Hacker News Reader

ozyon SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B

So I have to switch away from cursor? Any recommendations?

I really like the idea of openscad, or this, or the many alternatives. But when I say a shape with these and these dimensions, the next shape should attach to it somewhere. And then I want to say: chamfer all outside edges. But in all these programs, it's me redoing the math in my code, computing where the shape goes. As for chamfers, I just give up ...

ozyon When if is just a function

Useless unless the logical operators receive their rhs unevaluated. And that is generalized as a language feature.

ozyon John Searle has died

That is why you cannot ask the room for semantic changes. Like “if I call an umbrella a monkey, and it will rain today, what do I need to bring?”

Unless we suppose those books describe how to implement a memory of sorts, and how to reason, etc. But then how sure are we it’s not conscious?

ozyon John Searle has died

Maybe consciousness is exactly like simulated fire. It does a lot inside the simulation, but is nothing on the outside.

ozyon Under the hood: Vec<T>

Most of those are abstractions, but not a runtime overhead. NonNull even enables an optimization not available to most other languages.

And you can wonder, is this accidental complexity? Or is this necessary complexity?

ozyon Jürgen Schmidhuber – Can All-Purpose Robots Fuel a Comeback?

Why do statistics like GDP in absolute numbers?

The only thing that graph shows is that China was dirt poor in 1995, and is now still only at 25-35% of USA levels.

ozyon The Myth of AI Omniscience: AI's Epistemological Limits

Why would AGI be bound to human made models? Why can it no develop its own?

ozyon Philosophy of Science 101: What is the problem of induction?

I think a discussion on induction is best done by splitting the resulting models in two: models based on statistics, and models based on (abstract/iconic) simulation. (Eg all swans are white vs all swans lay eggs.)

Since our reality is "atoms and void", and since the sun and earth are huge configurations of atoms locked together in a stable pattern, the sun coming up tomorrow has nothing to do with statistics. And bayesian reasoning plays no role in our predictions or certainty. At least not directly. It does indirectly, by asking what perturbation, what intervention, can stop this from happening? And how likely are such events?

ozyon What Mary Didn't Know (1986) [pdf]

What we know by experience, by abstraction, or empirically, are three distinct modes of knowing. Experiences are directly known and always true. (Experiences might reference other potentially false things, and might be false indirectly.)

That resolves the whole Mary knowledge problem. Books cannot inject that kind of direct knowledge. Thus the claim "mary knows everything" is either false, or only true for a smaller domain.

One can think of analogies, like tamper resistant logs, or unique CPU states while doing static analysis vs running a program.

All in all, the non-physicalist conclusions are widely overdrawn. More over, for what it is worth, Jackson himself no longer thinks this argument is a good one.

ozyon Our conscious experience of the world is a memory, says new theory

It is a virtual time machine. You can run time forwards, explore various possible futures, then pick the future aligned most with your preferences, capabilities, and taste for risk.

ozyon Our conscious experience of the world is a memory, says new theory

Analogizing with software engineering, this stuff becomes funny:

- software is all about adding numbers, new study finds

- software is all about calling functions, says new theory

- software is all about objects, say scientists

- software is all about virtual machines, according to new discovery

ozyon Consciousness is not computation

> But in this world, consciousness is, at root, a physical phenomenon, not a purely computational phenomenon.

That is entirely unknown. If it were a purely computational phenomenon, it would explain a lot, and nothing in this article argues against it. Except, perhaps, the iron bar mapping. But it seems to miss that a computer program basically defines a causal network. And recognizing and comparing causal networks is much more objective then the thought experiment acknowledges.

ozyon Be curious, not judgmental

FYI: Little kids unpair ikea lamps with ease if there is still a physical switch.

ozyon Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

This might be a good thing. There are a few responses possible:

1. Do nothing, public gets angry.

2. Make bitcoin, or its mining, illegal. However, what is the criteria? All blockchains? Should google be illegal too? Both are just a digital product that the public wants.

3. Tax CO2 production by data centers, that might have a chance it can be coordinated broadly between nations, there is enough money there to tax, and bitcoin adds some urgency.

While doubtful CO2 can be taxed globally, without coordination, big companies play governments against each other.

ozyon My dad launched the quest to find alien intelligence

Space is enormous! While our capacity to search it for signs of intelligence is miniscule.

ozyon Gravity Is Not Like the Other Forces

Bending your spacetime frame of reference costs energy because you have to leverage something and change its frame. And you can use your bend spacetime frame to extract energy by bringing it in contact with another frame. But the bending itself, or maintaining it, or changing it, doesn't cost or yield energy.

ozyon Science without Validation in a World without Meaning

A cell is a regulator, something that selectively responds to internal and external signals. It doesn't require new math, it requires modeling the signals and responses accurately. But it is a huge, parallel, continuous "state machine".

The problem with an empirical approach is that, when in one state it might respond to an intervention differently than when in another state. Especially if the interventions are at the same level as the signals it normally responds to. (Eg not drowning it in a chemical that inhibits a certain reaction, that will likely always yield the same outcome. But a regulatory hormone might not always yield the same outcome.)

ozyon Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?

http://onnlucky.com

My musings on consciousness, materialism, information, knowledge, life, the universe. Might not all be correct ;) But I think must will find it quite different from the "normal" views.

ozyon Why does all life use the same 20 amino acids?

It isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_codes

On the other hand, once a certain layer of functionality exists, and starts being used to build on top of, that layer will resist change, because any variation will throw off so many higher level processes it's unlikely to be viable.

ozyon Gödel's Ontological Proof

Now do the same for the devil:

"The devil, by definition, is that for which no greater evil can be conceived. The devil exists in the understanding. If the devil exists in the understanding, we could imagine him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, the devil must exist."

From which it also follows that:

"If the devil doesn't destroy god, we could imagine him to be a greater evil by destroying god. Therefore, the devil must have destroyed god."

At which point we must conclude that it is a shame that theology has captured the minds of so many brilliant people.

ozyon What If Life Did Not Originate on Earth?

> The fact that all known life shares a common genetic > structure implies a common ancestor.

Or a (local) optimum.

ozyon Gödel Machine

1. rarely does that come up in practical problems 2. for many reasons (and completeness is one) the machine cannot prove the next version is better, thus must discard it

ozyon The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)

Imagine a database that stores strings using a common prefix method, one could make the same claim: this database does not store or retrieve strings. And yet it does.

The model of what something does is implemented by an underlying mechanism. But for many reasons the mechanism doesn't have to be, and often isn't, a naive translation of the model.

ozyon Unconscious brain activity predicts decisions 11 seconds before action

I would want a study that focuses on the opposite: what is the lowest bar a person trying to deliberaty foil such a system can reach. My bet: around 50-150ms.

ozyon Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

If you have a theory of consciousness, but it doesn't include something about learning, the theory is incomplete, most likely wrong.

ozyon A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

Exactly, one ontology of knowledge is: pointers (names), categories (matchers/recognizers), models (descriptions of systems).

The first two have all the problems philosophers talk about. But the last one does not. Not even underdeterminism, unless the system of the model is fundamental or fades into history or is a "wicked" problem.

ozyon A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

Note most gettier cases are plays on our intuitions:

What feels like a pointer is actually a category. That is, it feels like it points to one, but it points to many. Like both examples given here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem .

ozyon Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

In either scenario, there can be knowledge about the future, which, paradoxically, might cause that future never to materialize.

ozyon A Type of Simulation Which Some Experimental Evidence Suggests We Don't Live In [pdf]

I think compute power is what matters, not amount of simulations. Compute power available in simulated realities vs base reality will always be significantly in favor or root reality.

And parsimonious simulation won't work, or would be even easier to detect than what this paper was talking about.