skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hmm. I could change it. But are you sure it wouldn't be hypercorrect to phrase it that way? Isn't going critical a kind of shorthand for going supercritical, because in practice any situation that produces the first is going to produce the second?

Edit: Actually I think criticality is the right metaphor. It's a change in state from what preceded it. That's the important part, not the resulting explosion. (Arguably there are in fact analogs to control rods in online discussions-- nesting depth, the fact that people get tired after a while, etc.)
"Insight versus prolific" is a tough thing to debate. Zappa fans believe that the Beatles offered nothing to music. Some people think Sex Pistols are nothing but noise.

We don't know much about Homer, Plato's concept of "the gods" was one that said humans had their own free will and were not tools of the gods (brush up on Greek mythology, particularly Prometheus), Einstein gets called religious but wasn't actually. Dante you may be right about: I haven't studied him enough to know.

People claiming brilliance goes back as far as Shakespeare, who was known for being hotheaded and arrogant with his writing. It certainly goes back further, though I couldn't name specific names earlier than Shakespeare, who's pretty much the perfect null hypothesis. If Shakespeare thought he was good in and of himself, that means possibly the greatest artist of all time rejects this theory of divine inspiration.

Art isn't about originality. It's about personality. Art is partly about technical expertise, partly about artist ego. You only know yourself: the process to genius in art is the process of discovering your own standards.

For what it's worth, I've never had that experience. I know exactly what caused me to have the ideas that I do. I analyze my ideas until I understand what drives me to create them. As a result, I'm extraordinarily egotistical. It's why I thought it was worth denying the statements from the original post.
Organized religion, certainly. However, there is a lot of conflation of Religion and religion (or faith).

I don't disagree with your point, it just deals with very semantically messy stuff.
I actually would have put it in the mixed column, but I added that later and didn't move it. I run across some interesting things on the side, but at the same time, I have many, many books I've been meaning to read, etc., and I also know all too well where this comic is coming from: http://xkcd.com/386/
That is a good idea, has anyone done this? What was turn-out like? Did you have to talk with the manager first?
Ask HN: Have you read Dreyfus's What Computers Can't Do? How did you react?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Computers_Can't_Do

Full disclosure- my intuition is a strong reaction in the negative but I've only just begun reading his book, and I find it particularly staggering that the introduction frames the debate as open-and-shut, with Dreyfus having won.

Dreyfus's introduction for example spends a lot of time going over the brick walls hit by AI in the mid 20th century. That's compelling for what its worth as it leads to a deeper appreciation for the problems such researchers were trying to solve, but as an argument it's similar to saying that a lack of a man on mars counts as proof that it's impossible for men to get to mars.

Also, as a general note, I find the approach of supplying strictly philosophical arguments suspicious- there is lots of room for vagueness, and for characterizing AI researchers as taking certain philosophical positions without meaningfully engaging with the fruits of their research.

I apologize if that sounds unnecessarily harsh. I do think that I have an obligation to read and seriously mull over these arguments given that I want to disbelieve them so strongly and I'd like to think I'm open to being convinced. So I'm hoping that there is someone in this community who approached this book with a similar mindset who's willing to share their experience with Dreyfus's ideas.
Buddhists aren't immune to squabbling about ideological differences, either, of course. (But meditation helps.)
I love how Groovy refers to that as the "Elvis" operator.
You're right. That's why I was careful to qualify it with "all other things being equal."

In general identity gives you strength while making you stupid. This can sometimes be a good trade, especially in stressful situations. E.g. I think this is one reason people in the US are so much more religious than they were when I was a kid. People who 30 years ago might have been skeptical of preachers are now thinking that religion may at least save their kids from meth.
What would a proof of "not there" consist of?

What I mean is, how can you claim to know anything if you allow the possibility of supernatural things interfering with your experiments?
A scientist isn't committed to believing in natural selection in the same way an evangelical Christian is committed to rejecting it.

I disagree, I'm an evangelical Christian and I don't reject it.
Well, there is one word for something that comprises much of both: ideology.
Am I the only one who finds WoW extremely boring? I tried it twice for about an hour each, trying to see what was so great about the game, but never tried again due to lack of interest. I then uninstall it some time later.
Email Marketing Subject Line Comparison
My employer, The Denver Post. My bank. My library.
The Last Lecture is absolutely worth watching (and reading, there is a book). Just as a note for those who haven't seen it yet, Randy was rejected from Carnegie Mellon when applying there for graduate school. He was also rejected when he applied to be an Imagineer with Disney. Eventually he ended up getting his PhD from CMU and was offered a job as an Imagineer. You'll have to watch/read the Last Lecture to find out exactly how all of it went down :-).
Most public services ought to have them. Not just APIs, but even simple stuff like an RSS or ical export for garbage/recycling days so I can throw it in my calendar. It's about usable data formats too.

Great question, by the way :)
No, I don't think it's always been the case, though you're definitely right that we've advanced beyond the 1300s here.

I think that, quite generally, there are periods in which the art, on it own merit, breaks through and speaks to a broader audience, and in those periods the best works are often the most popular. Afterward, they are aped by successive imitators, relying on formulas, or production value, rather than having something to say.

That said, I do think that the internet has strongly influenced and improved music as an art form. The indie revolution probably wouldn't have had nearly the effect without it. I think that works in film are advance too, though quite independently of the major Hollywood productions.
I can tell you for a fact that line doesn't work on women.
With logic: one can exhibit contradictions in religious doctrines. (If there are any.)

I've always found it a bad idea to pretend to be an expert in someone else's religion. Pointing out contradictions in someone else's religion 99.9% of the time is just going to make you sound very ignorant as to how people interpret the things that you find at first glance contradictory.
It’s About Material Impact
Reaching criticality is a normal goal for the operators of a controlled nuclear reactor (nuclear power reactor unit; research reactor; etc.). A reactor that has reached criticality is usually one that is operating normally. For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22initial+criticality%22

The JRR-4, which reached initial criticality in 1965, had contenued to aperate safely until 1996 using uranium of a high concentration of 93% [...]

Unit 1 reached initial criticality on March 8, 1988 and went into commercial operation on August 25. Unit 2 reached initial criticality on March 12, ...
The value of persistence is similarly prominent in this description of finding a dream job at a toy company:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb09/7471
> all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.

pg at his best; a truth I've known without ever Knowing, expressed clearly and concisely.

> There may be some things it's a net win to include in your identity. For example, being a scientist. But arguably that is more of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a form that asks for your middle initial—because it doesn't commit you to believing anything in particular.

This part, though, is totally and completely false. I contend that it only seems this way to pg because the scientific spirit is so deeply integrated into himself that he can no longer see it.

And this points to a deeper part of the message, for me; everyone has these perspectives, they're a part of the way you choose the world. Strive to minimize them, but accept the ones you have, don't pretend that they don't exist, and certainly don't try to justify them by saying that they exist as reality.

Alternatively, become a buddhist and spend your entire life with the goal of emptying yourself of these lenses to see humanity as essentially undifferentiated from everything.
Albert Heijn, or any other supermarket.
"identity gives you strength while making you stupid"

Couldn't something similar be said about any emotional response. In that emotional responses give you something but are inherently irrational.
Great post. It strikes me that even when we try to avoid labels for ourselves, sometimes they are imposed by others. And sometimes a further step happens beyond the labels: consequences are imposed, depending on the labels.

This kind of imposition from the outside can sometimes leak into ones self-identity. Hyphenated Americans, for example, often start out as thinking of themselves as just Americans, but then discover that their experience is different, and they have a shared peer group of other people who have had the same experiences, because of what is imposed on them by others. And then, we blame them for calling themselves <foo>-American, when actually it was not necessarily their own doing.

Given such, it's also not hard to see why some people will decide that they would prefer to wear a label (atheist/theist/gay/Asian/Bush Supporter/whatever) as a badge of pride. Not saying this is or is not an ideal state of affairs, just that it's understandable.
Life's too important to spend fixated on marginal utility.
On a similar note, look into teaching continuing education classes at your local community college, or giving presentations at, e.g., ACM/IEEE meetings.
I do expect that we will get some push back on this. Especially until we provide a simple metric to show advertisers (which we are working on).

It is a pretty nuanced issue. For instance, do TC subscribers USE 5 readers? No. But web-based readers that people quit using still report subscribers. I don't use 5 readers either, but I have multiple readers reporting me as a "subscriber". This comes from trying different web-based clients as well as using multiple IPs in a single day with my desktop based client.

While you are absolutely correct that Google Reader is going to report accurately how many people have subscribed to your feed using their system, that doesn't give you any indication as to how many of them have read a single item in the past 6 months. This is why FB started to add "reach". In the article I referenced, TC had over 100k subscribers while "reach" was topping out at about 25k.

So, all of that is to say, you are right. We are going to have to provide a way for bloggers like yourself to easily convey the worth of ads on their blog. Personally I believe everyone wins with accuracy.
The notion that it is impolite to discuss politics and religion is a staple bit of folk wisdom dispensed by parents, grandparents, various other elders, and barkeeps the world over.

...but it's not a universal piece of folk wisdom. In fact it's the significant minority

When you consider 68% of the world of the world is composed under the belief structures of the 3 primary religions (christianity, islam, hinduism) and religion is primarily passed from the parent to the child, I find that parents (and so by inference, grandparents) suggesting that it is impolite to discuss religion a hard pill to swallow.

When you take almost all other religions into account, Non Religious people account for around 21% of the world's population, with some of those are agnostic people (like myself).
Okay. I'll agree with that.

I'm really hoping we're approaching a moment where video games reach that peak. Hell, I'm hoping when it happens a decade from now I'm the one doing it. Things ebb and flow, and I think right now video games are too clumsy to be at that peak.

Films are at an "eh" moment right now. The next breakthrough will be something like the rock movement was in music: once tools are cheap enough that you can shoot something that looks good for almost no money, there'll be the rise of some explosive new talents we won't have anticipated.
Until I moved to San Francisco ten years ago my identity was wrapped up in my home region of my home state. SF was where I finally let it go. I can perfectly remember the moment I realized I could. How exhilarating that was! And it started a landslide. I'll bet I don't have 10% the identity I did back then.

(It helped that I had long before figured out that when people speak of "X pride" or "Proud to be X", it means that X sucks. Say this without laughing: "Proud to be a physicist at Lawrence Livermore". Then try googling "Harvard pride". Hmm, I didn't even know there was a Harvard, Illinois.)

This is such a ridiculously brilliant essay. How in the hell does Paul keep doing this? I've been living this exact strategy for years and even advising people to do it too. Yet for me it remained a jumble of half-considered thoughts. (Please don't tell me I should reconsider having "smart guy" within my identity.) Another triumph, Paul. Thank you.
Just for some context, are people much more religious than when you were a kid? I had figured this was a relatively stable number. Or maybe you were referring to how fervent people have become with their religious views?

I'm curious about the actual trend of religiosity, and I'm somewhat skeptical of anecdotal data (for the very reasons in your article). What is the general trend from someone who's been following this longer?
Buddhist practitioners are human too, of course, but a central practice in Buddhism is to dissolve and refute concrete belief in a persistent self and consciousness.
My municipal government.
Heh...Good Luck with that.

I work in a facility that provides mental health care to clients. I am in charge of the computers and all the technology. Unfortunately, our primary customer is the county government and they simply will not budge on anything.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. I recently made a very simple proposal which was that we assign clients a confidential number (given to them in person) and have them generate their own password. They could then view their records online using that number and password. But...and this was the important part... no identifying information (such as name, SSN, etc...) would ever be transmitted over the web. None.

The number would be transmitted to us, matched up internally, and then treatment data would be sent back without any identifying pieces of info. No name, SSN, etc... would ever leave our firewall. In addition we’d still use secure connections through SSL, valid certificates, etc...

As you can probably guess I was shot down cold by the county. Transmitting data over the internet to private clients is not secure under any circumstances according to HIPAA (so they said, I don’t agree).

These kinds of policies are why every medical professional fears transmitting data in any way. I mean, if the government says it’s insecure than you’re just opening yourself up for a lawsuit if you ever try to give access.

Privacy is important and I’m not against err-ing on the side of caution to a certain extent. But when fear of lawyers and fear of the Government over power common sense it’s a tragedy and that is exactly where we are now.
I disagree that the more labels someone has the dumber they make you. And I strongly disagree in that. I know people that believe in almost nothing. Not in a religion, not a programming language. Sure there won't ever be a religious argument. But also probably no discussion at all because there is nothing to talk about with them. I have a lot of believes and disbelieves but I still consider myself able to talk about those things without ending in a fight.
What was amazing in the video to me was that, apparently, crows are to other birds and animals of their (brain) size, what humans are to other primates and mammals: "they stick around and figure things out".
One trouble with following this line of reasoning to its limits is simply that one doesn't have an endless supply of mental energy. It is not merely easier to mark something about yourself as known and solid, and move on; it also frees cycles for other things. One simply can't go about life questioning every action in terms of its relationship to values which you are supposed to figure out. It's too hard.

So, perhaps it might be best to say "keep your identity as small as possible, but no smaller."
Cumulate Labs (cumulatelabs.com) was probably the first vector graphics app. It was purchased by autodesk and is now project draw (http://draw.labs.autodesk.com).
I don't know about religion, but I think you are righter than you might guess about politics. Most political discussions ultimately devolve into an argument between collectivists and individualists. If you think about it, most of the individualists have direct access to some sort of resources, such as land, capital, intelligence, or whatever, that aren't possessed by the collectivists. In other words, they are privileged, either by custom (law), biology, or just plain circumstance. The collectivists have no such luck. They have nothing to work with directly. They consequently have no choice but to work indirectly. That is, they HAVE to work collectively, for the supposed good of everybody. The option of working directly with resources, without paying some sort of toll, or exclusively for one's own good, isn't there. No amount of logic or talk can change this situation. BTW, I should make it clear here that I'm not downing collectivists. You'd be a fool not to run with what you were given. What needs to be changed is how resources are allocated, not the rational behavior of people who are stuck with a particular allocation. Some of this (such as land distribution) could possibly be addressed culturally. Some, however, such as differences in intelligence, cannot be. In any event for all practical purposes the person's political stand might as well be an indelible part of their identity.
Notes on Computational Linguistics
I've really enjoyed icombinator.
traffic lights system
PGs thesis seems to boil down to this: If you believe in something strongly enough, it will cause you to want to defend it and you may compromise your rationality and civility as a result. For which reason we should believe in as little as possible and be as non-committal in our beliefs.

I'm not sure that this is an ethically tenable position: shallowness extolled as a virtue. It's true, people who don't believe in anything don't argue about religion and politics, they fight over fashion and celebrities. I'd prefer people to have strong, well-formed opinions that they are ready to defend, even against me, to people with no opinion at all.
So we have two examples where identity and impact coincide. Can anyone think of an example of one without the other?
Yet, the basic point holds. On the whole, the Internet makes people and organizations vastly more productive. Furthermore, morphine and opiates are regularly used when the benefits outweigh the costs (like for anesthesia) so thats not a very effective counterexample.

If one wants to start regulating parts of technology, they must ask the question of whether the expected gains from said regulation would outweigh the costs. With narcotics, its easy: addiction is very expensive, especially for the addicts and productive and non-productive uses are generally easy to tell apart (medical use of morphine v. junkies for example). OTOH, technology is difficult to separate and the side-effects from flash games, irc, et al. are not that significant.
Sure, and the result of that "normality" is furiously boiling water.
Screw privacy, I'd rather the whole world know what's wrong with me... maybe they can fix it! Make it searchable and put my email address at the bottom.
Looking at pg's title, I thought this essay was going to be about keeping your online identity small or centralized - which, would have been interesting given today's decentralized social web identities.
So thats your objective function.
Don't judge the kindle until you use it. Seriously. I don't know anyone (myself included) who has a kindle and doesn't like it. It might not be the best looking thing at first, but, goddamn does it grow on you.
An absolutely brilliant chess match hack. Amazing idea.
20 awesome free OS downloads that aren't Windows 7
Yeah, that statement bothered me to. People seeming to assume that just because a vocal minority of a group believe something, that all members of the group believe the same thing. This especially includes people who's expressed ideology hopes to avoid prejudice and bigotry. Thought I don't think PG, really thinks all Evangelicals are YECs. at least I hope he doesn't.
+1. I think if most people had the same attitude about their own problems, specially in the matters of health and finance, we would only benefit from it.
I'd say sports, where arguments get moderately heated, somewhere between baking and religion. Mac OS vs. Windows too maybe.

I don't know that it's possible to have impact without identity.
http://www.imdb.com/interfaces
Wesabe has an API, so if it supports your bank, then you already have an indirect API for it.

https://www.wesabe.com/page/api/examples
For all three examples trying to show that religion is even more impactful than politics, the mechanism for religious power is politics. I think more orthogonal examples would be better.

But I don't think there are good examples to be found. Political power is the means by which any widely held thought becomes impactful. Religion isn't special in this.
As an extension to what you are saying. Politics and Religion are, in fact, important. Whether or not we give millions to this are that cause, whether there is some kind of afterlife, these are important questions and so people should get involved in them. I think that there is something wrong with people who choose not to. This is not to say that people should be rude or irrational about these topics, but that they should put the thought into them so that they can discuss them rationally, and act on their conclusions in a productive fashion.

That said, I think that HN is generally the wrong place to have these debates. These topics, when treated fairly, require a lot of space and time to flesh out fully, and a tech news forum isn't properly equipped to do that. In addition, they distract from the valuable discussion for which this place is good.
Obviously I meant successfully, that was clearly implied by the second half of the sentence.
I know that I'm more likely to find a bug if I know it's there than if I'm just reviewing my own code for the hell of it.
You have to understand that unless you've got a name like Bill Gates, they're probably not going to put in the effort to understand what you're pitching. You might describe the most perfect system, but all they hear is "complicated computer stuff that might get me in trouble later on"
Most gyms make you swipe a card to get in, so they have a pretty good idea of how many people are in the gym at a given time. If they anonymized that data and made it public, I could go when I know it's not going to be crowded.
interface Energy {
getUsage();
setPowerState(outletID, powerState);
...
}

I wonder if we could create a developer community oriented around defining interface standards we'd like to consume.