3 ms·

You’re all going to hate on me for this, so first let me say that this is amazing. I’m awed by it. Truly. And I am very familiar with minecraft and even have b

You’re all going to hate on me for this, so first let me say that this is amazing. I’m awed by it. Truly. And I am very familiar with minecraft and even have been known to do a bit of redstone hacking myself I love seeing the cool things some folks do with it. (I’ve some redstone sorting algorithms and I’m esp fond of redstone Turing machines!) But this! This is like sending a person to mars! And I have the same question for the geniuses who did this that I have for the ones working on that: Aren’t there cures for cancer and perovskite solar cells to discover? Why are you using your excellent minds, and apparently enormous amount of free time, building cool but very slow virtual computers out of virtual sand, when you could be proving the smoothness of the Navier–Stokes equations? It’s one thing, to my mind, when athletes climb huge mountains because they’re there. It’s quite another, again, to me, when obvious genius goes to waste. There. I feel better for having said it. I only wish I could say it to Elon Musk re Mars, and get my son to spend a fifth as much time on his math homework as he does playing minecraft. This incredibly cool hack is just going to exacerbate the situation! :-)

glitchc 4y ago
Think of it as art rather than science. Do we question why someone created a piece of art, or whether they could have spent their time better by creating a different piece of art?
- abrax3141 4y ago
  Hmmm. Okay. Fair point. Although it actually is science. And these folks could be doing real science.
  - abrax3141 4y ago
    Ps. I’ve elsewhere agreed with you. It is art and I was wrong to criticize it. (It’s too late to edit my previous reply .)
  - imtringued 4y ago
    No they can't. Have you ever tried to do "science" aka a PhD?
    - abrax3141 4y ago
      Uh, like, yeah, I have one. And over a hundred peer-reviewed publications. You?
b112 4y ago
I am trying to follow ycomb guidelines, and assume the best intent here, but there is just so much wrong about how you view scientific research, and play, and hobby, and learning, and duty, that after rewriting my reply 3 times, I cannot imagine you're not trolling. If you're not trolling, you need to seriously step back, and think about how play=learning, how any scientific research=benefits us all. Going to Mars is not good?! A waste?! There is so much wrong with this thought alone, so much broken logic, that it is horrifying to me. A project such as going to Mars, will yield immense scientific research and output, benefiting humanity as a whole. Just the r&d into material research alone, engineering, will benefit endless other disciplines. It as if you see each thing as siloed, as if doing thing x, has zero benefit to y. I wonder, do you employ this same logic for yourself? That is, you have no hobbies, nothing but work, and spend every moment working? If you were a farmer, feeding thousands, would you be upset if you make bushes shapely at home, if you planted decorative plants? I literally cannot view your comment in a positive light.
- abrax3141 4y ago
  > A project such as going to Mars, will yield immense scientific research and output, benefiting humanity as a whole. I’m not trolling. I really do disagree with this in good faith. You can get the same materials research etc benefits by doing something that directly benefits humankind. Also, I don’t think that Musk thinks that it’s the spin-off stuff that matters. He honestly and in good faith wants to expand humans to another planet. He’s said this innumerable times. I just disagree that anything anyone feels like doing is as valuable as anything else. There are value decisions involved. I’m not saying that anyone should be enjoined or forced or any such thing. But maybe enticed?
  - b112 4y ago
    Expanding human knowledge and reach is good, not bad, and does benefit mankind. The type of thought process you are employing is not good for humanity. If we followed your thought process, we would still be in caves.
    - 4y ago
vintermann 4y ago
It's a reasonable thing to ask if you think intelligence is some fungible quantity that can be applied wherever you wish. But that's in "so wrong it's not even wrong" territory. Sammyuri's interest and focus is microprocessor design. I'm sure he has a future in it (as far as I understand he's fairly young). Curing cancer isn't something he's likely to be good at, but who knows, maybe the chips he helps design will help with it one day. Doing this thing which no one has done before, has surely given him unique perspectives on a lot of things (as well as a lot of knowledge about CPU architecture most of us don't have). Maybe he will combine it with other knowledgeable people's unique perspectives and make wondrous discoveries. Or he might do none of that, and just inspire a lot of other people to go down that path. Don't think of intelligence as something that can exist in a vacuum. Let Sammyuri be Sammyuri.
- abrax3141 4y ago
  Time is definitely fungible, and youth is fleeting, and us old guys wish we’d spent them both differently. However, I’ve elsewhere in this thread become convinced that you and the others are right. Folks shouldn’t be criticized for following their passion. (Well, I guess I can think of rare cases where their passions may be so anomalous as to be worth criticism, but this isn’t one of those.)
rockbruno 4y ago
The world has 7 billion people. While I agree with the overall feeling that every single human should be dedicating themselves to the evolution of the species, it only takes about 10 seconds of reading the news to realise that humanity is complex and everyone is different. Some people just don't think like that, and there's nothing wrong with it.
imtringued 4y ago
>Aren’t there cures for cancer and perovskite solar cells to discover? Why are you using your excellent minds, and apparently enormous amount of free time, building cool but very slow virtual computers out of virtual sand, when you could be proving the smoothness of the Navier–Stokes equations? Because in the real world there are people in power who do not want those things to happen, unless it disproportionately benefits them at the expense of the people actually doing the work. In Minecraft there are no busy bodies, gate keepers, monopolists, financial institutions or regulations preventing people from doing peaceful intellectual activities. The certification necessary to become a computer scientist takes 16 years, in Minecraft you don't need any certification you can just do it on day one. The other reason is that building a computer in redstone isn't that impressive, it is like building your own computer in a CS course which has been done over and over again by many students.

glitchc 4y ago

Think of it as art rather than science. Do we question why someone created a piece of art, or whether they could have spent their time better by creating a different piece of art?

abrax3141 4y ago
Hmmm. Okay. Fair point. Although it actually is science. And these folks could be doing real science.
- abrax3141 4y ago
  Ps. I’ve elsewhere agreed with you. It is art and I was wrong to criticize it. (It’s too late to edit my previous reply .)
- imtringued 4y ago
  No they can't. Have you ever tried to do "science" aka a PhD?
  - abrax3141 4y ago
    Uh, like, yeah, I have one. And over a hundred peer-reviewed publications. You?

b112 4y ago

I am trying to follow ycomb guidelines, and assume the best intent here, but there is just so much wrong about how you view scientific research, and play, and hobby, and learning, and duty, that after rewriting my reply 3 times, I cannot imagine you're not trolling. If you're not trolling, you need to seriously step back, and think about how play=learning, how any scientific research=benefits us all. Going to Mars is not good?! A waste?! There is so much wrong with this thought alone, so much broken logic, that it is horrifying to me. A project such as going to Mars, will yield immense scientific research and output, benefiting humanity as a whole. Just the r&d into material research alone, engineering, will benefit endless other disciplines. It as if you see each thing as siloed, as if doing thing x, has zero benefit to y. I wonder, do you employ this same logic for yourself? That is, you have no hobbies, nothing but work, and spend every moment working? If you were a farmer, feeding thousands, would you be upset if you make bushes shapely at home, if you planted decorative plants? I literally cannot view your comment in a positive light.

abrax3141 4y ago
> A project such as going to Mars, will yield immense scientific research and output, benefiting humanity as a whole. I’m not trolling. I really do disagree with this in good faith. You can get the same materials research etc benefits by doing something that directly benefits humankind. Also, I don’t think that Musk thinks that it’s the spin-off stuff that matters. He honestly and in good faith wants to expand humans to another planet. He’s said this innumerable times. I just disagree that anything anyone feels like doing is as valuable as anything else. There are value decisions involved. I’m not saying that anyone should be enjoined or forced or any such thing. But maybe enticed?
- b112 4y ago
  Expanding human knowledge and reach is good, not bad, and does benefit mankind. The type of thought process you are employing is not good for humanity. If we followed your thought process, we would still be in caves.
  - 4y ago

vintermann 4y ago

It's a reasonable thing to ask if you think intelligence is some fungible quantity that can be applied wherever you wish. But that's in "so wrong it's not even wrong" territory. Sammyuri's interest and focus is microprocessor design. I'm sure he has a future in it (as far as I understand he's fairly young). Curing cancer isn't something he's likely to be good at, but who knows, maybe the chips he helps design will help with it one day. Doing this thing which no one has done before, has surely given him unique perspectives on a lot of things (as well as a lot of knowledge about CPU architecture most of us don't have). Maybe he will combine it with other knowledgeable people's unique perspectives and make wondrous discoveries. Or he might do none of that, and just inspire a lot of other people to go down that path. Don't think of intelligence as something that can exist in a vacuum. Let Sammyuri be Sammyuri.

abrax3141 4y ago
Time is definitely fungible, and youth is fleeting, and us old guys wish we’d spent them both differently. However, I’ve elsewhere in this thread become convinced that you and the others are right. Folks shouldn’t be criticized for following their passion. (Well, I guess I can think of rare cases where their passions may be so anomalous as to be worth criticism, but this isn’t one of those.)

rockbruno 4y ago

The world has 7 billion people. While I agree with the overall feeling that every single human should be dedicating themselves to the evolution of the species, it only takes about 10 seconds of reading the news to realise that humanity is complex and everyone is different. Some people just don't think like that, and there's nothing wrong with it.

imtringued 4y ago

>Aren’t there cures for cancer and perovskite solar cells to discover? Why are you using your excellent minds, and apparently enormous amount of free time, building cool but very slow virtual computers out of virtual sand, when you could be proving the smoothness of the Navier–Stokes equations? Because in the real world there are people in power who do not want those things to happen, unless it disproportionately benefits them at the expense of the people actually doing the work. In Minecraft there are no busy bodies, gate keepers, monopolists, financial institutions or regulations preventing people from doing peaceful intellectual activities. The certification necessary to become a computer scientist takes 16 years, in Minecraft you don't need any certification you can just do it on day one. The other reason is that building a computer in redstone isn't that impressive, it is like building your own computer in a CS course which has been done over and over again by many students.