5 ms·

What's the topic that just doesn't leave you alone? For me it's an interest in animal consciousness and communication, even though I am a physicist by training

What's the topic that just doesn't leave you alone? For me it's an interest in animal consciousness and communication, even though I am a physicist by training.

dr_dshiv 7y ago
Resonance and Harmony. Just too frikkin fascinating, in music, physics, history, contemporary culture, neuroscience...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 7y ago
I really enjoyed this article. For me, I have two main ones. Professionally, it is four freedoms computing and ways to empower people with it. Privately though, since I got out of the military, has been an obsession with geopolitics and geostrategy. You might be surprised how interrelated I increasingly think the two are.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  What's it about geopolitics that makes it so interesting to you? It has always seemed like politicized BS to me. I think history shows quite well that once individuals and polities alike start on the path of pursuing/promoting some variety of economic freedom and classical liberal values (often including but not limited to what's known as liberal democracy), safety and stable cooperation become enough of a common interest to make most 'geopolitics' considerations quite irrelevant, and often misleading.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >What's it about geopolitics that makes it so interesting to you? It has always seemed like politicized BS to me. Yeah, it's just how the lives of billions are organised, changed, and affected, no big matter... >I think history shows quite well that once individuals and polities alike start on the path of pursuing/promoting some variety of economic freedom and classical liberal values (often including but not limited to what's known as liberal democracy), safety and stable cooperation become enough of a common interest to make most 'geopolitics' considerations quite irrelevant, and often misleading. That's the very theory put forward just before 1914, about how a war in Europe was not possible anymore, because of "economic freedom and classical liberal values" promoting "safety and stable cooperation" between countries. The possibility of war was laughed at as "The big delusion". We know how that turned out. Then there was the same idea, of the "end of history", with the triumph of "economic freedom and classical liberal values" put forward after the USSR collapsed. We also know how that turned out. Historically, "economic freedom and classical liberal values" have been very good at war and fierce geopolitics. The very idea of economy is competition.
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    For me it just started as trying to understand the why of the Iraq war. I worked my way up the chain from my grunts eye view and kept going up that chain. I think it had a very similar appeal to computers when I was younger, in that I could understand things that most others couldn't, and that was and is a good feeling in a strange way. Combined with a very American upbringing and the fact I swore an oath to the constitution also makes me feel like it is my duty in some way, especially given the kind of insight I have grown into. I started with the question "why", and my eyes didn't really open till I realized I was leaving all the other W's out. This is the obsessive part as referenced in the post, because a part of me wants to let it all go and just focus on trying disrupt society through tech, or art, or something equivalent, but it seems a Sisyphean task I can't let go of.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    Not OP, but why not geopolitics? It's like thinking how your village's future will look like, but in a planet level... For example the Iraq war quagmire has lead to Al-Qaida and ISIS (well, forest fires in Russia also caused grain harvests in Russia to suffer, food prices to go up, and the Arab Spring to happen), this has lead to the refugee crisis in Europe, that combined with austerity has lead to the rise of populism in Europe, and Brexit.
ssivark 7y ago
Fellow physicist-by-training. Got interested in "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" a few years ago. As I delve into the roots of the field, I increasingly feel that many interesting ideas seem to have been discarded without justification other than the field switching en masse to a different fad at some instant. Of late, I'm particularly fascinated by ideas in Cybernetics, but I don't see anyone else being interested in them right now. I think there might be interesting insights into both biological and artificial intelligence (with communication definitely being an important component; consciousness is a word I avoid till I can find a more concrete handle on it), but it's primarily based on interest/taste, rather than motivated goal chasing :-) (I'm more interested in concrete ideas from Wiener, Ashcroft, etc. rather than the fluff that came later as the word's usage got stretched beyond meaning, as is now happening with "AI")
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Yes to cybernetics. Its day will come again! If you go deep, it's a rabbit hole to discover why teleology in science is so controversial. Wiener said cybernetics started from the idea that Intelligence is all about decreasing local entropy.
- _Microft 7y ago
  Maybe Jürgen Schmidhuber's opinion on consciousness might be of interest? https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_am_j%C3%BCrgen_schmidhuber_ama/cp44iba/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_a...
- carapace 7y ago
  In re: cybernetics and psychology, Gregory Bateson said that the Neurolinguistic Programming folks achieved what he had been working towards, a cybernetic psychology. If you're interested, start with the very first books "Structure of Magic" vol I and II https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/964154.The_Structure_of_Magic_I https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/964154.The_Structure_of_... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821993.The_Structure_of_Magic_II https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821993.The_Structure_of_... Essentially, by modelling therapists' verbal patterns using Transformational Grammar a formal theory of mind was evolved that has lead to sophisticated algorithms for various kinds of psychological change. Unfortunately, a lot of pseudo-science and "woo" has grown up around it, but please don't let that distract you, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. - - - - In re: creating simple machines with intelligence, IMO cybernetics (i.e. what's in "Introduction to Cybernetics" by Ashby; I'm also not interested in fluff) is pretty obviously the way to go. Even the simple centrifugal governor "seems alive" in the words of early witnesses. Purposive behaviour is the domain of living systems, at least according to instinct and experience, eh? I think one could use cybernetics to inform the design of robotic systems using e.g. the kind of simple controllers David Wyland talks about at the HomeBrew Robotics Club in this video: https://archive.org/details/HBRobotics_Forth https://archive.org/details/HBRobotics_Forth He's not explicitly talking about cybernetics, of course, but I think he's got the right idea and cybernetics shows the way forward.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hamilyon2 7y ago
Bits and bytes, how they are layed out, transferred, read and written. Can't stop thinking of data structures
abj 7y ago
I can't stop thinking about applied fun theory to card game mechanics. I'm building a card game where you never leave the flow state. (I know there's been a lot of cash grab card games recently. I just genuinely enjoy card games.) Specifically this question - Why is soccer more widely played than checkers? Physical Mastery - repetitive exploration of real world ball physics encourages a sense of mastery. Checkers doesn't have this. I've built a physics sim into the card game to replicate this sense of building mastery through exploring the physics system to win. Mental Mastery - Both soccer players and checker players make choices that feel fun and meaningful. When trying to dribble around an opponent, they have multiple options they must chose (right or left, fakeout). The player must have a model of what their opponent might do and react based on that. Updating their model is a sense of mental mastery that can be rewarding and contribute to flow. Real Time - Soccer doesn't have turns. In checkers, waiting for the opponent can break the flow state if you already know your move. The demo allows players to play cards in real time. The catch is - when you run out of cards in hand you loose. Accessibility - People can just pick up a ball shaped object and ball. I built a demo in WebGL so people can just hop in. Simplicity of Rules and Depth of Choices - Instead of having a convoluted health system, the amount of cards in your hand are your health. This makes picking up the game easy, there's just one rule to keep in mind. This allows for a variety of fun choices because each card you play lowers your health. This creates a fun risk reward system with no additional rules. The other idea is to use the existing physics system that players are already familiar with. That way there's no tutorial - players already know how cards handle and drop in real life.
- glofish 7y ago
  I don't want to sound overly critical of your explanations but you seem to ignore the most important difference: We play soccer with our entire bodies, muscles, heart, legs, lungs get a workout. Not to insult the players but mind and thought processes are somewhat secondary, it is about the "lizard brain": attack and defend with instincts and reflexes. When you play checkers it is your mind that gets a workout. It is the intellect that gets a workout. The exact opposite of the soccer. There are almost no similarities between the two! Making it into a physics simulator does not make it a physical excercise...
dsaavy 7y ago
If you use Instagram I would encourage you to look at this profile: https://instagram.com/hunger4words https://instagram.com/hunger4words It’s a lady who is a speech therapist who has taught her dog to communicate with pre-programmed push buttons.
- ralfd 7y ago
  If that is real it is amazing!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _Microft 7y ago
  I'll have a look again. Last time I checked though, it looked like random button presses with wishful interpretations for what it's worth.
DenisM 7y ago
I can get latched onto many subjects, most of them useless. Like, what is the best way to split firewood while living in an apartment building? Or what is the best RV for me (I'm not buying one until I spend X days renting)? It's really getting in the way of more worthwhile pursuits. 10 years ago I was quite engrossed in automatic layout of UI elements to automatically accommodate e.g. localized text of different size (Apple's iOS UI layout tools at the time were awfully crude, not sure about now). Around the same time I was much very into application state management (same problem solved by flux, but different approach). Having "solved" these two problems for my use case I have since moved on. Recently I am into mapping business workflows to data structures, visualizing them back, and then providing control over them, e.g. order/invoice/shipping processing in wholesale trade. Nifty stuff, and trickier than the other two things.

What's the topic that just doesn't leave you alone? For me it's an interest in animal consciousness and communication, even though I am a physicist by training.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

Resonance and Harmony. Just too frikkin fascinating, in music, physics, history, contemporary culture, neuroscience...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

arminiusreturns 7y ago

I really enjoyed this article. For me, I have two main ones. Professionally, it is four freedoms computing and ways to empower people with it. Privately though, since I got out of the military, has been an obsession with geopolitics and geostrategy. You might be surprised how interrelated I increasingly think the two are.

zozbot234 7y ago
What's it about geopolitics that makes it so interesting to you? It has always seemed like politicized BS to me. I think history shows quite well that once individuals and polities alike start on the path of pursuing/promoting some variety of economic freedom and classical liberal values (often including but not limited to what's known as liberal democracy), safety and stable cooperation become enough of a common interest to make most 'geopolitics' considerations quite irrelevant, and often misleading.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >What's it about geopolitics that makes it so interesting to you? It has always seemed like politicized BS to me. Yeah, it's just how the lives of billions are organised, changed, and affected, no big matter... >I think history shows quite well that once individuals and polities alike start on the path of pursuing/promoting some variety of economic freedom and classical liberal values (often including but not limited to what's known as liberal democracy), safety and stable cooperation become enough of a common interest to make most 'geopolitics' considerations quite irrelevant, and often misleading. That's the very theory put forward just before 1914, about how a war in Europe was not possible anymore, because of "economic freedom and classical liberal values" promoting "safety and stable cooperation" between countries. The possibility of war was laughed at as "The big delusion". We know how that turned out. Then there was the same idea, of the "end of history", with the triumph of "economic freedom and classical liberal values" put forward after the USSR collapsed. We also know how that turned out. Historically, "economic freedom and classical liberal values" have been very good at war and fierce geopolitics. The very idea of economy is competition.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  For me it just started as trying to understand the why of the Iraq war. I worked my way up the chain from my grunts eye view and kept going up that chain. I think it had a very similar appeal to computers when I was younger, in that I could understand things that most others couldn't, and that was and is a good feeling in a strange way. Combined with a very American upbringing and the fact I swore an oath to the constitution also makes me feel like it is my duty in some way, especially given the kind of insight I have grown into. I started with the question "why", and my eyes didn't really open till I realized I was leaving all the other W's out. This is the obsessive part as referenced in the post, because a part of me wants to let it all go and just focus on trying disrupt society through tech, or art, or something equivalent, but it seems a Sisyphean task I can't let go of.
- netsharc 7y ago
  Not OP, but why not geopolitics? It's like thinking how your village's future will look like, but in a planet level... For example the Iraq war quagmire has lead to Al-Qaida and ISIS (well, forest fires in Russia also caused grain harvests in Russia to suffer, food prices to go up, and the Arab Spring to happen), this has lead to the refugee crisis in Europe, that combined with austerity has lead to the rise of populism in Europe, and Brexit.

ssivark 7y ago

Fellow physicist-by-training. Got interested in "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" a few years ago. As I delve into the roots of the field, I increasingly feel that many interesting ideas seem to have been discarded without justification other than the field switching en masse to a different fad at some instant. Of late, I'm particularly fascinated by ideas in Cybernetics, but I don't see anyone else being interested in them right now. I think there might be interesting insights into both biological and artificial intelligence (with communication definitely being an important component; consciousness is a word I avoid till I can find a more concrete handle on it), but it's primarily based on interest/taste, rather than motivated goal chasing :-) (I'm more interested in concrete ideas from Wiener, Ashcroft, etc. rather than the fluff that came later as the word's usage got stretched beyond meaning, as is now happening with "AI")

dr_dshiv 7y ago
Yes to cybernetics. Its day will come again! If you go deep, it's a rabbit hole to discover why teleology in science is so controversial. Wiener said cybernetics started from the idea that Intelligence is all about decreasing local entropy.
_Microft 7y ago
Maybe Jürgen Schmidhuber's opinion on consciousness might be of interest? https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_am_j%C3%BCrgen_schmidhuber_ama/cp44iba/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_a...
carapace 7y ago
In re: cybernetics and psychology, Gregory Bateson said that the Neurolinguistic Programming folks achieved what he had been working towards, a cybernetic psychology. If you're interested, start with the very first books "Structure of Magic" vol I and II https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/964154.The_Structure_of_Magic_I https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/964154.The_Structure_of_... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821993.The_Structure_of_Magic_II https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821993.The_Structure_of_... Essentially, by modelling therapists' verbal patterns using Transformational Grammar a formal theory of mind was evolved that has lead to sophisticated algorithms for various kinds of psychological change. Unfortunately, a lot of pseudo-science and "woo" has grown up around it, but please don't let that distract you, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. - - - - In re: creating simple machines with intelligence, IMO cybernetics (i.e. what's in "Introduction to Cybernetics" by Ashby; I'm also not interested in fluff) is pretty obviously the way to go. Even the simple centrifugal governor "seems alive" in the words of early witnesses. Purposive behaviour is the domain of living systems, at least according to instinct and experience, eh? I think one could use cybernetics to inform the design of robotic systems using e.g. the kind of simple controllers David Wyland talks about at the HomeBrew Robotics Club in this video: https://archive.org/details/HBRobotics_Forth https://archive.org/details/HBRobotics_Forth He's not explicitly talking about cybernetics, of course, but I think he's got the right idea and cybernetics shows the way forward.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hamilyon2 7y ago

Bits and bytes, how they are layed out, transferred, read and written. Can't stop thinking of data structures

abj 7y ago

I can't stop thinking about applied fun theory to card game mechanics. I'm building a card game where you never leave the flow state. (I know there's been a lot of cash grab card games recently. I just genuinely enjoy card games.) Specifically this question - Why is soccer more widely played than checkers? Physical Mastery - repetitive exploration of real world ball physics encourages a sense of mastery. Checkers doesn't have this. I've built a physics sim into the card game to replicate this sense of building mastery through exploring the physics system to win. Mental Mastery - Both soccer players and checker players make choices that feel fun and meaningful. When trying to dribble around an opponent, they have multiple options they must chose (right or left, fakeout). The player must have a model of what their opponent might do and react based on that. Updating their model is a sense of mental mastery that can be rewarding and contribute to flow. Real Time - Soccer doesn't have turns. In checkers, waiting for the opponent can break the flow state if you already know your move. The demo allows players to play cards in real time. The catch is - when you run out of cards in hand you loose. Accessibility - People can just pick up a ball shaped object and ball. I built a demo in WebGL so people can just hop in. Simplicity of Rules and Depth of Choices - Instead of having a convoluted health system, the amount of cards in your hand are your health. This makes picking up the game easy, there's just one rule to keep in mind. This allows for a variety of fun choices because each card you play lowers your health. This creates a fun risk reward system with no additional rules. The other idea is to use the existing physics system that players are already familiar with. That way there's no tutorial - players already know how cards handle and drop in real life.

glofish 7y ago
I don't want to sound overly critical of your explanations but you seem to ignore the most important difference: We play soccer with our entire bodies, muscles, heart, legs, lungs get a workout. Not to insult the players but mind and thought processes are somewhat secondary, it is about the "lizard brain": attack and defend with instincts and reflexes. When you play checkers it is your mind that gets a workout. It is the intellect that gets a workout. The exact opposite of the soccer. There are almost no similarities between the two! Making it into a physics simulator does not make it a physical excercise...

dsaavy 7y ago

If you use Instagram I would encourage you to look at this profile: https://instagram.com/hunger4words https://instagram.com/hunger4words It’s a lady who is a speech therapist who has taught her dog to communicate with pre-programmed push buttons.

ralfd 7y ago
If that is real it is amazing!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_Microft 7y ago
I'll have a look again. Last time I checked though, it looked like random button presses with wishful interpretations for what it's worth.

DenisM 7y ago

I can get latched onto many subjects, most of them useless. Like, what is the best way to split firewood while living in an apartment building? Or what is the best RV for me (I'm not buying one until I spend X days renting)? It's really getting in the way of more worthwhile pursuits. 10 years ago I was quite engrossed in automatic layout of UI elements to automatically accommodate e.g. localized text of different size (Apple's iOS UI layout tools at the time were awfully crude, not sure about now). Around the same time I was much very into application state management (same problem solved by flux, but different approach). Having "solved" these two problems for my use case I have since moved on. Recently I am into mapping business workflows to data structures, visualizing them back, and then providing control over them, e.g. order/invoice/shipping processing in wholesale trade. Nifty stuff, and trickier than the other two things.