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The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

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Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#41

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

archgoon wrote: post #33
lalaithion wrote: post #2

> The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where every possible quantum outcome exists in its own universe. And each time a universe branches, it creates a child universe that is slightly different from the parent universe, e.g., universal constants such as gravity and the speed of light might differ. Pretty sure this is flat ou…

Well; another problem is that saying that branching happens at all is to miss the point of MWI; which is to avoid collapse. There aren't any discrete "branching" events.

That sounds unlikely because empirically Certain Things Happen and Other Things Don't, and you need to be able to explain why. With examples.

MWI honestly sounds like the philosophical equivalent of No True Scotsman with added Meatloaf - no one is really sure what it means in detail, but they're somehow sure it doesn't mean that.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#42

Post by tim333 »

lalaithion wrote: post #2

> The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where every possible quantum outcome exists in its own universe. And each time a universe branches, it creates a child universe that is slightly different from the parent universe, e.g., universal constants such as gravity and the speed of light might differ. Pretty sure this is flat ou…

Yeah usually the Many Worlds hypothesis has the same constants, certainly as Everett proposed it.

The multiverse theory is usually used for having many universes with different constants and the like. Of course word use may vary.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#43

Post by tines »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41
archgoon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well; another problem is that saying that branching happens at all is to miss the point of MWI; which is to avoid collapse. There aren't any discrete "branching" events.

That sounds unlikely because empirically Certain Things Happen and Other Things Don't, and you need to be able to explain why. With examples. MWI honestly sounds like the philosophical equivalent of No True Scotsman with added Meatloaf - no one is really sure what it means in detail, but they're somehow sure it doesn't mean that.

MWI explains that "Certain Things Happen and Other Things Don't" is an illusion - everything that can happen, given the quantum probabilities, does happen. There is an infinity of branching outcomes. The only reason you perceive that Certain Things Happen is because, despite there being infinite paths from the root of the tree to a node, there is exactly one path from any node (where you are) to the root of the tree. So you look back and each moment appears to have followed from the previous, because it did. But the moments you experienced aren't the only ones that proceeded from the moments prior.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#44

Post by yesenadam »

holoduke wrote: post #19

It's funny that there is such a pro and anti js movement in the hardcore professional programming world. I know it's a bit off topic. But in every js topic here at hackernews you can feel this tension. I have never seen this before. And this place is visited by the best programmers out there . Very interesting

Aren't most popular languages like that? Pro-C, anti-C, pro-Lisp, anti-Lisp etc. Pro and anti Perl, Python, Haskell, Bash, Forth, C++, Go etc. Pro and anti OOP, pro and anti FP etc. There are the languages people argue over, and the languages nobody uses. (And a select group nobody uses but are still argued over - Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth, Prolog, APL etc)

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#45

Post by thrower123 »

krapp wrote: post #40
thrower123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I would appreciate it now, and the JavaScript that replaced it is really horrible. We haven't really gained any ground in about fifteen years, in real terms, there's just been a lot of swirling. Even WebAssembly's best case scenario is... Java Applets done a smidgeon better.

WebAssembly's best case scenario is "native software compiled to run to the web." Unlike Java applets, WebAssembly isn't tied to a specific language or runtime, so that "smidge" in the case of being inclusive of so many languages is pretty big. You could even run Flash sites in WebAssembly, the only thing stopping that from happening is copyright law. It would probably be even safer and run faster than Adobe's plugin…

Or you could just run native software...

I dunno, I don't get the point. If it gets rid of the dumpster fire that is JS applications, good, but it'd be better if the web could be for documents and applications could be for applications.

I'm too cynical and I've seen too much to believe that it'll be silver bullets and rainbows.

The write-once, run-everywhere idea always falls down, and pushes everything to lowest common denominator shovel-ware.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#46

Post by philipov »

tim333 wrote: post #42
lalaithion wrote: post #2

> The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where every possible quantum outcome exists in its own universe. And each time a universe branches, it creates a child universe that is slightly different from the parent universe, e.g., universal constants such as gravity and the speed of light might differ. Pretty sure this is flat ou…

Yeah usually the Many Worlds hypothesis has the same constants, certainly as Everett proposed it. The multiverse theory is usually used for having many universes with different constants and the like. Of course word use may vary.

You're thinking of the Cosmic Landscape. Many Worlds [Everett] interpretation is branching of the quantum wave function as described by GP. It solves the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical observables by saying that all possibilities occur, but we only see one of them because we exist in only one branch and branches can't interact. The copy of us in a different branch would see a different outcome.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#47

Post by philipov »

tines wrote: post #43
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds unlikely because empirically Certain Things Happen and Other Things Don't, and you need to be able to explain why. With examples. MWI honestly sounds like the philosophical equivalent of No True Scotsman with added Meatloaf - no one is really sure what it means in detail, but they're somehow sure it doesn't mean that.

MWI explains that "Certain Things Happen and Other Things Don't" is an illusion - everything that can happen, given the quantum probabilities, does happen. There is an infinity of branching outcomes. The only reason you perceive that Certain Things Happen is because, despite there being infinite paths from the root of the tree to a node, there is exactly one path from any node (where you are) to the root of the tree.…

I think a typical criticism of that is that Many Worlds replaces the mystery of wave function collapse with the mystery of why we are on this branch rather than one of the many copies of us on other branches.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#48

Post by krapp »

thrower123 wrote: post #45
krapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebAssembly's best case scenario is "native software compiled to run to the web." Unlike Java applets, WebAssembly isn't tied to a specific language or runtime, so that "smidge" in the case of being inclusive of so many languages is pretty big. You could even run Flash sites in WebAssembly, the only thing stopping that from happening is copyright law. It would probably be even safer and run faster than Adobe's plugin…

Or you could just run native software... I dunno, I don't get the point. If it gets rid of the dumpster fire that is JS applications, good, but it'd be better if the web could be for documents and applications could be for applications. I'm too cynical and I've seen too much to believe that it'll be silver bullets and rainbows. The write-once, run-everywhere idea always falls down, and pushes everything to lowest com…

>but it'd be better if the web could be for documents and applications could be for applications.

I disagree. Being able to compile software in practically any language and have it run both natively (because native runtimes for WebAssembly do exist) and in a browser would revolutionize the way people access software.

I mean, someone wrote Pong in COBOL[0] and I can run it in a browser without having to find a COBOL runtime for Windows 10. That's pretty damn cool, and it's significantly better than what Java and Flash could provide for both developers and the end user.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23189918

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#49

Post by Osiris »

holoduke wrote: post #19

It's funny that there is such a pro and anti js movement in the hardcore professional programming world. I know it's a bit off topic. But in every js topic here at hackernews you can feel this tension. I have never seen this before. And this place is visited by the best programmers out there . Very interesting

Programming languages are just a means to an end. I've used various language over the years and what I remember is what I built, not whether the language had pattern matching or not.

I have fond memories of writing PHP because it helped build a site to share messages with my family before Facebook. I remember VB.net because I tried to write a game in college. I remember C# because I built a laptop battery meter that I still sell 10 years later. I remember learning JS with node.js because I wrote a log aggregator.

Let's stop focusing on the how we get there and celebrate what we build.

Re: The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript

#50

Post by ChristianBundy »

fastball wrote: post #28
fennecfoxen wrote: post #10

> According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, your universe branched into many universes the moment you decided to use a for-loop. In this universe you wrote a for-loop, but in another universe you wrote a while-loop. Nonsense. If universes branch into many other universes, they do so when an event on the quantum level needs to be resolved. I presume that during any single decision-making operat…

I was actually delighted to discover that I've matured (ossified?) enough as a programmer that my source code is in fact fairly deterministic: the other day I somehow managed to completely wipe a fairly complex function (100+ LoC) from my repo before I committed it. I did this a week or so after I initially wrote the function. I then rewrote the function from scratch, with very little memory of how I wrote it the fir…

Interesting, I've noticed the exact opposite. For me, rewriting a program produces a slightly different program with different trade-offs. It's rare to have the time to build a bunch of different implementations of the same code, but when I have time it results in code that I'm very happy with.
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