4 ms·

Huxley and Heinlein were born only 13 years apart, so now, over a century later, maybe we can lump them into, if not the same generation, at least the same Zeit

Huxley and Heinlein were born only 13 years apart, so now, over a century later, maybe we can lump them into, if not the same generation, at least the same Zeitgeist. Somewhere I'd read about a fighting-game AI which had access to all of the human player data (so not the spirit, but knowing the joystick inputs would be a good proxy for "pwn the technique") and was unbeatable, so the programmers nerfed it by giving it only a noisy representation of the human player's avatar's outputs, at which point it returned to satisfyingly mortal. Doesn't 三体 touch upon (sophons/wallfacers) a watch-from-inside/behind opponent? Tech debt as sophistication would explain its sign flip over time! It also gives a metaphor perhaps better than "paying off tech debt": it's good if a program is a bit witty, but bad when it starts smelling of the lamp? > "In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble." —AJP EDIT: Re: [-1,4] Just as implication allows only 3 possibilities out of 4, my wife likes to say (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42329631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42329631 ) that when riding, there should be 2 bodies but 3 minds: what you know, what the horse knows you know, and what you know the horse knows. The rider should have an accurate model of the horse's attention and intentions, but not the other way around. (in particular, you might be very worried about an emergency situation, but the horse should never realise this) I believe this habit helped her with her fencing, because there also we are attempting to hide some aspects of our attention and intentions from someone who is very closely monitoring our posture, in order to discern them. EDIT2: just as a prelude to a comment on distance: napoleonic sabre cavalry was terrified of an opponent coming up from behind left (strong to their weak) — that's why all the dashing portraits with jackets/cloaks "jauntily" thrown over the left shoulder; ultimately the fashion was very practical, both for defence and for impressing the ladies. Lermontov's karakul nabadi is a particular instance. Налетели ветры злые. Да с восточной стороны И сорвали тёмну шапку Ой да с моей буйной головы. Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urjAwPfFPqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urjAwPfFPqU

gsf_emergency 2y ago
The setup of opposing forces leads one to think in terms of entropy ("the fog of war", the manifold of possible mistakes, etc etc).. Then there's that story about the break even point between French and Mamluks iirc? (And what was the break even point between LGA and the Coalition?) Somewhere in between we might characterize tech debt; rococo doesn't turn to rubble overnight, & most of it is still around. Or maybe there are some relatively cheap ways to mitigate tech debt. Always backpropagating debugs to spec, for instance. So we could kick the (meta)grokking/turning point down the road https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nassim-taleb-scientific-discovery https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nassim-taleb-scien... >There's no built-in payoff for complexity (or for making things complex). "In academia," though, he says, "there is". [Make sure your phonebooth expands at around the rate that the range of your (melee) weapons/number of participants increase] And those promised tubes are annoyingly hard to find http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html?m=1 http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to... Thankfully, Derek has somewhat identified the opponent as, not other scientists, but biology/evolution..
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > There's no built-in payoff for complexity (or for making things complex). Says the hideously (when compared to single-celled organisms) complicated h sap. Then again, I think social darwinists ought to admit that it's the single-celled organisms who have the fitness they claim to be looking for?
  - gsf_emergency 2y ago
    Vonnegut has admitted it?
gsf_emergency 2y ago
To riff on your wife's grokking, the number of effective participants increases faster than what one would usually expect: there's what you know,what you know what other academics know, and what other academics know you know Ditto for "industry" but there the default data structure (nominally) is ____, so perhaps sophistication is monotonic (not accounting yet for immigration, oligarchal or otherwise psychopathic/imbecilic, modelled as using weapons of uncertain range) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453789
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  For fog of war: > "Everything is very simple in industry, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen production." —not CPGvC Have you heard Niklaus Wirth's joke about God nerfing academia? (via https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/niklaus-wirth-or-the-importance-of-being-simple/ https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/niklaus-wirth-or-the-importanc... ) > On the seventh day of creation God looked at his achievement. He was pretty happy at the result. He started looking at the list of professions and felt good: all —policeman, minister, nurse, street sweeper, interior designer, opera singer, supermarket cashier...— had some advantages and some disadvantages. But then He got to the University Professor row. The Advantages entry was impressive: long holidays, decent salary, you basically get to do what you want, and so on; but the Disadvantages entry was empty! That could not be. For a moment, a cloud obscured His face. He thought and thought and finally His smile came back. What had happened is that He had invented colleagues.
  - gsf_emergency 2y ago
    3F's I've been mulling about while mucking about with VR triages (Or, trust is the sword that hypernormal&weird (mandies&mechies?) cleaves?) Fooser Friend Fcolleague The thing that has been low-key disturbing me about YC is one gets creeped out both as users AAND friends of YC founders. (it's a simple case of not paying enough attn to the Mandala side of things, I wonder?) Clearly the inner circle is of Fcolleagues.. (dang seems dangdy af which makes me wonder as well) (Aside: as I see it they missed the possible point SPJ made for HW to be mandala oriented because he cared about SW; rocks, smoothed by friction, have a special place in his heart) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5906365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5906365 Ah ha maybe maybe not For some profs outside CS (but not Rainer I guess) the list includes (grad) students If the unharvestable part of friction is called entropy, disproportionately produced by the lowest entropy aspects.. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now >redistribution It will take a long time for piners for noah to get that their enemies trust their gov (& maybe even one another), To repeat your venn in words "all you need to solidarify around is freedom+cash"?

gsf_emergency 2y ago

The setup of opposing forces leads one to think in terms of entropy ("the fog of war", the manifold of possible mistakes, etc etc).. Then there's that story about the break even point between French and Mamluks iirc? (And what was the break even point between LGA and the Coalition?) Somewhere in between we might characterize tech debt; rococo doesn't turn to rubble overnight, & most of it is still around. Or maybe there are some relatively cheap ways to mitigate tech debt. Always backpropagating debugs to spec, for instance. So we could kick the (meta)grokking/turning point down the road https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nassim-taleb-scientific-discovery https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nassim-taleb-scien... >There's no built-in payoff for complexity (or for making things complex). "In academia," though, he says, "there is". [Make sure your phonebooth expands at around the rate that the range of your (melee) weapons/number of participants increase] And those promised tubes are annoyingly hard to find http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html?m=1 http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to... Thankfully, Derek has somewhat identified the opponent as, not other scientists, but biology/evolution..

082349872349872 2y ago
> There's no built-in payoff for complexity (or for making things complex). Says the hideously (when compared to single-celled organisms) complicated h sap. Then again, I think social darwinists ought to admit that it's the single-celled organisms who have the fitness they claim to be looking for?
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  Vonnegut has admitted it?

gsf_emergency 2y ago

To riff on your wife's grokking, the number of effective participants increases faster than what one would usually expect: there's what you know,what you know what other academics know, and what other academics know you know Ditto for "industry" but there the default data structure (nominally) is ____, so perhaps sophistication is monotonic (not accounting yet for immigration, oligarchal or otherwise psychopathic/imbecilic, modelled as using weapons of uncertain range) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453789

082349872349872 2y ago
For fog of war: > "Everything is very simple in industry, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen production." —not CPGvC Have you heard Niklaus Wirth's joke about God nerfing academia? (via https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/niklaus-wirth-or-the-importance-of-being-simple/ https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/niklaus-wirth-or-the-importanc... ) > On the seventh day of creation God looked at his achievement. He was pretty happy at the result. He started looking at the list of professions and felt good: all —policeman, minister, nurse, street sweeper, interior designer, opera singer, supermarket cashier...— had some advantages and some disadvantages. But then He got to the University Professor row. The Advantages entry was impressive: long holidays, decent salary, you basically get to do what you want, and so on; but the Disadvantages entry was empty! That could not be. For a moment, a cloud obscured His face. He thought and thought and finally His smile came back. What had happened is that He had invented colleagues.
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  3F's I've been mulling about while mucking about with VR triages (Or, trust is the sword that hypernormal&weird (mandies&mechies?) cleaves?) Fooser Friend Fcolleague The thing that has been low-key disturbing me about YC is one gets creeped out both as users AAND friends of YC founders. (it's a simple case of not paying enough attn to the Mandala side of things, I wonder?) Clearly the inner circle is of Fcolleagues.. (dang seems dangdy af which makes me wonder as well) (Aside: as I see it they missed the possible point SPJ made for HW to be mandala oriented because he cared about SW; rocks, smoothed by friction, have a special place in his heart) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5906365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5906365 Ah ha maybe maybe not For some profs outside CS (but not Rainer I guess) the list includes (grad) students If the unharvestable part of friction is called entropy, disproportionately produced by the lowest entropy aspects.. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now >redistribution It will take a long time for piners for noah to get that their enemies trust their gov (& maybe even one another), To repeat your venn in words "all you need to solidarify around is freedom+cash"?