61–70 of 189 posts
I actually think PG is exploring something that is at the heart of what it means to be a human being. Interestingly, the traditional teaching of Original Sin is that we are broken at the level of what we 'want'. The phrase commonly used is 'disordered desire'. The key idea here is that if you want the wrong things, you are not actually free, even if you perceive yourself as choosing freely. As a corollary, the more y…
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?
It's a long-standing tradition in the hacker community to delve into stuff one only has a cursory understanding of. At times it's productive, as it helps uncover intellectual impostures. At times it's just embarrassing.
>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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as we know the universe isn't deterministic.
Do we know it is non-deterministic, or do we not have any proof it's one way or the other?
You have to assume things we haven't been able to observe to construct our universe as deterministic.
And it is pretty simple things such as radioactive decay of a single atom in a vacuum which are pretty easy to grasp.
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?
After a while the speed at which a fan turns in a circle in order to move heated air off a CPU stops being interesting and larger questions that aren't as falsifiable start to seem interesting since they have so many implications to the practical questions that do matter. For example, "does God exist?" has huge influence on how we think of why wars are caused. The trouble is that much of philosophy is castles built o…
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?
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]…
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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably due to artefacts and signal noise coming from the outer-system that contains our universe and/or the machine running our simulation, rather than God.
Combining this with an infinite universe theory, it could also just be random noise intentionally introduced to a specific "instance" of a universe.
I don't think the universe is deterministic. Why would you think such a thing? So, if you start from a wrong assumption, the rest that comes is not that interesting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic
See also: how to train a neural network.