Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The scarcity of the long term

kk.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#61

Post by AndrewKemendo »

psychoslave wrote: post #54
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This nails it I think The basic unit of humanity, the human, does not have consistent long term desires or goals. In fact within the span of a lifetime the same individual is expected to have completely divergent goals and conception of reality when they are 20 versus 50 versus 80. In effect this means that a consistent, coherent goal state for human action is not possible to define that would satisfy the self-report…

I don’t know, look at how Knuth is still at work on TAOCP. Sure not everyone is Knuth (I am definitely not at least). Having a life long goal require a conjunction of passion for a topic that requires that much attention span and relevant available resources to explore it. I dare to say that having enough resources at hand including not being interrupted too often with other hassles and hazards from life is the bigge…

I’d argue that is something different than I’m suggesting, though I certainly agree that having a consistent project across a lifetime is rare but not that rare.

The difference is that Knuth is providing something of value to others, while your grandmother’s fully complete American Girl doll collection she started at age 5 is of limited value.

Your last point is really the key takeaway: How do we create a global society that gives every single human the freedom, opportunity and resources to produce their version of the computing bible? We have more than enough natural resources to make that happen

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#62

Post by [deleted] »

js8 wrote: post #14
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Institutions sustain themselves or rather the jobs of the controlling minds of the institution. Today’s Catholic Church would be viewed by its founders as some kind of uber-hippy bunch of democratic maniacs out to destroy civilisation. I think the difference here is we can view a company / institution as a machine to do a job, and between a company that has a controlling mind able to change its own machine “code” hen…

> Today’s Catholic Church would be viewed by its founders as some kind of uber-hippy bunch of democratic maniacs out to destroy civilisation. Are you sure? It seems to me that Jesus would be dismayed by how establishment they've become and not nearly radical enough.

[deleted]

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#66

Post by NeoTar »

lloeki wrote: post #59
NeoTar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I struggle to think of any collective project that spans centuries, that isn't fundamentally a religious enterprise. Certain parts of mathematics and science may qualify. Yes they have practical outcomes (as do certain religious projects - building a cathedral will employ craftsmen), but isn't the pursuit of 'pure' mathematics a collective project which serves no purpose apart from intellectual satisfaction.

Maths has a constant "next step" which makes it very iterative though whereas a pyramid or a cathedral is only complete or not-complete, and it's not-complete over these decades/centuries. > religious Probably the most enduring meme.

I think I respectfully disagree almost entirely.

Maths requires a huge amount of creative effort and there often is no logical next step. There was a reason that it took three hundred years to go from an idea that a^x + b^x = c^x has no integer solutions when x is greater than two, to a proof of that, and it involved some crazy twists and turns of thinking.

However, while a pyramid may have a definite endpoint, cathedrals have historically been in a near constant state of flux - a bishop wants to show his influence and rebuilds a tower higher, a burgher of the town want to show his power by adding a side chapel. New windows are installed, a porch is demolished and replaced with something more beautiful. For the cathedrals which took five hundred years to complete, it wasn't that they were abandoned building sites during that time - they just took that long to reach the state that we see as final today. Maybe in-between there was a wooden roof instead of a stone roof, or a tower was capped at thirty meters tall rather than fifty!

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#67

Post by Timwi »

admp wrote: post #21
dobin wrote: post #6

Many cathedrals took hundreds of years to build. The following around 500 years: Cologne Cathedral, St. Vitus Cathedral and Milan Cathedral. Sagrada Familia was started in 1882, and Gaudi is dead for 98 years. If the emperor demands, it will be built.

Cologne cathedral didn’t actually take 500 years to build — construction was restarted after a 250+ year halt. “Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted in the years around 1560, unfinished. Attempts to complete the construction began around 1814 but the project was not properly funded until the 1840s.”

That seems to me irrelevant to the point being made.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#69

Post by samatman »

denton-scratch wrote: post #55
crabbone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the unexpected effects of learning Hebrew for me, was something I didn't realize at first. Only almost thirty years since I could confidently use the language I accidentally watched a video where someone was researching the phonetics of the language (it's more or less generally agreed that nobody really knows how ancient Hebrew sounded). So, the researcher asked people from different communities (eg. Yemenite…

> Except for the razor my grandfather brought from Germany in 1945 Hah - I also have an old razor. I inherited it from my Dad. He seems to have bought it in about 1935, from a cutler in Cambridge, where he went to University. It was made in Sheffield, but is engraved with the name of that Cambridge shop. He would have been about 20 when he bought it - perhaps his first razor. I've tried to sharpen and use it; but it…

You might consider having a professional take a crack at sharpening that razor, the result may surprise you. I sharpen my own knives, with enough practice I can put a keen edge on a kitchen knife or pocketknife, but putting a razor's edge on a straight razor is about as difficult as sharpening gets, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't do as good a job at that as a professional would. You'll want someone who specifically sharpens straight razors.

Re: The scarcity of the long term

#70

Post by samatman »

admp wrote: post #21
dobin wrote: post #6

Many cathedrals took hundreds of years to build. The following around 500 years: Cologne Cathedral, St. Vitus Cathedral and Milan Cathedral. Sagrada Familia was started in 1882, and Gaudi is dead for 98 years. If the emperor demands, it will be built.

Cologne cathedral didn’t actually take 500 years to build — construction was restarted after a 250+ year halt. “Construction of Cologne Cathedral began in 1248 but was halted in the years around 1560, unfinished. Attempts to complete the construction began around 1814 but the project was not properly funded until the 1840s.”

So it took 500 years to build.

If a building took one year to build, but they didn't work on the weekends, would you object and say no, it only took 260 days?

Post reply on HN