Urbit • Hacker News Board

Re: Urbit

#211

Post by xg15 » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

belisarius222 wrote: post #37

SrslyJosh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The project is exclusionary by design--instead of using an existing programming language or even keywords/terminology from an existing human language, the creator decided to make everything up, right down to new names for existing symbols. F'r example: gar > hax # hep - kel { sel [ ser ] sig ~ soq ' Have to agree about the screenshots--if there's something useful here, why not show it off?

Canonical pronunciation for each character is a wonderful thing, and I use it all the time to discuss code. If there's one thing other projects should steal from Urbit, it's this. Spoken programming languages FTW. The pronunciations are no more exclusionary than learning Cyrillic, and the effort pays off.

The pronunciations are no more exclusionary than learning Cyrillic, and the effort pays off.

Oddly, I have never been required to learn Cyrillic to use any of many, many other programming languages out there.

Re: Urbit

#212

Post by pron » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

maehwasu wrote: post #201

pron wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between Yarvin and vinegar-drinking scolds is that Yarvin merely repeats yesterday's vinegar-drinking scolds. If you like his writing, there's literally centuries' worth of it (in fact, it only stopped being the norm rather recently), and if you go study history at a university you'll read quite a lot of it. It does seem less fresh, though, once you read it in proper chronological order, and with appro…

I actually agree strongly: one of the best things in his writing is his references to primary sources, many of which I found extremely enjoyable to read. The past is a foreign country more interesting than any tourist trip you can take. If the only thing the Moldbug posts did was link to that material, that would be a service in itself. To give Yarvin his due though, he does a good job synthesizing it all into a gene…

Except for two problems: his understanding of the material is well below that of a first-year history student (he's a layman more than an amateur), and any decent college book or course contains far better references. Second, there is nothing new about his positions. They're a rehashing of the old mainstream, that was rejected over time because of societal and technological changes he doesn't know and certainly doesn't understand. As someone who studied both physics and history in grad school, his writing about history seems to make as much sense to someone who has actually learned that history as the multitude of texts about Reiki and channeling aliens that mention "quantum energy" make sense to someone who has actually studied physics. It only looks interesting (in a serious way) when you know virtually nothing. I read it in the same way I read about Reiki: a sort of curious anthropological entertainment from an epistemology that diverges sharply from science and scholarship. Sort of like a modern person would enjoy reading medieval texts about body humours or the four elements. So it's interesting to me to see the alternative constructions people who have no real scholarship make in order to understand the world around them.

Re: Urbit

#213

Post by mellosouls » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

_glsb wrote: post #196

mellosouls wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to look around, a quick Google on monarchies and GDP before your initial post would have given you the information you needed to not post it. Eg the first link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/07/23/shut-... Btw your jeering tone and determination to classify either of us as morons is unhelpful.

You peddling horsesh*t is unhelpful. Your fluid goal posts don’t help either. Obviously any U.K. style “monarchies” and republics with a figurehead. Your best bet therefore would be Middle East monarchies, which are obviously a product of the extraction industry. So even that is not an argument. Remember how China realized that the communist system isn’t sustainable and introduced elements of monarchy? No? Me neither…

How on earth is the first link in a Google search "cherry picked"?

At least half of those states in your own link are monarchies!

Placing quotes around the archetypal monarchy seems like an act of last resort tbh - as do the repeated insults; so I'll consider this particular micro-debate conceded to me.

Re: Urbit

#214

Post by NaggingGranpa » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #199

maehwasu wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I found Yarvin’s (awesome) writing in the first place was because of a post like this on Twitter. I figured that if vinegar-drinking scolds hated him, he might have something interesting to say. Your post will probably have a similar effect for a couple lucky people.

The difference between Yarvin and vinegar-drinking scolds is that Yarvin merely repeats yesterday's vinegar-drinking scolds. If you like his writing, there's literally centuries' worth of it (in fact, it only stopped being the norm rather recently), and if you go study history at a university you'll read quite a lot of it. It does seem less fresh, though, once you read it in proper chronological order, and with appro…

The cold leftovers can still be highly nutritious to those raised on processed, mythologized, state-endorsed pseudo-history.

Re: Urbit

#215

Post by blotter_paper » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

maehwasu wrote: post #203

blotter_paper wrote: post #81

Oh dear. Let me start by saying that I find Urbit interesting in it's own right. I'm generally interested in distributed systems, and Urbit's Nock and Hoon are weird languages that I'm interested in despite not coming close to groking. That said, we should also remember where it came from (without throwing the baby -- if there is a baby -- out with the bath water). Curtis Yarvin previously wrote a blog called Unquali…

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that HN is the HR department at your company. Pointing to someone's opinions and shrieking doesn't really fly here. Particularly when the opinions are fairly defensible. (I.e. the only moral principle by which Breivik (whom I abhore) is worse than Che is "anything done in the service of left-wing causes is ok.")

I'm under the impression that a lot of people in these comments seem unaware of the history of this project, and how the views of the Yarvin/Moldbug shaped early decisions such as naming and user titles. I'm not under the impression that you speak for HN; I've seen the comment you're replying to fluctuate between 2 and -2... and that's with Tlon employees engaging in the comments without showing good faith (e.g. not identifying themselves). I would call the comment you're replying to controversial, but I don't think it's fair to call the comment "shrieking" or say that it "doesn't really fly here." So far it is getting both upvoted and downvoted, repeatedly.

Yes, he mentioned Che. He dwelled on Mandela. Is 1962 South Africa comparable to 2011 Norway? I feel like that excerpt has 2 purposes, arguing for political violence being equally valid no matter the circumstances of the state you're living in, and race-baiting. He didn't dwell on those examples at random. Do his lines about the natural predisposition of black people towards slavery seem "fairly defensible" to you? I tried to include enough absurd quotes that most folks could find something that would make them understand where this character is coming from, even if they agreed with some small part of his thinkings.

Re: Urbit

#216

Post by pron » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

NaggingGranpa wrote: post #214

pron wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between Yarvin and vinegar-drinking scolds is that Yarvin merely repeats yesterday's vinegar-drinking scolds. If you like his writing, there's literally centuries' worth of it (in fact, it only stopped being the norm rather recently), and if you go study history at a university you'll read quite a lot of it. It does seem less fresh, though, once you read it in proper chronological order, and with appro…

The cold leftovers can still be highly nutritious to those raised on processed, mythologized, state-endorsed pseudo-history.

I don't know what to say except that as someone who has studied history professionally for some years, Yarvin's history is far more mythologized than the "state-endorsed pseudo-history." Hell, Yarvin's writings were the state-endorsed pseudo-history from about 1820 to 1920.

They read like a text by a Reiki guru about quantum physics. It, too, can be surprising by pointing out that the Newtonian mechanics you learned in high-school is far from the whole story, except that the story they give is just... wrong. I'm not saying one couldn't come to the same position as him while actually knowing history, but he specifically certainly doesn't.

Re: Urbit

#217

Post by blotter_paper » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

oldfanthroww wrote: post #143

blotter_paper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find that quote by searching the text of the linked article. I was looking for it because I'm skeptical of the claim that Yarvin supports a society with multiple shareholders of political power. I read the archives of Unqualified Reservations when Urbit was first released, and I was left with the impression that Yarvin supported the rule of literally one person. This is the closest quote I've found so far, bu…

Moldbug (whom I would distinguish from Yarvin as you would a comedian's stage persona) in advocating for neocameralism proposed rule by a CEO-king. This person like a conventional CEO would hold great personal power in their organization. Unlike a king the CEO would be elected by the board and responsible to the shareholders. You can read more in the posts about Patchwork. >Emphasis his If you mean to emphasize the r…

As in, emphasis original; the words italicized in the preceding block quote ("royalism", "King", and "Queen") were italicized by Yarvin/Moldbug, not myself.

Re: Urbit

#218

Post by yebyen » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

iudqnolq wrote: post #102

bronzejaguar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t, and the article is outdated and “titles” no longer exist.

The words changed from feudal to stellar. The concept is the same.

One of the core concepts of Urbit's naming schemes' origin and systemic ethos is that by naming a thing (or by reusing an existing name for a perhaps closely related thing) you confine and constrain the newly created thing in ways you may not have anticipated.

Why for example in Urbit terms you may have "gates" and not functions, "battery" and "payload" instead of methods and objects, or functions and parameters, because these things do not work exactly like the familiar constructs from your well-known languages that you're perhaps already familiar with.

It would then also be tempting to make them work more like the things they are being called like, or "anthropomorphize" them into those things, for lack of a better word, giving them traits which they don't innately have in spite of being part of a perfectly workable functional system.

There is also certainly a difference in concept between an aircraft carrier and a galaxy (although both may invoke imagery of energetic nuclear processes powering them, it's hard to argue they are the same or even similar), or differences between a destroyer and a planet, submarine and comet, although it's true that the addressing math hasn't changed, ...

I think you'd be hard-pressed to make an argument that IPv4 and IPv6 are feudally inspired, and they both use very similar maths to pieces of Urbit that we're talking about.

Re: Urbit

#219

Post by NaggingGranpa » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #212

maehwasu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree strongly: one of the best things in his writing is his references to primary sources, many of which I found extremely enjoyable to read. The past is a foreign country more interesting than any tourist trip you can take. If the only thing the Moldbug posts did was link to that material, that would be a service in itself. To give Yarvin his due though, he does a good job synthesizing it all into a gene…

Except for two problems: his understanding of the material is well below that of a first-year history student (he's a layman more than an amateur), and any decent college book or course contains far better references. Second, there is nothing new about his positions. They're a rehashing of the old mainstream, that was rejected over time because of societal and technological changes he doesn't know and certainly doesn…

> his understanding of the material is well below that of a first-year history student

Met plenty of history grad students in grad school. Well-read but intellectually very limited, and very herd-minded. But, then, I did not go to an Ivy with a tradition of excellence in the humanities.

> Second, there is nothing new about his positions

Of course there is, it's just the nutty cypherpunk stuff like crypto-locked nukes.

> As someone who studied both physics and history in grad school

You're a member of an extremely small class. He does not write for people like you. It makes no sense to write for people like you if power is the goal.

Marx's writing was childish beyond belief. He did not even know calculus. Yet, look at how much has been unleashed on his behalf.

Re: Urbit

#220

Post by kemonocode » Sun, Dec 01, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

I'm still unsure what this actually brings to the table and what necessity it actually tries to solve. Bitcoin actually tries to solve the issue of trustless, decentralized money (Whether or not it actually does that is a topic in itself, but it tries), then you've got endeavors like Ethereum but for distributed computing (In fact, as far as I can tell, some of Urbit's aspects are built on top of Ethereum), Namecoin for domain names, and so on.

It makes for interesting computing outsider art, I suppose, but being compared to TempleOS might not be too desirable.