Dennis Hackethal
@dennis.hackethal·Joined Jun 2024·Ideas
Founder Veritula.
Author. Software engineer. Ex Apple. Translator of The Beginning of Infinity.
dennishackethal.com
#5216·Tyler MillsOP, 27 days agoI notice a tendency to find more things to do (such as research questions) leading up to bedtime, similar to how I miraculously find more tasks to do (such as taking out the trash) when trying to leave the house for an appointment (I have a lifelong habit of running late as well; I suspect a relation between these two).
The cause of procrastination is a conflict between preferences. Part of you wants to take out the trash, another doesn’t. The solution is a common preference: a new option both parts of you prefer to their respective initial position.
Can you identify those parts within you?
Try brainstorming many new options on V. With any luck, you’ll find a new option both parts of you want without delay.
#5215·Tyler MillsOP, 27 days agoThis perpetual creep of waking time will mean one's circadian rhythm is messed up, inverting every several days. (Being out of sync with sunlight is a health concern.)
Then again, so is not sleeping…
#5213·Tyler MillsOP, 27 days agoThis perpetual 2-hour creep is not compatible with the obligations of life, such as getting to work by 9am every weekday.
But you don’t have that obligation right now, right?
There’s a company that makes a cube that you put in your bedroom and it creates a sound barrier. Like a noise canceling perimeter. It’s like noise canceling headphones except you don’t have to wear anything. I forget the name of the company but worth searching for it online. I remember being excited about it because I had the exact same idea and was stoked to see somebody actually doing it.
Just stumbled upon this tip in my Insta feed to deal with noisy neighbors: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db4gheyx9WP/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Apparently you can buy a device that cancels out vibrations in your walls. Not sure I’m understanding exactly how it works.
#5084·Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months agoNow also available on PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/HACTSO-6.pdf
I’ve been using Spotify for over a decade.
Every few months I try Apple Music only to run into bugs and switch back.
But this most recent switch is actually decent.
Transferring my favorited songs from Spotify finally worked.
AutoMix song transitions are fantastic.
Spatial Audio is a win.
Fingers crossed I won’t have a reason to return to Spotify this time.
#5183·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago@edwin-de-wit recently asked Deutsch about this:
… hard to vary can also be a property that you don’t want. Sometimes they say that complicated systems are just so entangled that they’re no longer changeable. You could call that hard to vary but it’s not a property you pursue.
Deutsch’s reply:
Quite so. So hard to vary is about explanations, not about end products. So the end product should be easy to vary, if you want to. But it should be hard to vary in the sense that you don’t want to.
Explanations are functions. In other words, explanations are software. There’s no sharp distinction between explanations and end products here. So the concern about tight coupling still applies.
#3718·Dennis HackethalOP, 8 months agoFrom my article:
[D]epending on context, being hard to change can be a bad thing. For example, ‘tight coupling’ is a reason software can be hard to change, and it’s considered bad because it reduces maintainability.
@edwin-de-wit recently asked Deutsch about this:
… hard to vary can also be a property that you don’t want. Sometimes they say that complicated systems are just so entangled that they’re no longer changeable. You could call that hard to vary but it’s not a property you pursue.
Deutsch’s reply:
Quite so. So hard to vary is about explanations, not about end products. So the end product should be easy to vary, if you want to. But it should be hard to vary in the sense that you don’t want to.
Taking Popper Too Far, Again: https://libertythroughreason.com/taking-popper-too-far-again/
Rationality as Computation: https://libertythroughreason.com/rationality-as-computation/
#5175·Liberty Fitz-Claridge, about 1 month agoI think we agree that the conjecturing and criticising of explanations is where the progress happens, and this choice you're saying people make at the end among conjectured theories is (relatively) mechanical. But I would also point out that trying to measure how HTV a theory is is as futile and scientistic as trying to measure moral worth. Yet it's still possible to have meaningful discussions about morality. I can't measure the moral value of murder but I can meaningfully argue it's worse than theft. So I think the claim that "if you can't program it you don't understand it" doesn't apply so universally as #3020 implies.
I think you may have misunderstood me. I asked how I can know that our discussion about HTV will be productive if we continue it now. (For context and for others: I’ve found that Liberty and I have roughly the same discussion in various venues every few months or so. I raised this issue in the linked X thread.)
I didn’t ask you to continue the object-level discussion itself.
Please address my concern before continuing the discussion.
Would it help to distinguish between dogmatic vs. critical information processing?
That’s a distinction I’ve been using. All programs written to date are dogmatic. Whereas a genuine evolutionary algorithm would be critical, at least in part.
We don’t know how to write critical code. We only know how to write dogmatic code that looks critical.
#5106·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoFor the changes made by a source of variation to be dependent on the content of any knowledge in the target, the source would have to contain knowledge itself. (The DNA mutation sources do not.) Blind changes are dependent on the medium in which information is contained, like an A versus a G in a strand of DNA (assuming these are information media). But the change made to the A or G by the cosmic ray is independent of the information they are hosting, if any. Any changes by the ray are dependent on the physical/chemical structure of the target, the substrate. Information is substrate independent. It is not the information stored in the A or G that is determining what changes are made to them.
Cosmic rays have been known to flip bits in computers, eg impacting election results: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021arXiv210505103N/abstract
However, due to computational universality, we should be able to simulate a knowledge-growing system plus cosmic rays impacting that system.
So then at that point the source of the mutation is part of the program again…
#5101·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoClaim: It is useful (if not crucial) to distinguish between two notions of novelty: inferential and non-inferential.
Knowledge that is inferentially novel may never have been seen before, but was already implicit in existing knowledge; it results from application and composition of existing knowledge (e.g. the running of programs). What is novel in this way can be instantiated without any external epistemic (knowledge-related) influence. A program needs infrastructure to allow its computation to occur; it does not need another program, in an epistemic sense: If there's a dependency, we should consider the two to be part of the same "epistemic system." Let's say the dependent target has no "implication space" until its needed source is causally linked to it. The source may have its own implication space. Once "joined," a new implication space is defined.
Inferentially novel output (the instantiation of knowledge in an implication space) is all that current computer software (and all AI) is capable of. These systems "create" knowledge only in this sense.
How much overlap is there between the concept of inferential novelty and reach, if any?
Paul Raymond-Robichaud tells me (I think in this space) that in math, you can have a formalized notion of HTV. From what I recall he said, it sounded like that would be trivial to develop (for a mathematician like Paul – not for me).
Anyone who’s both mathematically and epistemologically inclined could give this a shot at generalization.
Space where Tyler, Charlie, and I discuss hard to vary: https://x.com/dchackethal/status/2083018149151084792
#5164·Tyler Mills, about 1 month agoI don't think so; just having a Wall of posts on my profile is fine, no funny business. Here I was only hoping to delete an accidental mis-post. Maybe allowing deletion of exact duplicates with no parents is reasonable? But this is just a cleanliness/organizational thing, and kind of a fluke, probably not an issue worth spending much time on. (But I stand by #5143, and regardless of the size of the revision. Seems cleaner to me to only show the latest version, no diff.)
Maybe allowing deletion of exact duplicates with no parents is reasonable?
Too niche/specific for an extra feature tbh. If accidental duplicates happened often, then maybe.
#4977·Tyler Mills, 4 months agoAre pacifism, socialism and compromise all short-termist?
Pacifism reduces casualties --- in the short term.
Socialism reduces poverty --- in the short term.
Compromise reduces disappointment --- in the short term.
Did you know you can type em dashes (on Mac) by hitting alt + shift + hyphen?
#5145·Tyler Mills, about 1 month agoNo way to delete posts. Posted same thing twice by mistake (unexpected Chrome behavior). Choices are to leave the duplicate, which seems inelegant, or to revise it into another whole post, which I did, but that contributed to the issue in #5143 (creates an unclear green and red update post).
Discussions have an ‘Archive’ button for top-level posts. It looks like a box you’d put on a shelf in an archive.
Top-level profile posts could have such a button, too. And I could add an ‘Archived’ tab.
Would that help you achieve what you’re looking for?
#5083·Dennis HackethalOP, about 2 months agoI’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.
https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought
#5148·Tyler Mills, about 1 month agoI question whether previous versions of a criticism should contribute to the battle-tested count, as they do currently. Someone can make a spelling correction to the criticism, which creates the "supersedes" criticism of that previous version of the criticism, and that then contributes to the battle-tested count. This seems wrong, since that counter-criticism is not substantive, and even if it were, OP only generally responds to the latest version of a criticism (may not even have known about previous versions; all of this happened in: https://veritula.com/ideas/5089-knowledge-growth-such-as-in-genes-in-the-biospher).
… OP only generally responds to the latest version of a criticism …
I’m not sure that’s generally true. But regardless, OP should address all pending versions of a criticism.
#5145·Tyler Mills, about 1 month agoNo way to delete posts. Posted same thing twice by mistake (unexpected Chrome behavior). Choices are to leave the duplicate, which seems inelegant, or to revise it into another whole post, which I did, but that contributed to the issue in #5143 (creates an unclear green and red update post).
I’m open to letting people contact me for serious cases (like accidentally posting their password or credit-card details). And then I can delete that content manually in the database.
Aside from that, we’d need to identify a case where simply criticizing a post isn’t enough. The criticism can state the reasons one would otherwise have for deleting a post.
#5145·Tyler Mills, about 1 month agoNo way to delete posts. Posted same thing twice by mistake (unexpected Chrome behavior). Choices are to leave the duplicate, which seems inelegant, or to revise it into another whole post, which I did, but that contributed to the issue in #5143 (creates an unclear green and red update post).
Another problem with letting people delete posts is that others may have written a comment in the meantime, which they then can’t submit.
#5147·Tyler Mills, about 1 month agoOkay to allow for posts that have no comments or criticisms? Or only for posts on one's profile (perhaps also meeting that criterion)?
It can still mess up the continuity of discussions when the post to be deleted has parents.