matthewwiese

This is fiendishly clever; you more than made up for a lack of technical skills by exploiting the wetware angle. Lovely little story :)

On a VAX no less! Can't imagine there's an HFT arbitrage opportunity for such "slow" tech.

I, too, grew up on the first-ever Zoombinis game. I actually recently played through it again almost 15+ years later. Everything from the sound effects to the visuals is seared somewhere deep in my neural wetware like a permanent ROM chip. Funnily enough, some of the puzzles still confused me! I guess my colorblindness certainly hasn't been magically cured over time...

Thanks so much to OP for linking this article.

Thanks for the reply! I didn't know the standardized IPA was in fact with an "r." Strange though, because to me the umlauted-o sound is probably one of the easiest German pronunciations to do for an English speaker. Also, good point on the compiled/interpreted (using a programming analogy) divide in pronunciation of borrowed words. I do suppose there is plenty of evidence of butchered French terms already, so why not ruin some other language's beautiful sounds too! groaning laughter

Though, I should not be all that surprised. For my entire life in the U.S. people have pronounced my last name of "Wiese" as either "Wise" or "Why-se," both of which are totally incorrect (my family says "Weese" when anglicized). I much prefer the German pronunciation of my last name, though; too bad it's too much of a pain to explain the discrepancy between how it's spelt and what it sounds like to native English speakers. :P

That "Girdle" pronunciation is like nails on a chalkboard! The umlaut is an oo (or ue) sound. There is no "r" anywhere! As both a philosophy student and German speaker, whenever my professors pronounced it like that I shuddered in my seat.

I'm sure actual native German speakers could probably chime in, but I couldn't help but try to stop the spread of FUD around pronouncing poor ol' Gödel's name. :)

As a philosophy major, at my university we do so in our "Advanced Symbolic Logic" class. However, the depth with which you engage with Gödel's theorem depends on the professor teaching it and their interests when designing the course (we have 2 specializing in mathematical logic who flip back and forth iirc).

I took the class just last semester in Spring.

To add to that: Clickteam's Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer, which I learned to make games with back in elementary school. It is strictly (although not exclusively) "no code." Hell, one of my favorite indie games of all time, Knytt Stories, was made in it.[1]

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160821143752/http://nifflas.ni...

That document you linked is fascinating. It's especially relevant to me because I'm currently taking a class through my university's pharmacy department on drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry. Just last week I wrote about PCP's origins as an aesthetic (similar to ketamine). This[1] is a good source on the topic.

Do you happen to know of other documents in a vein similar to the LSD one you linked? Pharmacology is one of many bizarre topics I endeavor to understand in my free time (this weird thing called "programming" also happens to be one).

[1]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/dta.1620

That is an absolutely fascinating application that I've never considered before. One could design all sorts of experiments, not just exclusively spatial reasoning.

Imagine allowing a class of undergraduate students to participate in a version of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and draw their own conclusions as to potential flaws in its methodology.

Or, as a philosophy student: allow students to engage in a real life rendition of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, where a student "competes" against his or her classmates and various versions of text generation algorithms from simple Markov chain generators, to OpenAI's GPT-2 and beyond.

The incompetence originates from the disregard of the parent commenter's question/concern. It's the result of not engaging in good faith with your student, not necessarily the conclusions drawn. As I mentioned in my original comment, the value in taking a philosophy class (especially as a student in a different field) is the chance to engage with both the professor and your peers; it serves as a veritable petri dish for developing one's ability to succinctly articulate and debate topics. If you're expected to sit in a philosophy class and just absorb the material without any contrary thought, something is seriously awry. It goes against the very nature of why humans pursued philosophy in the first place.

Furthermore, it seems strange for a professor of philosophy to so easily dismiss criticism out of hand. Of all subjects, a philosophy professor has a pedagogical imperative to entertain contradictory positions and explain why or why not one ought to follow a line of reasoning. In addition, the question about the merit of a small sample size could itself serve as a valuable aside in teaching fundamental notions in the philosophy of science.

Note: This is from the perspective of Western analytic philosophy, but the spirit of debate and discussion is no less integral to the continental tradition.

I'm sorry an incompetent professor left such a bad taste in your mouth, and on the field as a whole.

What's strange to me, is that my interpretation of the results of such an experiment wouldn't even lead to your professor's conclusion. The takeaway being the fallibility of sensory perception, where I might then prompt the class for a discussion of their intuitive refutations of empiricism before diving into the literature.

Unfortunately, being a philosophy major myself, I know all too well that a crap teacher can totally ruin a philosophy topic (let alone a topic of any subject). From my 4 years in philosophy classes of varying levels of difficulty, the common denominator between a fruitful time spent in class has been the willingness of the professor to engage with their students. Whether it's logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, &c, the principal property of a quality professor is his/her dialectical ability.

Hell, that's how philosophy & theology was taught in the first universities! The professor would profess and then the students would engage their master in the subject at hand.

Just wanted to say that I always enjoy seeing a t3x.org link pop up on the front page of HN. Your site is one of the few "regulars" that I always enjoy seeing a new update from; your projects are always interesting and I can usually learn something new just by perusing the manual and looking at the code to discern how a feature was implemented.

> There is no space to drive my tractor collection around.

I am glad to see a comment like this on HN, despite the impression that everyone here is an SV-focused tech bro. Sometimes it feels good to read about somebody's tractors whilst I gaze out at the soybean field in my backyard. :)

When discussing this exact topic with classmates this semester (philsophy undergrad in a medieval philosophy class that is doing a lot with the interplay with theology) I've used the following metaphor to explain how I've come to understand the idea of the supposed symbiosis between God's omniscience and our free will:

Think of God as an observer at the top of the Grand Canyon, looking down into the winding path of the river below. Humans are afloat on the river down in the canyon, unable to see what lies ahead. They can choose how to react to obstacles, for example, yet do no see them coming. God, however, sees our entire path on this metaphorical river laid out for us since birth; each of our individual choices are "perceived"[0] by him simultaneously.

[0]: Note, however, that many theologians would protest anthropomorphizing God in this way. Maimonides, as an example, says that we can speak of God as exhibiting mercy but not being merciful. He simply acts in a way that is analogous to human mercy.

By damn, I just love when the big kahunas still involve themselves in the community they cultivated so long ago. Cheers, Sam; the best of luck to you and the team at YC.

Haha. Well said.

That's a clever take. I suppose if the "original" humans came from a universe as hellish as Warhammer 40K, ours would seem like a cakewalk!

I don't think you intended your first remark to sound like this, but I'd imagine the same could be said of us from the perspective of a highly advanced interstellar species: how different can the experiences be between humans, right? However, given the level of complexity of a fruit fly I know this metaphor doesn't necessarily hold when analyzed from the perspective of a human. Yet, who is to say beings beyond our comprehension wouldn't think the same of us?

Unless of course that was your point this entire time and I just stupidly repeated it in a more garrulous manner.

If I grokked the parent right, it's not that we are living in a simulation, but that the apex of development for a species is effectively becoming a simulation.

Now, whether that is an argument that life at present is itself a simulation is yet to be determined. However, I'd imagine given that ungodly level of computational power we'd have the wherewithal to construct a reality for ourselves far more compelling than this one. ;)

My girlfriend got me this book for Christmas! It's an absolute trip. Some of the Area 51 patches (for black site tech development, etc) have such surprising on-the-nose humor regarding aliens. It's nice to know that even people that work on top secret stuff have a sense of humor!

Shapiro! I'm actually in Advanced Symbolic Logic (PHILOS 5500) this semester and he happens to be teaching it. Talk about Hacker News serendipity.

Tennant isn't my advisor, but I've taken a handful of classes with him, and his "holistic" (that's the best descriptor I can come up with atm) approach to teaching logic and philosophy of science makes everything fall into place in my head. His pleasant, informal teaching style combined with a skill for connecting big ideas across disciplines is seriously pedagogical magic.

And I'm currently a senior, hoping to wrap everything up by this summer. :)

This theory, although fantastical, appears to fall in line with what little is known about Cotten. The kind of person to run a quarter-billion dollar operation solely from their laptop, I would think is certainly liable to pull a stunt like this. What's more interesting, however, is that the converse situation is equally likely: that the supposed ignorance of Cotten played up in the reporting of this story by the media plays absolutely in his favor. Would you trade appearing a fool to "get away with" something like this?

If I were to have unrestricted access to $250M and woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day (or just a bad day in traffic, even) it would take little to flip a switch in my head and think, to Hell with all this, let's skedaddle! However, I am way too much of a paranoiac to do this without absolutely ruining my QOL after the fact, hah.

I suppose situations like this is why we have the Two-man Rule for nuclear launches, &c. Keep those delusions in check!

I've only just skimmed the first section, and already I feel like I'm in for a trip. The math is indeed as approachable as you suggest. I'm only a philosophy major (though our logic department is seriously the bees knees, shout-out to Tennant!) yet I'm still able to pick up what you're putting down. Very fascinating paper, thank you for sharing.

Also, one of the many nerds across the street in University Hall says hello :)

I am so happy I decided to stumble into the comments section for this article. Your contribution of this short story by Borges is almost sublime in its essential similarity to the article of OP. I've already been a fan of Borges, but I had never heard of this piece of his before. It has positively tickled all the right literary fancies for me. Thanks much for the comment, as the story was a pleasant accoutrement to my lunch!

I respect the need to abide by an NDA, and I assumed something along those lines would be the case. Thanks for the tidbits nonetheless! The intersection between finance and tech at the highest levels like that has always intrigued me.

In what context was this done/could you provide more details (without giving away any information that you don't care to share)? Sounds like something I would enjoy doing as well!

Thank you for the link to the Wikipedia page. Makes for good Sunday reading :)

If am tracking everything right, then an (albeit simple) description of dependent origination is that we can't necessarily predict the unknown-unknowns of our actions. If so, I don't see how dropping out (in the Timothy Leary sense) is any different from other phenomena that cause unforeseen consequences?

Using your example as my example, that Politico piece presupposes that increased sex ala the sexual revolution is itself an altogether "good" thing, and that the effects of Netflix et al is impacting that previously held ideal in a negative manner. At the risk of sounding contemptuous, I quite frankly don't see what the big deal is, and it reads more akin to vacuous hand-wringing.

Do you have another example of what you are trying to describe? Perhaps I missed the forest for the trees in your above link and haven't approached the topic in good faith.

Very well put, and I agree with your general analysis.

The question is: how exactly is this a "bad thing"?

Thank you for this information, this is going to be my next project.

Now that's something I'd love to read about! My only comparable experience was during my most recent co-op where I used an Asus C300 Chromebook running Gallium OS 2.1, and it served me quite well for the work I was doing.

Although using modern websites when you only have 2 GB of RAM and a mobile Celeron chip is absolutely painful...

Didn't expect to see a PhilPapers link on HN! I liked your paper, definitely gave me something to chew on. I've never given much thought to attempting to falsify the simulation hypothesis in any meaningful way (on account of a general apathy to its oft "contrived" nature that you elude to). However, your thought experiment regarding this supposed x-x' property is quite clever. Now my mind is buzzing...

P.S. I appreciated your reference to Popper in the abstract. It prompted me to take my copy of The Open Society & Its Enemies off the shelf and peruse it for nostalgia's sake. :)