151–160 of 239 posts
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That's fascinating but I don't understand his argument. Wouldn't it mean that no problem can be solved? There was a time before Wiles proved Fermat, for example.
I think the central thesis of his argument is closer to, "No matter how big of a problem you've solved, life went on without that solution previously, so don't get too big of a head about it"
Most enlightened people don't even know they're enlightened. The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach. I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked f…
Hold on. Is enlightenment a widely accepted phenomenon with an agreed definition?
Most enlightened people don't even know they're enlightened. The ones who arrived there without conscious effort, through some intense concentration on some other aspect of life, simply lose their angst. Asked to explain, they usually have some kind of muddled folk mysticism about how it happened. Very few of them teach. I know of well attested enlightenment from an olympic-grade swimmer, and a guy who really liked f…
Hold on. Is enlightenment a widely accepted phenomenon with an agreed definition?
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Are you sure?
No I’m not absolutely sure. I’d love to learn how I might be wrong. But I feel pretty good about the idea. Do you have any concrete theories of how a human can _fully_ understand the entire universe?
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Your first quote reminded me of this from Bruce Lee: > Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.
Thanks for the quote, Bruce is a really admirable guy. May have been paying homage to another old Zen saying: “Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” ― Dōgen
Physics is kind of like that as one develops successively better models of molecules, atoms, and particles, replacing the bottom-level concepts each time. Though the stuff on top of them doesn't change a huge amount every time.
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Thanks for the quote, Bruce is a really admirable guy. May have been paying homage to another old Zen saying: “Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” ― Dōgen
A hobby of mine is taking sayings like that and saying, "Well, if it weren't mumbo-jumbo, then what might it mean?" In this case, it would seem to be: At the start, you have a bunch of knowledge, concepts built on other concepts; studying Zen involves breaking all of that down and reforming it from scratch; at the end of the process, you have a new bunch of knowledge and concepts built on concepts, and you have simil…
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Regardless of how one feels about the article, the thread is surprisingly not bad, and it's an intellectually interesting topic that doesn't get discussed here much. That makes for a great submission! Your notion of what belongs here is narrower than what the site guidelines call for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . The best submissions are the ones that can't be predicted from any sequence ( https…
Well, observing the decrease in quality and increase in frustration on HN over the years, I'd double down on my opinion any day. The more junk on HN that has nothing to do with code, the more people complain, the worse the quality is, etc. Year after year, it's held true. I don't hesitate to posit either that moderation decisions have severely decreased the quality of the HN experience. A a cyber-hammer as the arbite…
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%22%20%22hac...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%22%20%22hac...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%22%20%22hac...
As the saying goes, things have always been getting worse. HN has been "turning into Reddit" since before it was HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21755721), getting "taken over by politics" for almost that long (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869), and so on.
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No I’m not absolutely sure. I’d love to learn how I might be wrong. But I feel pretty good about the idea. Do you have any concrete theories of how a human can _fully_ understand the entire universe?
I have heard it said, that if you understand yourself you understand the universe. Some say there are levels to go through in order to get to this "universal understanding". There's this one Youtuber who filmed himself on 5-MeO-DMT - his gateway drug to universal understanding. Well he was more blunt, in that he became God.
Here's one piece of evidence out of thousands more. Consider that the psychedelic effects of LSD can be prevented simply by blocking 5-HT2A receptors in the brain [1]. This is what you would expect if a psychedelic experience is a biochemical phenomenon occurring in the brain, like that sparked by caffeine. A more powerful and much more interesting one, yes, but not something that requires talking of "god" or "universal understanding".
[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/httpbl... (search the page for "block the 5-HT2A receptor")
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Your first quote reminded me of this from Bruce Lee: > Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.
Nice, I like that. It meshes with my own experience learning and internalizing various skills. If I'm interpreting it correctly, upon learning an art, each aspect of that art becomes a wide topic unto itself, to be picked apart and studied in detail. But in mastering an art, those lessons learned are internalized, and each aspect seen again as only its whole self.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
You know what you don’t know.
You know what you know.
You don’t know what you know.