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What Urbit is

urbit.org

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Re: What Urbit is

#151

Post by lisper »

state wrote: post #42
kefka wrote: post #28

I was looking into this, as I have connections to the devs via our hackerspace. After research, I steered away, and hard. 1. Newbies trying to grok the platform are mocked mercilessly. Publicly over reddit and twitter. 2. The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Now, ad hominems aren't "good"... but if I work on it, I get lumped into the similar group. Just no. 3. It uses "Hoon" to program, which…

Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. 1. Has this ever actually happened? I'd be quite disturbed by that. We're more than happy to have people learning about Urbit, although we're not particularly active on social media. 2. Curtis is certainly controversial. None of us share his views, but we do enjoy working together. I'd like to think we live in a world where people who don't agree can still collaborate professionally.…

> Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs.

Can you please explain to me what a "non-lambda interpreter" is and why it matters?

Re: What Urbit is

#152

Post by ci5er »

zardgiv wrote: post #114
ci5er wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> collaborators in behavior that should _never_ be tolerated? Why? What has he done to anyone? Do his designs have built-in genome detectors? Or are you encouraging us all to join in as collective arbiters of wrong-think? Doesn't that seem a little too Maoist Cultural Revolution to you?

"Wrong-think" as a phrase is one of those thought-terminating clichés. People are voicing their disagreements with his professed viewpoints, yet you are using that cliche to dismiss them without addressing their viewpoints. This does not lead to a vigorous discussion in the marketplace of ideas.

> "Wrong-think" as a phrase is one of those thought-terminating clichés.

Agreed.

> People are voicing their disagreements with his professed viewpoints,

Voicing their disagreements with his pseudonymous comments from a completely different non-urbit context. I suspect (but I don't know) that if he wanted the public's perspective on his non-conformant political thought to skew the public's views on his technical design work, he wouldn't have used a pseudonym in the first place.

> yet you are using that cliche to dismiss them without addressing their viewpoints.

Quite the opposite. I am using that cliche, in a question, to ask if that is what the parent is asking (inciting?) us to do: arbite non-conformist thought.

The viewpoint that (here) I intentionally don't address can be summarized as: "I heard the designer wrote something that I disagree with elsewhere, under a pseudonym - more than once! I hereby dismiss anything he has to say on any matter." That's like saying: "Hitler lover strawberries, so we must all agree to avoid them."

> This does not lead to a vigorous discussion in the marketplace of ideas.

I agree, but... what marketplace of ideas? The aforementioned comments have nothing to do with the merits (or lack thereof) of urbit. A public shaming of a heretic is not a marketplace of ideas. Maybe the guy doesn't pay his taxes. Maybe he's behind on child support. Maybe he eats puppies for breakfast. I don't know. I also don't know that it really matters, as regards the merits (or lack thereof) of his engineering design.

And, I'm sorry. It seems that I have contributed to the thread going even further afield than it already had. I shouldn't have said anything to begin with...

Re: What Urbit is

#153

Post by yarvin9 »

lisper wrote: post #146
yarvin9 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another project, and would like to retract? It's certainly an understandable mistake. #2 is not worth bringing up again, but you might want to look carefully at the dictionary meaning of the word "avowed." If a person denies being a communist, it is still possible for him to…

> #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp It is not hard to re-invent/re-discover Lisp. In fact, it happens all the time. So just because you don't know Lisp doesn't mean you haven't re-invented it, though it does likely mean that you have re-invented it badly. Re-inventions of Lisp are sadly common. Good re-inventions of Lisp are rare. And good re-inventions of Lisp by people who don't know Lisp are unheard of…

Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem.

Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional programming is too important to be left to the functional programmers.

I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. I realize that people with IQs of 175 have an uncanny knack for taking indefensible positions and then defending them, but I'll just have to take this one on trust.

While we're measuring our respective equipment, however, we can agree that Lisp has macros. Hoon does not have macros, because it's a pure typed language and a pure typed language doesn't need macros.

If Hoon did have macros, however, they would be inherently hygienic, without anything like a gensym. If this is a good time for you to favor us with a lecture on the virtues of Lisp, perhaps you could start with gensyms and their place in "Maxwell's equations of software."

Re: What Urbit is

#154

Post by lisper »

Hmmm...

"Addionally, we're creating an open political and economic process, with a small, fixed-price public presale of Urbit address space."

Why does an "open political and economic process" require (or even allow) a "pre-sale of address space" by a central authority?

Re: What Urbit is

#155

Post by zardgiv »

ci5er wrote: post #152
zardgiv wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wrong-think" as a phrase is one of those thought-terminating clichés. People are voicing their disagreements with his professed viewpoints, yet you are using that cliche to dismiss them without addressing their viewpoints. This does not lead to a vigorous discussion in the marketplace of ideas.

> "Wrong-think" as a phrase is one of those thought-terminating clichés. Agreed. > People are voicing their disagreements with his professed viewpoints, Voicing their disagreements with his pseudonymous comments from a completely different non-urbit context. I suspect (but I don't know) that if he wanted the public's perspective on his non-conformant political thought to skew the public's views on his technical desig…

The marketplace of ideas means you don't get to dictate what others find relevant.

For some, this means that they don't want to be professionally or socially associated with someone who thinks some ethnic groups make genetically good slaves. People can vigorously discuss whether his writings crossed lines of acceptable behavior.

However, you're also free to discuss the technical details as much as you want! If that's what's relevant to you, that's perfectly acceptable as well, and it doesn't require you to defend his other writings.

Re: What Urbit is

#156

Post by natrius »

lisper wrote: post #154

Hmmm... "Addionally, we're creating an open political and economic process, with a small, fixed-price public presale of Urbit address space." Why does an "open political and economic process" require (or even allow) a "pre-sale of address space" by a central authority?

Sybil resistance. I'm skeptical, but it could make sense.

Re: What Urbit is

#157

Post by ci5er »

zardgiv wrote: post #155
ci5er wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wrong-think" as a phrase is one of those thought-terminating clichés. Agreed. > People are voicing their disagreements with his professed viewpoints, Voicing their disagreements with his pseudonymous comments from a completely different non-urbit context. I suspect (but I don't know) that if he wanted the public's perspective on his non-conformant political thought to skew the public's views on his technical desig…

The marketplace of ideas means you don't get to dictate what others find relevant. For some, this means that they don't want to be professionally or socially associated with someone who thinks some ethnic groups make genetically good slaves. People can vigorously discuss whether his writings crossed lines of acceptable behavior. However, you're also free to discuss the technical details as much as you want! If that's…

Fair enough. I agree with everything you just said here. Thank you.

Re: What Urbit is

#158

Post by rspeer »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #17
Bino wrote: post #15

Pro tip: I'm mildly clever. However I wan't able to understand the value or reasoning of this. Make it more clear and resell it to me

Consider what you would do with a personal server. Now imagine it's easy enough for anyone to use and maintain. Now imagine everyone's personal server could connect and communicate with each other seamlessly and securely, transferring data of any type. That's the promise of urbit.

If you ended with "That's the promise of the Information Superhighway", it would be an MCI commercial from the '90s.

Re: What Urbit is

#159

Post by state »

lisper wrote: post #154

Hmmm... "Addionally, we're creating an open political and economic process, with a small, fixed-price public presale of Urbit address space." Why does an "open political and economic process" require (or even allow) a "pre-sale of address space" by a central authority?

natrius got it. The explanation you may be looking for is (mostly) here: http://urbit.org/posts/address-space/#-initial-allocation-an...

Re: What Urbit is

#160

Post by state »

lisper wrote: post #151
state wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. 1. Has this ever actually happened? I'd be quite disturbed by that. We're more than happy to have people learning about Urbit, although we're not particularly active on social media. 2. Curtis is certainly controversial. None of us share his views, but we do enjoy working together. I'd like to think we live in a world where people who don't agree can still collaborate professionally.…

> Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. Can you please explain to me what a "non-lambda interpreter" is and why it matters?

We had this argument in person! Or, at least we had a good chunk of it. It was cut short, and I think it's my fault for not re-initiating it.

As you may remember, I'm really not the person to answer that question sufficiently. But I would like to see you and Curtis have this out at greater length.

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