placebo

13 ms·

91.
by placebo 7y ago
> All human models of reality are flawed. Definitely. I wholeheartedly subscribe to this view ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong ). The thinking mind will always be confined to models. The way I se
92.
by placebo 8y ago
My exact sentiments. This isn't adding anything of value as an HN comment but I just wanted to share my appreciation of this book as well as my frustration that there are only 24 hours in a day...
93.
by placebo 8y ago
> it implies that it's all zero sum and there's nothing that's ever unconditionally better or worse than anything else Not necessarily - to start with, a good trade-off is unconditionally better than a bad trade-off. Als
94.
by placebo 8y ago
This whole thing about character flaws and self control reminded me of the following passage from Raymond Smullyan's "This Book Needs No Title": I know one woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I have to smoke; I choose
95.
by placebo 8y ago
Thanks for the link - I loved its accuracy and humour :) In many ways, I think it's possible to apply some of the good answers here to any "how many X have you been to" question.
96.
by placebo 8y ago
This assumes the only way to persuade someone to change their minds is via unpleasant confrontation. In my experience this is very rarely needed. You're right that a lot of confidence is required though, but it is the type that is root
97.
by placebo 8y ago
My take on it is that it just boils down to what your highest insights are about what is important in life. If you believe that the maximum we can hope for is just to be sophisticated animals, acting in a sophisticated jungle, aiming for mo
98.
by placebo 8y ago
"In the latest paper, Yehudayoff and his collaborators define learnability as the ability to make predictions about a large data set by sampling a small number of data points. The link with Cantor’s problem is that there are infinitel
99.
by placebo 8y ago
More software development options give you more freedom to choose a path that gives the best solution to the problem you're trying to solve. That is "beautiful" for me. Software development in the real world is a game of trad
100.
by placebo 8y ago
You might be confusing "smart" with "knowledgeable". There's no way to be smart about concepts you haven't yet learned. And the ELI5 idea is cool - just need to find a business model :)
101.
Predatory publishing(youtube.com)
1 points by placebo 8y ago|0 comments
102.
by placebo 8y ago
Google Duplex https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-cal...
103.
by placebo 8y ago
I opened an account long ago - I think around the same year Facebook started. I never really understood the appeal in the first place, but I keep the account around for the odd chance someone from the past might want to get in touch. I&#x27
104.
by placebo 8y ago
I think a better way out of the trap of the free will vs. determinism question is to really dive not into the question of whether or not we have free will, but of who exactly is asking the question. What exactly is this me that's suppo
105.
by placebo 8y ago
Consider the possibility that whether the future is predetermined or not has nothing to do with free will. The persistence of the notion of free will seems to be an attempt to reconcile a feeling of what seems to be a very real, conscious a
106.
by placebo 8y ago
It is scary for legitimate reasons. It doesn't mean we should stop the advancement of science, but ignoring human tendencies to leverage the best of science to amplify the destructive abilities of worst in human nature is a bit on the
107.
by placebo 8y ago
Those are very reasonable points to explain the way correct subconscious prediction of success works. I wonder though whether this definition doesn't run the risk of creating a closed system of thought, i.e one where you can always ref
108.
by placebo 8y ago
> It's not really possible to give a glib, one-sentence description of it. And yet, you just did. My definition is poor if you turn it into something simplistic and not realise the vast number of ways and levels of abstraction in w
109.
by placebo 8y ago
I think that there's another way of looking at it. My definition of intelligence would be the ability to tell what is true from what is false. The ability to predict the future is a by-product of that ability. regarding what is the nat
110.
by placebo 8y ago
I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't aware of Keats' writings and your comment sent me to get more educated about him, which I found very interesting, so thanks for that :) Not sure in what sense you find the view reductionis
111.
by placebo 8y ago
It's a nice distinction. I wonder whether we can go further though, and not even need that distinction. Here's my take on it. Any human endeavour is worth its salt if it succeeds at discovering and expressing beauty. It can be a m
112.
by placebo 8y ago
The level of experience, talent and expertise required to dive into LuaJIT development and following Mike Pall's stepping down from active development of it was cause for concern that this would be the end of the road (some even decide
113.
by placebo 8y ago
given there is no real "you" to begin with, who is it that falls somewhere in the middle between "afraid" and "indifferent"? :-) I understand what you're referring to though, and assume that the very few t
114.
by placebo 8y ago
His article on Medium [1] references this [2] [1] https://medium.com/@Numenta/the-secret-to-strong-ai-61d153e2... [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2017.0008...
115.
by placebo 8y ago
"Two of Elemental’s biggest early clients were the Mormon church, which used the technology to beam sermons to congregations around the world, and the adult film industry, which did not." Amused to see some element of humor added
116.
by placebo 8y ago
could you elaborate? Do you think they really didn't have the condition described? If they did then while more evidence would be helpful in establishing likelihood, it would not make a difference in establishing possibility.
117.
by placebo 8y ago
I did start earlier than the VIC-20 (with TRS-80 Model 2 at school) but you definitely take the title :)
118.
by placebo 8y ago
Guess I win this round, unless there are older farts than me - Commodore VIC-20 with 3.5KB RAM which was plenty for me to do really cool things with in BASIC and 6502 machine language)
119.
by placebo 8y ago
It's great to see lots of amazing projects and that people get to have more choice and can avoid being locked into one solution, but one thing I'd like to see more in a description of any product (open source or not) especially wh
120.
by placebo 8y ago
Another version of the Euthanasia Coaster? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster

More ›