breuleux

41 ms·

451.
by breuleux 10y ago
I think it makes sense for an intelligent civilization not to expand, if you consider the problem of synchronizing over vast interstellar distances. If it takes years to exchange messages and resources back and forth between two colonies, i
452.
Insert Language Name Here – How to make interesting little languages(breuleux.net)
1 points by breuleux 10y ago|0 comments
453.
by breuleux 10y ago
I don't think that's relevant. It may be true that we do not have free will in prison, nor in that very contrived scenario you've cooked up, but that has no bearing on whether we have free will or not when we aren't im
454.
by breuleux 10y ago
> there is nothing someone could know about you, the sun, and the rest of the universe that would let them predict with certainty whether you'll go for a walk or not. Nothing someone could know about me? If someone knew everything
455.
by breuleux 10y ago
Overbroad? "Étranger", in French, is just as broad as "alien". It can be used for people, places, things, and more. Save for the ET meaning, any use of "alien" or "foreign" can be translated to "
456.
by breuleux 10y ago
I kind of feel the exact opposite: free will could only be meaningful if it was completely deterministic. I mean, think about it for a second. You have a choice between A and B, and you freely choose A. From your definition it seems that if
457.
by breuleux 10y ago
If a person's choice is mostly determined by the state of their brain at the moment of choosing, would that count as a "prior condition"? It would mean the choice is mostly determined by their "self", but the defini
458.
by breuleux 11y ago
I find it far-fetched, but you're right, it is fun to think about :) To be fair, far-fetched things happen all the time, the trick is that we're usually wrong about which ones do.
459.
by breuleux 11y ago
> The reason time dilates as you approach the speed of light is because the faster a particle moves, the more the main loop must access that particle, and the more the particle's state may be in a "being processed" lock wh
460.
by breuleux 11y ago
I feel these limitations are pretty central to the way our universe works, and that without them the universe would be very deeply different. You can only "simplify" the world so much before it becomes something else entirely, or
461.
by breuleux 11y ago
That could happen, but I don't think it makes much sense for it to happen on a large scale, so I wouldn't put a lot of probability on it. Entertainment is the most likely use for that kind of simulation, but I like to imagine they
462.
by breuleux 11y ago
> if at any point in the future, we ever run even one simulation of the world at our current time, then our odds are 50/50 of being in that simulation That's the contention, though. Someone in the future might simulate some unk
463.
by breuleux 11y ago
> Another interesting thought is if we ever become capable of simulating such a universe, it seems much more likely than not we're also a simulation, since there's a possibility for each simulation to produce it's own simu
464.
by breuleux 11y ago
I'm aware, but I think the efficiency of these methods is rather circumstantial: they work well because of the way our computers are organized. What you are comparing are two simulation methods, with are both very far removed from wh
465.
by breuleux 11y ago
I don't know if that would work as well as it sounds. I mean, I'm not observing what's going on in China at the moment, but it will certainly impact my life in some way, if only through the butterfly effect. In the worst case
466.
by breuleux 11y ago
A universe can't really "simulate itself". There is inherent overhead to simulation, so a perfect simulation of a physical system would have to be larger and slower than the system it's simulating. Any simulation worth
467.
by breuleux 11y ago
Well... what kind of evidence could demonstrate a universe isn't simulated? Continuousness, perhaps, but I don't think it is possible to prove that a universe isn't discrete unless you can measure with infinite precision. Eve
468.
by breuleux 11y ago
> They found that indentation level had a statistically significant effect on comprehension, and optimal indentation fell somewhere between 2 and 4 spaces. There's your answer. 3.
469.
by breuleux 11y ago
> the "rockputer" can't change its behavior based on its inputs in a way that improves its chances of survival Yes it can. Some natural events, for example a flood or an earthquake, can destroy parts of the rockputer. It i
470.
by breuleux 11y ago
There's always something to interact with. If you had a conscious being made out of star systems, it wouldn't meaningfully interact with anything within our lifetime, but over billions of billions of years, it would presumably shi
471.
by breuleux 11y ago
> If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. I don't think this is as absu
472.
by breuleux 11y ago
The online REPL for my compile-to-js language uses JSPM to load NPM packages: http://www.earl-grey.io/repl.html Try "require: markdown", for example. I can put up a JavaScript version if it would be useful to anyo
473.
by breuleux 11y ago
It's debatable whether "simple and regular syntax" is a strength or a weakness. Lisp/Scheme might be too regular for their own good. Consider the following statements in Scheme, for instance: (lambda x (+ x x))
474.
by breuleux 11y ago
Probably a little, but I don't think it would have made a big difference. It takes a certain amount of code before it becomes clear that the design has a flaw, and it's going to be the same amount of effort to adapt it, whether th
475.
by breuleux 11y ago
It depends on a couple of factors. Personally I always write subtraction as "x - y", so I never have any issues. Also, if undeclared variables are a compile-time error, the compiler will (probably) complain loudly about "x-y&
476.
by breuleux 11y ago
I think that's a neat idea. I've thought about it, but I've never used Go personally and I wasn't sure just how much it would help. I imagine it works best for languages with good static properties/tools for code an
477.
by breuleux 11y ago
Ah, yeah, the link to the REPL in the GitHub repository was broken (I figure that's where you got it). I fixed it. As the other commenter pointed out, the real link is http://breuleux.github.io/earl-grey/repl.html
478.
by breuleux 11y ago
I wouldn't say Lisp-like syntax is necessary for a macro system. It helps a bit... but all things considered, I believe pattern matching is a bigger boon to macro writing than syntax per se. For those it may interest, I have made a lan
479.
by breuleux 11y ago
S-expressions are not obvious "just by looking" either. Don't forget you had to learn what they were and how they worked. You know that `(a b c)` is a list of three elements, that the first element can be extracted with the `
480.
by breuleux 11y ago
I think most people have an irrational dislike of s-expressions, but that at the same time, s-expressions are not as good as their proponents think they are. There's a certain aesthetic "purity" to them that's seductive,

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