Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What You (Want to)* Want

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 189 posts

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#91

Post by papascrubs »

nopinsight wrote: post #72
distcs wrote: post #11

Why is PG writing these pseudo-scientific metaphysical posts? His last post on Alien Truth was a disaster. Now this? I normally enjoy PG's writings! His writings on Lisp had good influence on me. But these recent posts are embarrassing. How can someone who has had so much influence in tech communities bring themselves to write these pseudo-scientific posts so glibly?

Do people still read philosophical writings by the likes of Plato and Socrates? This piece like quite a few others is a kind of musings which many find interesting and PG doesn't claim it to be scientific. There are areas of human interests that lie well outside our scientific capabilities. People should be allowed to speculate on them. Reasonable conjectures often precede solid evidence/proofs in math and science. T…

I was gonna say. This is very much discourse. It's someone's musings. What's so cringy about this? It never claims to be scientific; it never attempts to persuade or even really argue.

100% your twitter reference.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#93

Post by hugs »

"You can do what you want, but you can't want to want what you want."

I've read many of PG's essays, but this one feels like GPT-3 wrote it. It's borderline gibberish. Like he trained an AI on all his other essays, fed it the essay title, and this was the result. I half-expect a year from now that he'll tell us all his recent essays were written by this AI and it's now the core IP in some recent YC investment.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#94

Post by pydry »

AlexandrB wrote: post #32
jagrsw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> brain and physics are very deterministic Not to get too much into the 'quantum woo' territory, but my naive understanding is that the physics is only somewhat deterministic, b/c non-deterministic quantum events can have macroscopic effects? Say you decide for whether you'll eat a dinner, if a particle with half-time of 1 second will split within the next second. This you wouldn't be able to predict, even if you kne…

The problem is quantum effects are random. Even if they impact our behavior, RNG is not what most people think of when they say "free will". In my opinion, any coherent definition of "free will" implies a supernatural force - since it must be non-random yet not bound by deterministic chemical and physical processes. At this point it becomes a matter of faith/religion whether we have free will or not.

Are there any coherent definitions of free will?

I dont think I've ever seen a disprovable definition. It's like "god" or "love".

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#96

Post by nowherebeen »

hef19898 wrote: post #66
jean_tta wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very smart man, PG himself, once said [0]: > I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. PG started writing essays about what he knows well (programming, start ups), then about things he knows a bit (painting) and then stuff like this, or his essays on economic policy. In any case, he predicted his own future quite well. [0]…

Popularity and power seem to do that to people quite often, don't say? Which is said, especially in PG's case, because I like his older essays a lot. The now ones, well, not so much.

His older essays are grounded in experience. These ones he is trying to be Socrates - it's embarrassing.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#97

Post by vagab0nd »

You will do what you are programmed to do. "Free will" is an illusion that you don't know what you are going to do before you have computed the outcome. The Matrix said it best:

> Neo: But if you already know, how can I make a choice?

> The Oracle: Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#98

Post by mistermann »

auggierose wrote: post #77
mistermann wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possibility: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic See also: how to train a neural network.

Are these not at least two possibilities? Furthermore, what kind of heuristic is that? I don't see people being able to predict the future with much reliability.

I'd say they're kind of a blend - heuristics is what enables the Illusory Truth Effect.

> I don't see people being able to predict the future with much reliability.

Agree, but people seem generally unable to realize this (there is a similar problem with Truth, another thing people predict without realizing - see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33593349).

Now, what is the causality of this? Presumably it is a natural consequence/side effect/service of consciousness. But: so (presumably) are things like racism, but because that is harmful, society has deemed it inappropriate and this is socially enforced in various ways. Might the same be possible with clairvoyance and soothsaying, or at least in certain special scenarios/venues? The institution of science seems to have accomplished it, and realized substantial benefits as a consequence - might it have utility in domains other than science (politics, human relations, etc)?

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#99

Post by theGnuMe »

suslik wrote: post #68
theGnuMe wrote: post #63

I don't really get what he means here. >you can't (want to)* want what you want It seems to me that "want to want what you want" is a tautology, if you want something you already want to want it. you can't (want to want what you want). you can't want to want to want what you want). And it is recursive: you can't (want to want to want it)

I think this is just a wordplay that abuses the imprecision of the word 'want'. For example, a drug addict wants (as in has a very strong internal, biology- and subconsious-driven desire for) heroin, but doesn't want to want it (as in when thinks about it consciously).

I don't see that beyond holding two one or more beliefs in juxtaposition which is the definition of uncertainty.

A chemical addiction is not a "want".

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#100

Post by theGnuMe »

fluoridation wrote: post #73
theGnuMe wrote: post #63

I don't really get what he means here. >you can't (want to)* want what you want It seems to me that "want to want what you want" is a tautology, if you want something you already want to want it. you can't (want to want what you want). you can't want to want to want what you want). And it is recursive: you can't (want to want to want it)

>It seems to me that "want to want what you want" is a tautology, if you want something you already want to want it. Tell that to an addict.

Tell what? I am not sure I am following you... can you be more specific?
Post reply on HN