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Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

mitchellh.com

181–190 of 313 posts

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#182
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only a single source of truth and that is objective reality. Maybe you agree with that, but your wording is messy. It's true that different perspectives can yield their own particular bits of truth, if that's what you're saying.

Uh, what is objective reality?

What is.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#183
post #19

What a word of wisdom right there, the bit about internet is beautiful because it's ok to be weird - this is often the opposite on twitter, fb, reddit and many discords where if you have a different opinion you get mobbed by angry comments making one feel worse about their own weirdness.

It is increasingly important to be able to see that many things are true. There is no single "truth". Many things are true at the same time , and in all aspects of life. Each brain is like a band pass filter, and the effort we should make is to try to imagine the points of view of others, which are just different slices of the same world. Then embrace the slices we like, and just ignore the ones we don't, but don't a…

To clarify, there are formal truths: widely-accepted hard science, e.g. “2 + 2 = 4”. Technically, there’s a point where we can’t fundamentally prove anything (“if a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?”), and rarely we get things wrong (e.g. classical physics)….but in practice, these are true, end of discussion.

Then there are informal truths: e.g. “the Earth is round”, “the sky is blue”, “Gala apples are red”. You can nitpick them (the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, the sky is only blue during the day in areas without high pollution, Gala apples may be pinkish or have yellow blotches, or exceptional discoloration), endlessly or until they become formal (possibly by becoming self-referential). But in practice, these are also true (like formal truths; although it’s important to know the difference because…)

The problem is, there’s no line between an informal truth and uncertainty/opinion that isn’t true. Like you know ##FF0000 is red and ##00FF00 is not, but there’s no exact color that separates “red” and “not red” (it depends on person, mood, surroundings…) Consequently, unlike formal truths, informal truths have false implications (“fuzzy logic”). An informal truth can be phrased in a “misleading way”, priming the reader for a false implication (a formal truth can be phrased in a convoluted or unintuitive way, but interpreted formally, never leads to a false implication).

The vast majority of discussion is not formal. Even the smartest people constantly fall for false implications. And this isn’t completely solvable, because we fundamentally can’t formally define everything (too much detail): we tried with GOFAI, it failed and its successor, neural networks, informally defines things like us (by forming a lossy model of the world, then generalizing it).

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#184
post #93
post #53

This is great IMO. I like zig as a language and the idea behind it. But boy, it has a syntax issue. I with they figure out better syntax before 1.0, developer ergonomics I think are as important.

Can you elaborate on what you find to be an issue?

For me, anytype and the everything is public

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it out of touch? I donated much more than Hashimoto did relative to our net worths, but I cannot deny that I would have felt much more satisfied making a 1000x impact if I was a billionaire. I donated $6000 to a halfway house last year and that doesn’t even come close to covering a single bed for a year. If I was a billionaire I could have built an entire halfway house.

> How is it out of touch? I donated much more than Hashimoto did relative to our net worths, but I cannot deny that I would have felt much more satisfied making a 1000x impact if I was a billionaire. You have no way of possibly knowing this. And I bet you its not true. I'm no longer a billionaire, partially because I paid an astronomical amount in taxes (I don't play the tax avoidance games). And partially because we…

[flagged]

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#187
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only a single source of truth and that is objective reality. Maybe you agree with that, but your wording is messy. It's true that different perspectives can yield their own particular bits of truth, if that's what you're saying.

Uh, what is objective reality?

What is objectivity?

“There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity,’ be.” — Nietzsche:On the Genealogy of Morals III

It's a target. Objectivity does not appear in nature in a stable form. Nothing is fixed and certain. Some things just appear that way from our point of view.

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it out of touch? I donated much more than Hashimoto did relative to our net worths, but I cannot deny that I would have felt much more satisfied making a 1000x impact if I was a billionaire. I donated $6000 to a halfway house last year and that doesn’t even come close to covering a single bed for a year. If I was a billionaire I could have built an entire halfway house.

Hashimoto did more valuable work than you and then he is in position to do more impact wherever he pleases. >>I donated $6000 to a halfway house last year and that doesn’t even come close to covering a single bed for a year. If I was a billionaire I could have built an entire halfway house. We need some mechanism to select people who makes the choice. Popularity/lying contest (politics) ain't it. People making money…

I for one am glad that "let's just all follow bluecalm's hackernews comments" isn't how we select people who make "the choice".

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#189
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More money absolutely does make it easier to have social life. It absolutely does make it easier to cure curable diseases as well as live the life to the fullest when you have incurable diseases. And increasing your wealth is strongly correlated with gaining respect of people who were born into similar backgrounds and socioeconomic conditions as you were. More cynically, wealth makes it both easier to attract a roman…

None of that makes you happier. Define happiness, but there's a baseline for not being miserable (I have enough to eat etc) and then there's actual satisfaction with your life. If you doubt the thesis, consider the extreme examples of Musk and Trump. they have infinite wealth and power and are demonstrably, publicly miserable. The consistently happiest people I've personally met are Buddhist monks of various sects, w…

One of the downsides of arguing over internet is that whenever you provide an argument that precisely counters the point person A has made, there comes person B who makes a completely different point than person A, but still treats my reply to person A as if I was replying to person B instead.

I define happiness as whatever the person before me defined it as. GP defined it as good health, love and respect of others. Thus, my reply to GP was focused on how money can be turned into good health, love and respect of others. Your definition of happiness is completely different. So of course my reply to you is going to be completely different. The definition of happiness we're operating on has changed since my last comment, after all.

You are conflating two diametrically different claims. One is that money makes people inherently happy. Which is so obviously wrong it's not even worth talking about. It's also something nobody in this comment section said. Least of all me.

The other claim is that money can be exchanged for things that indirectly will make some given person happier than without those things. In short - that money can buy happiness. Both "can" and "buy" are extremely important here. "Buy", as in money itself is useless unless it's exchanged for something. It's this something that you exchange money for that's supposed to increase happiness, not money itself. "Can", because everyone has a choice what they do with their money. You can use the same money to buy something that will make you happy, or to buy something that will not. Musk and Trump are extreme cases of people who could buy happiness but chose to buy something else instead, and are therefore deeply unhappy despite their wealth.

What do these "Buddhist monks of various sects" eat? Where do they get food from? Is eating part of what makes them happy, or just something they're forced to do to continue living? If it was somehow possible for them to continue living without eating, do you think they'd stop eating?

What do these Buddhists do when they're not eating? I assume whatever it is, it's what makes them happy. And the more time they dedicate to it, the more happy they become. By not eating, they'd free up time to do even more of the thing that makes them happy.

In real world, these Buddhist could stop growing food by hand and instead ordered catering. They would be exchanging money for more free time, which in turn would increase their happiness. Is that not so?

Re: Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really do not understand how people talk about "Being rich / being a billionaire will make you fundamentally unhappy". Damn if I had all the money I have so many good-willed projects I want to throw money at!

Damn if I had all the money I have so many good-willed projects I want to throw money at! I think this is quite defeatist thinking. A thousand people who donate $400 is also $400k and is well within the realm of most people here. A lot of non-profits also want the thousand people that donate $400, because $400 yearly from thousand people is much more robust long-term funding. Recently a well-known Dutch journalist, w…

I think the point that above commentor was making is that mitchellh is likely more than a 1000 times as rich as most commentors here and that being able to out-influence over a 1000 people can be quite personally satisfying.
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