jrowen

Compared to the activism of the 60s and 70s, where so many people seemed willing to put their entire lives on hold for the cause, the fact that there is no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency leads me to believe there is a threshold of contentment afforded by modern technology and QoL.

In either case it is about populism though. Hopping on a bus to California to protest was a cool thing to do. Somehow this data center thing happened to catch on and become a lever people felt they could move with mere outrage, even if it does seem pretty misguided.

The major thing that's always stumped me is how to design a universal fitness function that can take you from soup to a brain. IRL there is "the environment" which contains resources that need to be consumed to survive, and the majority of evolution (senses, bodyforms, metabolic pathways, etc) is based on navigating this environment and extracting energy. Can we say that life or intelligence is a meaningful concept without this universal background reference plane and survival game?

One of the things I think is limiting about conventional systems is what I call the "brain-in-a-vat" problem. They don't "exist" in any meaningful sense, they don't "experience" anything, they don't have any "reason" or "motivation" to do or develop anything.

I think of something more like a video game. The world of World of Warcraft or Call of Duty is a mathematical construct that doesn't truly reflect how our world works, but, through a window we can interpret it in a way that we understand and relate to. Some kind of video game environment with more relaxed and "open-ended" parameters and a simulated survival mechanism would be an interesting experiment.

The abstract mentions metabolic constraints. Can you share more of your thoughts or conceptual approach to this?

What I'm tired of is zero-sum jingoistic nationalism of any kind. Can we just be happy for all of the world to prosper?

edit: I didn't downvote you but it's probably the uncalled-for cynicism.

Now you're just agreeing with my original assessment? What do you want me to do? They seem like they've got a handle on it.

I do wonder though how much of what you describe, or some form of it, is still happening in dorm rooms. As we get older we just do less of that kind of stuff. I still connect with a large circle of friends through music, and discuss different artists and such, mostly at events.

edit: how many HN comments talk shit on HN comments? Ask your therapist about self-loathing

> People perpetually parrot that statement.

Funny, I thought I just made it up, but it did sound pretty good! I don't know what you mean by examples, but it can be as simple as words that can help you identify your feelings and understand your reactions. If you feel like you're good on that (and I can empathize, I don't have a therapist), there may not be much there for you.

I would guess that you have expectations of the world -- perhaps visions of what it could be -- that are unrealistic, which sets you up to be consistently disappointed.

Now ask if this battle is worth fighting with someone that is actually "just trying to do the right thing," on the front lines of gritty social work, and who may not care as deeply about the philosophical implications of linguistic prescriptivism at hand.

I can't really imagine what nefarious purposes someone might have in trying to control you into using the word unhoused vs. homeless, it doesn't seem to me an important hill to die on in this context.

I would dare to say that your interpretation of that vague FUD was largely a projection of your own experience. And I think you sharing that in a constructive and connective way was a lot more clear, empathetic and helpful than the original formulation.

I do think it does undermine one's point to bemoan the efficacy of HN comments relating to mental health, while making a comment on HN attempting to speak on mental health. Either don't do it, or accept that you believe it can have value.

Your interpretation of their statement is incredibly nuanced. Language matters. Tone matters. Confusion, misinterpretation and miscommunication are the defaults. You certainly understand the importance of endeavoring to express yourself clearly and precisely.

I didn't infer the "beware of harsh self-talk" angle, I was too caught up on their comment actually embodying that approach, which I commented on. Based on the surrounding context I got more of a "HN is dumb because they debate about super nuanced technical stuff" vibe. (Also see sp1nningaway's comment for another completely different interpretation).

I stand by the sentiment that writing a blog post about your mental health and posting it on HN is a totally valid and respectable strategy and I would argue it's had good results even if it's not a "solved problem" and they should still seek other avenues to understanding as well.

P.S. "trivial albeit obnoxious" is an interesting construction I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

It should just be about more deeply understanding ourselves as individuals, and understanding the world around us (particularly other people), so that we may navigate it better.

I saw a video of a comedian (a woman) doing crowd work, and kind of playfully bullying someone (a man), asking them about their therapy. I thought it was funny, but a lot of the comments were along the lines of "that's not cool, how dare you."

But that audience member was at a comedy club, where comics do that kind of thing. Going to therapy isn't about collectively making sure the world babysits and coddles everyones needs. It's about giving you the tools to handle what you can't change.

Nice paradox you've created there.

> People here have trouble agreeing on engineering, product and business practices they specialise in. They are _NOT_ going to guide you in the right direction on mental health topics.

I don't know that that follows logically. Whatever people they might reach out to in the real world -- be they friends, relatives, therapists -- also actually disagree about things and don't have all the answers. HN comments come from the same general pool of people, who also potentially have experiences and insights a like-minded individual might find valuable.

> You are not going to just build a better planning system one day.

No but you may be able to over time, through trial and error, and connecting with others and hearing about their experiences. I don't think there's anything wrong or unhealthy about exploring it in this fashion and I don't understand your choice of tone.

I do agree that setting a goal for the year of "not making stupid mistakes" is a (stupid?) mistake. It is more of a lifelong journey and process, of striving rather than achieving, and not setting unrealistic expectations for yourself.

How many man-hours go into various parts of the advertising distribution chain? Though a certain fraction of that energy goes to connecting people with goods and services they might find valuable, most of it goes into shifting numbers around for people that already don't personally have to worry about money.

We don't need to find endless ways for people to spin wheels, but as long as we're worried about "jobs," we will. We just need to find the social structures to provide people with basic needs and reserve "work" for things that are vital to society or truly inspired.

But half the exposure isn't quite equivalent to twice the protection.

All my life I just thought they were somewhat arbitrary numbers, I didn't correlate them to any actual measurable quantity, and I would assume it's the same for most people. So while I would agree that that representation "gets the job done," I don't think it contributes to a deeper understanding.

I do feel like if you saw "90%, 95%, 97%, and 98%" on the shelf it would start to make some kind of sense, and then when people talk about it ("what's the difference between 97 and 98?") the underlying concept would become more apparent. Using a kind of converted magic number scale that doesn't work like other things seems unhelpful, but I'm certainly not an expert nor the intended audience.

The only intuitive bit about that system is "bigger number does more." I feel like I would have more readily understood it if it just said "blocks 97% (or 98%) of UV light" instead of numbers I assumed were somewhat arbitrary.

A household that earns nearly 400k talking about "I'm not completely hopeless" is shameful. Take some lessons from people who earn a lot less and are more happy.

Your comment feels somewhat reductive as well, you could basically replace "Japan" with a lot of things that are appreciated by some sizable subset of HN readers.

But, for some reason Japan does seem to inspire a certain fervor in both the otakus and weeaboos and their inverses. I think it's because it's the closest thing to an alien civilization for Westerners.

Has the internet enabled more people to be more educated and informed, or has it enabled echo chambers of misinformation? I don't think it's demonstrable that it's not a wash. Technology is an extension, a mirror...we need to fix ourselves, AI is not the problem.

Kind of taking this a step further, what is the worst thing that an AI run amok could do to existentially threaten the human race? I feel like almost anything could be short-circuited by some form of "pulling the plug" before it got too far. But, hypothetically, if it were possible to launch nukes without human intervention, or with maybe a small amount that could be socially engineered, that seems plausible (or releasing some kind of super-pathogen that is stored in a lab somewhere).

So, what if, along the lines of MAD doctrine and the plot of Battlestar Galactica, the best thing we could do for AI safety is just to engineer our other systems so that a hypothetical superhuman adversary could not use them against us? Which is just making our world safer all around rather than trying to kludge arbitrary limitations into an "intelligent" system.

(This doesn't really solve AI child porn and fake news but those things are mostly just imaginative reflections of the people using them and you can't really fix that any more than you can stop people from doing it themselves)