skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's funny. Thank you for the explanation. I've come to Canada and people started talking to me about the difference between gelato and icecream. I kept saying "to me there is garbage gelato and good gelato" (I'm Italian), so I had no idea what they were talking about
lol, I find that metaphor apt for quite a few languages I've worked with!
But surely downvotes will discourage informative comments? I'd most certainly be discouraged to find that comment I worked hard on to provide context in an area I'm an expert grey and dead.

Thank goodness this is not actually how most people use up/downvotes.
Yeah Essential's more aimed for underclassman (e.g., sophomores) whereas the other text is for upperclassman (i.e., juniors and seniors) and graduate students.

It's probably more useful for laymen.

Those who find themselves wanting more can always go to the larger, more comprehensive text later.
Hah, going back is allowed :D

Some of the questions are imperfect. As I mention at the bottom, I mostly stole them from Scott Alexander. The problem with the wording of many of his questions is that the answers assume you have a principle. For example, question 3's answer is:

> This is acceptable; the Supreme Court should be zealous in its duty of defending constitutional rights against potentially extremist states.

I didn't change it because I couldn't figure out a way to reword this that I was happy with, but the problem here is that both answers involve you "agreeing" with a principle about the supreme court, so it's kind of weird if you don't agree with either of the principles given. I wonder if that's what you were referring to?
I've found quite a few good coconut/soy milk based ice-creams in terms of flavour. Once you spend time noticing the texture though (e.g. xanthan gum) they can become unpleasant. That's what ultimately made me stop buying them.
I've been living "as if" this is true for over 10 years.

After years of struggling with confidence issues, anxiety, and physiological issues like muscle tension/pain and inflammation, and trying all the conventional modalities with minimal lasting benefit, I came onto a form of healing that seeks to address subconsciously-held traumas picked up and earlier life and inherited from parents.

Without making this a long, detailed post, the results are profound and lasting, though slow, given how deep this stuff goes and how much there can be to work through once you start digging.

There are books and talks about it by a former Stanford biologist called Bruce Lipton, who gets panned for various reasons that seem mostly to do with him being out of step with conventional thought, and (I think) for having a manner that doesn't seem science-y enough, but in my experience his research and teachings on the links between inherited/held emotions and biology and on the physiological benefits of subconscious healing are very solid.

I'm really hoping to see more research and widespread interest in this topic, as after experiencing it and contemplating it for so many years, I'm convinced it offers many answers, or at least clues, to issues that medical science and broader society have been stuck on for a long time.
Yeah, I'm still shocked when I want two flavors and they give me those giant balls...

In Italy we have the opposite problem though. Since the scoop size doesn't have a standard, you might find the server in training and get a gelato that's half the size of the one of your friend, which paid half the price
The upcoming decade is going to be the decade of unionization. The companies which will come out of that era are going to be co op companies. It's an exciting future for the world.
Cults are often criminal. The Catholic church doesn't harrass you for money or really reach out at all if you're on its roster. All it is is a record of your having come there, which is their record to keep. This is like saying elementary schools are cuts because they keep your transcripts on file -- a completely ridiculous assertion.
Literate slaves were literally for the taking. One didn't inquire about education when taking them. They might be sold to a patrician, later. Anyway, any soldier might be son to a patrician, and be sent out with a slave retainer. Slaves by definition had to do as they were told. Even if it was carving in stone, grammatically, serifs or no.

Curses, especially, were routinely farmed out. Executing curses oneself was considered dangerous, like practicing law today. Priests were consulted. Like today.

Very, very often -- indeed, absolutely conventionally -- literate slaves were kept as teachers. Any soldier with aspirations to advancement would need education.

You are really stretching to avoid trivially obvious inferences. Read some history? Maybe a literate slave could help you out.

Advancement could be yours!
What do you dislike about induction ranges?
So in short, we are too comfortable to need the dog eat dog cutthroat start-up mentality because it's never been required?

I think this is a fair comment.

For me, being a wage earner, I have to date been able to have a pretty decent middle class lifestyle without having to scheme, hustle or con anybody and I take a pretty dim view of those that do. But that is changing. As others have pointed out, it's now almost impossible for the average wage earner to aspire to home ownership, it's hard enough to even find a place to rent. Cost of living is going through the roof, and many are discovering that that social safety nets that they thought they could rely on may not be big enough when a significant proportion of the population can't earn enough to both house and feed themselves.

We have a younger generation who are massively disaffected. They know their futures has been sold off and they are not happy. Political shifts are starting to rattle the establishment with an understanding that just doing the same thing is no longer good enough. Recent elections have telegraphed the changes that are coming.
I get into a vehicle every day that I don't fully understand, yet it still seems to perform its function.

I use vast swathes of computational resources every day for various tasks, the operation of which I understand even less. They still seem to accomplish those tasks without issue.

Sometimes those computational resources run ML workloads. Very very few people on this planet can honestly claim to understand how neural networks work, and in many cases, the minutiae are inscrutable to all of us. They still seem to work fine.

I most certainly do not understand how my own brain works, yet here it is, shitposting on hackernews.

We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually.

Although you're certainly right about one thing, most laypeople would have a real tough time accepting a world where consciousness is synthetically reproducible, and instead tend to reach for comforting thoughts of "maybe quantum is required", "maybe consciousness is magic" or "maybe consciousness can only be created by a deity".

Non-laypeople know that at normal temperatures and pressures, quantum effects don't really extend into the macroscopic realm.
I take it you've noticed this is user CryptoPunk reposting dead comments like this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31792222

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31721752
I also have something like 15 years of serious C++ experience, but I've used it more for data processing than software engineering. While std::vector has almost always been good enough for me, I've often had to replace std::unordered_map with something smaller or faster, or with something where I have more control over memory layout or serialization.

std::unordered_map is not a particularly good example of things that need platform-specific optimizations. The implementations I have seen are pretty close to standard C++. std::vector implementations, on the other hand, are often really weird and rely extensively on compiler-specific annotations.
Family size may influence cognitive functioning in later life
> My personal experience is that consciousness, like free will, is a useful illusion.

This is easily contradicted. Let's say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of computation but causality only flows one way: you "choose" to do something because your brain chose to do it and your consciousness tricked itself into thinking it was doing the choosing.

If that were the case, then the brain wouldn't be aware of consciousness. The illusion falls apart due to the fact that we are discussing consciousness right now. Consciousness must have at least some ability to communicate back to the brain.

And since evolution hates inefficiency, that means it must have a purpose.
Not really a bug. A basic design flaw, since corrected it seems.
Keep in mind that when something appears on the front page, it’s because enough people voted it up. I don’t actually know, but suspect that commenting on it may bump the score a little as well? Either way, if it’s uninteresting to you, I encourage voting up or submitting something more interesting.

Also keep in mind that because computing is a growing field, the majority of people in it are relatively new to the field, plus there are plenty of people here that don’t have CS degrees.

FWIW, there are many representations for real & floating point numbers. Rationals are an example of something that’s neither floating point nor BCD, and can represent 1/10 and 1/3 exactly. Here’s a fun example: https://iquilezles.org/articles/floatingbar/
> I'm literally taking the narrow conclusion from the second paragraph: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

You should really the entire article, but at least finish the paragraph you're citing: "The broader conclusion of the argument is that the theory that human minds are computer-like computational or information processing systems is refuted."
If twitter can only stay in business through controversy and perversion, maybe it shouldn't.
Soar: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying by Tom Bunn worked very well for me. It's written by a pilot who is also a licensed therapist. The book uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help you moderate your body's stress response to flying, but with the added benefit of the author explaining, from a pilot's point of view, the mechanics of flying.

The book is only $10 so if it doesn't work no big loss.
three US Corporations will be in charge of the implementation of this newly required security ?
It really seems like you’re choosing to not understand the GP.

The green agenda is just a blunt way of referring to all of the messaging and policy initiatives related to climate or environmental protection - as I understood it.

I don’t know why you think the petrochemical industry is synonymous with the green agenda. Does that not sound suspiciously incorrect to you?
Ask HN: Will Coinbase Last (from an oncoming intern)?
There's so much backlash on Coinbase, I'm an incoming intern in the Fall, and honestly seeing how much backlash there is worries me. Coinbase is my dream company and seeing the public perception is making me second guess it. So many people keep saying they will go bankrupt in 6 months, but I want to work here for the next couple of years as I graduate from school, but seeing how everything is going on seems like it won't happen.
> – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy

That's literally why I started off my comment with "I'm not going to excuse the church". You're absolutely right that there ought to have been a reckoning with the consequences.
You must have missed all the very suspicious information about Durov's close ties with Russian authorities, and that Telegram developers worked from the same office with VK in Saint-Petersburg when he claimed that they are in Germany. [1]

Good choice for a dissident! (No)

[1]: https://medium.com/@anton.rozenberg/friendship-betrayal-clai...
> If it’s not showing you ads, it’s not connected.

If it’s not showing you ads, it might not be connected. It could still be connected and performing all sorts of shenanigans without necessarily showing you any ads.
Oh yeah, that one
Yah. I started in Java, and really enjoyed delving into Ruby, and then Clojure--the latter being my favorite.
> It’s worth pausing here and noting one property of consciousness that will be of use to us later: consciousness is independent of external observers. By this I mean that the existence of my consciousness does not depend on other observers perceiving me to be conscious. Even if everyone else in the universe should deny that I am conscious — or if those other observers did not exist at all — this would have no bearing on my own consciousness. If, in a terrible catastrophe all life on Earth should perish, except by some strange fortune my own, my consciousness would not suddenly dissolve into the ether.

Seems like exactly the sort of thing something trying to convince me of its consciousness would say to justify it. How am I supposed to know this was written by a human?

Anyways, I have a relative who was sterilized because people believed she not only had no capacity for higher reasoning, but also that her continuing to have reproductive autonomy would be a danger to others because she might pass her lack of "consciousness" along.

So you'll have to forgive me if I'm not very impressed by anyone who decides they have the key to an objective measure of consciousness. This edges far too close to eugenics in my mind.
No, try reducing client churn. Hiring a PM is going to be a pain in the butt for both you and your clients (who will need to speak to two people, one of whom isn’t going to be technical). And it’ll set you back at least 30% of what you make.
build webapps that you WANT to use from you phone. then actually use them from your phone. take notes on what is annoying, and fix it next time your at your desk.

webapps suck on mobile when the builders don’t use them on mobile.
John Searle's Chinese Room argument should be a universal stop token, in the same way that Godwin's law means the conversation is over when someone brings up Nazis
Does that mean that any web page that loads a resource from any other location on the web would be fined the same way?
That has already happened. Numerous times. Including right now. That doesn't automatically mean it's dead. If it did, well, it'd be dead already. :)
Agreed, all networked things on my TV goes through Apple TV (puck, not the service).
Your entire comment is based on a misunderstanding. In this context "not that different" means not as different as "rocket motors" and "lettuce." I even explicitly quoted that context, so it was pretty hard to miss.
I am just saying that OP is correct that "consciousness is not computation" if we can prove that consciousness can exist without a (physical) computation.

One example of consciousness without a physical computation is we know that Satan is a conscious, sentient being, without a physical body (computation).

Otherwise, can we prove that a "mathematical equation" (e.g. e=mc2) can represent consciousness?
Fasting Your Way to 100 Years Old
> We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually.

Isn't a random generator for a neural network act as its "inception"? If so, it's exactly quantum principles in aggregate.
The other answers pointed out some good reasons we use floats instead, but just a note -- Python at least has a "fractions" class.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/fractions.html
> I have second-hand but reliable information about their security approach, and "laughable" doesn't begin to describe it.

Back in 2017 a security researcher found 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Samsung's Tizen OS. [1][2]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/samsungs-tizen-is-ri...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xy9p7n/samsung-tizen-operati...
ALERT ALERT!

"bad faith" used in a political thread!

All your opinions are now null and void.
>People will only need to articulate ideas instead of worry about structure and grammar

Articulating and broadly structuring ideas is 99% of writing; comparatively very little time is spent refining grammar and low-level structure. (This is in contrast to programming, where high-level architecting and low-level implementing take roughly the same amount of time.)

As a sibling poster points out, simply concatenating your three prompt sentences with a couple connective words (and a couple grammar fixes) already yields a well-written paragraph:

“Writing as we know it may be a thing ~in~ of the past, [since] GPT-3 will automatically rewrite sentences into proper [E]nglish. [Thus,] people will only need to articulate ideas instead of worry[ing] about structure and grammar.”
I have never heard of CapRover and I dont know how to use it. I do know how to use Kubernetes across Digital Ocean, AWS, GCP and Azure. Just had to learn it once. I don't even use it for scaling. Not complex at all. I've used it for four years. Literally never had a problem with it. It just runs.
Never use that. But it looks good. I prefere SQLAlchemy approach.
In my humble opinion, so far, the only realistic use of crypto is as a store for digital art. Which is also a form of speculation actually, but at least you can enjoy the tokens as art.

If that's the case, then 99 percent of all the chains will fall away and leave just two.

ETH and Tezos.

presumably new tech will be discovered and new chains will be able to handle that. But as of now, the digitization of art actually works very well in crypto, in the form of NFTs (which is a polarizing word)

Solana is a VC back speculative chain which is trying to kickstart art and PFPs on it, because that's basically the only thing you can do right now with where the tech is at. But all the real artists have already made their home on ETH and Tez.
> Starting from these as axioms, what can we construct?

Nothing, unless there is also a physical world which actually exists independent of any of the participants' will.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Could you please not? We ban accounts that do that, regardless of their ideology, because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

More explanation on the "primarily for ideological battle" point can be found in past comments here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
>Most startups on AngelList are a waste of space, time, money, and employment. No different with blockchain.

One huge difference - crypto had the time and money to find it's market. I was optimistic at first - but then it turned out to be a toxic cesspool fueling speculation, gambling, money laundering and other illegal activities, causing HW supply disruptions, burning insane amounts of electricity.

Getting into it just because I might randomly get rich goes against my ethos.
Maybe it tastes like a dirty roof?
True, but the fact that government regulation is needed kinda voids the argument that crypto currencies are great because they can't be manipulated by the government like a fiat currency.
Lack of examples,you mean?
I have an assumption on machines that might be different from yours which is quite likely based on our knowledge of current life:

We have a biological brain that has a limit on the number of neurons while "machine" has no limit on scalability. They can discover a better way to achieve consensus. One might be exchange "ego" which is impossible for humans. We already know "put your self in others shoes" in just literal means. Even that is not close to exchange "ego".
>I can even imagine how someone would rationalize it

But you make it sound like a big deal. Like it would be a shocking scandal or lead to lawsuits. Who do you think polices advice columns?

Ann Landers was a pen name for multiple people. People used to joke about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Prudence_(advice_column) being 90% fake (I never read it, or Slate, on a regular basis, so it's only hearsay).
1. I was never hiding that fact. But if those ads showed without any pre-discussion on whats app, i wouldn't care. The point is. Those ad's did not show until shortly after the whats app conversation. That suggests that Facebook is aware of the conversations that occur on whats app that are not business accounts. So e2ee is false.

2. Again, those ad's never showed until shortly after the conversation occurred. I'm talking within ~30m of the discussion.

That's too soon to be a coincidence.
> Generating text for hours without an anchor to the real world is not a productive method of generating insight about that world.

Yet people see to be claiming that LaMDA does just this, and is therefore not conscious.

Seems like a journalist is conscious if they do it, but it can’t possible be consciousness if LaMDA does it.

I’m yet to see a convincing argument about why LaMDA isn’t conscious other than “it’s just generative”. To demonstrate that this means it’s not consciousness requires us to prove that our own consciousness isn’t “just generative”, but I’m yet to see anyone show that, and I’m sceptical that it can be done.
I saw a video review by Sorted about this back in April[1]. It looks interesting.

I've been seeing the Pacojet (the commercial machine you mentioned) mentioned by various professional chefs for a while now. The Pacojet runs to AUD$10k here.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dneSgw3fmhg
> have been unable to stop a physical anxiety response

Well there's your issue. Anxiety attacks are like a rushing river, if you try to swim against or stop the current you'll get nowhere. Ride it out and know that if you felt things got really got bad, you could ask any airline attendant for help - they deal with nervous flyers every day across tens of thousands of people every year and would help you through it compassionately and respectfully. We're all in this together man, nobody is going to make you feel bad for being human.
Solend is now voting to reverse the decision to interfere with $170M position
https://archive.ph/7g3IK
> you "choose" to do something because your brain chose to do it and your consciousness tricked itself into thinking it was doing the choosing.

This happens most of the time actually. The most interesting experiment really highlighting specifically that it happens is in split brain patients. But in common day experiences, I believe that all habits fall under this and basically anything that our default mode network is directing for us.

When I was in a meditation retreat what I noticed is that I have all kinds of feelings and thoughts arising that were not arising because I chose them to arise, instead they were arising on their own. When you really observe yourself you see that happening. In that sense, the beginning of a thought and feeling has a very distinct quality that dreams have as well which is they are "passed down from up on high" (metaphorically speaking). What I get to decide is whether I choose to follow that feeling/train of thought, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized that my choice is very limited in that as well. As my whether I'd follow a feeling/thought or not was actually based on other feelings and thoughts. In any case, the more I observed myself, the more I came to the conclusion that I have no free will, there is no "me" that does the choosing. It's all feelings/thoughts that arise that I have nothing to do with. I only have freedom of choice.

And then I got to normal life, and lived my life as normal. It did help me to have more sympathy for other people.

So now I wonder how you experience yourself if you'd go to a 10 day silent/meditation retreat ;-)