6 ms·

Urbit is a prank that has somehow lasted for a long time. If you look at their version of machine code, Hoon or whatever its called, it's purposefully obfuscate

by mjfl 5y ago

Urbit is a prank that has somehow lasted for a long time. If you look at their version of machine code, Hoon or whatever its called, it's purposefully obfuscated so that, just to add two numbers together requires I think 4 different instructions. I did my OS class final project on it 6 years ago...

tomphoolery 5y ago
my first reaction was "is this language descended from brainfuck??"
- astrange 5y ago
  Is that a problem? I've seen Haskell written in terms of Peano arithmetic and that's like the same thing. (* did not read the article yet)
dwb 5y ago
You could choose to not read it as a prank, then it might be more interesting. I don't doubt there is an amount of purposeful obfuscation in the naming at least, and there clearly is a desire to be different. But looking beyond the surface, there is a coherent system there that I think deserves being judged as such, if you're going to judge it at all.
lisper 5y ago
> Urbit is a prank I had Curtis pitch urbit to me in the very early days and I can assure you that he did not intend it to be a prank. He was deadly serious about it. I think his true motives were much darker. I think he wanted to start a cult following the model of L. Ron Hubbard. And I think he succeeded.
- vzcx 5y ago
  If you want the world to become Tlon, don't you need an Orbis Tertius? As someone who has never met Curtis but has been initiated into both the cult of urbit and the cult of lisp, I've sometimes wondered how familiar he was the works of the latter, as you can often see some familiar things when you squint, but it's covered up with strange materials, quite possibly of alien origins.
  - lisper 5y ago
    Curtis definitely was aware of Lisp. I pointed out to him that he seemed to be reinventing Lisp, but very badly. He actually acknowledged this, or at least acknowledged that this was a possibility. He specifically said that this was part of the Grand Plan (my description, not his): making Urbit radically different from anything that had gone before was an explicit design goal. That is one of the reasons I came to the conclusion that I did.
    - dwb 5y ago
      He strikes me as enough of a self-important dork to say (and mean) something like this, and what I’ve seen of his politics are extremely bad to me, but let’s not lose perspective: we’re talking about an open-source VM here. There’s no lock-in. If I got into it and then found out that it was worse than I’m seeing right now then I would shrug my shoulders and move on.
      - lisper 5y ago
        > There’s no lock-in. There is very rarely any externally visible lock-in. That's not how cults work. Cults work by building a community of people who perceive non-members as the enemy. Urbit builds that community by enticing geeks with the promise of something new and interesting and then keeps them in by leveraging the sunk-cost fallacy (people don't like to admit that all the effort they put into learning Hoon was a waste of time) and all the derision that comes from the outside from people who "don't get it".
        dwb 5y ago
        I still think this "cult" characterisation is a bit much. Even if Urbit does inspire something like what you're worried about, we're talking about, what, some people being annoying in the comments section? The "followers" spending their time on doomed technology that isn't ideal for their needs? An alleged racist accumulating a bit more cryptocurrency (itself possibly a doomed technology) than we'd like? Compare this with religious cults that ruin people's lives, separate them from their families, and so on.
sschueller 5y ago
Isn't Urbit the definition of a Pyramid scam?
- someguydave 5y ago
  does Urbit destroy the atmosphere too?

by mjfl 5y ago

tomphoolery 5y ago

my first reaction was "is this language descended from brainfuck??"

astrange 5y ago
Is that a problem? I've seen Haskell written in terms of Peano arithmetic and that's like the same thing. (* did not read the article yet)

dwb 5y ago

You could choose to not read it as a prank, then it might be more interesting. I don't doubt there is an amount of purposeful obfuscation in the naming at least, and there clearly is a desire to be different. But looking beyond the surface, there is a coherent system there that I think deserves being judged as such, if you're going to judge it at all.

lisper 5y ago

> Urbit is a prank I had Curtis pitch urbit to me in the very early days and I can assure you that he did not intend it to be a prank. He was deadly serious about it. I think his true motives were much darker. I think he wanted to start a cult following the model of L. Ron Hubbard. And I think he succeeded.

vzcx 5y ago
If you want the world to become Tlon, don't you need an Orbis Tertius? As someone who has never met Curtis but has been initiated into both the cult of urbit and the cult of lisp, I've sometimes wondered how familiar he was the works of the latter, as you can often see some familiar things when you squint, but it's covered up with strange materials, quite possibly of alien origins.
- lisper 5y ago
  Curtis definitely was aware of Lisp. I pointed out to him that he seemed to be reinventing Lisp, but very badly. He actually acknowledged this, or at least acknowledged that this was a possibility. He specifically said that this was part of the Grand Plan (my description, not his): making Urbit radically different from anything that had gone before was an explicit design goal. That is one of the reasons I came to the conclusion that I did.
  - dwb 5y ago
    He strikes me as enough of a self-important dork to say (and mean) something like this, and what I’ve seen of his politics are extremely bad to me, but let’s not lose perspective: we’re talking about an open-source VM here. There’s no lock-in. If I got into it and then found out that it was worse than I’m seeing right now then I would shrug my shoulders and move on.
    - lisper 5y ago
      > There’s no lock-in. There is very rarely any externally visible lock-in. That's not how cults work. Cults work by building a community of people who perceive non-members as the enemy. Urbit builds that community by enticing geeks with the promise of something new and interesting and then keeps them in by leveraging the sunk-cost fallacy (people don't like to admit that all the effort they put into learning Hoon was a waste of time) and all the derision that comes from the outside from people who "don't get it".
      - dwb 5y ago
        I still think this "cult" characterisation is a bit much. Even if Urbit does inspire something like what you're worried about, we're talking about, what, some people being annoying in the comments section? The "followers" spending their time on doomed technology that isn't ideal for their needs? An alleged racist accumulating a bit more cryptocurrency (itself possibly a doomed technology) than we'd like? Compare this with religious cults that ruin people's lives, separate them from their families, and so on.

sschueller 5y ago

Isn't Urbit the definition of a Pyramid scam?

someguydave 5y ago
does Urbit destroy the atmosphere too?