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Nice - I love Feynman! Actually, QED was the big reason why I got interested in the question in the first place! I think that what he poses there is more of: 'there's no way for me to explain to you what this field is - since I can't formulate an analogy that you're familiar with, so I won't even try.' I love Feynman's sense of curiosity: it was absolutely divine and he's a personal hero of mine. One thing that I never understood about him though was the fact that whenever someone would pose the question of existence or why the laws exist, he would always shrug it off and say that he didn't understand and that there was no point in trying to understand it. It is what it is - we do the mathematics and take it as is. My take: I think that explaining it is possible, and I think it's a question that's definitely worthy of trying to answer. Even if we can't get there, the pursuit itself I would think would be a worthy cause!!

Ahhh - very interesting take!! But I see that your viewpoint essentially states: consciousness is ever-lasting and it is the 'base.' There is no consistency nor wonder in it: it just existed and created an infinite branch - one in which we exist. Very interesting idea, and one which I see is a mixture of having a creator and both having a 'wave function' trying out all paths - but nonetheless, how do you get rid of the inconsistency of having something there that doesn't have a logical base? Or maybe - we don't need a logical base - some things just are I suppose?

I definitely see your viewpoint - and like I said, you definitely write with great clarity and you seem to have a great sense of belief in the system which ... points towards a God who is ever-present or ever-lasting and isn't prone to causality. I'm just trying to see different takes on people who might be exploring a self-consistent system - once which may 'create' or 'contain' itself. I'm sorry if I can't put it in terms that are less confusing. Once again, I appreciate the feedback and it's great to hear other takes on this matter :)

What if God were part of the system itself though? Wouldn't that be a case worth considering? From my perspective: if you were to ask God what created him/her/it, I would think that there would be some sort of answer. Or sorry, when I say 'create' - I really mean having a casual mechanism without having to invoke an ever lasting presence.

Your take on having parallel universes is also interesting: I believe that there definitely are parallel worlds (this is where we extend into the 5th dimension) - so we may have a very deep call stack!

'I got the idea while building some procedural plot generators. The characters have their free will and diverging paths, but it only picks the paths that were predestined for a reason.'

Wow - interesting! Now we're diving into 'free will.' So, the characters which you programmed - would you say that they have a will? Or did you program them to pick those paths? You can almost say that it's self emergent system?

Great intro and overview: http://coding-geek.com/how-databases-work/

Great book: https://dataintensive.net/

Also great read and overview: http://www.redbook.io/

Great paper over-viewing the architecture of a DB: https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/content/binary/Architectur...

If you're looking into building your own database, there are some great open source projects you can reference here: https://github.com/danistefanovic/build-your-own-x#build-you...

If you want to actually dive into source code - SQLite is amazing. It has very clean and readable code, so I'd suggest using it as a reference as well: https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite

Perfect! Neither do I. Now, let's sit down and try to program the laws ourselves :)

It does exist though. Our brains are information processing mechanisms which have figured out some of the laws of the universe - and they continue to question it. They do exist and reality does 'exist.' I suppose you're questioning the validity of nature> If so - then yes, I would say it doesn't really 'exist.' Mathematical fields are really what exists...but hey, who's here to argue certainties! So what by your definition - or whom meets the criteria of 'existing' then?

Or: sorry if I offend you: A human wrote those words and passed them on as being God? In which case (and once again - no offense): they gave their best thoughts as to what they perceived God was at the time, but didn't really understand much about what we currently are, nor what the real laws of the universe are. I tend to be open minded, but when people mention the process of creation to me and fail to account for Quantum Electrodynamics nor the design and laws of the universe - I don't tend to take them very seriously. You seem to be in the camp of attributing God to being beyond causality: beyond physical or mathematical laws. I disagree with your viewpoint: although I do respect your opinion and I'm glad that you chimed in, I think there's a way to explain existence with having causality, information, and logic tied in and no 'magic' happening behind the scenes. This is the central point I'm trying to bring across in this thread. If I'm confusing the living hell out of you, that's a good thing. This point I make is meant to be very confusing. I'm hoping that you sit down and think about what it is that I'm saying...

I see!! Sorry, I might have read your comment as you saying that you're struggling: In which case, I see that you definitely have the right attitude, so I hope everything is OK :)

Love it. It's pretty close to my answer - my hypothesis is that it's a simulation which creates itself. I'm not sure if you can call this the 'base' - but essentially, it comes down to a self-recursion. It's information which calls itself and which calls itself, and which well...I'm not sure if you can define a base. 1 = 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... so mathematics itself is actually self recursive.

Interesting. What do you ponder created the laws then? Or is it self-emergent? I'm not sure how to process your answer...

I'm sorry to see that you're struggling my friend. I'd love to help you, so if you ever need anything, feel free to give me more info on how I can reach you and I'd love to get a chance to give you my take on life and try to help you out...the fact that anything exists is amazing. Whenever I look at the world, I think: wow. Why does anything exist at all? Why is matter, time, or even a creator necessary? If you ask yourself this question, you'll find that you're worries will melt away. Some other tips which I think will definitely help you from my perspective: 1. Eat healthy (mostly plants and less meat) 2. Exercise 3. Keep in touch and meet great people who you love and 4. Have a meaning in your life: strive to accomplish something which gives you meaning. I'm hoping this helps? If anything, I'd love to have more of a chat with you and get to know much more about you, so let's stay in touch :) Also, I love your feedback!!!

Perfect. Love your answer and this is exactly what I was looking for :)

"Two widely read atheistic authors, Richard Dawkins (2006, p. 155) and Sam Harris (2006, p. 73-74) have succumbed to the guiles of Leibniz’s PEQ by countenancing it misguidedly as a searching question that rightly calls for an explanatory answer. Thus, Dawkins allowed a “first cause, the great unknown which is responsible for something existing rather than nothing” (ibid.). And Harris capitulates to PEQ, declaring with very misplaced intellectual humility: “Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point” [italics in original] (ibid. p. 74]. But surely the failure to answer a pseudo-question does not bespeak ignorance on the part of scientists, philosophers or even the man in the street. Thus, Dawkins and Harris very misguidedly took PEQ as legitimate grounds for watering down their atheism."

I understand the sentiment of the paper, but it doesn't answer my question. Is there a causal mechanism? If there is an intellectual being - what is its cause? And if not - is there a cause for the cause?

Let me give you a bit more info on what I believe in: the universe has a self-causal mechanism. We are all God, and intelligent life isn't an accident created by the universe. It's an emergent and 'programmed' mechanism which causes it to spring into existence. I'm hoping to see some other viewpoints from the crowd here - so I do appreciate you're input, but it still doesn't answer my question: what belief do you have which might be different from the mainstream view? You seem to be leaning more towards what's already there...what makes your viewpoint different?

Sorry, but your answer still assumes the existence of a super-natural being (aka God) who doesn't have a causal mechanism. So - if you were to ask God, what is the reason for his existence, or the mechanism for it, what would you ponder the answer would be? Also: Einstein didn't 'ponder' the existence of the 4th dimension - he proved that it exists in a manner in which it was counter intuitive to what we thought it was. There is no 'static' concept of time - it's a relative concept, so the computational mechanics that's being used to create the universe doesn't have a 'highly parallel' processor that Newton thought it had. And from experience: the universe we live in definitely has more than 5 dimensions (there are parallel branches which don't mimic ours). My big questions to you is: what mechanism created God? How do you explain Him?

Sorry - I just noticed that you're questions was more of: "If I were to go into teaching, what can I do to improve the process". My answer to you: have compassion. Create a sense of curiosity in your students. Look into Richard Feynman. If you can instill in them that deep sense of being incredibly curious and wanting to know more about the world (and it should come naturally - since the world and the universe is an incredibly interesting place!!!) - you will do well and you'll guide others towards a path that they'll always remember you for. I respect your sense of wanting to know how to improve this process, and I wish the best of luck to you if you decide to pursue it. If you do - you'll change a lot of lives, but I'm going to give you a heads up: it won't be the easiest path to take. You'll really struggle and I hope that you're persistent and you don't give up. In the end - it'll be a path that you'll definitely find a lot of meaning in, and you'll definitely more than change the world by doing it. All the best of luck to you my friend :)

Nice answer and your response pretty much summarizes my theory:

"Eastern beliefs can escape these two points by saying the universe creates itself in a loop. Which still sounds tautalogical"

The universe in my opinion is a self-causal mathematical loop. If you believe in God - he escapes causality, which to me ... doesn't really meet the truth and beauty equations I'm trying to complete. The other scientific hypothesis is in the same boat: they formulate a theory based on an accidental beginning which forms according to a wave function which 'tries out all possible laws' - and the same theory comes to a stop when trying to answer the question: what is it that created the wave function?

I want to see other viewpoints to try to see if anyone else is as curious about this as I am - so I hope I'm shedding a light on what it is I'm asking for.

Or sorry - to re-phrase my question - what created the God?

OK - but you're still not getting the point: what created the program / AI?

1. Look into mastery learning if you're really interested in making progress in regards to teaching. 2. Curiosity. 3. Compassion. 4. Ability to make your students use their 'visual cortex' which has a processing capacity that extends much further than what we can process using our auditory channels. 5. Great pay (you need adequate compensation in order to attract the best).

By the way: this wasn't meant to be offensive or a discussion on other beliefs. I'm trying to get a sense of how many people here think 'deeper.' In the god framework, you eliminate causality, since you put attribution to a God who simply avoids all sense of creation and you avoid the sense of causality since you transfer it to being created by this ever lasting presence and he/she simply exists and creates all that is. The other side: In our current scientific framework, we say that we have the mathematical laws, and since they're really complicated, we say that we exist within a universe which embodies all probability lines leading to us - including ones which coincide with an accidental existence. I don't believe that either one of those are true, so I'm trying to write a piece which shows what I think - but prior to doing that, I'd like to get a sense from the HN crowd: what do you think?

Dirac was a legend and a man who actually believed in the principle that the universe itself was a mathematical structure, rather than making mathematics the tool which we use to describe the universe. His amazing prediction of anti-matter from a pure theoretical / mathematical basis was astounding. He also believed in the principle of mathematical beauty and that one should use this principle in attempting to find the laws of the universe, and I very much agree.

In the James Scott Prize Lecture that he gave on 6 February 1939, Dirac spelled out his new ideas of the relationship between mathematics and physics which focused on the concept of mathematical beauty. Many years before his brother in law Eugene Wigner famously problematized the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, Dirac discussed the same topic. How is it that the mathematical-deductive method is so remarkably successful in physics? According to Dirac:

“This must be ascribed to some mathematical quality in Nature, a quality which the casual observer of Nature would not suspect, but which nevertheless plays an important role in Nature’s scheme. One might describe the mathematical quality in Nature by saying that the universe is so constituted that mathematics is a useful tool in its description. However, recent advances in physical science show that this statement of the case is too trivial. The connection between mathematics and the description of the universe goes far deeper than this.”

In his James Scott Lecture and at numerous later occasions, Dirac asserted that the modern history of theoretical physics provides convincing evidence that there is a perfect marriage between the rules that mathematicians find interesting by their own standards and the rules that govern natural phenomena. He thought this was not accidental, but that it might reflect some deep identity between mathematics and physics:

“Pure mathematics and physics are becoming ever more closely connected, though their methods remain different. One may describe the situation by saying that the mathematician plays a game in which he himself invents the rules while the physicist plays a game in which the rules are provided by Nature, but as time goes on it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen. It is difficult to predict what the result of all this will be. Possibly, the two subjects will ultimately unify, every branch of pure mathematics then having its physical application, its importance in physics being proportional to its interest in mathematics.”

Dirac suggested that future developments in theoretical physics would lead to the “existence of a scheme in which the whole of the description of the universe has its mathematical counterpart.” In accordance with this philosophy, he advised physicists to “begin by choosing that branch of mathematics which one thinks will form the basis of the new theory. One should be influenced very much in this choice by considerations of mathematical beauty. . . . Having decided on the branch of mathematics, one should proceed to develop it along suitable lines, at the same time looking for that way in which it appears to lend itself naturally to physical interpretation.”

Source:

https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2017/09/24...

He was an outstanding man with outstanding insights on the nature of matter and the universe.

Thank you for the feedback! Yup - there are definitely some items that need to be looked at on mobile and I'll see if I can find time to fix them, but I figured I'd make it available for anyone anyways in case they wanted to take a look...I did this years ago and it was based on an old bootstrap framework. I definitely know there are some things that can definitely be improved :) Cheers.

I'm sorry to hear about your wife. What is she suffering from and what types of clinical trials are you trying to enlist her in?

I think it would depend on what you’re into, but these are my picks:

Quantum Electrodynamics (Feynman): A summary of how almost EVERYTHING works (albeit explained simplistically).

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (great insights / worldly wisdom from one of the world’s greatest investors).

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (Great overview of mathematics).

Quantum Mechanics: Concepts and Applications (Great QM book).

Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization (Great leadership / management insights).

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (An extremely simplified historical overview of how we got here).

The Book of Disquiet (Serpent's Tail Classics) (Random journaling from one of the world’s greatest prose writers: Fernando Pessoa).

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Excellent explanation on how computers work from bottom -> top).

The Machinery of Life (Includes excellent visuals in biology).

The Character of Physical Law (Great insights in physics by Feynman).

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Great book on business process improvement).

How to Win Friends & Influence People (Nothing groundbreaking, but still a worthy read).

Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming (Great info and insights from some of the greatest software developers of all time).

The Periodic Table (Great read and some of the greatest prose writing you’ll ever encounter).

I just wanted to commend you and thank you for your great work - this is an absolute masterpiece!!!

Fernando Pessoa and Vladimir Nabakov come to mind. Primo Levi is great as well.

Nice work!!!

If anyone is interested, I also made a 'Learn R by Example' project which attempts to teach R through code comments: https://github.com/photonlines/Learn-R-by-Example

OK, so to follow up with the author of the piece and to maybe throw in a little 2nd order thinking into this equation:

“Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform” - the author makes a broad claim that all smart people use second order thinking to outperform those who aren’t smart.

Questions: What makes the author credible, and what data / research does he/she have in order to support the claim? He/she cites Howard Marks as an example, but is Howard Marks really enough to support the claim for such a broad and generalized statement? What about the fact that even people who try to think deeply tend to get it wrong often-times, which has been shown to be true over and over again? Example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-h...

That’s not to say that I disagree with the premise – I think that in general, this piece puts forward a hypothesis that smart people are deep thinkers who think critically and deeply about the effects of their decisions, while those that aren’t so smart might not put such an effort in. There is some truth to the statement the author puts forward, but by no means is this the differentiating factor between smart people and the not-so-smart. I’m not an expert in this field either, but I’ve read a lot of stuff from Feynman, Einstein, and the geniuses of the field, and I find that some of the things which differentiate them from the rest are:

1. Deep curiosity. They were incredibly interested in finding out how things work / solving a problem. 2. Persistence: They worked hard to achieve what they wanted to achieve and didn’t give up. 3. They used their visual cortex / visual systems a lot. Tesla for example would have live simulated conversations with other people and build things inside of his head. Einstein is in the same boat - he would spend hours trying to visualize concepts. This makes total sense from my perspective. We have a heck of a lot more capacity to process information using our visual cortex than other areas in out brains. We can process something like 10 million bits per second vs. a much lower capacity in other brain areas. When you read silently for example, you're only processing around 45 bits per second.

Apologies for the long write up here – I guess I might be over-analyzing things a bit, but I just don’t really see the point of this article, nor do I see it pointing out the real differentiating factors between those that are ‘smart’ and those that aren’t, and I think the author is making a very broad statement and doesn’t have any data to support his/her claim. Howard Marks also by the way is not a class above other investors. He still uses a value-based approach in a time where the value based strategy doesn’t really guarantee maximum returns. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t bright – he definitely is. I just don’t think that this presents enough evidence or data to support the generally broad claim made in the article.

I didn't grok anything at first actually. I had familiarity with Prolog and wanted a refresher, so I decided to take a look at implementation attempts done in other languages. I found one which did it in a few lines of Javascript, and you can find the full read and implementation here: https://curiosity-driven.org/prolog-interpreter . My apologies if I didn't make it clear that this is a port of the original write up - I did include this in the first paragraph of the README though, so maybe I should have been clearer?

Originally, I was trying to learn Kotlin along with wanting a refresher in Prolog, so I attempted to do the port using Kotlin and gave up half way though. I didn't have the patience to try to grok too many things at once, so I decided to go with Python due to it's simplicity, popularity, as well as the fact that I'm a lot more fluent in it than I am in Kotlin.

Anyways - sorry if I'm going off track. To answer your question, I grokked the implementation details through porting / refactoring the original code. The concepts / unification I was already familiar with from taking a university course which involved Prolog and from using it in a large AI project. From what I remember, it took me quite a long time to grasp the language and its power!!