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Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

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Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#461

Post by ballenf »

yissp wrote: post #319
jawns wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the PROBLEM statement says: > it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity Yes, you could tell them something that happens tomorrow or the next day. But if time is of the essence and you can't wait until tomorrow, then the Temporal Password helps you _immediately_ demonstrate your authenticity.

What if we generate a random number every, say, 5 minutes and maintain a log of them along with their timestamp. Then the time traveler could just look up a few entries immediately after their destination time and convince people by predicting them in advance. Not immediate but pretty quick.

Wouldn’t the butterfly effect change the numbers? If not then the numbers need more entropy and less pseudo.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#462

Post by Smoosh »

I am trying to decide whether a political party could be created (in my country) which implements rational evidence-based policy. All policies and their implementation would require a postulate, and pre-defined criteria for success or failure. All regulations and driectives would then need to be consistent with, and balanced according to, the accepted policies. If necessary, laws would be changed/implemented to further this.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#463

Post by jamesrcole »

I believe that computation, mathematics, information and semantics all share the same set of simple foundations. And that the means to understanding these foundation is to look at how physical computational processes use information from their environment, and produce information that is used to make "real world" outcomes happen.

I am working on this at the moment, and no, I don't expect that what I write here will convince anyone. And I don't have any summaries of the work at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#464

Post by knowingathing »

wiseleo wrote: post #264
mattjoyce wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a father with a 12 year old struggling with math, to say something is extremely easy makes me think you have a better understanding of math than people.

Take your child back to first grade and systematically re-test his knowledge. Identify where he got lost, catch up, and then today's assignments will not be as difficult. The child is likely stuck on something that wasn't thoroughly understood in the past. I did this for a child recently. He was in the special needs program. I looked at his homework and re-tested his math understanding. It turns out he had no solid u…

Hey, this doesn't sound too different from the adaptive diagnostic Maths Pathway (https://mathspathway.com/) has. It starts at Level 1 and retests all mathematical knowledge of the student until it reaches their zone of proximal development (ZPD). It's all within a classroom environment, but it means all the students are learning the maths that suit them, not a one-size-fits all which is the issue you are referring to I believe.

Full disclosure: i work at maths pathway.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#465

Post by soulofmischief »

jamesrcole wrote: post #463

I believe that computation, mathematics, information and semantics all share the same set of simple foundations. And that the means to understanding these foundation is to look at how physical computational processes use information from their environment, and produce information that is used to make "real world" outcomes happen. I am working on this at the moment, and no, I don't expect that what I write here will c…

Essentially the Maxwell's equations of information theory?

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#466

Post by tobr »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #219
jezze wrote: post #21

I am trying to reinvent the web. Replacing HTML/JS/CSS with a language called ALFI. It is stupidly simple in its design but still very powerful. Similarly to HTML you use it to create widgets, place them, and define their behavior. It is humanly readable like HTML but line-based instead of markup-based. Instead of nesting it uses references. This allows it to be streamed. A big difference is that the language itself…

>A big difference is that the language itself doesn't allow styling (like CSS), the downside being you get less flexibility but the upside being it will render correctly on any display with any resolution. HTML without styling will render correctly on any display with any resolution. The facts of the history of the web tell us that people want custom styling, though, and businesses want it even more, because marketin…

> The facts of the history of the web tell us that people want custom styling, though, and businesses want it even more, because marketing says so.

Wait, what? Are we on different webs? The facts of the history of the web tell us that some of the most popular services for publishing are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, etc - places that allow for very limited custom styling.

I think you misunderstand what OP is trying to do, and are criticizing them for not instead making a thing you already know.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#467

Post by jamesrcole »

soulofmischief wrote: post #465
jamesrcole wrote: post #463

I believe that computation, mathematics, information and semantics all share the same set of simple foundations. And that the means to understanding these foundation is to look at how physical computational processes use information from their environment, and produce information that is used to make "real world" outcomes happen. I am working on this at the moment, and no, I don't expect that what I write here will c…

Essentially the Maxwell's equations of information theory?

I don't think so, in the sense that it's not concerned with the same kinds of details as information theory (which it is not to say it is incompatible with it), and it provides a set of foundations that are common to information, semantics, mathematics and computation.

As is well known, information theory doesn't deal with the meaning of the messages. As far as information goes, I am primarily concerned with information in the sense of such "messages", and their meaning.

Computation is considered by many to not involve semantics, because it processes information in a "blind, pattern matching" fashion, without regard to its potential meaning. But the sense in which it is semantic does not have to do with its intrinsic characteristics. It it a matter of its "extrinsic" details - how the information states in it relate to details that are (typically) outside of the computation. Seeing the computation as a physical process, processing information "about" details in its environment, highlights this.

The key to all this is appreciating that, once you see semantics and information processing as a matter of physical processes, you can see that the correct semantics can be necessary for producing a physical outcome. So you can analyse how that physical outcome was produced, in order to understand the semantics.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#468

Post by dr_dshiv »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #347
dr_dshiv wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the point still applies. The small integer ratios of harmony apply even to the rhythms of gamelan. And, of course, octaves are more-or-less universal across cultures.

This starts to get silly. "Small integer ratios" apply to huge numbers of natural phenomena, because "small integers" and "ratios" are properties of the world we live in. Pointing out that "harmony is another example of small-integer ratios" seems fairly devoid of content to me, especially when the primary user of musical harmony has long abandoned those pure integer ratios to allow modulation and other desired compo…

Silly indeed.

The fact that integer relations are mathematical relations that bear so heavily on physical phenomena is precisely the point. That's what the ancients got so damned excited about. You may not find meaning in it, but it certainly drove the development of science and philosophy from Plato to Galileo to Kepler to Descartes to Newton, etc.

Now, in recognizing that integer relationships are, in fact, an imperfect description of a pervasive phenomena -- that's why the ongoing investigation is so interesting and challenging. Don't we expect what is pervasive in physics to apply to psychology, culture and economics? I'd argue that the mathematical "imperfections" of modern music point to better models of what universal harmony really is.

Overall, the point is that we haven't yet solved harmony. Not even remotely. And i'd love a reference on why you think Byzantine music doesn't have octaves when the Greek music it grew out of most certainly did.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#469

Post by joe-collins »

chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

I've come to feel that a crucial feature missing from online discourse is the influence of third parties to the conversation.

If you have a conversation in meatspace, sufficiently nearby third parties send signals, because they cannot help but hear you (setting aside headphones or the like). Without entering the conversation, they can communicate by means like a change in stance, a muffled laugh, a roll of the eyes. If those signals are noticed, they provide feedback on the words exchanged and moderate the conversation when it grows heated or extreme. Social media doesn't well allow for these signals: the input interface doesn't allow for them without conscious effort to translate.

In the absence of those signals, any outrageous speaker on the internet can mistake the silence of our lossy input interface for silent approval. If they were wrong, someone would say something, surely? But no, there's just too much effort required to tell every damned fool they're an idiot. Even when one person speaks up, there's no apparent audience to serve as jury, and the fool can go on believing themself in the right.

In short: I think "audience feedback" is a necessity.

In effect: I think the concept of a "timeline", as a presentation of user-generated content, is socially broken. Every posting must be weighed, none should be allowed silence.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#470

Post by soulofmischief »

chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

I'd love to chat more about this if you'd like to reach out to me via the email address in my profile.

I have some ideas for this domain which you may find useful or at least worth discussing.

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