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The Power and Beauty of Incrementalism
- puttycat 1y agoThat's also the beauty of evolution–there's no goal in that search algorithm, just open-ended incremental exploration which eventually grows beautiful things. See Kenneth Stanley's book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25670869-why-greatness-cannot-be-planned https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25670869-why-greatness-c...
- lovestory 1y agoThis is the second time someone has recommended this book on HN so for sure it can't be a bad read. I will be starting it tonight
- michaelsbradley 1y agoThe book may be a good read or bad one, I am unfamiliar with it. However, terrible recommendations are made on HN all the time, as well good ones, so I’d caution against “recommended a few times on HN” (on its own!) as an indicator of much anything. --- EDIT: changed wording from “multiple times” to “a few times” to be more clear.
- nine_k 1y agoIt may be an indicator of popularity / mindshare of certain ideas. It says little about the ideas' substance, but may still be very important in practice, if you deal with people.
- michaelsbradley 1y agoThe git cli tool is mentioned countless times over many years on HN, surely an indicator that it’s in popular use by the commentatorship here. I’ve seen many (seemingly informed) mentions of the jj cli tool in the last year — not unreasonable to conclude interest in it is growing among folks here, and enough to pique my curiosity. I responded to: This is the second time [I’ve seen that] someone has recommended this book on HN
- gsf_emergency_2 1y agoFrom Ken Stanley's wiki >He left both Uber AI Labs and the University of Central Florida in 2020 to lead the Open-Endedness team at OpenAI as a Research Science Manager.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI've always found that an "evolutionary" approach to design is important[0]. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/evolutionary-design-specification/ https://littlegreenviper.com/evolutionary-design-specificati...
- ants_everywhere 1y ago> That's also the beauty of evolution–there's no goal in that search algorithm, Yes there is, there's a fitness function, both in biological evolution and evolutionary algorithms
- IAmBroom 1y agoThat is not a goal. It is an adaptive strategy to meet changing constraints.
- layer8 1y agoI’d argue it isn’t a strategy either. You can’t not be subject to it.
- layer8 1y agoThere’s no goal in biological evolution. Being subject to natural selection based on the present environment is an inevitability. You could argue that mutation isn’t inevitable, but its presence and degree is subject to natural selection as well.
- _lex 1y agoIncorrect. The search algo has a goal: to find out. You just think it has no goal because you didnt think in quantum.
- jacknews 1y agowoah this seems like tribalism run riot. How about just living, and learning to deal with, the rest of society.
- bogwog 1y agoYeah, it seems easier (and healthier?) to make friends with your current neighbors than to try to build a concentration camp of friends.
- IAmBroom 1y agoIn this age, is living next to "10 besties" really needed? I have one neighbor that I'm really close to - yay! I can borrow their wheelbarrow, or they can borrow my sprinkler attachment, without asking, and return it promptly (to remain friends!). We watch each other's dogs on vacation. All of this is much easier than if I had to use a farther-away friend. But my other neighbors are just ... small-f friends. Friendly. I would even consider asking them to borrow a cup of sugar. But as nice as it would be to have ALL my besties nearby, we do just fine with phone calls, texts, social media, and seeing each other at events. I do agree with the advantage of incremental change. I suck at completing big tasks. But if I view each step as a small task, I can get there.
- neighman 1y agoHow many of them would you trust to watch your 8mo old while you go out with your spouse for a few hours? Or would be willing to take your kids to school? Or help you repair the rotted subfloor in your bathroom? I don't understand why most comments here are perversely interpreting the goals of the article. Obviously you have different life and relationship philosophies, no need to knock people doing it the way they want.
- IAmBroom 1y agoI'm not knocking anyone. I'm asking if this is as important as it used to be. Also, I'm the one who watches my closest-friend neighbor's kids in emergency sitations. I've pointed out that physically+emotionally close relationship ARE important.
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- mgfist 1y agoIn a time when people are becoming less social and more isolated, I think creating communities like this is super cool.
- atemerev 1y agoI am in awe how people can talk about buying 1.8 million homes like it's nothing big.
- Jtsummers 1y agoPer the table, that was 4 homes and 5 adults. That's $450k/home and $360k/person.
- tolerance 1y agoThe people appalled by this practice have good reason to be and I don't think the people who support it are considering the consequences, which aren't necessarily bad but subject to one's own political ideology. And by that I mean the general ideals that a person has on how people should materially cooperate and not some popular label imposed by a two-party system, for example. I wonder what the responses would be if you asked the people in this "bestie row", their raw opinions on concepts like "diversity", "inclusivity", or whatever.
- YesThatTom2 1y agoI wrote about this a decade ago https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2945077 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2945077