westoncb

71 ms·

781.
by westoncb 9y ago
Hmm, maybe I'm missing something, but I lost interest after seeing that pretty much all the 'ad hoc' solutions listed (similar non-monad based solutions is the idea I think) were nearly identical to the monadic solutions, exc
782.
by westoncb 9y ago
I checked the Wikipedia article, and the sorts of operations involved do appear to be a part of the definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-form_expression —though it sounds like it's a somewhat loosely d
783.
by westoncb 9y ago
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this refers to the fact that it can be expressed in terms of certain simple mathematical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, powers, roots etc.—and as a consequence, the
784.
by westoncb 9y ago
I drew up a wireframe of what I'm thinking: http://symbolflux.com/images/wireframe123.jpg Would be cool to keep it something super simple like that—though you'd need a way to create new 'terminals'
785.
by westoncb 9y ago
Hey archagon—that sounds like a great idea. I can just imagine how it must have felt to get on AnonCon :) I wonder about the two principles involved there (or the ones I've happened to pick out anyway): locality + anonymity. Seems like
786.
by westoncb 9y ago
Hackers was very inspirational to me when I read it as a ~17 year old. I'd been programming off and on for a while, but just really getting into it at that point—and the attitudes of many of the folks in the book resonated strongly w
787.
by westoncb 9y ago
It was a kind of fuel while I worked at a grocery store trying to build some software that I thought would be game changing (it was a new kind of text editor that would break documents into interactive 'tiles' around grammatical b
788.
by westoncb 9y ago
I nice companion project for it would be a tool for creating these 'explorable explanations'. Anyone know if any good attempts have been made at that yet?
789.
by westoncb 9y ago
It really depends on what you're looking for. If you're trying to build a solid understanding of algorithmic patterns, the Algorithm Design Manual is a quite good choice, and not hand-wavy nor lacking in rigor in any meaningful wa
790.
by westoncb 9y ago
I recently had an idea for doing something like this with encoded/somehow transformed/encrypted natural language documents—anyone know if such things already exist?
791.
by westoncb 9y ago
I didn't do anything on the level of speech. I figure it's a form of 'treating the symptom'—of course I'm not a medical professional, though :) One thing that did seem to help was just changing my values about how m
792.
by westoncb 9y ago
I noticed during a very anxious time in my life that my thoughts (and speech to a certain extent) were most often overly tentative and full of qualifications. (I even wrote a very short story related to the idea which makes use of a similar
793.
by westoncb 9y ago
It is referring to something that could be called racist—it is not itself racist. Important distinction, imo.
794.
by westoncb 9y ago
Would anybody who's familiar with some items from the collection care to give a top three (or so) for those of us who don't know where to start?
795.
by westoncb 9y ago
There are two very different things both commonly referred to as consciousness. The first can easily be seen as a 'system' like any other one might study—it's basically the part of our brain that does self-awareness (monitors
796.
by westoncb 9y ago
There's also a write up of the project if you scroll down. It was written with three.js and uses raymarching to create the visuals. If you hold shift it pauses the simulation and allows you to toggle cells on/off for live experime
797.
Show HN: Interactive Conway's Game of Life with good graphics (MIT License)(symbolflux.com)
5 points by westoncb 9y ago|1 comments
798.
by westoncb 9y ago
I've spent a good amount of time thinking about why this change would occur. My current favorite hypothesis is that a playful mode/attitude emerges naturally when you find your circumstances to be 'okay'. The playful mod
799.
by westoncb 9y ago
You should check out the Debroglie Bohm/pilot wave interpretation. What I have described does not go counter the experimental data we have.
800.
by westoncb 9y ago
So you think an electron IS a mathematical expression, not that a mathematical expression describes its behavior? > ...we're not merely constructing a map, but a model, that is, we try to feel out and understand the territory, what
801.
by westoncb 9y ago
If I understand correctly you're saying the interpretation I've pointed out is not tenable because it carries classical baggage, and yet we've already observed quantum systems to not behave classically, so if we proceed that
802.
by westoncb 9y ago
Isomorphism, yes, exactly—that's the basic principle of a map: it's a description that enables us to make predictions about the territory, because it's possible to put the two into systematic correspondence. However once you
803.
by westoncb 9y ago
I'm just responding to this: > I think of many worlds as kind of a literal interpretation that quantum superpositions are fundamentally real, as opposed to quantum superpositions merely being a very accurate mathematical model. If t
804.
by westoncb 9y ago
This sounds a lot like someone has fallen for a subtle confusion of map and territory...
805.
by westoncb 9y ago
Would you mind either arguing for the superiority of that interpretation or showing flaws with the alternative I pointed out? I know that what you've stated is nearly cannon at the moment, but the issue isn't actually settled, whi
806.
by westoncb 9y ago
The most sensible explanation I've heard came from sir Arthur Eddington. His claim (roughly) is that probabilities in quantum theory model our knowledge of the quantum system, rather than indicating anything intrinsically probabilist
807.
by westoncb 9y ago
Yep, my understanding is also that Berger and Luckmann is the source of the phrase. That looks like an interesting article—I'll check it out. Here's another (shorter) one that deals with the issue: https://arstechnica.c
808.
by westoncb 9y ago
Half of my quote is from that, the other half is from the article. I'm not a fan of either's usage, but I take no issue with PKD's because he's just sharing his ideas and fiction; the article has set itself up in way lik
809.
by westoncb 9y ago
No, actually, my complaint is that mid 20th century a bunch of people introduced a new definition for it, so clearly not everyone agrees :) Before that, however, the situation was much more clear cut. And even still, 'reality' is
810.
by westoncb 9y ago
> In other words any subjective reality is constructed, and the objective reality is not known. Yes, agreed. The only issue I have here is about the contortion of language to support a particular philosophical viewpoint. If the phrase w

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