Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm totally lost, but this thread of self-replies makes me suspect a Markov chain generated them or something like that. The same is true for some—but not all—of your other comments, which feels really weird to me. Of course, maybe I'm way off base, and what you're saying makes total sense and is just going over my head.

I wonder if dang (or another mod) has already seen this....

I suspect vinnyvichy may have been "conversing with gods and ghosts" ... but until I manage to translate that page I shan't be sure :-)

Indeed I would have most preferred "spirits & spectres" because that one has a neutral connotation in Chinese.

The referent of your 三殺法, "kill the buddha-spirit, kill your demised-forebears"《临济录》(written back when Taoism had not been fully differentiated from Buddhism) was way more suicidal in ideation..

The heart of kenshin (or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saiyuki_(manga)):

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/32380940?utm_id=0

https://academic.oup.com/book/38937/chapter-abstract/3381231...

What are the various connotations of gods, ghosts, spirits, and spectres in Chinese?

(Continue the series: 天大人小 ??)

Come to think of it, "God is Dead" is true for both christians and Nietzsche's madman: as Gautama's charioteer explains, living things are subject to age, disease, and death; the christian god is subject to none of these, therefore He –not being quick— is dead.

what would JZY say?

Here, it is explained that “神“ would be used in a posthumous title out of politeness...

(JZY wrote down Px for that)

https://view.inews.qq.com/k/20231216A08KQ700?no-redirect=1&w...

Let me prove that I am your curtness-challenged Dwalin :)

  dwarves delve into discourses
  by the length of their beards
  not the height of their heads

I’ve also noticed this with vinnyvichy and 082349872349872 (who mostly seem to respond to each other). Probably it should be reported to dang if it hasn’t been already.

(The first time I saw it, I wondered if I was going insane, because the conversations seemed unrelated to the topic and nonsensical in themselves… good to know there’s nothing I’m missing!)

It's a bit like an abacus: the motion of beads on each individual rod may not seem to make much sense, but there is a meaning to the calculation taken as a whole.

(Hmm: presentation does a great deal for providing meaning; imagine a "write-only" tetris game where instead of presenting the current state of the playfield, completed rows stayed on the display and dropped pieces stretched through them to incomplete rows. I think that'd be much more difficult than the traditional view)

Lagniappe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40714981

(Sorry for interrupting your regular HN? Maybe we ought to bump up the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_(CDMA)#:~:text=The%20chip.... rate and attempt to dive beneath the noise floor again?)

So your bufferbloat curve comment refers to how congestion doesn't depend linearly on symbol rate, e.g https://superuser.com/questions/1324956/is-bufferbloat-trigg...? Or is there more to it (like hidden Shannon assumptions not priced in with the chiprate e.g https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30130091 https://phys.org/news/2024-06-cooperation-evolve-limited-pay... )

Chemical clocks can get a bit crazier-- there can be much randomness, but the number of equivalent ahem pathways can be few.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2015/cp/c5cp0...

"Tit for Tat" only requires storing one bit, for the last interaction. (its robust-to-noise variant, "Tit for Two Tats" still only requires constant memory)

(I think I've talked about bufferbloat on HN before, but my Algolia-fu is lacking today) In this particular parent, I'm not referring to bufferbloat, but rather the mechanism "chipping", by which spread-spectrum communication can hide near, or even below, what more traditional signal processing might consider the "noise floor".

Jiang Ziya gets a good start on the idea in §25: "Secret Letters" of the "Dragon Way" (httphttps://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/六韜#陰書第二十五) in which he suggests sending sensitive messages by sending 1/3 of their characters each over three different channels.

The birds (鸟语) use frequency sweeps (chirps) to provide noise protection: most noises either occur across nearly all frequencies but are localised in time (a "pop") or occur across long stretches of time but are localised in frequency (a "hum"); by changing frequency with time one minimises interferences with either of those noise sources.

Finally, frequency-hopping proper involves sending multiple chips for each bit, on a nearly uncorrelated (prng-drived) schedule of frequencies.

(because we have sign as well as frequency, even on a single frequency swapping between sign conventions allows one to extract signal from substantial amounts of noise. A Dicke switch would be the scientific method in microcosm, hopping relatively quickly between signal and control)

EDIT: Mao Basic Tactics (1937) mentions multiple redundant messaging, but only as a repetition code, not even as fancy as Jiang's scheme. [Mao evidently had the problem of composing fighting forces capable of independent action with peasants who could read fewer than 20 characters! Yikes! (I mean, not that I'm much better, but I'd guess by analogy with kanji I probably have 20 hanzi already just in passing?)]

vinnyvichy, any chance your baidu-fu would be enough better than mine to find either that or On Guerrilla Warfare (1937) in the original hanzi?

https://www.marxists.org/chinese/maozedong/marxist.org-chine...

(1938-05)

"由此，游击战争的指挥原则，一方面反对绝对的集中主义，同时又反对绝对的分散主义，应该是战略的集中指挥和战役战斗的分散指挥。"

Glad to be able to be meatgpt for now

Thanks; that's 1938* 《抗日游击战争的战略问题》but I'd been hoping for the 1937 work,《游击战》, which even in english only seems to appear in various US translations as well as a "collected works" that was printed in India, but is not canonical according to China?

When I try baidu-ing I get plenty of hits for Guevara's title but none for Mao :(

* I think en.wikipedia.org is just plain wrong here but maybe they consider them two editions of the "same" work?

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/512552544?utm_id=0

says 1938 might be what they meant.

Might have to get to a physical archive to make sure.

> 现在其中文版已经找不到了

Yeah, Griffith's translation is what I keep turning up, no matter what character set; maybe if I ask Fort Meade really nicely "The Dragon Lady" would be willing to samizdat me their version of the original?

But but but that the Griffiths translated "contents" line up nicely with the 1938 hanzi contents doesn't excite you?

https://banned-historical-archives.github.io/articles/43e710...

I don't doubt that it's an accurate translation (Griffith retired from the USMC and did a doctorate in chinese military history before[0] attempting it); I'm just curious[1] how various phrases from the translation were phrased in the original.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_B._Griffith#Post-retire...

[1] the only other chinese text I've looked closely at has been bits of the Mawangdui Tao Te Ching, and I'd guess using that as a reference style would be like attempting to write contemporary english based on the King James bible.

I might be misreading the signal in your messaging as of your frustration that 1938 text I posted ("//..banned-...") isn't the original source of Griffith translation

Here is the first para: "In a war of revolutionary character, guerrilla operations are a necessary part. This is particularly true in war waged for the emancipation of a people who inhabit a vast nation. China is such a nation, a nation whose techniques are undeveloped and whose communications are poor. She finds herself confronted with a strong and victorious Japanese imperialism. Under these circumstances, the development of the type of guerrilla warfare characterized by the quality of mass is both necessary and natural. This warfare must be developed to an unprecedented degree and it must co‑ordinate with the operations of our regular armies. If we fail to do this, we will find it difficult to defeat the enemy. "

"游击战争是一切带革命性的战争之必要的组成部分，尤其在广大领土上作战的民族解放战争，广泛的民众性的游击战争之发展是必要的与必然的。在领土广大、技术贫弱与交通不便的中国现存条件下，战胜强大的敌人一一日本帝国主义的正确方针，无疑应该是广泛地发展民众游击战争，使之与主要的正规战争相配合。不这样做，战胜敌人的自的是难于达到的。"

Okay you might rue that it isn't a scan, but I doubt the hanzi isn't a word for word transcription of the original. Unless.. you mean you want the traditional hanzi?

The one translation I find questionable is of the phrase 民众性 to "quality of mass", maybe appealing to Clausewitz?

EDIT: in fact if you click on 对比 you get scans of the original, but it crashed my mobile browser lol..

I'm ruing that we have 1938 in both languages, but 1937 only in english translation (although I have every reason to believe that translation has, when choosing between fidelity and beauty, opted for the former), and I don't believe 1937 and 1938 are the same composition (or at least if 1938 is an expanded 1937 it also clearly has deletions).

[traditional vs simplified is not an issue here, although I note that 丑 (note there are sibboleths even in the simplified strokes!) as simplified 醜 loses a potential flight of fancy: does the existence of unitary ghosts imply that subghosts and ghost-quotients are two different structures (in general: for abelian hauntings they coincide?), for the latter may be non-unital? This would have important repercussions for the kernels of mappings between ghosts...]

Hard to do this on a mobile phone so maybe point me to suspected insertions/deletions in the 1938 translation as you seem to already have a list of them.

<<Basic Tactics>> here's the very good candidate for the original https://www.marxists.org/chinese/maozedong/1968/1-095.htm

Re: unitary ghosts.. ask your friend who might be all aquiver? He might well be as coy as these creatures..

Lagniappe https://youtu.be/sBi2WSlg6ug

Someone, or, the One?

> good to know there’s nothing I’m missing

Hmmmm.

On a Blindsight tangent, that's exactly what "techniques will occur when a void is found" was about: the passive is on purpose, encoding the philosophical zombieism of martial zen.

The conscious mind is useful (like s/w for resolving a TLB miss) for calculating useful things to have in the cache, but in an antagonistic situation, one needs to have a high percentage of h/w-served hits.

If one consciously decides to employ a technique, one will certainly not surprise oneself, and one will probably not (unless one's heart is very spherical indeed?) surprise an opponent who is practicing the 3rd of the "3 pwns"*.

(indeed, I find the evolutionary just-so for consciousness to arise from the 3rd pwn: once one has the grey matter in place to model others, modelling oneself would be a natural side effect)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39898001

You shoved everything into the utility functional (god of the spectral gap)).

How should one incorporate theories of mind (to all orders) into the ゆ[ ]? (Or 幽[ ]*) With the aforementioned quiver varieties?

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABrei Let the holey spirit be formless for the now. (Genesis 1:2≬3)

Looking forward to ℞ from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery#Infl...

Would that be a physicists/chemists', mathematicians', or psychologists' spectral gap? (or is it a mixed state, not a pure?)

Glad to see you've found the unicode necessary for the naughty part of the AMEN combinators: https://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/pgh/arithmetic.lhs

EDIT: > If we're not in pain, we're not alive

I actually saw this non-ironically somewhere (The View From 80 perhaps?) in which it was suggested that, after a certain age, waking up with pain is a positive sign, with the rationale that if some part of your body doesn't hurt, maybe you didn't really wake up after all...

Mathematicians', although there IS an equivalent

Physicist-chemist formulation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9586289/ https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.10171

'https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R3NbM_wzSJ8

And then there is the mixed one which could be undecidable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang%E2%80%93Mills_existence_a...

RE: "naughty" = labelled "abstossende" by Cantor?

"Naughty" would rather be "anziehende" for Cantor; note Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.

EDIT: yet another GrIneq! Any motivation for it? Max Cut clearly has applications in fratricidal hardware (see Bombers, Strategic) and it's also dual use (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40701284 ) in that pulling wholes apart (into parts which may themselves be amenable to decomposition) is the analysis step which (in general position) precedes synthesis.

Kyūdō (stationary archer and stationary target) may be good, but Yabusame (archer in motion) is even better.

Yabusame may be good, but targets in motion are even better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTaYvMmNYU

[The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He commented: "Neither the archer nor the target is in motion; mind is in motion".]

Dx: There are more things in Heaven and Earth than allow a small (speak not of the 10'000 things) finite presentation: ignoramus et ignoramibus (as our light-cone expands we always encounter new information on its boundary)

Rx: Sheaves allow one to synthesise globalitites by coordinating handfuls of localities.

Px: The hacker will move amongst essential entropy as a fish (whale?) swims in the sea.

[Best non-ironic usage of bullet-time class of edits.]

PEx: s/entropy/surprisal/? (Just a nod to Memorious, for the now)

REx: to keep, barely, out of my Conscious, using lagniappes.

L (for the plainsmen): https://youtu.be/FspytbymxpI

EDIT: the ironic (Kutznets哈哈）thing about Mongols, they overwhelmed the other barbarians with advanced tech (gunpowder, siege engines, biowarfare) but now we admire their neolithic technik.

Fratricidal hardware

for those with I M P E / R I A L finger tats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MShtCg4fk

Pedantry: spear-throwers (atlatls) were neolithic; composite bows are more bronze age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_bow#Origins_and_use

By golly I did it again!

Ok. That prompted me to look for spectral evidence :)

>specimens of compound bows with bone backing in Serovo graves

https://www.jstor.org/stable/276490

Might be pushing the definition?

Sorry, I only have access to the preview.

I find it plausible, though, that compound bows might've been invented in the neolithic (assuming one already has the adhesive technology to haft spear points), but never became popular until the bronze-age development of horseback riding because until then having a smaller bow (that was both heavier and took over 5x as long to make) was little advantage for a lot of disadvantage.

https://sci-hub.wf/10.2307/276490

Aha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_Archaeology_Project#Res...

Serovo is just before 5000 YBP (3000 BC), and locally late neolithic, but that's because Siberia has no chalcolithic, so neolithic gets directly succeeded by the bronze age. Given the uncertainty of dating back then (some people believe riding had already been invented, others that it would not be for some time after), I'm happy to consider those as possible or even likely compound bows.

Sorry for leading us in circles with the pedantry!

No prob, that led to my exploration of whether horses might have been used in the area around that time. Maybe you want to be a bit more killer to improve communication?

As for the chipping stuff, I'm quite certain (despite your PhD????) gaussian noise has been assumed somewhere, so right now I'm searching around for serious attempts (not just proposals) to try to use, say, squeezing, to get below the shannon(-hartley?) limit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezed_coherent_state#Applic...

I had the choice of starting with Geroch or Bamberg+Sternberg and I went with the cleaner notation and crappier words, might not have been prudent.

Okay maybe you weren't as familiar with french academic activism as fencing (although maybe you might still ask your local experts about recent rule changes with respect to say Korean dominance in sabre -- curious about what is it that the Koreans know that is so unteachable, plus, people getting upset might be a good sign)

Point was, if Murderous Saint Ted was raised a physicist, he might have found socially acceptable ways to get his messaging out ( I don't know, preaching to pliant students?) buuuuut I would think that's still suboptimal.

Botai culture was before, but whether it was close enough to be in the area and whether they rode as well as ate their equines are both open q's.

Interesting, I had been talking about chipping not in the quantum regime, but in the classical[0] and metaphorical[1] regimes.

Sorry, I had thought I had the referent to be J-Y G, as I'm currently in the middle of The Blind Spot[2] and enjoying how he'll discuss something foundational in mathematical logic one moment and the next he'll make a social or political observation. (as does Körner, but Girard is more gallic and more so)

泰德干公 (am I doing this right?) might've done better as a physicist, but (unlike, say, Pol Pot) thankfully he combined revolutionary[3] fervour with a human-organisational capability unlikely to have been up to running a church bake sale[4].

Finally, I really enjoyed 187:

> in making such appeal care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the truth or doing anything else that would destroy the intellectual respectability of the ideology.

I mean, nothing says intellectual respectability like claiming "I needed to do a few small bad things (like killing people) in order to publish my manifesto in which I worry about big good things (like upholding copyright)"[5]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_spectrum#:~:text=Moreov....

[1] in which Algolia, rather than high dot products, allow us to reconstitute a more-or-less linear convo

[2] I'm not very convinced by the circularity argument, because if I wish to ground out boolean logic, I'm happy to either present either a truth table, or if I must, just define `∧` to be the symmetric, idempotent binary operator that tends to falsity, and so on... However, I am intrigued by his program to escape to the geometric (or at least topologic) from the algebraic, in an attempt to make the equivalent classes of proofs more explicitly syntactic and less implicitly semantic.

[3] TIL that "revisionist" may not (etymologically) have meant that someone had gone off-commie-message, but that they had gone off-revolutionary-message, in that they believed it might be possible, by making a series of incremental revisions, to accomplish the stated goals of The Revolution without bothering with all the unpleasantness that tends to accompany actual revolutions. In this sense I suppose I am both an earnest Bumble-Puppy[6] advocate and a card-carrying capital-R Revisionist.

[4] even on personal, not organisational, axes there are lacunae in dealing with volunteers; eg (exactly like certain segments of HN) Ted/"FC" advocates large family sizes for others, despite failing to adequately demonstrate any personal reproductive success.

[5] see his note to note 16.

[6] He was at least consistent in choosing to emulate "When Adam delved, and Eve(cf [4]) span" (although aren't postal services post-technological?), but I know quite a few people who have both pre-technological and "surrogate" interests, and while all of us enjoy visiting the pre-technological, we've all opted for living in the "surrogate" world.

There are many distracting falsities in "Industrial Society and Its Future", but I think the overarching problem is that Kaczynski had not watched enough "My Little Pony" to realise that his inability to develop his cutie mark[0] probably had more to do with the power process in Ted K[1] than with the "Power Process in Modern Society"?

[0] come to think of it, some accomplished entomologists have even managed to become widely known in the small circles of literature as well...

[1] making him a "manky blanky flanky?"

Lagniappe: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.engr.explosives/c/2vrHw_nnw_... (for those curious about those curious about the properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane)

It's gonna take me a while to precisely measure the gap of our disagreement on strategy (or basic tactics!) but note that fanatics, possibly only the reproductively talented, of Ms Bechdel, ship this nonironically

https://youtu.be/8wKnPYTd9UM

EDIT: couldn't find the longer exact clip i was looking for which included the crucial section.. YT has a knack of losing the critical snacks

PEDIT: pls note my amusement at the translation of "foundational" into "basic"?

> but in an antagonistic situation, one needs to have a high percentage of h/w-served hits.

Can you explain "h/w-served hits"? (I am guessing other than conscious?)

I'm guessing it's about the general rule of thumb that hw is faster than sw, and so can react to urgent situations in a timely fashion. As for why sw might be shorthand for consciousness: sw can modify itself (and thus react to strategic issues)

... so yeah, hw is more or less defined as something that cannot modify itself.

Firmware is exceptional though.

Fair enough, and we could get into microcoded architectures too.

But basically the analogy (originally built around TLB handling) is supposed to be:

    software    slow & flexible     conscious response
    hardware    fast & inflexible   reflex response

We're altricial, not precocial, so over our lifetimes we can (and hopefully do) alter many of our own "reflex" behaviours. In particular, details of the 4 F's are firmware configurable.

Does that make sense?

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__KfrDZoBgQ (for mistermann)

Yes but "4 F's"?

Also, there's lots of potential for failure (and I'd say it is overwhelmingly observable that we have and do) in "can (and hopefully do)". Who knows what our absolute capabilities are, especially if we hardly or maybe even never try (at least certain things)?

Writing the capabilities to firmware is a step after this, but only after the first step is accomplished.

Glad we moved the discussion into the Overton window of firmware.

Maybe it's too early to start shipping metaphors in wetware, but developing general heuristics for productive+reproducible+survivable self-fuzzing? (*)

"n X's" might still be a useful template to keep in mind, yes?

Here are some good resources to explore the pain-gain frontier. (Or its baby versions, the supplies-surprise dilemma, shiprate quantification, etc.)

[0-1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-024-02525-w

https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.15070

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[0] caveat lector: "nature physics" is where economics that's almost certain to be rejected for very good proboscidean-tail-wiggling reasons would be dumped.

(*) Going back to the "Blindsight tangent", the social-political plane might already be an ideal platform to begin quantitative experimentation. ("Bylaws as wetware")

> Maybe it's too early to start shipping metaphors in wetware

I have some bad news for you, we've been at it for a long time.

> but developing general heuristics for

Oh God please no, we have too many already.

I'm also generally speaking not a fan of apply principles from physics to metaphysics.

I suspect I'm mostly misunderstanding you though, so take the above accordingly.

(HN search can uncover/surface some very interesting phenomena, it is a very underappreciated tool.)

>Who knows what our absolute capabilities are, especially if we hardly or maybe even never try (at least certain things)?

Ego quoque, for misunderstanding what you meant by "certain things" (>)

I stress that I manifestly do not want to see physicists and tech bros publish bio-meta-how-tos just yet, did you mean high quality professionally conducted BSL training?

As for 082349872349872, I think exploring the Taoist metaphysics of marginally injurious mutual surprise as an epsilon over Buddhist tainted reinterpretations could be at most a waste of time. And what's more, I can vouch that he's not a physicist, not even vicariously.

>though an ideology taking root in the mind is necessary to exploit its capabilities to their maximum.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Okay so give me an example of an interesting ideology, as opposed to merely a conspiracy theory, such as "applying skepticism to your own beliefs" )

I could hit the News, but I am interested in how you think.

E.g. did I misunderstand that you are interested in locating the precise quantitative boundaries of Systems I vs II?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27489329

> he's not a physicist, not even vicariously

Upon reflection, I do share the physicists' annoying-to-everyone-else habit of believing I can take subjects upon which books worth of ink have been spilled, do some Procrustean projection, and address them (to zeroth order, anyway?) reasonably with dozens of symbols.

Lagniappe: https://xkcd.com/793/

Physics is almost entirely deterministic (the exception being quantum mechanics, which seems just short of it).

Metaphysics on the other hand seems to not only be not deterministic, it is often the opposite of it (at least at the level we can discern, though there is no consensus on levels or perspectives).

> address them...reasonably

Is there an implicit epistemic assertion here, or are you using these terms colloquially (as most physicists / scientists do in my experience)?

defo colloquially, because (in the tradition of M Jourdain) I'm ignorant of how one might even make an epistemic assertion thus?

When I say "[I] address subjects reasonably", I guess I'm trying to implicitly communicate a few things:

(a) if I gave you a model of a large rock, and you find something physical that can be mapped onto what I claim to be a large rock, and thereupon proceed to kick it, then no matter what your (or my) epistemic views "reasonably" suggests the model predicts that your foot will hurt before long.

(b) this model is continuous: the "easier" it is to map your bundle of sense-perceptions onto my ideal rock, the "better" my theoretical prediction of pedal pain will hold up in practice.

(c) pace James, "you get what you pay for": given that it took you seconds or minutes to understand the cheap and cheerful model, don't expect it to make better predictions than another model that takes days or years to understand.

for an example of very small models, see the algebraic metaphysics in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39885475

(do we have a set of models that are the equivalent of the feed store "gimme cap"?)

> M Jourdain

Who dat?

> I'm ignorant of how one might even make an epistemic assertion thus?

In this case: click inside white rectangle box, push some buttons on keyboard to generate a series of symbols, then click on rectangle with symbol "reply" on it. Easy peasy, so much so it is almost intuitive, or sub-perceptual.

> if I gave you a model of a large rock

Westerners (I presume?) and literally every single modern day ~philospher I've met do love their always physical based analogies!

Is red really red? Is a chair really a chair? Great stuff, surely a catalyst for great revolution (any day now).

For fun, now do "Coup d'état, at the object level, in an epistemically sound manner (in case not obvious: this is a reference to the Jan 6 mass psychological spectacle).

Or: "COVID", or "[The] Science", or "Democracy" (our Most Sacred Institution).

> for an example of very small models, see the algebraic metaphysics in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39885475

Yikes....thank you, but this will take some time to process!

> (do we have a set of models that are the equivalent of the feed store "gimme cap"?)

This sounds interesting, but you have lost me (I did find out what a "gimme cap" is, but that's as far as I can get). Could you explain please?

(Apologies for unnecessary antagonism, I attribute it to lack of free will.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Fs_(evolution)#Four_Fs_an...

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96258071/f32.item

https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2016/03/12/berkeleys-immater...

Say we wish to encourage, at best type 2 thinking, and at least confidence in the ability of others to use type 2 thinking: could we come up with simple models, well within the compass of a habitual type 1 thinker (and applicable to what they consider problems), but critically involving a single inference? If so, these might be the equivalent of gimme caps in that practicality leads to ubiquity leads to —at least with regard to simple argument— improved ability?

> In the case of vertebrates, this list corresponds to the motivational behaviours that drive the activity in the hypothalamus, namely: fighting, fleeing, feeding and sexual functioning. The hypothalamus responds to these motivations by regulating activity in the endocrine system to release hormones to alter the behaviour of the animal.

A powerful force, but we have some ability to transcend such things.

> https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96258071/f32.item

Ha! Very nice.

> https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2016/03/12/berkeleys-immater...

Preaching to the choir!

The well-deserved dig at Bill Nye was a nice cherry on top....oh how I hate Delusional Scientific Fundamentalism.

The poster child:

"Philosophers Are USELESS!" Neil & Curt Clash on Physics

https://youtu.be/ye9OkJih3-U?si=aP48bSVERh1FQwLR

It is amazing how dumb studying science makes people. Even Curt (who seems to have lots of depth in philosophy) has fallen victim to it: "Physics is understanding what reality is" lol.

> but critically involving a single inference?

I was with you up to this point....I feel like you're hinting at something here? :)

The single inference as the simplest way to switch from Type 1 to Type 2...

(if we think of catechisms as being the canonical type 1 instruction, and textbooks the canonical type 2)

Consider the "Tigerfibel" (1943), many pages of which feature items for every sort of thinker, eg https://web.archive.org/web/20230617172820im_/http://www.ala... :

Type 2 thinkers have a thesis and antithesis: "Water is necessary to cool the engine, when it runs" and "Water is sufficient to destroy the engine, if it freezes"

Type 1 thinkers have a motto: (upper left)

    Water puts your tank at ease, don't forget the anti-freeze

Type 0 thinkers have a place to rest their eyes (upper right)

> Ego quoque, for misunderstanding what you meant by "certain things" (>)

> I stress that I manifestly do not want to see physicists and tech bros publish bio-meta-how-tos just yet, did you mean high quality professionally conducted BSL training?

How to say....more like curiosity about, and the pursuit of correctness (or at least, accurate representation) of affairs within the metaphysical realm. Something like "Enlightenment 2.0 - The Final Chapter" lol

> I think exploring the Taoist metaphysics of marginally injurious mutual surprise as an epsilon over Buddhist tainted reinterpretations could be at most a waste of time.

As a Taoist, I am very interested in whether you're interested in the truth value of this belief (and if so, to what degree). (Or were you perhaps using ambiguous language deliberately, for fun: "could be" could be a reference to a subset of the whole, or the whole itself....which did you mean? edit: "at most" seems to imply the whole?)

> And what's more, I can vouch that he's not a physicist, not even vicariously.

Can I trust you though?

> Okay so give me an example of an interesting ideology, as opposed to merely a conspiracy theory, such as "applying skepticism to your own beliefs" )

Ok: I am interested in ~"Non-binary, Comprehensive Truth". Not only is it interesting (to me), it is essentially blasphemous in Western Culture, 2024, so much so that I suspect it may lead to me getting banned from this forum some day (I've certainly been given fair warning at least, so "no one to blame but myself").

> as opposed to merely a conspiracy theory, such as "applying skepticism to your own beliefs"

As a Conspiracy Theorist and a Pedant, I lol'd. What a great start to the day!!

> I could hit the News, but I am interested in how you think.

Me too! I am extremely curious about what "thinking" is". I suspect it is quite other than what it seems to be, and is told to be (pardon the redundancy).

> E.g. did I misunderstand that you are interested in locating the precise quantitative boundaries of Systems I vs II?

I take a more vague perspective: I am interested in the nature of the distinction, and ways we could optimize it (individually and collectively). If you think about it, our current era (in the Blinded by Science and destroying our ecosystem as a consequence Western World at least) is fascinating: one one hand the humans have extensive knowledge that thinking is what separates us from other (known) life forms on the planet, and yet we pay it essentially no mind (at least at the public level...I suspect what goes on behind closed doors, perhaps within various Three Letter Agencies, perhaps elsewhere, is very different. But then that sort of thing is a conspiracy theory, and we all know what that means epistemically). I often what would happen if we were to do otherwise. But how to accomplish such a thing? How to even desire to try?

> what "thinking" is

A question, does thinking necessarily involve inference?

"Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore Socrates is mortal." probably counts as thinking in anyone's model?

Does "four legs good, two legs bad" count as thinking? What about "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard"?

> A question, does thinking necessarily involve inference?

That would depend on the scope/context, which you did not specify. :)

But on average (especially if one drops the "necessarily" constraint, but even if not): yes, very much so.

> Who knows what our absolute capabilities are...

Our (individual) absolute capabilities or our (collective) absolute capabilities?

(assuming that "2 hominids: 3 opinions" doesn't mean the former essentially bounds the latter)

> Our (individual) absolute capabilities or our (collective) absolute capabilities?

Both, though the two are necessarily and intimately intermingled, and more so every day (except for exceptions, like for example if the United States government is successful in putting down TikTok, because {silly lies that easily fool child-like, conditioned since birth minds}). I'm thinking of it from a possible worlds perspective, so "capabilities" gets a bit complex due to ~multidimensional & temporal dependencies, but hopefully you get my drift.

I hope The Normies are enjoying our "word salad". ;)

If I get your drift, I think a precondition is that we need to figure out a way to keep the Bartle Taxonomy Killers (♣) happy just playing power-{possession/craving} games with each other, instead of feeling the need to drag everyone else into the Sith spirit; compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40019115

If I get your drift, I agree.

> instead of feeling the need to drag everyone else into the Sith spirit

(Note: I have some disagreements with that here and there in the context we're discussing.)

Alright seeing that I have to do some major unrelated symbol-pushing in the toplevel today... I might have to take a few days to process what has been said here. I know folks do not mind, but thought a heads-up would be in order. Praying to the gods of HN to keep this thread alive )*

EDIT: the delvings into ancient "Taoist" texts, I would do so myself, if I didn't feel that my models have been heavily polluted by god-knows-what. Those conspiracy theories are very compelling. Maybe a search for the actual battle records of 姜子牙 is in order)[0]

*As a Procrustist or Protist lol

[0] https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_24715199 says (likely CCP propaganda, but sometimes fun to read) 史记 should be the first cache to look up. (The rest of that has mostly been quoted to me, but I iterate to motivate mistermann's possible context updates)

"鸷鸟将击，卑飞敛翼；猛兽将搏，弭耳俯伏；圣人将动，必有愚色。”

> but sometimes fun to read

Assuming my Google translate is working well enough, indeed.

HN is perhaps not the optimal venue for such conversations, though I have no suggestions of where to take it. Any ideas?

I enjoy scurrying about in the wainscoting of HN, perhaps because of, not despite, its ferrocrete and stainless steel suboptimality?

  三十辐共一毂，当其无，有车之用。
  埏埴以为器，  当其无，有器之用。
  凿户牖以为室，当其无，有室之用。

30 stories and their hot takes exist on HN's front page, yet the stories with no traction function to carry leisurely conversation.

  故有之以为利，无之以为用。

I concur that HN is a liminal superspace whose character is slippery and so fit for rummagings in the murk, dang is a Taoist best sovereign whose existence is only dimly felt*, etc etc but all I really want to for now is to uh serialize something bothering me since mistermann replied.. quite localized to procrustean-physicism...

maybe physicists are hedgehogs who imagine themselves foxes, but then it occurred to me that it might be true that most non-French non-logician mathematicians tend to stay away from wider sociopolitical commentary (unless prodded)

I can think of reasons, but some implications are clear?

1. Kolmogorov thought of himself as more of a mathematician than a physicist.

2. Arnol'd was heavily frenchified, but had to rationalize that. (In particular, his students didn't inherit his attitudes?)

3. Galois was pretty normal.

4. Grothendieck was special but found a way to resolve the inner and outer (cultural) game.

5. Kaczynski.. too much of a logician? (Dare I suggest he was special XD?)

Back to scheduled programming, over and out.

*Preceding Jefferson, Spinoza, etc https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%81%93%E5%BE%B7%E7%BB%8F%C2%...

*second best, for by Chapter58/spinozoan formalization PG** was the creator..and thus worthier of being 太上

"You are what you symbolicate"

**https://youtu.be/EEwPXdbKG8U

Oops, let's not get distracted..

EDIT: according to later commentators this is a popular misreading, but in this case the masses were correct? https://www.aisixiang.com/data/117662.html

Upon reflection, thanks for "♥ reflections"; I see the commentary there doesn't use the Star Wars Sith analogy I prefer, but instead talks (after Allison?) about a 修昔底德 trap.

Is there any english-language equivalent to this site? Did it grown organically out of the tradition of posting essays and counter-essays on village walls?

You don't mean substack?

Both ssc & robin hanson are on it

Could be! For some reason I was thinking of substack as more "subscribe to my newsletter" writing than "here's my bibliography" writing, but I could easily have prematurely stereotyped...

Re: Kaczynski, I think he stopped being an analyst in 1969, and switched to being a non-mathematician prepper?

(and usually analysis is pretty far from logic in various people's maps of mathematics, but here's an exception, in which the "plains of analysis" [sic] are right next to the "ocean of logic": https://utenti.quipo.it/base5/scuola/mate_metafor_mathematis... )

For some reason non-French non-logician non-social-commentariens remind me of https://existentialcomics.com/comic/541

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TilQ8BIHisw

(unfortunately going in the other direction, as with Yuri and Tonya Zhivago, I believe Vladimir Vysotsky might've done better —at least healthwise if not artistically— to have spent much more time in Paris with Marina)

> dang is a Taoist

The Rationalists got one thing right at least: "We are only aspiring Rationalists". (I would add: "Or so it may seem.")

See also: Science, Humanism/Skepticism, Atheism, etc.

> maybe physicists are hedgehogs who imagine themselves foxes

Maybe....but one thing that can be observed is that they often imagine themselves to be omniscient.

> Kaczynski.. too much of a logician? (Dare I suggest he was special XD?)

You may!

Haha touche.

Btw.. I didn't want to look like I was the kind of person to put valproate [experimental protocols] in the same bin as psychedelics (which are tainted with profit and other motives)..

I just thought it would be a minor step forward if we could observe and manipulate our own learning processeses (as something close to sensations?)..

as opposed to being limited to observing what children or experts do.

Have psychedelics changed since my day? They used to be dirt cheap, which pretty much kept all the profit-chasers away. I guess th' freaks did have their own motives, tho

> I can think of reasons, but some implications are clear?

I have a feeling I have missed something important here.

On Sirlin and 読み, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40397874

Thanks especially for his take on self-balancing forces (with relation to Guilty Gear).

My sub-half-hour but supra-half-min take is that official non-sanctioning of bugs/exploits might be the interesting protomechanism to impede the evolution of granfalloony (vs karasserai)

System II & System I shades to be explored when cycles freed, but my basic thesis is that the bug discoverer/onlookers are trained to quickly direct reflexivity towards in-game rewards rather than towards tribal/purity considerations?

Post-mannichean millinery?

EDIT: which fencing weapon is most conducive to a healthy democracy?

System I)(II take: sabre > epee > foil

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12650-018-0521-3

Possible measurement: look up rule-type-evolution rate

(again I lack access)

> Unlike sequential games, such as tennis and table tennis, fencing is a type of simultaneous game.

One way to turn fencing sequential is to view "initiative" as the equivalent of a ball: generally either one player or the other will have possession at any given time. (given enough distance, then neither has the initiative, just like how in a field sports it's possible for neither to have possession)

The analogy falls down because fencing is more symmetric: losing possession of the ball near the goal you're attacking isn't bad compared to losing it near the goal you're defending, but in fencing losing initiative when you've nearly completed an attack, when distance has collapsed, is much worse than losing it near the start of an attack. (explaining why in both épée and kendō stronger players invite attacks)

Unfortunately determining who has initiative from the outside requires experience — and as the invited attack shows, it's very possible to believe you have initiative when you're actually being shaped by your opponent.

(the latter explaining why a king might wish to just "face south" and let all the ambitious people of the kingdom focus on modelling and exploiting his ministers instead of him)

https://sci-hub.wf/10.1007/s12650-018-0521-3

Have to use the doi..

Did you mean "right of way"? I was under the impression sabre/foil had right of way but epee didn't.

No, not "right of way", you're correct.

When I have the initiative, I am threatening in such a way that you have to respond (counter or neutralise) to what I'm doing or you will get hit. When you have the initiative, I have to respond. (and, as in chess, the equivalent of pins and forks set up situations in which even when you make a good response I've gained something without losing initiative)

If neither of us threatens the other, neither of us has initiative.

"Right of way" formalises the concept, making it easier to teach, and easier to adjudicate: unlike the subjectivity of initiative, there are clear ways to gain and lose right of way, and an outside umpire can (and does) say who has right of way at each moment.

In theory, they're the same: what one has to do to gain and keep right of way is exactly what one should "by the book" do to gain and keep initiative. In practice, they have a large overlap, but it's possible to make actions that would gain right of way but not effectively seize initiative, and vice versa, it's possible to gain initiative without first taking what would —with a conventional weapon- be right of way, or keep it without first re-acquiring right of way.

Does that make sense?

EDIT: first impressions of the paper:

Cold war? They probably mean "Napoleonic" at the latest.

33 ms video frames are too slow. 40 ms is the "lockout" (time during which hits are counted as simultaneous) in épée, in my experience, this corresponds to about 10cm worth of distance (probably greater for more competitive fencers) and until one learns how to construct a point to set up a clean score, it's astonishingly easy for phrases to end in double hits — 1 frame of the video. And sabre is a faster game than épée.

> The proper use of tactics made up for [Szatmari's] lack of ability in this area, making it difficult to find a very effective way to beat him, so he won the championship at last.

I have heard it claimed that we have much less of a doping problem than other sports, because the sorts of drugs that increase physical ability (speed, endurance) tend to blunt mental capacity (choice and deployment of tactics).

The paper gives one story of Szatmari/Gu; here's a possible other story: (compare with the alien vessel in Blindsight) in the first part of the match, Szatmari explores, sacrificing some points to Gu to (a) take the edge off Gu's energy reserves, (b) learn exactly where Gu's strongest attacks go and how to trigger them, and possibly even (c) feed Gu disinformation about Szatmari's strongest actions; and in the second half of the match, he exploits, more than making up for whatever points he lost to get that information (or, if he did so, perform that shaping). [But note this is a very épée-tinged alternative telling]

Next time I stop by my old club I'll have to ask the fencing masters what they think about the ideas in this paper — it's very much outside the prisms the french tradition uses to analyse bout performance.

I do love the fencing analogy, but once again I caution against using physics as a highly reliable guide to practicing metaphysics.

"Looking at the cake is like looking at the future - until you've tasted it what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late."

> using physics as a highly reliable guide to practicing metaphysics.

Have the professional metaphysicians done any better?

[I also suggest steering well clear of any work in which I paraphrase chapters of the 道德经 as advocating partitioning one's control budget among small neighbourhoods of the inflection points on the manifold in phase space occupied by the 10'000 things.]

> Have the professional metaphysicians done any better?

In my estimation, no, like hilariously not (at least as a function of execution of relative ability). I attribute this to them thinking like children or little babies on the matter, as all people do on an absolute scale in that specific domain.

When you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Maths is just unreasonably effective shamanism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220159

The 童乩 is interesting because there, like in vodoun (or the Iliad!), the spirit world is the high impedance side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Vodou#:~:text=to%20inv...

I wonder to what degree southern US charismatic christianity owes its peculiarities (glossolalia, etc.) to proximity to whatever practices predated vodoun?

[When I was young, we were supposed to "leave room for the Holy Spirit" at dances. That Holy Spirit sure got around, because even on the other side of The Wall, the godless commie young pioneers were supposed to leave 50cm for it: https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/1866022/pub_63343bd... ]

(Not) according to my undergrad advisor, quite the mathematical physicist,

"Shut up or shamanate!"

(Not)https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/57/5/10/412592/Cou...

Also, the Russian version of glossolalia, if it existed/exists in Russian-America, would be interesting/also-relevant, weren't they a minor splinter of the great Schism/some spending a lot of time east of the Urals?

http://www.russianaz.org/molokane/people/Samarin_William_Joh...

This one seems to have a more southern origin

Back to scheduled (II?) glossolalia

> Theoretical physics is done by physicists who lack the necessary skills to do real experiments; mathematical physics is done by mathematicians who lack the necessary skills to do real mathematics.

I owe my switch from being a "systems" informatician to a "theory" informatician exactly to a mathematical physicist, so I'm glad there are some people who don't find it too much of a burden to work with the mathematically immature: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo415803...

(I'm guessing the "Algebra of Observables" is why JvN seems sometimes to crop up under every other stone I turn in semigroups?)

Russians also invent putting flow over beat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ppG_G2s9g

(Have I mentioned I'm very disappointed that «Иван Васильевич меняет профессию» hides exactly how Ivan Grozny crosses himself; how are we supposed to decide if he's an Old Believer or not? I also still have to watch that «Ku» «Kyu» one sometime...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com