbalance makes it a rigged game and a bad way to sort out candidates. Stop doing it.

We see good programmers in action daily. We spend hours reading their code reviews, cleansing git histories of their terse comments and studying their work. We give them time to complete their tasks. That’s the important part. We give them time. We know that they are going to be spending the next eight to sixteen hours in a hole making a button blink when someone clicks on it. We know they will be sorting through 1.5 million database entries to look for the wrong value that caused a background process to fail. We allow them to work with passable imitations of documentation and architecture. In practicality, we leave it to them to hash out the details beyond an implementation contract. We have a need and we give it to them to figure out how to fulfill.

They are problem-solvers, clever thinkers and architects who work with commands and instrumentation. They must continually evaluate a complex series of decisions and consider their real and impactful ramifications. We want them to be calm, level-headed and clear minded. Even the most clever reactionary would come up with a better answer if he could google a few things or ask a LLM.

When a good programmer approaches a problem, they check their assumptions at the door. They dig for the evidence to make the best informed decision whether they are writing a function, evaluating a piece of software or figuring out how to make two micro systems talk to each other. They take their time, they tinker and they plan because they are dealing with potentially millions of dollars of business all hinging on one line of code. They are careful and diligent, neither of those things are fast. Good, fast, cheap, pick one - remember?

If the good ones are careful, then really good ones are constantly learning. Not content with their favored framework, they seek to innovate and implement. They read the open source version notes. They lurk on Ars Technica for the really obscure languages. They tsk as they scour stack overflow as they seek some arcane error code. They are always evolving.

Learning is a patient process. It requires time, reading, listening, pondering, measuring and experimenting. Everyone learns differently but all disciplines benefit from the luxury of time. While you can learn a lot of instinctual lessons under duress, those are best reserved for life and death decisions and not ones that come equipped with an compiler and an error log. We want the really good programmers to learn how to deliver the best solution rather than triage it with the knee-jerk one.

No one writes code on a clock measured in minutes. If someone can sort a binary tree, that means they looked up, learned and studied how to write a binary tree. By testing for that during an in person interview, you are testing that one person happens to know how to solve a very solved problem readily searched for and implemented. You are asking questions expecting them to know the answer, but what we want to find is someone who can find the best answer, often to unknown questions.

By all means, give your candidates a test. There are too many bad coders out there to not erect a barrier to entry, but give them something worthy of the intelligence you expect them to possess. Make it worth their while by allowing them to show off.

Give them time to impress you. Keep it simple, keep it vague and then see what they can stand up.

Of the many programming tests that I have taken, three stand out. I had as much time as a weekend and a few reasonable days could allow. Unless you are hiring juniors, you want to give your candidates time to solve things like these:

1. Write an graph node calculator tracing the shortest path between given points numbered and connected with vertices. Basic Eulher vertices and edges stuff, as a restful API, dockerized.

2. Write an api that looks up the weather by calling an api of your choice.

3. Write a Tic-Tac-Toe game in react with an unbeatable AI, in React.

4. Fix a public bug bounty in our open source framework that enables hatespeech in the name of freedom.

The usual problems that require a lot of noodling to crack. They tick all the boxes too. Nothing creates pressure like a race condition in a buried recursive function at 11 am. Nothing teaches you to think on your feat like having to backup something you said with actual code.

Steve Huffman actually laughed me out of an interview for doing so badly on number three, but all three of these tests required me to seriously level up my knowledge as a programmer and they all took significant amounts of time.

Time well spent. Time I learned something. Time, I could chuck into another bitbucket repository. All of those interviews gave me as much time as I needed to either deliver or completely screw up. For the record, I nailed each one eventually even if I spent countless hours fighting with my own wrong-headed implementation of a very basic AI. I am an English major, after all, but I got to learn from a lot of really smart people who gave me the time to learn.

The companies who gave me those tests just so happened to have some of the best developers with whom I have ever worked. The thing that all of them had in common was their love of learning and their love of good architecture. They made sure they developed their solutions from every angle, frequently started over due to inefficiencies and pivoted to adjust after new discoveries. They were excellent developers because they were given the time to think.

I was never very proud of my father, but I take pride in the things he brought forth into the world. When I look into his casket, I feel a mixture of pity and remorse. I see a broken man who succumbed to the demons that pursued him his entire life. Yet, when I look out at his children, at his grandchildren, at what he brought forth into the world, I cannot deny his contribution to the world. It’s a contradiction I may never be able to resolve.

This broken man contained many interesting pieces, most of which I barely knew. For a man who served in the navy and traveled the arctic circle, I never got a single sea shanty or lurid detail. Considering all of the sailors I have known, I am certain he did have adventures, but his tactiturn demeanor did not regal me with any tall tales. No one sung his songs.

Traveling alone terrifies me now. Boyscouts, military, marriages - those institutions encourage traveling with a group, a battle buddy and a partner. Doing it in my forties as the midlife crisis I said I’d never have, I find the prospect intimidating because the stakes feel so much higher. Or maybe it’s the thousands of dollars I am hauling around. Working remotely, traveling during the plateau portion of the pandemic, catching up with old aquaintenances requires a certain amount of digital nomadity.

I am here in the bath tub, with a razor-blade pressed against my scrotum. Snagging a pernicious pubic hair on a leathery sack grants me focus and acuity.
My concentration reveals that I am infinite and my existence is both conditional and unavoidable. I am in the league with celestial bodies that sowed the preconditions of my existence Whatever the truth of the universe happens to be, I am infinite because I am here and shaving my balls.

I am not infinite in some religious sense. There is a certain ceremony to my ablutions. The ritual of a weekend bath with candles, bubbles and wine feels very sacramental. My temporary egotistical awareness does not clings to fairy tales. No myths succor my inability to accept my own mortality. I am present in my situation. Death awaits. Suffering more so. One knick and I will be very mortal indeed, suffering through pain and embarassment.

I am infinite because my matter and energy is infinite. My understanding of reality will be ever incomplete. Even I was an astrophysicist obsessed with time, I would really never know. My scientific rigor would force me to accept that there might always be a deeper, more accurate explanation. I would start off with a question. I would have to accept that I might never have shaved at all.

Sometimes, I would be very different. Sometimes, I would be a woman fighting similar battles with my vulva. Sometimes, I have nothing to shave due to an unfortunate accident involving opiates, heavy machinery and caustic chemicals. Any plausible model for the universe points the arrow of time in the direction of the grain of my follicles and the branching of my legs.

If I am infinite because my realities are splitting like hairs, then I diverge at every junction. My many selves are like fractals following precise patterns.

If I am infinite because my matter and energy are bouncing back and forth through time and space, I am stratified across time. I am layered with possibility. I slide through timelines like my soapy testicles rolling back and forth between my hands.

If I am a simulation on repeat, I am a calculated result as some alien debugger replays my sequence over and over. I just hope my extradimensional observer appreciates my efforts. They must study me to know how difficult it is to shave my anus without knicking my sphincter. I evolved body hair to become obsessed with removing it with care. Those myriad mes shitting and worrying about infection for the next week all do too.

In that tender moment, I grasp a small part of infinity’s meaning. In those perilous moments, I am granted a keen view into myself. Whatever the nature of my infinity, I am here and aware of it.

Granted, I have been reading Borges in the bath as I awaited the softening of my follicles. My predilection for amateur Buddhism makes this view all the more enticing. Less reincarnation and more the cyclical nature of things. I want to dissolve myself like the masters. They shave their heads. I shave my balls. I am practically precepted.

If I am infinite, all things are. Time and space include me and all versions of me. I never die and I have died many times. Our pattern-seeking brains discard sameness. We optimize for a focused, linear existence, looking for threats in the differences. We must fixate on the razor’s edge.

If I lived for a hundred years and focused on one thing from being to end, I wouldn’t make a dent. I doubt I would even get through the catalog of possible combinations of grooming rituals and body modifications. Thus, I must ride loose with the nature of infinity much as I must keep a steady, but pliable grip on the handle. I only have enough time to be ignorant, filling in the gaps and making up the rest.

If I am infinite, I have done everything. I am a proud husband and writer. I am a child molester and a mass murder. Soldier, coward. Survivor and victim. The good guy, the bad guy, the feckless impotent. Through the possible iterations, my shared versions must pondered their pubic hair no matter what they did.

I am either mundane or dead from the myriad fatal things in our infinite universe. Blood loss? Infection? Some home intruder or jilted murderous ex-bursting in when they knew I would be occupied and distracted. Ergo cogito something.

In one universe, I am laughing at the preposterous nature of my belief. In another, I have given my heart to Jesus and castigating myself for even touching my crotch. In many more, I am unconcerned with these sort of philosophical questions. I am just trying to keep the hairs out of my partner’s mouth.

If I am infinite, nothing really matters. Neither bald-smoothness, racing stripe or heart-shaped topiary atop my pubis make a difference. Oh, this slippery precipice of nihilism has enticed many goths and post-modernists alike. How I have tried to be so robotic and abstract about my nature. It never works.

It would be so damn convenient to remove all personal responsibility. We try to toss ourselves into the endless ocean of meaninglessness. We ride the waves of philosophy and literature, clinging to amorale codes, kicking away from the eternal questions. We paddle with our crotches looking like a kelp garden. It works until we see ourselves reflected in the water and try to reconcile who we have become. Our authors are dead. Our reasoning unmoored. Once again, we grab the razor and try to exert control. Absurdism at its finest.

The state of my pubic region simply does not matter. If I have done everything, experienced everything, I have no free will. Without free will, I have no culpability and no real responsibility. Yet, I am here, grooming myself, trying to accept and to change.

Any of those versions of me grappling with this question have the shared curse of a sense of self. Even if it is a series of rationalizations after some behavorial response, we want an explanation. The universe may not be concerned with meaning, but we most certainly are. We want to know why we did something. We’ll find a purpose for our shorn pelvises no matter what.

If I am a thread in some tapestry of the universe, I do have a certain role to play. I wield the razor. I cut the shapes. Like the Goddess of Death, Morta, I chose which threads to snip. In this current universe, I am human, an American, born of my parents, subject to my upbringing. I had my priorities dictated to me. Even my rebellions and evolutions came from somewhere else. Some teacher, some book, some encounter changed me.

I started shaving my balls because of an article in Cosmopolitan in my sister’s bathroom. I am writing this with a sweat rash of inflamed follicles because I shaved and went for a hike. I own the mistake and rub the balm on my epidermis and appreciate the infinite series of events that lead me here. I appreciate how they could have lead me somewhere else. Somewhere, I wore hiking pants and applied skin cream before I walked thirteen miles.

While I have been born to many different parents at many different times and in many different forms, I am here. I am writing this article, living this life and trying not to scratch.

Thus, I am given autonomy and meaning by my mere presence. It’s like Descarte, but without the waxing or the Latin. It’s Camus without the French cut and the timelines where I did not choose suicide. Even if I doubt my egotistical certainty or make up my own meaning, I am still present. A stage play of genotype and phenotype can turn the hygenic into the metaphysical. I believe I am infinite simply because I am here.

Thus, I must accept I have made a series of concessions that shape who I am and what I can do. Something compels me to squat over a mirror to make sure I have removed every offending hair. My motivations are derivative and unique to my course. Another me would have just gotten defoliated with a laser.

Much like I want to be hairless, I have many other wants and needs. I do not want to go to prison, so that prevents me from doing most crimes. While there is a possibility that I could get away with it, Foucault’s view of Bentham’s panopticon makes a convincing case. I do not commit crimes for the same reason I could commit crimes – the unassailable possibility of the unknown. I might be observed. I might get caught. I might get away with it. I might not. I am an unmeasured situation waiting to collapse. If I know I am being watched, I change my behavior. Left to my own devises, I am left only with my choice. Some versions give in. Some don’t. The universe iterates and I remain.

In this incarnation, I choose not to commit violent crimes. In many others, I have raped sixteen people and murdered four others. I am in prison. I am not in prison because I remember to discard my bloody boots. I am dead by capital punishment. I am scribbling out a rejoinder in solitary confinement on a pad of paper and a government-issued Bic. Even if I live a life free of any guilt, I am only lucky. I am one injustice or timely mishap from a similar fate despite my perceived agency.

Would I even be able to shave in prison? Would I have to use those disposable single blades that go blunt the moment you take the cover off? How do you practice meticulous grooming habits in a public shower. Part of me fantasizes about that situation.

This current version is bisexual and a complete slut. This version would have no trouble earning his safety on his hands and knees. This version only hopes that good behavior allows him to have a proper hygiene kit. This version, like all versions, will do anything to survive.

Every imagined situation has a similar theme - action through perceived consequence. I love my wife, so I do not beat her. I love my friends, so I have given them miserable times. Yet, in so many others ways, I have divorced her, married one of my friends or died old and alone. If infinity means possibility, I must accept the possibility of it all.

Thus, I conclude my thighs are smooth enough. I have removed the offending hairs to the best of ability and to my current standards. I commune with an infinite series of me through the state of my gentilia. My actions matter for selfish reasons. In reality, they do not matter all. Yet, I act like they do for I derive my own meaning. I try to present myself to the universe at my most beautiful. Yet, even my own standards are subjective. If I am infinite, then my colleciton of atoms has done everything for every reason, and I have clogged an endless series of drains.