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Urbit is now in open developer beta

urbit.org

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Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#51

Post by corv »

jcrites wrote: post #19
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical. If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a pr…

I don't disagree with your criticism. I read through the Urbut whitepaper [1] a while ago, and there's some meat and novel ideas there. As far as a concise description, here's my attempt, followed by some content from the whitepaper. The key idea that distinguishes Urbit is its focus on deterministic computing. Urbit is a computing environment, like a virtual machine, with the distinction that the entire computationa…

I don't see how a clean-slate approach brings them closer to their goal of "make hosting this virtual machine easy enough to do that anyone could".

Decentralized "cloud" computing is a necessity and I commend them for their efforts but this seems like a case of NIH syndrome if I ever saw one.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#53

Post by corv »

jmspring wrote: post #25
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical. If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a pr…

Honestly, it seems to fit the current hype around being mysterious, disruptive, etc. That they can't describe what they are doing in plain english is downright silly.

That a project can't be explained in plain English is starting to become a guarantee for successful crowd-funding.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#54

Post by emmelaich »

gaze wrote: post #11
panic wrote: post #6

Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal. That sounds a bit scary!

I think if people read Curtis's writing under Mencius Moldbug, nobody would touch urbit with a ten foot pole. He believes that white people are genetically endowed with a higher IQ than black people. Why are people giving him money? This is why we can't have nice things.

Do you use transistors? Then stop, because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#55

Post by hodwik2 »

Throwaway585250 wrote: post #49
hodwik2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe IQ is heritable -- racially, or otherwise . Full stop. Intelligence is, by my estimation, entirely a function of nurture, not nature. Those exceptions are in situations where it is lacking due to handicap. Which is to say, everyone's brain has the same chance at brilliance (barring fetal alcohol syndrome, neglect, etc.) if they are not intellectually handicapped, and are provided the same child-reari…

Heritability of traits can be measured by twin studies. Some people have spent quite a lot of time doing this for IQ. Others have even identified some of the genes that are correlated with high IQ, TOR1A being one of the more interesting ones. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this area of research. Regarding population genetics, I don't think it matters as much as people seem to think. Han Chinese are short…

>"Heritability of traits can be measured by twin studies."

No, correlations between traits can be measured in twin studies, but they do not prove a causal link.

In the realm of intelligence, it could be (and I would argue) that looking like a nerd generally proceeds becoming one. People become social outcasts, and then become intelligent as a defense mechanism. That is,once in that nerd social caste, a greater percentage of people will find themselves using their brains more often. As a result, they get smarter, and score better on IQ tests.

Because twins are liable to look the same way, have the same temperament, same physique, etc. they are liable to be pushed into the same sorts of social groups, and as a result the same sorts of interests, ultimately pushing their IQs up or down together.

This would not mean that IQ is heritable, but that traits which can have a forcing effect on nurture (and thus IQ) are heritable.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#56

Post by kevinschumacher »

imron wrote: post #26

> An Urbit identity, or "ship," .... is actually just a 32-bit number, like an IP address 32-bits huh? That's brave.

I was thinking the same thing. Pretty bold move for a startup with an aim to provide a digital identity for everyone in the world with their stack.

But if you really dig (and I mean really dig) into their site:

> In the general case, a ship is actually a 128-bit number.

...

> A comet's [128-bit] address is the hash of its initial public key. Anyone can launch a comet. Nothing stops you from using a comet as your identity, except that the name is a mouthful and everyone will assume you're a bot. [0]

So, I mean, there will be a market for names I guess.

[0] https://urbit.org/posts/address-space/#-moons-and-comets

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#57

Post by bordercases »

Throwaway585250 wrote: post #49
hodwik2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe IQ is heritable -- racially, or otherwise . Full stop. Intelligence is, by my estimation, entirely a function of nurture, not nature. Those exceptions are in situations where it is lacking due to handicap. Which is to say, everyone's brain has the same chance at brilliance (barring fetal alcohol syndrome, neglect, etc.) if they are not intellectually handicapped, and are provided the same child-reari…

Heritability of traits can be measured by twin studies. Some people have spent quite a lot of time doing this for IQ. Others have even identified some of the genes that are correlated with high IQ, TOR1A being one of the more interesting ones. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this area of research. Regarding population genetics, I don't think it matters as much as people seem to think. Han Chinese are short…

Yao Ming was potentially part of a breeding program, of a sort. This is an argument that population genetics does matter, in that you generally get whatever the past has selected for unless you make a deliberate effort otherwise. Otherwise it's a no show.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/basketball/yao-ming-the-basketbal...

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#58

Post by hirsin »

emmelaich wrote: post #46
Camillo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is what amounts to a direct claim of purposeful obfuscation here: https://github.com/cgyarvin/urbit/blob/master/doc/book/1-noc... > We should note that in Nock and Hoon, 0 (pronounced "yes") is true, and 1 ("no") is false. Why? It's fresh, it's different, it's new. And it's annoying. And it keeps you on your toes. And it's also just intuitively right.

Focus on the intuitively right. I think it makes sense for 0 to yes/true. Think of the Unix exit codes, and golang returns. No news is good (yes/true) news. edit: as to the "annoying" that's just Yarvin being cheeky. I really don't think it is too serious.

And S_OK in Windows also being 0. Seen that take down services with a misplaced parens...

But to use it everywhere flies against the origin of it, which is current flowing vs not.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#59

Post by bordercases »

I'm not entirely sure I buy the arguments that "made-up words" are a bad thing. All words were made up at some point. And the English language on the surface seems extremely redundant in its vocabulary, but each element of a cluster of words can contain separate nuance, so we keep them around. Perhaps this doesn't have a place in computing, but perhaps it does. Consider, for example, the most jargon-y field of mathematics of all, category theory:

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/computational+trinitarianism

Proofs = Types = Categories; all related, all translatable in terms of one another, yet all different. New words in a technical vocabulary let you be both concise but also on occasion familiar.

I find arguments about obfuscation maybe a bit more credible. It's hard to say. I'll venture that getting people to pay attention to your ideas by throwing you off of previous convention could potentially work, but time will tell.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#60

Post by hodwik2 »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #40
hodwik2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe IQ is heritable -- racially, or otherwise . Full stop. Intelligence is, by my estimation, entirely a function of nurture, not nature. Those exceptions are in situations where it is lacking due to handicap. Which is to say, everyone's brain has the same chance at brilliance (barring fetal alcohol syndrome, neglect, etc.) if they are not intellectually handicapped, and are provided the same child-reari…

I think you're making a good point overall. If a trait is heritable then it will vary by populations. People should understand the consequences of the position they're arguing. However, why do you believe that IQ is not heritable? It's hard to believe there is no genetic component that is heritable. Humans evolved over time from other species, and in the process of evolving into Homo sapiens sapiens , their intellige…

The change in the brains from early protohumans to homo was a change of kind not quantity. We evolved new mental apparatuses.

On the other hand, from homo habilis/erectus to human, I do not believe there was a drastic change in kind of mental capacity, but rather, in a slow build in the technology of language made possible by our new mental apparatuses, which finally provided us a means for expressing and exploring complex ideas.

The brain is a very complicated system. Like other complicated systems, it is very easy for it to break from small changes (and thus we see mental disorders). On the other hand, it is nigh impossible to make a very complicated and robust system more effective -- a small change here or there generally won't do it.

So, barring us finding major physical differences in the brains of the general populace, they would seem to me to operate with roughly a uniform capability.

The difference that people ignore between the evolution of the brain and visible traits like skin color, is that skin color is a very simple system. We can expect it to change quickly. On the other hand, for human mental capacity to change would require enormous amounts of time because of the complexity involved.

It's possible there are modicums of difference in their operation, but it is unlikely to make a measurable difference between humans when compared with differences in the software of nurture, of culture, of 'thought'.

As with computers, you'll get more out of a little software tuning than you will by shrinking transistors by a nm, and software tuning is much easier.

As for twin studies, see my comment above.

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