The Bitter Lesson
also referred to as: bitter lesson
9 statements across 9 episodes · 4 bullish · 4 bearish · 9 people on the record · first statement Nov 15, 2024 by Florent Crivello · said 1 times in 1 episodes since 2024 · across every show →
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brought up most by Shawn Wang (1)
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2024 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about The Bitter Lesson, oldest first
Nov 15, 2024 bearish
Crivello: The Bitter Lesson applies to agent cognitive architectures
“I think people fail to truly, and me included, they fail to truly internalize the bitter lesson. So for the listeners out there who don't know about it, it's basically like you just scale the model, like GPUs go brrr, it's all that matters. I think it also hol…”
May 7, 2025 bearish
Jun 19, 2025 negative
Sep 11, 2025
Martin: AI engineers must continuously remove scaffolding as underlying models improve
“We should be adding structure necessary to get things to work today, but keeping an eye on improving models and keep, but keeping a close eye on models, improving rapidly and removing structure in order to un-bottleneck ourselves.”
Sep 25, 2025 positive
Ball: Agent scaffolding should be disposable as foundation models improve
“You want to build a scaffolding around the model, a wooden scaffolding that if the model gets better or you have to switch it out, the scaffolding falls away. You know, like the bitter lesson, like embrace that a lot of stuff might fall into the model as soon …”
Jan 23, 2026 positive
Feb 25, 2026 bullish
Apr 2, 2026 positive
Sun: Using structural abstraction in AI does not contradict Bitter Lesson
“I do feel like sometimes people confuse like, oh, like we're taking an, a method with abstraction. That means they don't believe in bitter lesson. Like that's just false, right? Like we are believers in bitter lesson, but then I feel like the question that we …”
Aug 11, 2026 negative
McPartlon: AlphaFold 3's high architectural complexity contradicts the Bitter Lesson
“One thing that I like to say is kind of like complexity and being bitter lesson pill, they're like fundamentally at odds. For example, I think like outfold three, I might get this number wrong, but I think it was like 23 sub modules. And at that point, that's …”