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The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

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Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#41

Post by throwanem »

WJW wrote: post #38
rdevilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits: > I. DEFINITION: > MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. > (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. > I call…

A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician, and which is therefore not very useful as a distinction.

If you called him on it he would say that was on purpose, then talk your ears off about how. He was a ferociously effective charlatan, which is why people still remember the name he made up for himself. (And even invented a rhyming couplet to prate as a pronunciation guide!)

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#42

Post by rdevilla »

WJW wrote: post #38
rdevilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits: > I. DEFINITION: > MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. > (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. > I call…

A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician, and which is therefore not very useful as a distinction.

> A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician

Exactly correct.

Chapter 2: "No, every act of your life is a magical act; whenever from ignorance, carelessness, clumsiness or what not, you come short of perfect artistic success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration. [...] Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly."

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#43

Post by WJW »

throwanem wrote: post #37
rdevilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits: > I. DEFINITION: > MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. > (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. > I call…

Crowley is full of shit. By this definition a hammer is a magical or "magickal" implement - the K was Crowley's invention, so that he could trademark it - which of course can be true if someone decides as much, but the only reason to couch such trivia in the pettifogging obscurity Crowley favored is because doing so will help you nail bored young socialites, an activity which Crowley also famously favored. (Gotta wat…

For sure. Despite all the talking about "self-deification" and all that shit, they sure seem to care a lot about what society (and their imaginary demons) think about them.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#44

Post by talkingtab »

rdevilla wrote: post #24
talkingtab wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.

I mean, I've had pipe dreams of a parallel networking stack built on IPv6 with a killer app offering real peer-to-peer networking again. But who will deploy and maintain all the new IPv6 networking gear, infrastructure, undersea cables? This is not something within the purview of the average (or even above average) hacker any more; the encumbents are too firmly entrenched.

Personally, I am guessing it is the other way around. Not first killer app, but first a parallel networking stack, etc.

The idea that anyone is too firmly entrenched is always true. Until it is not. We are not still using horses, nor casting bronze tools. Nor do most ships sail. We (mostly) don't burn coal anymore. It would have been utterly insane to imagine replacing any of those entrenched technologies. That is the "follower" syndrome.

The context for a new kind of internet is very different now, than when the internet started. That changed context provides an opening for new ways to do things.

A crucial and hard piece is that it has to be paid for. As much as you need a parallel networking stack you need a parallel business model. Yes, the current one is too firmly entrenched, etc.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#45

Post by rdevilla »

throwanem wrote: post #41
WJW wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician, and which is therefore not very useful as a distinction.

If you called him on it he would say that was on purpose, then talk your ears off about how. He was a ferociously effective charlatan, which is why people still remember the name he made up for himself. (And even invented a rhyming couplet to prate as a pronunciation guide!)

[flagged]

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#47

Post by satvikpendem »

throwanem wrote: post #35
satvikpendem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the show Devs (2020), by Alex Garland. The joke is "Devs Ex Machina", Ex Machina being another film of his.

Eh. I enjoyed it enormously and I do likewise recommend it, but its story isn't related to AI (either the concept of its moment or the technology of ours) even slightly, nor trying to be, or at least not in any way I saw. It was pretty open with its themes, so I would expect that one to have been pretty noticeable if it was present alongside the questions of reality, artifice, grief, and simulationism with which the…

You're right, not necessarily AI, more so what an omniscient and omnipotent device could do especially in the wrong hands.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#48

Post by notpachet »

throwanem wrote: post #37
rdevilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits: > I. DEFINITION: > MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. > (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct. > I call…

Crowley is full of shit. By this definition a hammer is a magical or "magickal" implement - the K was Crowley's invention, so that he could trademark it - which of course can be true if someone decides as much, but the only reason to couch such trivia in the pettifogging obscurity Crowley favored is because doing so will help you nail bored young socialites, an activity which Crowley also famously favored. (Gotta wat…

> pettifogging

Off-topic but just wanted to thank you for teaching me a new word. I try to always reply to HN comments that expand my vocabulary.

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#49

Post by apsurd »

embedding-shape wrote: post #32
apsurd wrote: post #14

Best line: > I am concerned that ML systems could ruin our lives without realizing anything at all. It's hard to say it's not actively happening. And we don't even know it, don't realize it? don't care? (Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.)

> (Claude Code got mandated at my work this week. Like literally engineers must use CC.) As I haven't been a typical full-time employee in software development for some time, could you possibly just like leak the entire email where this was announced or something? (open invitation to others who could too, if parent cannot) I'm very curious to see how it was announced and what possible reasoning they could have for th…

The official declaration came about in a team-meeting. We're a tiny startup, 3 full-time eng with the CTO co-founder driving the AI transformation. We have scheduled onboarding meetings to get the entire company finding automation opportunities with specifically Claude (CC, Cowork). For eng specifically, there is "acknowledgement" that we all may have different setups, but we should all be unifying our prompts, strategies, pipelines, Agents, and so... it's CC. I still use Cursor so I'm the only one not on CC; my eye-brow was especially raised.

I don't want to be doxxed lol, so ironically I'll be sharing in the sense that on one hand I am unsettled by the mandate, on the other hand, for a tiny startup it's seems the state of the industry, less so company specific.

Startups (think they) are in a fight for their life, so the mandate comes from everyone contributing 10x or whatever. The expectation is that agentic coding should 3x/5x/10x your feature output, because that's how we're going to win.

I have many thoughts. But I'll focus on that last one: the mandate is literally more features, more code, because it gets us closer to winning. In my small engineering circles, surprisingly, this is like the defacto stance. All things considered, might as well ship more code!

Re: The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture

#50

Post by Slow_Hand »

notpachet wrote: post #48
throwanem wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crowley is full of shit. By this definition a hammer is a magical or "magickal" implement - the K was Crowley's invention, so that he could trademark it - which of course can be true if someone decides as much, but the only reason to couch such trivia in the pettifogging obscurity Crowley favored is because doing so will help you nail bored young socialites, an activity which Crowley also famously favored. (Gotta wat…

> pettifogging Off-topic but just wanted to thank you for teaching me a new word. I try to always reply to HN comments that expand my vocabulary.

Nice word.

I rue the day the IG reels crowd pick up on it and it becomes the "word du jour" that gets overused to the point of being intolerable. Right up there with "narcissist" and "gaslighting".

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