6 ms·

I think you are being more than bit harsh. This is not an academic paper, it is not "A New Kind of Science", it is a fun personal project that the author took

I think you are being more than bit harsh. This is not an academic paper, it is not "A New Kind of Science", it is a fun personal project that the author took a lot of time to document well. I think the author should be applauded not told to read textbooks from the early 1990s.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I thought I was applauding the author and suggesting they read up on some antecedents.
- akkartik 5y ago
  Perhaps you could elaborate on some concrete benefits that reading up on some antecedents provide here. Has there been any work combining A-life with GoL? I've got some passing familiarity with the A-life literature, and I'm not aware of anything like OP. So it's not clear what benefit mentioning Tierra has to a reader beyond name-dropping.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    GoL is one very specific cellular automata. There was lots of work in the 80s and 90s on CA's investigating their properties, and some of them turn out to be much more interesting from an evolutionary-ish perspective than the GoL one. That could be useful if you were interested in evolving CAs. Tierra was among the first documented examples of evolving code/evolving rules and led to many other ALife experiments with simple rules governing evolution yet complicated outcomes. The work done then didn't lead to any particular conclusions, but it could be inspirational when thinking about how to apply selection pressure, what degrees of freedom to allow, and the nature of the rules controlling the CA. I wasn't name-dropping Tierra, I was giving it as one entry point (and an early one at that) into the prior work on this sort of thing. I could have left the name out, and then some other commenter (perhaps even you) would have said "oh yeah, why not actually give some examples?"
    - akkartik 5y ago
      Ok then, agree to disagree. Not being aware of merely interesting work is not ignorance or a shame. One nonlinear phenomenon is not by default relevant to another. Checking what someone cited is "Science!" not Science.
- mattcwilson 5y ago
  “don’t want to complain”, “near-ignorance”, and ”a shame” don’t ring of applause.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I'm totally ignorant of lots of things. And if I tried to do stuff in those domains, it would probably be a shame that I didn't know what had been done before (though I concede there's some chance that it might not be).
    - Method-X 5y ago
      You may not have intended to come across as rude, but you did.
    - alphabet9000 5y ago
      It can be very rewarding to jump right into a new creative project (e.g. cellular automata, drawing, etc) without any knowledge of what's already been done before. When you approach a something from a clean state perspective, you won't have any references of what's what, and all of your discoveries will be the result of your own creative experimentation. If at some point you feel like you've reached a limit to discovering things, you will naturally become curious about what other people have done -- to see what else is out there that you didn't find on your own. Only then do you see the sort of stuff that's already out there, and it's way more exciting, because you appreciate it how difficult it was for others to reach unfamiliar states you didn't reach on your own. That same bewilderment might not happen if you read about all the amazing things that already exist before you even get started. If you read or see too much of what's already been done first, you might just end up feeling starting from scratch is boring, because it isn't as interesting as the more advanced stuff other people had already done.
      - thealig 5y ago
        If you read or see too much of what's already been done first, you might just end up feeling starting from scratch is boring, because it isn't as interesting as the more advanced stuff other people had already done This is pretty much my feeling in every side project idea I've thought up :D
ubadair 5y ago
I once posted a nascent open-source project to reddit and it got shredded, but someone pointed me to some prior art. I studied the suggested materials, and thanks to that feedback my project was eventually successful. Now even CERN uses it in some LHCb software. ShowHN needs comments like Paul's. Tact and expertise never come equally in the same package. We should appreciate this and grow some thicker skin in the meantime.
- FranzFerdiNaN 5y ago
  > Tact and expertise never come equally in the same package. There is no reason at all for an expert to act like an asshole, and being an expert should not mean that bad behaviour should be tolerated from them. In fact, experts should be held to a higher standard, because they are examples people look up to.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    But their feedback can still be useful even if it wasn’t delivered tactfully. It’s not wise to outright dismiss expert feedback simply because they were a little mean.
    - fenomas 5y ago
      That begs the question, doesn't it? If someone visits your project and says "shame you're so ignorant of this topic, maybe read a textbook", it doesn't matter whether that person is the world's foremost expert or the town drunk, it's useless feedback either way. Whereas, if the feedback was rude but also pinpoint-accurate and incredibly actionable, I don't think there'd be a big subthread about it.
      - nkrisc 5y ago
        Well the example you gave is bad feedback, and would be bad feedback from anyone. But that's not really the point of the discussion at hand, as I understood it. The discussion is about useful feedback that is delivered in a manner that may not be the most kind, but being unkind doesn't make useful feedback and less useful. After all, the feedback that sparked this discussion does seem like useful feedback even if it came across as a bit dismissive.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

I thought I was applauding the author and suggesting they read up on some antecedents.

akkartik 5y ago
Perhaps you could elaborate on some concrete benefits that reading up on some antecedents provide here. Has there been any work combining A-life with GoL? I've got some passing familiarity with the A-life literature, and I'm not aware of anything like OP. So it's not clear what benefit mentioning Tierra has to a reader beyond name-dropping.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  GoL is one very specific cellular automata. There was lots of work in the 80s and 90s on CA's investigating their properties, and some of them turn out to be much more interesting from an evolutionary-ish perspective than the GoL one. That could be useful if you were interested in evolving CAs. Tierra was among the first documented examples of evolving code/evolving rules and led to many other ALife experiments with simple rules governing evolution yet complicated outcomes. The work done then didn't lead to any particular conclusions, but it could be inspirational when thinking about how to apply selection pressure, what degrees of freedom to allow, and the nature of the rules controlling the CA. I wasn't name-dropping Tierra, I was giving it as one entry point (and an early one at that) into the prior work on this sort of thing. I could have left the name out, and then some other commenter (perhaps even you) would have said "oh yeah, why not actually give some examples?"
  - akkartik 5y ago
    Ok then, agree to disagree. Not being aware of merely interesting work is not ignorance or a shame. One nonlinear phenomenon is not by default relevant to another. Checking what someone cited is "Science!" not Science.
mattcwilson 5y ago
“don’t want to complain”, “near-ignorance”, and ”a shame” don’t ring of applause.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I'm totally ignorant of lots of things. And if I tried to do stuff in those domains, it would probably be a shame that I didn't know what had been done before (though I concede there's some chance that it might not be).
  - Method-X 5y ago
    You may not have intended to come across as rude, but you did.
  - alphabet9000 5y ago
    It can be very rewarding to jump right into a new creative project (e.g. cellular automata, drawing, etc) without any knowledge of what's already been done before. When you approach a something from a clean state perspective, you won't have any references of what's what, and all of your discoveries will be the result of your own creative experimentation. If at some point you feel like you've reached a limit to discovering things, you will naturally become curious about what other people have done -- to see what else is out there that you didn't find on your own. Only then do you see the sort of stuff that's already out there, and it's way more exciting, because you appreciate it how difficult it was for others to reach unfamiliar states you didn't reach on your own. That same bewilderment might not happen if you read about all the amazing things that already exist before you even get started. If you read or see too much of what's already been done first, you might just end up feeling starting from scratch is boring, because it isn't as interesting as the more advanced stuff other people had already done.
    - thealig 5y ago
      If you read or see too much of what's already been done first, you might just end up feeling starting from scratch is boring, because it isn't as interesting as the more advanced stuff other people had already done This is pretty much my feeling in every side project idea I've thought up :D

ubadair 5y ago

I once posted a nascent open-source project to reddit and it got shredded, but someone pointed me to some prior art. I studied the suggested materials, and thanks to that feedback my project was eventually successful. Now even CERN uses it in some LHCb software. ShowHN needs comments like Paul's. Tact and expertise never come equally in the same package. We should appreciate this and grow some thicker skin in the meantime.

FranzFerdiNaN 5y ago
> Tact and expertise never come equally in the same package. There is no reason at all for an expert to act like an asshole, and being an expert should not mean that bad behaviour should be tolerated from them. In fact, experts should be held to a higher standard, because they are examples people look up to.
- nkrisc 5y ago
  But their feedback can still be useful even if it wasn’t delivered tactfully. It’s not wise to outright dismiss expert feedback simply because they were a little mean.
  - fenomas 5y ago
    That begs the question, doesn't it? If someone visits your project and says "shame you're so ignorant of this topic, maybe read a textbook", it doesn't matter whether that person is the world's foremost expert or the town drunk, it's useless feedback either way. Whereas, if the feedback was rude but also pinpoint-accurate and incredibly actionable, I don't think there'd be a big subthread about it.
    - nkrisc 5y ago
      Well the example you gave is bad feedback, and would be bad feedback from anyone. But that's not really the point of the discussion at hand, as I understood it. The discussion is about useful feedback that is delivered in a manner that may not be the most kind, but being unkind doesn't make useful feedback and less useful. After all, the feedback that sparked this discussion does seem like useful feedback even if it came across as a bit dismissive.