Dennis Hackethal’s Blog
My blog about philosophy, coding, and anything else that interests me.
Tweets
An archive of my tweets and retweets through . They may be formatted slightly differently than on Twitter. API access has since gotten prohibitively expensive – I don't know whether or when I'll be able to update this archive.
But in case I will, you can subscribe via RSS – without a Twitter account. Rationale
@ParodiMarcello @LibertarianJew @liberty_deity
I know this topic is taboo, but don’t frame it like you’re doing me a favor.
Our best explanations of consciousness and creativity say animals aren’t conscious. Either refute those explanations or accept them.
@LibertarianJew @liberty_deity
Now, they still could be conscious anyway, but consciousness seems to have to do with creativity and error correction in particular.
If animals just mindlessly execute their genes’ instructions and don’t create knowledge, that leaves no room for creativity/consciousness.
@LibertarianJew @liberty_deity
Ok. If everything is inborn, animals are just mindlessly executing their genetic instructions. They don’t need to be conscious for that. They’re just little robots.
A video series on the Berlin programming language:
@LibertarianJew @liberty_deity
Ok there are layers to this so let's go step by step.
I follow David Deutsch here who says that everything animals do can be explained through inborn algorithms they inherit genetically. Biological evolution created those algorithms. Make sense so far?
@LibertarianJew @liberty_deity
Right. There is an emotional response--it cries out--but I don't think it suffers. Only people can suffer because they have an ability animals don't have: creativity.
Has to do with how the human mind works vs how animal "minds" work. I can go into more detail if interested.
@LibertarianJew @liberty_deity
As uncomfortable as it is reading those tweets, animals aren’t conscious. They can’t suffer so it isn’t immoral to kill them or hurt them.
However, if he thinks his dog does suffer and he enjoys it anyway or even because of that, then I’m worried about him (but not the dog).
It’s not about resisting things that protect you. It’s about resisting force. You can agree that people should wear masks without agreeing they should be forced to do so.
I wasn’t, but lack of a fitness function and competition over memory and processing power sound promising!
mentioned a paper to me about artificial life once by someone who’s Popperian, IIRC.
I wrote a little functional programming language called Berlin that transpiles to JavaScript. I call it "poor man's Clojure."
Hoping you find it useful.
Docs: berlinlang.org
Source & rationale: github.com/dchacke/berlin…
They are conjectures. We tentatively assume they are true until they are refuted.
You wrote a lot so your content is ~4x longer than mine so it's overwhelming. You also insult David's work and his fans. That leaves little incentive for others to discuss/learn with/from you.
Speaking of the "Bucket Theory of the Mind"... This is what some French artists around the turn of the century thought school could look like in the year 2000 :(
From publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-1… https://t.co/iaV0JIqssV
It's a keen observation, but that problems are inevitable is itself not a problem. It's a good thing: otherwise we wouldn't be able to make infinite progress. In other words: if problems weren't inevitable, we might get stuck and stagnate forever. So it's a feature, not a bug.
.@ChipkinLogan stopped by to talk about economics, epistemology, coercion, the US government's response to the pandemic, Constructor Theory, and more. I learned a lot—I think you will, too.
Enjoy!
They don't qualify "men," so presumably they mean all men, including black ones. Therefore, they're singling out black men for special opprobrium, when three paragraphs earlier they said all black lives matter regardless of their sexual identity.
2/2
They're also self-contradictory.
First they say: "[...] all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity [...]"
Three paragraphs later: "We build a space that [...] is free from [...] environments in which men are centered."
1/
RT @TheAliceSmith:
In a hundred years time...
“Mum, is it true that we used to put men on the moon?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Why don’t we d…
@NathanpmYoung @DavidDeutschOxf @DouglasCarswell
Is a legitimate point. I'm agreeing with you.
Oh, I got confused there. By "standard" I was referring to the API standard you mentioned, so when you used the word "standard" again I thought it was still referring to that.
@NathanpmYoung @DavidDeutschOxf @DouglasCarswell
Ah, yes, I would consider that a sort of "negative" coercion -- "you must not do x" -- whereas a positive coercion -- you must do x -- is immoral.
I'd argue negative coercion is morally okay iff it prevents positive coercion. What do you think?
@NathanpmYoung @DavidDeutschOxf @DouglasCarswell
I think how you create the standard is legitimate.
Legitimate how? Because it's government-sanctioned?
Coersion is not always immoral.
Give an example of moral coercion and an explanation of why it is moral?
@NathanpmYoung @DavidDeutschOxf @DouglasCarswell
You could. The question is whether you should.
That standard is almost invariably dictated by those who don't have to meet it themselves (govt) and don't know whether it'd be hard.
And again, even if it were the most trivial undertaking: coercion. is. immoral.
The Case against Commas and Operators:
@NathanpmYoung @DavidDeutschOxf @DouglasCarswell
Do the incumbents also need to update their migration software to support every little new service? What about incumbents with high market share but little cash? Etc
- even if some companies can do this trivially, it isn’t right to use force on them. Better to persuade.
RT @liberty_deity:
Let the truth be known. https://t.co/2n7mTouEml
It’s not real AI because real AI would be a person. This is false advertising.
No such thing as a reliable source, see Popper.
RT @Crit_Rat:
Today, the YouTube algorithm blessed me with an explanation of why arches are stable structures: youtube.com/watch?v=JlL6ZH…
It'…
One of the most influential scientific journals has become vulnerable to political abuse. This is extremely worrisome.
@tjaulow @PessimistsArc
It's not on those subjected to force to explain the harm. It's on those who want to subject others to force to explain what gives them the right to do so, no matter how small a force it may be.
While I am in support of the use of seatbelts, I completely get Dave’s opinion that forcing people to wear seatbelts is not okay.
RT @Ayaan:
What the media also do not tell you is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have…
RT @DavidDeutschOxf:
Learning about those things has never been more important, yes.
RT @SarahTheHaider:
This passage from Arendt seems... extremely topical. Read in full. https://t.co/NatL8xDUaA
RT @Laquearius68:
This is my participation at the @frictionalgames Frictional Fan Jam as main theme : Spring/Rebirth ! Hope you like it <3…
More buggy animal programming: dog’s person-recognition algorithm falsely identifies a statue as a person, dog then repeatedly expects the statue to throw the stick. twitter.com/_Islamicat/sta…
Beasts can't be appeased. Don't base your actions on what they want. twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/stat…
James is trying to present a false package deal to pressure people into agreeing with him. You can, e.g., oppose uncoordinated and unsafe toppling in favor of coordinated/safe toppling.
More about how you can identify such false package deals: medium.com/@hcd/how-do-so…
Yes, + “the more you deny being wrong the more you are wrong”
RT @SpeechUnion:
1/ An alarming number of people are losing their jobs at the moment – or being suspended from them, pending investigations…
I’m not sure people are born with racist ideas. Those strike me as memes, ie learned.
.@jtLOL Official prediction: some SJW will demand BLM hashtag shouldn’t count toward character limit because that “silences their voices.” @twitter will scram to implement that lest they look like racists.
He’s basically saying: if you’re white and claim you’re not racist, that’s just more evidence of you being racist.
No. That’s evidence of HIM being racist against white people (yes that’s possible)
- he’s setting up a situation in which he can’t be wrong. Static memes galore. twitter.com/kjdrennen/stat…
RT @chadfelixg:
If white supremacists were the threat the left demands they are, defunding the police would be the most dangerous thing for…
RT @TomCottonAR:
How is everyone at the @nytimes doing tonight?
RT @jtLOL:
Utter lunacy. This is how people leave the left. https://t.co/itJ7PhpIVK
RT @jtLOL:
"I just publicly shamed my daughter for looking like me"
RT @jtLOL:
OUT: "In these uncertain times..."
IN: "Please stop looting us, we swear to God we're not racist"
RT @jtLOL:
Every brand must tell me that racism is bad or I will be left to assume they think racism is good
Hmmm... can't really do that as I don't have commas or semicolons so I already use whitespace as as delimiter for lists...
RT @ZubyMusic:
@ArielleScarcell
Yes. And this shouldn't need to be said.
Posting a black square literally does nothing. It's a feel good t…
What are good delimiters for code blocks in compiler design? Other than the already overused {...}, [...], and (...).
I'm thinking maybe <...>. Like in this fn declaration:
fn(a b <
... code here
)
Problem: conflicts with less than/greater than operators.
RT @MikhailaAleksis:
Apparently it’s “post a black box on Instagram to prove you’re not a racist” day. The world is insane. I’m not taking…
@JesseNichols @ToKTeacher @dela3499 @ChipkinLogan
Sometimes it can be fun and low-effort to solve a problem you've solved before. You can try to solve it differently, or better, or both.
Good for you for speaking out against trendy nonsense.
I don't know what's more disturbing. The tweet itself or the amount of likes & retweets it got. twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/stat…
Yes, heroes. Now cue environmentalists saying "but if they hadn't done that we wouldn't be having as much of an impact on the environment today and the planet would be better off." Environmentalists oppose progress, even (or especially?) when it saves people's lives. twitter.com/HumanProgress/…
RT @dvassallo:
"If you're on the wrong train, every stop is the wrong stop." — @GuruAnaerobic
No matter how much you've invested in your c…
RT @Trad_West_Art:
She is an 'artist' twitter.com/ParanoidKino/s…
RT @Ace_Archist:
@PBP1366 @smellycarney @1diotzQuery
You can think anything you like, yes. You don’t have a right to impose it on me throug…
I was wrong. It may be even simpler: feeling cold + not touching ground.
Seeing water + not touching ground = kick off swimming motion.
More buggy animal programming: youtube.com/watch?v=H49iVB…
Note the comments: nobody goes "wow, it's remarkable how dumb these dogs are." Most go "OMG so kewwwt." Only the users "FlyingFuzzies" and "Remember White" say what I think is right: it's instinctual behavior.
Four new videos in the "Functional JavaScript" series -- on thread operators and accessing and updating object properties.
Did Bostrom write that headline? twitter.com/PessimistsArc/…
Want to step up your JavaScript game? I created a video series on functional JavaScript: youtube.com/watch?v=KGR7U-…
11 videos so far, and I'll be uploading more content soon.
It's like: updating parameters has nothing to do with creativity regardless of where the knowledge of how to that comes from.
Re leaking knowledge generally: it's fine as long as the only knowledge leaked into the creative program is knowledge of how to create new knowledge.
The reason ML isn't the path to AGI/creativity isn't just that programmers leak knowledge into ML programs. It's that ML is about optimizations and not about creating knowledge.
Even if in the latter case the animal wouldn't be confused, though -- it just wouldn't recognize things.
It could go either way. Either like you say - it's all already given genetically - or the animal's genetically-given recognition algorithms first need to be trained similar to today's ML algorithms so then the animal would get better at recognizing things over time.
Popper arguably being one of the most important in terms of philosophical progress made.
RT @CalebJHull:
"Flattening the curve" turned into communism real quick
How do we explain this? newscientist.com/article/dn1230…
It looks like there’s virtually only neocortex left.
RT @Kasparov63:
Of course. This is why it's important for Americans and others in the free world to understand that there is no useful sepa…
Yes. It’s just that we are not always aware of many of the incremental steps so some new conjectures can look like leaps.
IIRC, DD says something similar in BoI but I can’t find the quote rn. But yeah generally I’d say boldness and gradualness are orthogonal not opposites.
“The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch.
Well, the evolutionary “purpose” of any biological adaptation, including the brain, is to spread its genes through the gene pool. See Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene.”
In terms of what the brain does, it’s a computer.
In terms of what the mind does: it explains things.
Judging by the title, it seems the author claims to know “How Your Mind Really Works.” So then he’s built AGI?
See also Pinker’s “How the Mind Works.” (He hasn’t built AGI either.) Such a bold title should be reserved for whoever builds AGI.
I just stumbled upon the Japan Popper Society. How cool!
Therefore, Popper's conjecture about consciousness holds and we are still only ever conscious of one thing: disappointed expectations.
Consciousness seems related to disappointed expectations (Popper). But we also seem to be conscious of newfound solutions.
Conjecture: having found solutions to a problem can be reduced to a disappointed expectation because we never expect to find a particular solution.
In other words, the first step in a scientific or philosophical discovery is surprising oneself.
In evolution, mutations happen without regard for the problem situation. The human mind contains an evolutionary algorithm to solve problems, and so we always only happen to think of a solution. So an insight is always surprising and, therefore, exciting.
RT @andrewdoyle_com:
Two college professors (one at Harvard) have written an article for a major publication calling for the US to follow C…