zoogeny

One obvious one, is that people crave community and religion provides a ready made and welcoming community.

But this is an exercise that is best performed by you. It is about changing your own attention. Next time you come across some "adult convert", instead of looking for signs that prove your assumptions (that they are looking for comfort), look for some positive sign.

Consider how you are reacting to this very comment chain. Are you thinking "there is no possible way any person could ever be attracted to religion for any other possible reason than fear and need for comfort". When you asked me for suggestions were you actually curious? Bring that same curiosity to your next interaction. Demand of your own attention to see a positive reason.

And consider that if you are not able to notice the positive intentions in the actions of another, that might be a you problem.

I understand the sketch you are making and my claim isn't "you are wrong". My claim is "it isn't sufficient to explain all of the behavior". You are making massive leaps over important details. In order to feel a grasp on the big picture, you are turning a cow into a sphere.

"Awareness" isn't a well defined term and is often just a proxy for consciousness. But in as much as we can define it, it is one or both of experience and knowledge. You may (or may not be) aware of the hum some electronics in your house. At certain points in the day that hum is present in you attention, at other points it is absent from your attention. Sometimes you choose to bring previously unattended objects into your awareness, sometimes they are thrust there despite your will.

What is actually interesting about awareness, and one of the reasons it is a tricky subject, is that it isn't clearly related to agency. There are objects of your awareness that you do not act on, and you act with respect to objects that are provably not in your awareness.

There is also the question of the field within which these oscillations take place. Is it the electro-magnetic field? A quantum field? Which field are we talking about? If you are proposing some "principle of least action" in that field, can you describe it?

You seem to claim "loss minimization" and then hand wave the rest. But without descriptions of knowledge and experience it feels like you aren't actually saying anything except stating an opinion that reduces all knowledge and experience to loss minimization. That is an extraordinary claim and requires either extraordinary evidence or extraordinary reasoning.

Very good point and question. I am not intimately familiar with Obsidian because I haven't used it. My understanding is that it indexes directories of .md files to provide a graph-like interface over them, using the contents of the files themselves to store meta-data (e.g. in the form of links and YAML frontmatter).

Let's imagine a .zip file format that combines:

- A directory of .md and/or .xml files (there is more to structured text than markdown)

- A sqlite db in the root for some metadata

- A graph representation (RDF, triples, whatever) of the files

That is directionally what I am talking about, but with a standard spec so that someone receiving a project bundle knows how to parse it all.

You can still have all of the Obsidian stuff over the contents of the directory. But you can also store much more interesting meta-data in the db that may not be appropriate to put in any individual file (or in some kind of pure data .md file). It is something that can be sent over the network a bit more conveniently than a directory. And if you standardize the db schema and the graph you can have immediate interoperability between systems.

In fact, given advanced enough LLMs, you could just have an README.md or something in the root that sketches out the directory structure and files, the db schema for the metadata, and then just expect that the agent, knowing how to load and query a SQLite db, will be able to work with it. But I think there is value in having some loose standards around the db schema, some YAML frontmatter conventions, some well known graph representation, etc.

I'm not sure what your argument is here, except stating an opinion that loss minimization is equivalent to agency. But even if that was accepted, which is a huge stretch, it doesn't stretch all the way to awareness.

I don't think this can last, because whatever advantage structured text files in a file tree provides over an API will be maximized by some format that is better than a file system.

That might mean leaning into SQLite or some other open format. My own thought is that a graph-like structure of documents will be ultimately more valuable than either a tree-like structure or a database-like structure.

But if a proprietary implementation of whatever usurps structured text in a file-system becomes popular, that company will have significant leverage.

> eventually an awareness would develop

I am not sure how this is a necessary conclusion to the premises you provide.

I've thought this myself. We sure do consume a lot of yeast-based foods. Entire industries created to cultivate the stuff.

I thought it would be an interesting story about how the bakers and beer makers are the actual illuminati, consciously working on behalf of the yeast which is our actual over-lords.

I don't think the entirety of the phenomenon can be explained by fear, and in complex issues such as this a single variable analysis is suspect.

I would encourage you to think of forces other than fear that might be driving observed behavior. It is only in this way that you have any hope of creating an alternative attractive force that satisfies the needs that are currently being served by religion.

That is what the market is for!

I'm just pointing out "we don't need this right now" isn't necessarily an argument against "we don't need this".

There is a saying that isn't perfect but may apply: better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it.

Here is another way of looking at it. Let's say agents don't meet the hyped up expectations and we build all of this robust tooling for nothing. So we have all of this work towards creating autonomous testing systems but we don't have the autonomous agents. That still seems like a decent outcome.

When we plan around optimistic views of the future, we tend to build generally useful things.

> t took humans years to write the tests by hand, and the agents still failed to converge.

I think there is some hazard in assuming that what agents fail at today they will continue to fail on in the future.

What I mean is, if we take the optimistic view of agents continuing to improve on the trajectory they have started at for one or two years, then it is worth while considering what tools and infrastructure we will need for them. Companies that start to build that now for the future they assume is coming are going to be better positioned than people who wake up to a new reality in two years.

I very much take your point, and literally the paragraph before I said "... I tend to seek a middle way". So if you think reviewing once or twice a year is right for you, then go for it.

But to answer your specific question: I do keep journals and I almost never review them. I have a box with 20+ years of handwritten journals in it. Once every couple of years I'll even open the box and flip through a few pages of a few of the books and read a couple of pages. But that is generally all I do and I have no desire to do any more than that.

I also have maybe 100 journal entries in Google Docs and to the best of my recollection I have never read a single one of them after they were written.

Lately I've been using LLMs as a kind of active journal, where I engage in a dialogue as a means to externalizing my thoughts and refining ideas through critical feedback. I have never gone back and re-read any of those conversations.

I'm not making a value claim here, just answering you honestly. It isn't that I think one should or shouldn't review their journals, it is that it doesn't give me pleasure to do so and I find no personal value in it.

It is interesting that Marc Andreesen was having a bit of a X crash out over his belief that introspection is bad [1]

I disagree because I tend to seek a middle way. I would agree that too much (excessive) introspection is bad. But I would argue that too little is equally bad.

I think obsessively examining ones own comment history would verge on excessive. I'm wondering how much LLM analysis of my public and private life can remain healthy.

1.https://x.com/pmarca/status/2035190797218587116

Part of me thinks this is a bad sign for Apple. They have always been a premium brand. I'm not a business major, but it just feels like a bad thing when premium enters low-end markets.

But on the other hand, this is kind of the culmination of them owning their hardware stack. They can avoid the commoditization race to the bottom since they are the exclusive owners of a significant amount of their hardware vertical, From chips to enclosure. Perhaps that will let them retain the margins that were previously driven by a consumer base that prized prestige over price.

While my intuition is that this may be the last big cash grab that Apple squeezes out of their premium image, they did have a massive hit back in the day with the original iMac (the CRT based one). They've defined "cheap and premium" categories before.

I have always wanted Deno to succeed. But it just seems to be too full of contradictions.

Their initial baffling stance about package.json was the first bad sign. I almost can't imagine the hubris of expecting devs to abandon such a large eco-system of packages by not striving for 100% support out of the gate. Of course they had to relent, but honestly the damage was done. They chose ideology over practicality and that doesn't bode well with devs.

I think they saw Rust and thought that devs were willing to abandon C++ for a language that was more modern and secure. By touting these same benefits perhaps they were hoping for similar sentiment from the JavaScript community.

Deno has some really good ideas (e.g. the library KV interface). I agree with a lot (but not all) of Dahl's vision. But the whole thing is just a bit too quirky for me to invest anything critical into an ecosystem that is one funding round away from disappearing completely.

I recall an earlier exchange, posted to HN, between Wolfram and Knuth on the GPT-4 model [1].

Knuth was dismissive in that exchange, concluding "I myself shall certainly continue to leave such research to others, and to devote my time to developing concepts that are authentic and trustworthy. And I hope you do the same."

I've noticed with the latest models, especially Opus 4.6, some of the resistance to these LLMs is relenting. Kudos for people being willing to change their opinion and update when new evidence comes to light.

1. https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/chatGPT20.txt

I actually agree on how unlikely it is but the wildcard is Trump. I mean, he is the kind of guy who just goes with his gut and he has already publicly supported getting rid of the time change, calling it a "50-50 issue" (on which to go with, standard or savings).

The worse case is he pushes a federal change to standard time, in which case I suspect BC would have to go along.

Not to be argumentative since I broadly agree with your characterization (and the mass cancelling of games is concerning), but I think AI will revolutionize at least asset creation.

I worked on sports titles for a while and there was literally an army of contractors making uniforms, shoes, hairstyles, etc. I'm pretty convinced gen-AI will make that job obsolete.

I think this means preparing for BC to go out of sync with the US states we normally sync to (Washington, Oregon, California).

However, there is some hope I've heard expressed that this may push one or more of those states to make the switch as well. Unlikely, but hey, a lot can happen in eight months (as this year is already proving).

Anyone who has worked on a game knows it is a long, painful slog to the finish line. AI dev is promising the exact opposite: minimal prompts and the agent does all the slog.

Even if AI can whip up a quick demo or prototype for a game, it is the long-tail of tedious details that a passionate person has to hammer away on that separates what ships from what dies. I'm guessing most AI opportunists are looking for quick wins.

I still think it is only a matter of time before someone with the passion hammers an AI to get a game to market.

Hitchhiker's Guide had a slightly deeper philosophical implication though, in that the premise is that powerful computers already existed to solve complex problems. Earth was created to pose powerful questions.

One thing I have been guilty of, even though I am an AI maximalist, is asking the question: "If AI is so good, why don't we see X". Where X might be (in the context of vibe coding) the next redis, nginx, sqlite, or even linux.

But I really have to remember, we are at the leading edge here. Things take time. There is an opening (generation) and a closing (discernment). Perhaps AI will first generate a huge amount of noise and then whittle it down to the useful signal.

If that view is correct, then this is solid evidence of the amplification of possibility. People will decry the increase of noise, perhaps feeling swamped by it. But the next phase will be separating the wheat from the chaff. It is only in that second phase that we will really know the potential impact.

I'm happy to wait for any argument you can provide that cultural capital and economic capital are "intertwined, often strategically" instead of bowing to the authority of a source that in abstract clearly argues for the predominance of cultural authority in the constitution of taste.

But we aren't here to discuss apparently.

No counter argument? Ad hominin? I was politely saying you were wrong and your attempt to muddy the water with "They are both intertwined" was a poor deflection based on the source you provided. But now I see you are a troll and I was lured.

Your source does not support your position.

Just skimming the Wikipedia article [1] and it is appears Bourdieu's argument is bit more nuanced than status and money. It is a bit laden with Marxist jargon, but at least the abstract seems to place the heavy burden on "cultural capital" which is a more precise term than what I chose (status) but close enough to my meaning.

Whether or not economic capital is actually transferrable to cultural capital seems to be another debate, but as the old saying goes "money can't buy taste". In fact, a newly rich lower class person marrying a contemporarily poor higher class person seems more likely.

As the abstract states: "Because persons are taught their cultural tastes in childhood, a person's taste in culture is internalized to their personality, and identify his or her origin in a given social class, which might or might not impede upward social mobility." Money can't rebuild the personality that is internalized in youth, but marriage might give your kids a shot.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book)

edit: also to add, the relationship between these is the underlying theme of The Great Gatsby.

> we are constantly seeking consensus

I disagree, it seems to me that most people are seeking validation. In that sense, we don't want some global consensus, but a consensus within a specifically chosen group that proves our membership.

I think your analysis is interesting but I would argue it has more to do with status than money.

I log into Facebook website a couple of times a week to browse Marketplace. I very rarely check the feed (once a month?) since almost no human I know posts there. But my feed has 0 thirst traps when I just checked. It was some musicians I follow, one or two pictures posted by friends, the workout routines from a distant family member, local news and then a whole bunch of comedy skits and old comic strips turned into reels.

It is 60% garbage but actually the 40% that is there is completely different and valuable compared even to YouTube (where I spend the lions share of my social media time). But I actually think that only looking at it once a month is the best way since if I look at the feed more often I notice it slowly skews more to 90% garbage and 10% value.

You may have mistook my post as advocating Christianity or even Alchemy.

In the same way that we realized that the plants people used to treat pain contained chemicals that are actually effective at treating pain, and in the same way that modern science seems to agree that fasting (a once religious practice) is effective for health, we can gain some insight on personality by looking at how it was addressed in historical contexts.

There was a video posted recently about a Sufi thinker whose ideas are quite close to modern CBT practices [1].

I think it is a good thing when we recognize ideas from the past as being related to modern ideas. I think we can do so without diminishing the modern and also without diminishing the past.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26hltikcyk

A couple of anecdata for those interested in this.

The first is the gospel of Mark, which unlike the other synoptic gospels starts with Jesus, probably around the age of 30, coming across John the Baptist and being baptized. Subsequently, Jesus went off into the desert where he prayed for 40 days.

Second is the alchemical process of creating the philosophers stone. Jung argued that this was a description of a process akin to individuation. He believed that what was on the surface metallurgical work (transmuting lead to gold) was actually an obscure formula for remaking the psyche, from whatever was pre-programmed by society into what the individual actually wanted. This process was said to take 40 days.

I think a big trap is mistaking who we are from who we appear to be. Some people try to "seem" a particular way, thinking that they can only change their appearance, like changing one's clothes. The alchemical view that Jung put forward was a bit more radical, suggesting that we can fundamentally change ourselves.

Many people in our modern society experiment on themselves to change their physical bodies and to change their minds. I believe it is interesting to consider similar experimentation on how we change our spirit/emotions.

I know this sounds maybe a bit insane, or even self-aggrandizing but I don't comment on public websites for some benefit to myself. I write with the vague hope that some unique expression of myself makes some tiny difference to this universe.

Every once in a while I have some experience or some a point of view that I don't see reflected anywhere else. One of the benefits of the pseudo-anonymization of sites like Hacker News is that I feel a bit more comfortable stating things that don't really have a place to say anywhere else.

The only thing I regret is when I get into pointless arguments, usually when I feel that my comment was misunderstood or misinterpreted. But even those arguments sometimes force me to consider how to express myself more clearly or to challenge how deeply I hold the belief (or how well I know the subject) that lead me to the comment in the first place.