Hallucinations Are Everywhere (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/hallucinations-hearing-voices-reality-debate/571819/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> Sometimes I hallucinate cats, or other small animals like squirrels.

I see them from the corner of my eye, and then when I go to look at them, they aren't there.

They usually show up when I'm under stress.

I kind of like them, because they remind me to try and relax a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most people are hallucinating anytime they open their eyes. We have blind spots where the optic nerve goes through the retina. There is no optic information due to the lack of rods/cones there, so our brain interpolates that information based on surrounding information. For this reason we don't see an empty spot in our periphery. You might have tested this effect as a kid with a paper with an X/dot on either side. When staring at the X you can see the dot "disappear" if you line things up correctly.

A neurologist (and author of _Phantoms in the Brain_ ), Dr. V. S. Ramachandran, tried to test the limits of this interpolation with test subjects with larger blindspots. He found that when looking at text, some participants found that the brain would create fake glyphs to fill in the "texture" of the text.

I get insomnia often and have found that when I am very sleep deprived those blind spots actually exhibit lag and become more detectable. This is especially noticeable when I turn my head quickly.

</comment><comment><USER5> We are just a ghost in the machine, we do think that we have control but at all times the physical brain is in charge. Everything we are is a hallucination, our personality is just calculated sensory input and often things go wrong with that. There are a lot of outside parameters that make the process go wrong, it is a near miracle that also things go right and that there are things like synchronised collective hallucionations between multiple input/brain interactions (we call that reality). Sometimes also the physical brain gets damaged by the ghost from the inside. I have been severly depressed for years and learned the hard way about hallucinations, but learning about that and accepting the hallucination took away that depression. As far as I see it, thinking is a form of radiation inside the brain, containing particles and waves, and those waves can be disturbed very easy

<comment><USER6> So you identify with the brain?

<comment><USER5> Of course not, everybody identifies with the ghost. Although the brain is a work of evolutionary art, it's still just a dumb machine. The hallucination within is just a weird artifact of how that machine works.

Just a wave of the radiation, nothing more, nothing less.

<comment><USER6> but it is still dying. Some people identify with their political movement. Other identify with other people (Ubuntu: person living through a person). Or just simply believe in your self (all packages together).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everything is a hallucination, since everything is an internal representation ([1] direct vs indirect realism). The real question is why do these hallucinations seem consistent enough to generate a shared world/consensus reality. I think David Pearce answers this well [2].

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism)

2: [https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-explain-the-shared- experien...](https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-explain-the-shared-experience- of-reality)

<comment><USER8> This is the typical philosopher going one (well, at least one) step too far. If I cut off my hand, I'll experience my hand being cut off, people will see my hand cut off and surgeons could try to stitch it back. To qualify reality as a shared illusion is fine after a night of drinking. To hold such a view in face of independent viewers perceiving essentially the same events without having to communicate is ludicrous. That perception is imperfect and that people can disagree does make a proof of delusion.

<comment><USER7> This doesn't qualify reality as a shared illusion, it qualifies our experience of it as a private illusion, with shared/overlapping characteristics. It's not the pragmatic, common-sense way of interpreting our experience of the world, but no one said the truth had to match up with pragmatics. If you think you see an error in the actual logic leading to that conclusion, please point it out, but deeming it unpragmatic (or ludicrous) isn't one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There should be a distinction between sensory hallucinations and _delusions_. I think it is usually the latter that people are more concerned about.

<comment><USER10> I agree. I'm not sure some people understand the distinction. Hallucinations are really just the input, in this case a faulty input. Delusions are faulty conclusions. You can have delusions without hallucinations, and hallucinations can come without delusions.

<comment><USER9> Yup. And the scary thing about delusions is that often times, people under delusions are not aware of them.

I'm trying to recall this long article someone wrote. Her mother had moved her and her family to Canada for witness protection. It turned out though, the mother was under the influence of someone who was deluded into thinking they were out to get her. It took years before the author came across evidence to the contrary. Her father and her aunts were not dead after all. At which point, the person who was deluded said, oh, that's cause they had been replaced by clones.

I make a distinction here in that, I think the mother here was herself not delusional. She was influenced, and perhaps, could herself reason herself away from it given time. The person who was delusional, however, will continue to generate new explanations to fit the evidence around that delusion ... and is probably not even aware of it. According to the author, he was otherwise rational in everything else but his delusion.

<comment><USER11> > often times, people under delusions are not aware of them

Isn't that the required quality for it to be a delusion? The moment you realise that a thought or a perception is a delusion, it is no longer one.

Also, this is the story you're thinking of: [https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788](https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788)

<comment><USER9> That sounds reasonable.

What would you call persistent beliefs that you know are erroneous, and yet you cannot somehow shake?

<comment><USER11> I guess I'd call that cognitive dissonance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yep, all the time. Some are pretty easy to trigger consistently too; think about insects and you'll start feeling them everywhere. Ride a bus for a while or swim in a wave pool and you'll be feeling like you're moving when going to bed. Desperately try to find something you've lost and you'll start seeing it everywhere.

Some senses are way easier to fool than others. For example I hear things that aren't actually there all the time, but I don't recall ever tasting something that wasn't there. I wonder how it is with smell; I do sometimes vaguely smell things (e.g. certain kinds of food, cat pee) that I then can't find anywhere, but the nose is very sensitive to trace amounts of chemicals so there isn't really a way to verify whether what you're smelling is real or imagined in that case.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've heard voices for as long as I can remember but immediate link most people jump to with psychosis meant I never told anyone until I was in my 30s. Only when I heard, I think, a RadioLab episode where they mentioned somewhere around one in ten do did I think that maybe I'm not teetering on madness.

It happens whenever I manage to stop thinking, which isn't often. This makes two things incredibly difficult - getting to sleep and meditation. Getting to sleep I've pretty much nailed thanks to melatonin and Radio4 through some speakers under my pillow. Meditation though I've pretty much given up on - <USER2> second I manage to reach any kind of meditative state I hear snippets of speech which _always_ kicks my brain into thinking about what the voice just said. I feel like I haven't actually relaxed in 40 odd years.

<comment><USER14> So now that you're no longer keeping it completely private, have you spoken to a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist about it? It sounds like it's caused you a lot of strife for a long time.

> _Only when I heard, I think, a RadioLab episode where they mentioned > somewhere around one in ten do did I think that maybe I 'm not teetering on > madness._

I'm obviously not your doctor, but whatever is happening to you so much that you haven't been able to relax in 40 years probably doesn't happen to 1 in 10 people. Certainly not to the degree that you describe. "This one time this thing happened" isn't the same as "I can't sleep because of the voices". But anyway, maybe the whole world is teetering on madness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I once worked three days straight finishing a manual and started to see small dinosaurs around the office. My girlfriend drove 65 miles to keep me company when she heard about it.

</comment><comment><USER16> What distinguishes a hallucination from a perception of a real thing? I'm hoping it's not simply the criteria of "anything without a rational explanation is a hallucination"

Also, if people hallucinated all the time, I'd think there'd be a LOT more accidents on the road!

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure you understand, when they say "everyone hallucinates all the time" they include you and me. Those hallucinations don't have to be "big" or disruptive.

A hallucination is where your brains perception doesn't match "reality". Maybe you thought the lights flickered for a brief moment but they didn't, or may you thought you saw a shadow move.

The article explains it pretty well, it's very common with things you "expect". Such as your phone vibrating when it isn't, or after watching an insect documentary makes you feel like there's an ant on you (called Formication), or feeling a raindrop when expecting rain (only to realize your skin isn't wet).

EDIT: That is to say - hallucinations aren't usually disruptive enough to cause car accidents, most of the time we just kind of "brush it off" so to speak and forget about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did anyone else follow the link to the sine wave example and clearly made out the voice on the first try? Welp no I'm concerned

<comment><USER9> I heard it. I was also primed. I read the rest of the paragraph before trying it.

I've had enough psychedelic experiences though, so maybe that is it :-)

<comment><USER19> I hadn't read forwards when I tried it and I've had no psychedelic experiences, but I heard it too. I've only ever had the "normal" hallucinations, like phone vibration or once or twice hearing someone say my name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A few weeks ago, I was drifting off to sleep and heard my name being spoken. Extremely clear, and right in my ear.

It freaked me right the fuck out.

</comment><comment><USER21> Microdosing is the best of both worlds -- you get the same focus and random insights without the hallucinations.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _If you've ever felt the buzz of your phone against your thigh only to > realize the sensation was entirely in your head_

I get what they're trying to say, but the much more plausible explanation for "phantom phone vibrations" is actual phone vibrations. There are all kinds of things, electromechanical and software, interactive and non-interactive, that cause phones to vibrate. My current phone vibrates if you look at the fingerprint unlock sensor the wrong way. An old phone of mine would vibrate and wake up the screen randomly without any visible notifications and behaved strangely for weeks after exposure to a small bit of rain. My current phone regularly flashes transient notifications (I think maybe from a Motorola app?) that are gone faster than I can read what they are. The point is that, on average, software and hardware are both basically shit and do things that they're not supposed to do all the time.

<comment><USER22> Not when there's no phone anywhere near your thigh. Have personally experienced that enough to know for sure it's a thing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you go from seasoned hobbyist to professinonal engineer ? - <AUTHOR> I'd like you to share your experiences with the community. If you went from being a passionate hobbyist to a professional software developer, how did you go about it ? Any tips, funny stories / anectodes you'd like to share ? What would you have done differently looking back ? Cheers <comment><USER2> As a teenager, won 3rd place at a programming competition, after the prizes ceremony went to the CEO of a sponsor company that gave a talk about "growing the next generation of high tech workers" and told him "if you really want to grow the next generation, don't donate laptops as prizes, give us summer jobs". He replied "you're hired, get my secretary's phone number and give him three names".

(Once you have job experience, you can get your next job easily)

Note: this was the second time I tried it. The year before I did the same with the CEO of the Israeli branch of a sponsor who in the immortal words of Douglas Crockford "I won't name to protect their identity, but I can give their initials, I.B.M", and he also said "this sounds great, here's my secretary's phone number" but then I got a call from a different secretary in a different unit every few months where they tried to figure out what's this weird thing that landed on their table and who they can forward it to in order to get rid of it...

</comment><comment><USER3> The most effective way is a piece of paper from some reputable organization that says you've done something that makes you competent.

From a practical standpoint it's probably most effective. Whether it's an ideal situation is a different discussion.</comment>


What Cracking Open a Sonos One Tells Us About the Sonos IPO - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bolt.io/what-cracking-open-a-sonos-one-tells-us-about-the-sonos-ipo-dcab49155643M <comment><AUTHOR> There is an "M" after the url, correct one: [https://blog.bolt.io/what- cracking-open-a-sonos-one-tells-us...](https://blog.bolt.io/what-cracking- open-a-sonos-one-tells-us-about-the-sonos-ipo-dcab49155643)

</comment><comment><USER2> I get a 404. Cached version anyone?</comment>


Inside Ember.js FastBoot: Faking the DOM in Node - <AUTHOR> http://emberjs.com/blog/2015/01/08/inside-fastboot-faking-the-dom-in-node.html

<comment><USER2> Congrats @tomdale!

Using React for our current project was a no-brainer because it was the only library at the time to build in-browser web apps with an SEO story. It's great to see other, previously DOM-bound frameworks, tackling this problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

We'll be working on this feature for the next few months, and we think it has the opportunity to fundamentally change how web apps are written. As you noted, little bits and pieces of server-side rendering have existed for awhile (I've heard of people using Backbone + Handlebars, as well as React), but historically it's required so much manual labor, and is so error-prone, that in practice very few people have the resources to pull it off.

We hope that by moving a full-stack framework like Ember.js to the server- rendered model, it will start to see wide-scale adoption.

<comment><USER2> I'll be speaking[1] about my experiments with this at ReactConf at the end of the month. I've been using React, ReactRouter, and Reflux for rendering, routing, and data flow respectively. Gluing them all together was definitely a non-trivial project (that I'll be sharing in conjunction with my talk). It'll be rad to have JS apps that Just Work, regardless of runtime.

In my experimentation so far, the three things you need to be able to do on the server are:

\- choose a view to render (ReactRouter),

\- get whatever data that view depends on (Reflux), and

\- render it

I'd be curious to see your take on this. Are there other concerns you think a "full-stack framework" is needed to manage?

[http://conf.reactjs.com/schedule.html#tweak-your-page-in- rea...](http://conf.reactjs.com/schedule.html#tweak-your-page-in-real-time- without-leaving-the-comfort-of-your-editor)

<comment><USER3> We should sync up! I've cracked this similar isomorphic nut myself in a similar manner and will be giving 2 talks on it as well.

Ember's advancements on this are sorely needed, as anyone doing this today has to solve a lot of hard problems with lots of tools just to come close.

<comment><USER2> I'm easy to find. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is ember.js being ported to node? Could someone give me a little back story?

<comment><AUTHOR> We described our motivation in the previous blog post in this series: [http://emberjs.com/blog/2014/12/22/inside-fastboot-the- road-...](http://emberjs.com/blog/2014/12/22/inside-fastboot-the-road-to- server-side-rendering.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get the motivation in the abstract, but does someone have a use-case for where this is really useful?

I've worked on apps that are close to either extreme. I.e. static pages with content, and you add one or change one or two small pieces later, which is easily done returning the piece of html from the server, and data-exploration type apps where you initially load some kind of menu and then incrementally add/update/remove/reload all kinds of data, in which case your templating lives in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really great. I needed this type of functionality in my Angular app and landed on [https://prerender.io](https://prerender.io)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is handy. One step further to more isomorphic js apps!</comment>


University of California's outsourcing is wrong, says U.S. lawmaker - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3118552/it-careers/university-of-california-s-outsourcing-is-wrong-says-u-s-lawmaker.html <comment><USER2> the report is about UCSF, which is in the center of Bay Area.

How much does the postdoc earn there? about 50k.

How much does a 1b1b cost in SF? It is all over the news.

You may think why is this related to the news?

hint: Could they hire any local IT guys with 50k?

<comment><USER3> i want to understand your comment better, can you expand on it?

<comment><USER2> be in SF, make it harder to find IT staff with a limited budget.</comment></comment></comment>


Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/08/stop-fearing-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><USER3> Nobody is afraid of today's AI algorithms. But if we make machines that are smarter than us and have desires, they will influence the future to achieve their desires. If these desires conflict with our own, things will not end well for the dumber party.

As we really have no idea what we, collectively, think of as a moral terminal goal, and less so how to formalize this, there is no reason to expect the first AIs to have goals that correspond to what we want. If AIs self-replicate in a competitive ecology, what would be selected for would be agents millions of times more intelligent than us who use their intellects only to make more copies of themselves - using all available resources including those we need to survive.

I'd recommend people read Stephen Omohundro's paper on the topic, Basic AI Drives: [https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_driv...](https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > But if we make machines that are smarter than us and have desires

It is a hypothesis that human desires - the conscious processes involved in thinking "I want such-and-such" \- influence human behavior. Consciousness is not whatsoever a solved problem, and it may be that we are just complex, deterministic automatons whose consciousness and desires are _caused by_ our behavior (like the steam produced by an engine), rather than causing it.

I'm not necessarily in this camp, but I bring this up to point out that there is an awful lot of common prejudice bundled up in what we consider _our own_ intelligence/consciousness to be, and we project these biases onto what we imagine AI will be. We almost certainly misunderstand our own consciousness profoundly in this way, and at any rate there is no definitive scientific (or philosophical) answer to "what is self awareness" or "what role do desires play in human behavior" (again, the desire could be the steam from the engine).

<comment><USER5> > and it may be that we are just complex, deterministic automatons whose > consciousness and desires are caused by our behavior (like the steam > produced by an engine), rather than causing it.

Then explain that we are talking about it.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand your point. Computers communicate with one another constantly. There certainly does _seem_ to be something different about us, but I've yet to see any scientific or philosophical proof that our self- awareness is necessarily involved with our intelligence or behavior. There's a good deal of philosophical literature around this idea ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) ), and virtually no scientific explanation of consciousness.

I grant of course that this may not be a terribly _useful_ way for human beings to view themselves, and it is quite contrary to popular belief, but for all that it could still be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Instead of going through each of the points made, let me link to some pages that already dealt with many of them. It sounds like all this guy heard was "AI might be dangerous" and decided to rebut that, without looking at the arguments put forward by so-called "doomsayers". Protip: before demolishing any argument, try to find one (or a couple if you have more time) person who makes the argument seriously, instead of taking your understanding of the argument from news articles.

[https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi- voliti...](https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi-volition- timelines/)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4h/request_for_concrete_ai_takeover...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4h/request_for_concrete_ai_takeover_mechanisms/)

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/07/no-physical- substrate-n...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/07/no-physical-substrate-no- problem/)

[https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf](https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf)

[http://futureoflife.org/misc/open_letter](http://futureoflife.org/misc/open_letter) (this is just to counter the implied claim that nobody who actually deals in AI disagrees with him and it's only uninformed people like Bill Gates(!) that worry.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Superhuman Machine Intelligence does not have to be the inherently evil sci-fi version to kill us all. A more probable scenario is that it simply doesn't care about us much either way, but in an effort to accomplish some other goal (most goals, if you think about them long enough, could make use of resources currently being used by humans) wipes us out. - Sam Altman

[http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence- part-1](http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1)

Oates seems to have missed the concept of an Intelligence Explosion, which is why it is difficult to compare current AI limitations to the behavior and capabilities of a superhuman machine intelligence.

I would strongly recommend reading Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence for a full treatment of the source of worry for many brilliant minds.

<comment><USER8> I'm surprised with how many self-proclaimed experts in AI related fields complete ignore this point of resource optimization. Any article with a title like OP's that doesn't mention that seems pointless to me and just an attempt to jump on the new bandwagon to dismiss fears of strong AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems most people who take a position _against_ the feasibility of machine superintelligence are basically making an argument-from-lack-of-imagination: "I can't think up a plausible way that bad things could happen, therefore bad things won't happen." This is then backed up by an argument-from-authority: "And I've been in this field for X decades, so you should trust my ability to imagine this kind of thing."

We have seen arguments like this throughout history. Often, what motivates them is the writer's own failures and consequent life narrative: "I couldn't do Y, so Y isn't possible right now."

<comment> at-fates-hands I completely agree with your points.

It's strange to me to think as humans we will remain at the top of the food chain forever. As such, it would seem a fault of our genetic makeup thinking nothing would capable of knocking us off that top rung of the evolutionary ladder.

It's like we can't fathom building something that would undermine our own existence, or downplay the notion that AI would have some sort of bad intentions since we built it.

<comment><USER9> "Bad intentions" aren't even necessary -- out of control AGI will probably look more like "oops, I hit >rm -rf /".

AFAIK, nearly every piece of software ever deployed has had bugs that humans have had to subsequently patch. AGI must not, even though it would probably be _much_ easier to build it if it did.

<comment><USER10> > _AGI must not, even though it would probably be much easier to build it if > it did._

Which is exactly what raises the issue to the level of an existential threat - it's _easier_ to build an Unfriendly AGI than a Friendly one - which means the first GAI ever built is likely to be Unfriendly - and it takes only one impatient team / person unleashing an UGAI on the world to kill us all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> HFT algorithms aren't even AI but are capable of doing large amounts of damage when they become synchronized - the resulting flash crashes can wipe out large amounts of capital.

And it's most likely that these things will emerge from industries that have no effective regulatory oversight (e.g. HFT/SEC), so effective controls against damage will most likely just not exist.

There won't be a shotgun welded to the main processing core of the Wintermute AI that decides, for whatever reason, to bankrupt your company, halt food shipments to your grocery store, or shutdown the systems that clean the water supply.

What scares me about AI is the ineffective controls that will exist on these things, and given the state of most software development practices I don't think that's a huge stretch.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oates' argument generally seems to be "It won't be scary because it won't be." He rejects the premise of Musk, Gates, etc. He basically says we won't be able to build a superhuman AI. All his arguments are then predicated in this assumption. The assumption that we won't build a superhuman AI is just wrong.

For example:

> [Would this superhuman intelligence inherently go nuclear, or would it > likely just slack off a little at work or, in extreme cases, compose rap > music in Latin?]

This statement assumes an AI on the caliber of a human intelligence. Making rap music in Latin is something a human would do. A superhuman AI is beyond a human intelligence in the same way a human's capacity for thought and tasks is beyond that on an ant.

The premise of a superhuman AI has at least some evidence supporting it. Oates offers no solid evidence to his rejection of the premise. His argument is therefore kinda bad (but not necessarily incorrect).

<comment><USER13> No, his argument is "nothing we have built so far (i.e. special purpose AI) leads us to believe that we will build general purpose AI".

There is nothing inherently contradictory about a future with ONLY special purpose AI. Technologically speaking, it doesn't really follow that one leads to the other. He is using his credibility as an AI practitioner to state this, although he doesn't go into details.

He's saying the burden of proof is on the doomsayers, which is reasonable. I still don't see the argument either.

<comment><USER12> I agree; that is part of his argument. Obviously though it is a completely flawed argument. Up until the creation of the personal computer most machines were specialists. They were large computers designed for specific computation tasks or machines made specifically for manufacturing certain kinds of goods. Generalist computers didn't have much precedent. That's kind of the point of new technology. It's not necessarily predicated by something that came before. It is orders of magnitude better.

To me this argument has historically less validity than creative people dreaming about singular, binary acts of creation. Historically those people have won.

<comment><USER14> _Up until the creation of the personal computer most machines were specialists. They were large computers designed for specific computation tasks or machines made specifically for manufacturing certain kinds of goods._

Sorry, but that's just not true. Back in the 60s, way before personal computers, the were many time-sharing companies, selling general "computing resources" to different people who would dial-up into the machines and run their own programs.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I thought about that when I was writing the reply. I don't really consider that a generalized use case. Is it more generalized? Yes. Computing itself, however, can be argued to be a specialized task. My computer today doesn't do "computing" it lets me read news stories, it lets me talk on skype, it lets me send mail, it lets me have philosophical discussions on hackernews. The personal computer is so clearly a generalized machine whereas those time sharing rigs back in the 60s were clearly not. They were specialized tools for programmers.

<comment><USER14> PLATO had graphical terminals with touch screens and software implementing forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer games. They weren't just used by programmers by a long shot.

<comment><USER12> Ok, fine. PLATO was a super cool _more generalist_ machine that happens to not be a personal computer. My use of personal computers was just an example that I thought would get a point across about the evolution of technology. The fact that PLATO existed and was very different than what came before it (as per all the cool stuff you listed) if anything strengthens the argument I was making. Generalist machines were a big step up from what came before, orders of magnitude better. A super-AI will also be _unpredictably_ orders of magnitude better than what we've done so far.

<comment><USER14> But my point is that the generalist computers weren't a sudden or unpredictable step, they were the result of slow and progressive improvement. If generalist computers are any example to go by, the fact that we don't have anything close to a primitive general AI indicates we're far, far away from developing anything close to a "super-AI".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't fear "AI". What I fear is AI being used as a replacement for human judgment or as a justification for greed and/or bigotry.

We already have this problem, where decisions that should be made by the humans involved are restricted under the "policy" excuse of bureaucracy, blind to the reality of unusual situations that require an exception in the usual routine. I fear AI because it is harder to fight complicated systems. I fear AI because - like the dubious "studies" that came before it, it will become a tool to obfuscate and hide bias and prejudice.

</comment><comment><USER16> In a data mining / machine learning class I took in university a key point my teacher made was that of the 'No free lunch' theorem. In that class the theorem was offered on its face and I haven't yet read the original paper (just summaries and recounts) ([http://web.archive.org/web/20140111060917/http://engr.case.e...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140111060917/http://engr.case.edu/ray_soumya/eecs440_fall13/lack_of_a_priori_distinctions_wolpert.pdf)), but the point of the theorem feels very related to the point the author makes. The thesis boils down to: 'not having seen the data, there is no universally superior algorithm'. The author's point of view seems to comport with this theorem. I haven't gone through the paper myself, so I can't argue for or against it. However, in my experience as a professional statistician that has used Random Forests, SVMs, Neural Networks, etc --- finding the right algorithm takes 'feature engineering' ([http://blog.kaggle.com/2014/08/01/learning-from-the- best/](http://blog.kaggle.com/2014/08/01/learning-from-the-best/)) and close inspection of the data and basis function. Are the data fit well by rectangles? Then you'll want to use decision trees / random forests. Curvy? Give SVM a try. Do the data take intricate patterns? Look into boosting (fitting on residuals recursively). Feature engineering boils down to the old statistical phrase, 'live with the data.' That is, you actually need use your own mind and beliefs to organize inputs prior to feeding them into an algorithm. So in my experience, what seems to be true in Kaggle competitions, and the perspective of this author, it's true --- algorithms are either tightly constrained and perform really well at a specific task, or they perform poorly (but quickly) in a broad sense.

<comment><USER17> if our computing systems continue to get significantly more powerful, won't a brute-force system obviate feature engineering? in other words, can't kaggle eventually be outcompeted by an algo-of-algos that iterates through all known approaches and then settles on the ideal candidate?

<comment><USER16> Hmm, great question. The caret package made for R might actually make that loop possible: [http://caret.r-forge.r-project.org/](http://caret.r-forge.r-project.org/) However, in my experience it's really easy to accidentally ask caret to iterate over a grid of parameters for just one model that would effectively take forever to complete (the useful grids change for each dataset). My bet would be that the algorithm space will expand with more and more computationally intensive methods such that we're always chasing this brute- force method. Even with this great 'caret' abstraction layer today, boy would it be hard to run through even a handful of algorithms in an algorithmic way (not having seen the data ahead of time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > [combination of things necessary for an AI to become a threat to humanity] > Sound reasonable to you? Me either

The question isn't whether it "sounds reasonable". If there is even a 2% chance of that happening, we need to consider it. Anything that can end humanity is worth considering even if it is unlikely.

> Even if this were the case, there is absolutely no reason to believe that, > by virtue of running on a computer, an AI will be better at computers than > we are.

No, there is every reason to believe that. Once we make an AI that is equal to us, we will be able to scale it up by running it on the next generation of CPUs, or running more such CPUs in parallel. We can't scale up human intelligence in any similar way. If an AI can match us, it can far exceed us. edit: in fact, the AI may well work to scale itself up

<comment><USER6> I think the list is misleading and is not necessary for an AI to be dangerous.

>It has an "I," a sense of self distinct from others.

I deny this is required for a program to be dangerous.

>It has the intellectual capacity to step outside of the boundaries of its intended purpose and programming to form radically new goals for itself (the "I").

Deny this as well; even carrying out programmed goals can be harmful. In the words of Superintelligence (copied from [https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi- voliti...](https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi-volition- timelines/)):

>[W]e cannot blithely assume that a superintelligence with the final goal of calculating the decimals of pi (or making paperclips, or counting grains of sand) would limit its activities in such a way as not to infringe on human interests. An agent with such a final goal would have a convergent instrumental reason, in many situations, to acquire an unlimited amount of physical resources and, if possible, to eliminate potential threats to itself and its goal system.

>It has access to resources on a global scale to carry out the plan.

This sounds reasonable. As [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/07/no-physical- substrate-n...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/07/no-physical-substrate-no- problem/) points out, _humans_ have made billions anonymously, just by being connected to the internet. [http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4h/request_for_concrete_ai_takeover...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4h/request_for_concrete_ai_takeover_mechanisms/) gives some ways an AI could takeover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Virtually all of these discussions of AI come from the very peculiar way in which we view our own intelligence. It's only the notion of a "conscious will" or whatever unifying feature we find in reflective self-awareness that prevents us viewing intelligence as nothing more than large chains of deterministic complexity. It is a hypothesis that there is something to _even human behavior_ which is more than this deterministic complexity. In other words, there may be no qualitative leap from the AI we currently have to some sort of "real AI" or singularity or whatnot. It may be that you just build up more complex cases over time.

That way of thinking is hurtful to our egos (we would be simply complex deterministic automatons) but there is really nothing other than our pride to suggest that this is not, or could not, be the case. It would also put to rest concerns about machine AI, as it would be an extension of what currently exists, simply on a larger scale.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hardware and software evolve fast, humans don't. This is enhanced by increasing network complexity.

Unless you think there are evidence that this will slow down somehow and we are becoming less and less depending on technology i don't see why the burde of proof is on the doomsayers (which are not the only one saying this)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a little off topic but maybe someone who knows more about this than I do can chime in and give me some links to studies on this:

What is the possibility of creating a biological computational device and are there currently efforts to do so? To me it seems like rather than physically building computers out of processed materials, growing computers in labs might be much more efficient and more powerful. The human brain is an example of this (not lab grown, biological).

Are there any studies that look into harnessing the power of biological computers? I mean, actually tapping into neurological pathways, giving input and receiving output?

</comment><comment><USER21> All this hype about the coming AI menace seems like old fears about new technology, like the 19th century fear of the explosion of printed material exhuasting and destroying children's minds.

We still don't know how to create a human level general intelligence and it may be far more difficult than we think. I suspect that the pace of brain/mind research will be tied in with AI research and the boundary between AI and the human mind will blur before general AI has a chance to take over. We will be augmenting our own intelligence in step with AI progress.

</comment><comment><USER22> One thing I don't see discussed much in these superintelligence/singularity scenarios, is the possibility that there is an upper limit to intelligence. Maybe it simply isn't possible to be much smarter than what we already are. So maybe we build AIG, but even with all its smarts it can't improve beyond - <USER2> - Einstein level (or what have you).

But surely I ca't be the first to make that suggestion, so who has discussed this possibility?

<comment><USER23> Even if that's the case, quantity wins where quality fails. Imagine what you could do if you had so many clones of yourself that you could monitor every website, every forum, every person logged on IRC, 24 hours a day, giving each one of them your complete undivided attention.

(Not that I'm taking an anti-AI stance. Machines do what we program them to do, that's a tautology. If there is risk, it's from user error / intentional terrorist action / AI upsetting distribution of wealth, not from some kind of magic skynet event)

<comment><USER22> Sure, but there is overhead of communication with a large group. One smart person can be extremely efficient, but 10 smart people are probably not 10 times as efficient. And it gets worse with scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It becomes much easier to understand the AGI threat if you consider whole brain emulations -- human minds running at superhuman speed on silicon. Hollywood has made it obvious, if it wasn't already, the serious implications of that type of development.

Whole brain emulations also make it clear that the issue has nothing at all to do with human values: a human superintelligence would be a catastrophic risk to humanity.

<comment><USER25> Whole Brain Emulation is far off, even putting in moore's law, because we still are far off from understanding the brain. Yes, optogenetics and the connectome are going to bring us a long way there, but at the end, we have to understand that the brain is far to plastic to really know at any time point what is going on.

Experiments with macaque motor cortex (M1) provide a great example. When you cut off a finger or toe and record from M1 at the same time, you can watch the synapses change in real time. The remapping of M1 in the monkey starts the second that the nerves are severed. This remapping is poorly understood as it stands. Typically, the brain will allow innervation of the areas the control the other digits into the now useless area where the missing digit is. Even more interesting is when a pair of monkeys were stolen by anti-vivisectionists (The silver spring incident, I think [0]). When returned, the monkey's M1 had totally remapped from it's original state. Hippocampal neurogenesis [1] is also very poorly understood as it is today. Why our brains make new neurons and mostly for the more short-term memory centers in the hippocampus is a mystery.

What I am getting at is that we do not understand our own intelligence from the standpoint of it's mechanics enough to emulate a brain near at all. It is a looooooong ways off. To truly emulate it, you have to know that it is a moving target, and therefore any emulation is a moving one as well. One that has to live in a body that you emulate in a world that impinges on it. Trying to take the mind out of the body is impossible as well as trying to take both then out of the world. The results would have no meaning.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spring_monkeys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spring_monkeys)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis)

<comment><USER24> The point is that the danger of AGI is much easier to understand through whole brain emulation, not that whole brain emulation is necessarily imminent. That said, the most pernicious risk in AGI is that it will happen "slowly, then all at once"; that it will always be a long way away until the day it isn't.

That said, it isn't obvious to what extent we need to understand the brain in order to transfer it to another substrate: much of engineering relies on a simplified understanding of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom, essentially on the recommendation of Elon Musk (he tweeted about it). It talks about the dangers of strong AI and possible paths to it, and how humans can mitigate its effects.

The only reason I read past the beginning is because in the preface he says: "This book is likely to be seriously mistaken in a number of ways".

So at least he's intellectually honest. I believe he's building 300 pages of argument and analysis on a flawed premise.

As far as I can tell, the entire discussion rests on what he calls "instrumental goals" vs. "final goals". (This article I found on Google has similar content: [http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligentwill.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligentwill.pdf) )

His example is the "paper clip maximizer": [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

In this situation, the final goal is: Produce the maximum number of paper clips.

The instrumental goal is: Acquire all resources in the world so that you can direct them toward paper clip production, which involve destroying all humans, etc.

Personally, I don't believe this threat is worth thinking about this point. The supposed path to implementing such a technology isn't credible, and it seems orders of magnitude less likely than, say, us having to evacuate the entire planet.

In other words, I believe that we will be able to build very useful special purpose AIs that accomplish our goals. I can see a future full of benign "plant-like" intelligences, existing indefinitely. They are machines that take in incredible amounts of information, and spit out ingenious answers that no human could have come up with.

From that, it doesn't follow there there is any motivation to take over the world.

We should think about the many, many challenges ahead with special purpose AI instead, and our increasing dependence on computing.

All these special purpose AIs will collecting everybody's personal data, shape their behavior, etc. For example, you can easily imagine a company like Facebook or Google deciding to sway an election.

There are a lot more important problems to be thinking about now.

<comment><USER6> Why do you feel we will not build "Strong" AI? We know AI as smart as humans _can_ theoretically exist, because humans exist, so intelligence is possible. Is there a reason to think that humans are near the upper limit of what's possible? If not, why can't we build something significantly smarter than us?

<comment><USER26> Just to play Devil's Advocate, not because I believe this:

We can, and do, create machines that are faster than humans, and it is reasonable to assume that eventually computers can be created that have capacity and connectivity larger than humans.

But that doesn't prove that the result will be as intelligent as humans, let alone more intelligent, because intelligence is clearly more than just speed and capacity.

Edit: for instance, faster and bigger does not change the O(n) complexity analysis of algorithms, thus faster and bigger does relatively little to improve the ability to solve exponential problems.

 _Exactly_ what intelligence is, is still not known, and it is quite possible that we will need an _algorithmic_ breakthrough to create something equivalent to human minds.

And even if _that_ happens, making _that_ thing faster and bigger than human minds may turn out not to result in superintelligence -- that would just be another similar assumption as the first.

So it might need yet another algorithmic breakthrough to create superintelligence, and it is possible that neither humans nor human-equivalent AIs will be able to make that breakthrough.

Again, I don't believe the above, but I think it is purely a matter of optimism versus pessimism, not about things that are proven.

<comment><USER6> >Exactly what intelligence is, is still not known, and it is quite possible that we will need an algorithmic breakthrough to create something equivalent to human minds.

Let's assume this is true.

>And even if that happens, making that thing faster and bigger than human minds may turn out not to result in superintelligence -- that would just be another similar assumption as the first. So it might need yet another algorithmic breakthrough to create superintelligence, and it is possible that neither humans nor human-equivalent AIs will be able to make that breakthrough.

This seems unlikely to be true. Imagine we have a program that is as smart as the human brain. It's running on hardware a million times as fast, though. So at the very least, it can think in one day what a human can think in a million days. Even if it's restricted to human-level intelligence, it should still be far more effective than a human. This is even without considering self- modifications.

<comment><USER26> > So at the very least, it can think in one day what a human can think in a > million days.

You are simply reiterating the original position that I was devils-advocating against.

It is not proven that a million days of work equals superintelligence, even though obviously it would be more effective than 1 day.

If some activity is exponential, like if it takes 10^x days to accomplish, then a human could solve problems of size 3 in about three years, and the million-fold faster computer would take only 10^(x-6), or about a minute.

And in three years it could solve problems of size 9. But a problem of size 1000 would take so many multiples of the lifetime of the universe that it would appear to be approximately as slow as a human, the difference is negligible.

This is not hypothetical; the best known complete (not approximate) solutions to things like the traveling salesman problem, or to fitting odd sized containers into a container ship, are in fact exponential like that as far as we currently know.

The topic is not limited to algorithmic complexity theory like that, it's just a proof of concept.

So the point is that superintelligence _might_ turn out to be something that a million-fold improvement isn't enough to achieve.

We don't understand intelligence, so it's pretty obvious we don't have a handle on superintelligence.

Again, all this is a matter of optimisim or pessimism up until the subject is understood far, far better.

<comment><USER6> >It is not proven that a million days of work equals superintelligence, even though obviously it would be more effective than 1 day.

>This is not hypothetical; the best known complete (not approximate) solutions to things like the traveling salesman problem, or to fitting odd sized containers into a container ship, are in fact exponential like that as far as we currently know.

Why would something need to solve problems like that to be significantly smarter than us? On real problems, working 1000 times as much time surely helps a lot. This is not even taking into account how much benefit you get from not being lazy and everything like that.

<comment><USER26> I am merely playing Devil's Advocate. I personally think that speedups of 1000-fold and million-fold etc. are a really big deal.

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

Nonetheless, it remains _possible_ that there is a difference between fast intelligence solving things faster than we can, versus a superintelligence (from extraterrestrial aliens or something) that can create superior inventions or art or math or whatever that humans couldn't no matter how much time was allowed.

Time is not always the issue.

Anecdote from the Feynman biography "Genius":

A physicist once said that there were two kinds of genius. The first kind was the sort that a good but non-genius physicist could imagine that they, too, could have achieved the same results as the genius, if only they could work on just that for decades or even lifetimes.

But then he said that Feynman was the second kind of genius, whose results seemed to have been created by magic, and that ordinary physicists could not imagine achieving no matter how long they worked at it.

The key thing here is that some pretty smart people already believe that there are at least two kinds of very high intelligence, one of which is not related to speed.

So my point is merely that the same _might_ apply to these other topics. We know so little about how to create a mind that there simply is no proof one way or the other.

And that latter is an objective fact. There is no existing algorithms for creating human-level minds that merely needs more cpu + ram + disk to work, there just isn't. So we don't know. Different people choose to believe one way or the other.

That's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Would your opinion change if you were told that article was written by an AI?

</comment><comment><USER28> We wouldn't wish for the end of humanity, but if it implies the end of inhumanity, it would be a net gain.

</comment><comment><USER29> I fear AI far less than I fear humans.

First, twenty thousand years or more of human history is about us trying to make other humans into machines: slavery, rape and forced prostitution, political coercion, war, overreaching prison systems and draconian punishments for minor crimes. We're not very nice to each other. Rather, we're controlling assholes as a species. Most of the ones who get power in organizations small and large are more focused on relative dominance than on absolute gain. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bible to modern Stalinism, we see that effort by powerful people to turn the rest of humanity into a machine that will exert their own will.

Given 20,000 years of abusively turning humans into machines, tearing apart their families and banning their religions, attempting to boil them down into simple working devices, is it really likely that a control-freak species like us is going to let a machine try to assert itself as human? In peacetime, I think we'll be pretty good at preventing that from happening. We're good at mechanizing labor and, now that we have devices that outperform us at menial and dangerous work, that's becoming an asset rather than a flaw.

Sure, it's possible that we get outdone by AI, and in fact there's one context in which it's likely: war. Counted among the casualties of an all-out or existential war are all the rules that people once believed in, and all of our assumptions about what humans (who, normally, aren't so terrified and desperate or so power-hungry) will do. If a runaway AI destroys humanity, it will probably begin from humans warring against other humans, and in an all- out conflict where surrender is not seen as possible by either side.

This is not to downplay the risk. At best, I'd be saying that AI isn't dangerous in the way that guns aren't dangerous-- and, of course, we know that guns are extremely dangerous when used by humans to kill other humans. Luckily, this desire to kill another person doesn't seem to exist at the scale that would enable the existence of guns to be an existential threat.

So why might humans tend to kill other humans? Crime often results from scarcity. Well, technological unemployment is only accelerating. What happened to agricultural commodity prices in the 1920s, leading to widespread rural poverty and a global depression in the 1930s, is happening to _almost all human labor_ today. It's terrifying because ill-managed prosperity begets scarcity and that begets fear and authoritarianism and war. While we're decades away from being able to build a species-killing AI (which, of course, would typically not be designed as such; it would probably be designed to kill some humans before running amok and doing fatal damage) I do think that if we are similar in character, by that time, to what we are now, it's a real threat. Power accrues, in most human organizations, not to those who deliver progress but to those who create scarcity. If this doesn't change, then wars will never end and that fact alone is an existential risk.

<comment><USER30> An idea that I got after reading Guns, Germs, and Steel was that at a basic level, killing other humans is the correct response to most threats, annoyances, or disagreements. Manager wants to micromanage with story points? Kill him. Problem solved.

Now, clearly, if everybody is killing everyone beyond their immediate family, it is hard to have any sort of larger society. Living and collaborating under constant threat of immediate death wouldn't work. So we have a large set of social adaptations to limit the killing and restrain ourselves.

My point here, is that 'why do human kill other humans' is a less interesting question than 'why are the social adaptations that prevent killing not taking affect?' The problem of fighting isn't a moral failing, or some flaw in the human soul. Killing makes sense within the decision making scope of our conscious brains, and is the result of inadequate build up of collective structures of inhibition that are required to have larger groups of people in closer contact with each other, and as the groups get bigger and the contact becomes closer, we need to engineer new schemes for inhibiting the 'lets just kill them off and solve this once and for all' urge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER32> Careful... Roko's basilisk ([http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk))</comment>


Fleet: a radically different architecture for computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/06/30/fleet/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is the biggest idea I've seen in computing in some time. It makes me wish I knew more about hardware. The fact that it involves Ivan Sutherland, one of the great visionaries from the early days, is really cool. If you don't know who Ivan Sutherland is, watch the following now (it's not long and, trust me, you need to know about this):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg>

Sutherland's Sketchpad system is from 1962; the video is Alan Kay talking about it in the 80s. The best bit is at 3:45, where Kay says: _I once asked Ivan Sutherland: How could you possibly have done the first interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language, and the first object-oriented software system all in one year? He said: I didn't know it was hard._

If you want to see it do 3D, go to 4:00 of this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKM3CmRqK2o>

That Sutherland did these things in the early 60s never fails to astound. The machine it ran on was built in 1956.

Regarding the Fleet stuff, one thing I noticed is that they're using Guy Blelloch's work on data parallelism from the 90s, which is also the basis for the recent work on parallelism in Haskell. (Edit: turns out this is one of the models they're considering for programming Fleet, but it isn't a perfect fit. See the link to the other slides posted by abecedarius.)

<comment><USER3> So basically this will be like a LISP machine, execpt a haskell machine? Because that would be awesome. ...also this entire topic is completely over my head.

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't a Haskell machine, but the Reduceron is: <http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/reduceron/>

Fleet is more like a higher-level FPGA machine -- instead of mapping async- default logic designs onto a huge array of look-up-tables, Fleet executes async-default program code on a huge array of 'ships'.

People are routinely baffled trying to use FPGAs because HDLs are _NOT CODE_ \-- there's no clean abstraction between the text you write and electricity+wires. Verilog + VHDL are more like CAD tools than they are like programming languages, despite appearances.

Fleet may be a deeply weird computer architecture, but it's a lot more palatable than using FPGAs for software guys.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure, I mean, they ARE code, just not sequential imperative code like we are used to. I would argue that they are DATAFLOW languages, since electronic circuits function in the same fashion (a stream of data is routed, NOT a stream of instructions applied to some data).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More at <http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/>

<http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/slides.pdf> seems a better intro to the project, with more of the basics (I haven't finished it yet).

<comment><USER6> I just submitted the fleet link before I saw this - it is definitely an interesting design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anything that has Ivan Sutherland in it bears close observation.

I learned just about all I know about computer graphics from his textbooks and it still amazes me how relevant those books are today. The guy is definitely one of the 'great' names in the history of computing.

</comment><comment><USER8> This architecture may sound ridiculous now, but I'm glad researchers are attempting to redefine how a computer should work. The most troubling thing I see about Fleet is the difficulty of programming on it. That is, unlearning what we already know.

</comment><comment><USER9> "A recent 90 nanometer TSMC test chip, called Infinity, demonstrated switch fabric performance at about 4 GHz. A new test chip, called Marina, has just gone out for fabrication. Marina will test the programmable interface, and if successful, will give us confidence to build a complete Fleet. We seek participation from sponsors, programmers, and designers of basic computation elements."

It sounds like it's far too early to know how 4-GHz "switch fabric performance" will translate into MIPS or FLOPS, much less application-level performance.

</comment><comment><USER10> It wasn't until the end of the article that I realized that it was _the_ Sutherland of graphics fame. His early work was profound, and ahead of what everyone else was doing. I remember reading the original paper (or maybe it just was an early one) on the hidden line problem.

It is great to see some research at this level. Feels like we have been building stuff that is based on the 8085, constrained by compatibility. Everybody but Burroughs, that is, what with their b1700.

</comment><comment><USER11> How do these compare to the MARDAN and Apollo Guidance Computers?

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes! A modern dataflow processor! I really hope this is successful.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you still use reddit.com? - <AUTHOR> What are some good subreddits you visit on Reddit.com? <comment><USER2> Like others have said reddit is most useful the smaller the subreddit is. I use:

/r/hardwareswap, /r/buildapcsales, and /r/homelabsales as an alternative to ebay

/r/selfhosted, /r/homelab, and /r/datahoarder for new project ideas

/r/sffpc, /r/mechinicalkeyboards, /r/watches for fun

/r/unixporn, /r/firefoxcss, and /r/pop_os for wasting time

/r/deepintoyoutube and /r/youtubehaiku are pretty fun too

<comment><USER3> Yes, small niche subreddits are really good. Sometimes they are the only place where you will find a particular community on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, I don't know but like Facebook I just stopped using it alltogether one day and I don't miss using it at all.

The only thing I use reddit for nowadays is when I'm looking for suggestions like best vpn, best headphones, etc.

Instead of just googling these keywords I often use e.g. "reddit usenet providers", etc and I find that the quality of results is much higher than google's blogspam.

<comment><USER5> I use discord for that now.

Reddit's quality in recommendation is not great when it comes to tech. I was looking for a laptop and suggestions made were better than your average consumer guy but still sucked.

Also for headphones too. Almost anything tbh.

They all end up with American brands whereas there are many nice brands outside of USA or Canada.

There is lot of astroturfing going on. Discord is less prone because usually it's private and split into small groups. Hard work for dem marketers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely. It has some really nice communities on a number of niches, you can find some amazing in-depth answers from specialists in many corners of the society and the curation of some channels is excellent. When Digg f-cked up, a generous amount of users onboarded Reddit.

I couldn't find another online platform around topics that interest me that's simple enough to join and participate as Reddit (Stack Overflow comes close, but is also one of the most abrupt social networks out there). I rarely engage in commenting, but I do submit & read quite a bit of content in the channels I follow.

old.reddit.com is still the best format, in my opinion. Like HN, keeping it simple and focused on the _content_ instead of the users will ensure to some degree that the right type of public will be interested to spend time around there. This, I suspect, is where almost every other social platform fails and becomes perishable. And probably desperate monetisation efforts, like Quora.

As with every social platform, the more popular it becomes, the more often you find low quality content and users trying to take advantage of the traffic or business generation potential offered by the platform.

LE: typos & suggested channels.

Channels I can recommend (though some are quite niched)

\- r/AbandonedPorn/ (images)

\- r/AcademicPhilosophy/

\- r/Archivists/

\- r/bestof/ (arguably best user comments)

\- r/indepthstories/ (long form articles)

\- r/longform/ (long form articles)

\- r/Longreads/ (long form articles)

\- r/TrueReddit/ (long form articles)

\- r/privacytoolsIO/

\- r/selfhosted/

\- r/stopworking/

<comment><USER3> r/privacytoolsio is really good. I find it more accessible and friendlier than r/privacy

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found that reddit has grown some very nice communities around topics I care about. As long as I try just a little bit to avoid the distractions that other subreddits bring, it gives great value. Some subreddits I joined are r/compsci r/linux r/programminglanguages

</comment><comment><USER8> I use it every day. My favourite subreddits are

/r/london

/r/rust

/r/golang

/r/UKPersonalFinance

/r/Games

/r/linux

EDIT: and I always use old.reddit.com. The new site is a disaster.

<comment><USER9> Have they released any statistics about the redesign? Reddit is only usable to me with the old interface. I can only imagine new users will run away screaming, if they only see the new Reddit.

<comment><USER8> I honestly could not care less about statistics of the redesign, although user numbers would be interesting

The new design is an absolute train wreck, it loads in slowly, feels like you're constantly running through treacle to do anything, let alone it gives my CPU fan a workout just to scroll through a page.

The old design runs butter smooth, almost instantaneous. Navigating feels light and quick and it feels functional. I'm really hoping they don't turn off the old design because that will be a real sad day.

<comment><USER10> Beside the heavy-ness, I've found the site unusable with mobile browsers because it constantly nags you in various different ways to "try out" their app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me or is Reddit.com (non-old) intentionally bad? It feels like they've deliberately slowed down the website in order to force you to use the app.

It's worse in practically every way. I genuinely wonder if any of the PMs or developers who worked on it have ever worked on high-traffic websites before.

<comment><USER12> IIRC It was done to make the site more accessible to a wider audience, specifically on mobile devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes

There are lots of cons and a few pros

It's best to think of Reddit as a giant grouping of millions of subreddits

Some very good some good Many terrible some absolutely terrible

1) Use old.reddit.com

the new site is terrible

2) The more niche you go, the better the experience

3) Be prepared for the worst kind of idiots you can imagine. If you end up in a subreddit like that, get out ASAP

4) There are lots of very smart and helpful people. If you are interested in any topic, you will find something devoted to it

5) Be very careful time wise, it's a great time waster and you should avoid things that are negative and/or useless

</comment><comment> m-p-3 On desktop I don't mind the new interface too much, on mobile (Android) I use Sync for Reddit. I bought the "Pro" version in 2012 and I'm still using it today.

It did evolve quite a bit since.

Some subreddits I enjoy are * /r/selfhosted * /r/sysadmin * /r/HighQualityGifs * /r/talesfromtechsupport * /r/IDontWorkHereLady * /r/GifRecipes * /r/bapcsalescanada * /r/sffpc * /r/GamePhysics

</comment><comment><USER14> No. It's astroturfed to an insane degree, controlled by power-mods with an obvious agenda and I don't find it a particularly friendly or healthy place anymore.

<comment><USER11> The power-mods are so obviously controlled by multiple people or agencies that it's insane they haven't been banned.

Some of them literally post 24/7, all content violating their own subs' rules, and usually partisan political junk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still do - I'm sure if I look around more, I'd find a few more gems on there, buy my favourite four right now are:

/r/unixporn

/r/linux

/r/retrobattlestations

/r/vintagecomputing

</comment><comment><USER16> I lived on ukpolitics for most of the last decade. I can safely say that was the stupidest decision of the 2010s.

<comment><USER17> R/Unitedkingdom and ukpolitics are both dreadful. The dominant views are completely detached from the country as a whole. And as a bonus it's depressing as hell to read.

<comment><USER14> It's due to serious amounts of astroturfing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No, old.reddit.com

</comment><comment><USER19> Some I haven't seen mentioned

r/sfwpornnetwork/wiki/network links to all the sfw porn network some great pictures depending on your interests and to waste some time

for graphics r/vfx r/simulated r/gamedev/ r/generative/ r/blender

for idle time r/DIY r/ArtisanVideos r/BeAmazed/ r/bizarrebuildings/ r/EngineeringPorn/ r/ScientificArt/ r/Lost_Architecture/ r/specializedtools/

for food ideas r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ r/chinesefood

for book recommendations r/books r/scifi

<comment><USER12> Also love r/diWhyNot

<comment><USER19> looks fun, r/redneckengineering/ is another I forgot to mention

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 10 minutes of r/aww before bedtime is a nice way to unwind.

</comment><comment><USER21> Less and less. I don't care about the larger subs - but even niche subs are getting silenced without breaking site rules. While activist subs that openly and actively brigade are left alone. There are less and less places to have conversations outside the Overton window. thedonald.win is good for a laugh, but voat and gab are just cesspools.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes, my favs:

r/askscience/

r/coolguides/

/r/DidntKnowIWantedThat/

r/EngineeringPorn/

r/Infographics/

r/interestingasfuck/

r/LifeProTips/

r/BeAmazed/

r/todayilearned/

r/Showerthoughts/

r/oddlysatisfying/

<comment><USER23> hydrohomies

hotsauce

mtb

common_lisp

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some subreddits I like: Books: r/books, r/fantasy, r/printsf

Games: r/lowendgaming, r/patientgamers, r/roguelikes, r/interactivefiction, r/shouldibuythisgame

Music: r/listentothis

Misc: r/arduino, r/thinkpad, r/cyberdeck, r/raspberry_pi

Fun(ny) stuff: r/disneyvacation, r/boottoobig, r/sbubby

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER25> I do. I know it has a reputation, but I have found Reddit has some great communities, interesting and helpful people, and a lot to explore and experience. Sure hanging out in /r/thedonald or whatever is going to be a toxic experience. /r/unixporn? Not so much. :D

</comment><comment><USER26> Do you still use news.ycombinator.com ?

<comment><USER27> of course I do

<comment><USER28> The joke is that people normally just call it reddit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can get an RSS feed of any sub, you can enjoy a small and specific topic without ever visiting the site itself.

Can I recommend r/abstractgames/ it's a very small community designing and playing games.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am partial to user research and startups, so some of my favorites are:

/r/Entrepreneur

/r/GrowthHacking

/r/prodmgmt

/r/product_design

/r/ProductManagement

/r/startups

/r/usability

/r/userexperience

/r/UserExperienceDesign

/r/UXResearch

</comment><comment><USER31> The only functional subreddit I've found so far is /r/spacex, that's the only one I visit regularly.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use the reddit enhancement suite, which only seems to work with the old site. Without res, I'm never on it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yes, just unsubscribe to all default subs and sub to the communities that are relevant to your interests.

</comment><comment><USER33> r/ProgrammerHumor is pretty good

<comment><USER26> yeah 13 year old me would have loved that sub

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> /r/idiotsincars /r/batman /r/scala /r/me_irl

</comment><comment><USER35> Only niche or non mainstream subreddits. Anything popular is absolutely cursed those days.

</comment><comment><USER36> I use it for reading about

Clash Royale Australian personal finance Pen-and-paper RPGs, mostly D&D

</comment><comment><USER37> I use it but more and more I see how big an echo chamber most popular reddits are.

</comment><comment><USER38> I use it only for NSFW content (mostly OC from real users).

</comment><comment><USER39> Hacker News is a subreddit of sorts

</comment><comment><USER40> less than I used to but mostly because I changed and want to do more and read less

</comment><comment><USER41> r/LockdownScepticism and r/conspiracy

</comment><comment><USER42> less and less...

</comment><comment><USER43> reddit content is mostly editorialized now, so it's not the same website that is used to be. Now it's one more media in the end of the mainstream. Useless and not interesting.</comment>


Managed Care 3.0: Rise of the Robots - <AUTHOR> https://thedeductible.com/2020/07/21/managed-care-3-0-rise-of-the-robots/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some detailed HMO history here, followed by lots of insider detail (parts 2 and 3) on how HMOs are using AI to dominate the healthcare system.

"Hospitals saw, in some cases, a doubling of claims denials or "repricing" in just a 12 to 18-month period after 2016 based on these automated" reviews. This surge of machine-driven denials played a major role in the mysterious 39% plummet in hospital operating earnings"</comment>


Ask HN: A single compose interface for email, notes, posts etc? - <AUTHOR> Whenever I have a thought or an idea, I find the decision of which app to open to write it down (Evernote? Twitter? Medium? Email? Todo? Wiki? Google Doc?) ends up interrupting the flow of thoughts.
I've been looking for a single compose interface (preferably something like the quick "Save to Evernote" popup window that is accessible from the Mac menubar. Something where I can first take down my idea/note/thought/message, and then select how to store/share it: e.g. store as note, create todo, send as email, tweet, start document, Medium post etc.
Does such a universal compose tool exist? If not, do you think it will be worthwhile for someone to create one? <comment><USER2> Years ago the (obvious to me) revelation that all these different services and tools are showing slices and summaries of the same larger article. Twitter is a headline publisher. Slashdot/HN/lobsters/Facebook are publishing the summary paragraph. Email and blogs are still the host for the long form article.

Take a stroll through journalism textbooks, identify all the parts of a successful publications lifecycle, and provide all elements and you might reinvent publishing such that it satisfies all the current and future needs while still meeting the old style too.</comment>


When should a startup not accept venture capital? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/When-should-a-startup-not-accept-venture-capital

<comment><USER2> Capital should be a catalyst for growth.

If you're asking this question, then you probably either aren't ready for it, or don't really need it.</comment>


Russian Memorial to Steve Jobs Dismantled After Apple CEO Says He's Gay - <AUTHOR> http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russian-memorial-to-steve-jobs-dismantled-after-apple-ceo-says-hes-gay/510578.html

<comment><USER2> What worries me more is not the insanely stupid law prohibiting gay propaganda, but the fact that people are so afraid of it to dismantle a monument depicting a phone. This 1984 level fear, unfortunately.

Interestingly, the currently popular terms for the EU and USA among "vatniks" (extreme nationalists) are "Gayropa" and "Pindostan" \- homophobia is very influential.</comment>


Report Describes Lawyers' Advice on Moving Suspect Funds into U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/us/report-describes-lawyers-advice-on-moving-suspect-funds-into-us.html <comment><USER2> Something to do in a big city, apparently:

 _And later this week, activists in London will hold what they are calling a Kleptocracy Tour, a bus ride past properties that they said had been associated with illicit money. They plan to hold a similar tour in New York in April._</comment>


Notes on Discrete Mathematics (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/202/notes.pdf <comment><USER2> Why do most introductory math textbooks not contain solutions? How can a self- learner without access to a university or professor check their work?

The common answer I get is solutions "rob" the student of learning. Why should the fear of the lazy student cheat those that actually attempt their work and want to see if their solution is correct?

Additionally, I heard the argument that "you should know" if your solutions are correct. A beginner is probably prone to subtle mistakes and may think their reasoning is rational. Thus they are probably unaware of any subtle logic errors and could easily fool themselves into thinking their proofs are correct.

Is it partially laziness from the authors in creating new problems for homeworks/exams? Or do people think a literal beginner in math can be their own proof checker?

I wouldn't want a beginner programmer writing "production ready" code without code review, so why should we expect a beginner math student to write error free proofs? What is the point in not allowing solutions?

As great as these text may be, I couldn't and wouldn't recommend them for the beginner. These text seem to be designed solely for a classroom where students will get assistance and feedback from TAs and professors. They seem useless for a beginner to learn on their own without outside proof checking.

<comment><USER3> > Why do most introductory math textbooks not contain solutions?

I offer a couple of Free texts, one of which is pretty popular ([http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/](http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/)). The answers, completely step-by-step solved, are available. I can give you two reasons.

1) Preparing good questions and giving answers is about half the work. On my page you'll see that the book is 500 pages and the answers are 400 pages.

And it is not the half that is fun, or that gets you credit. I find that compiling the answers greatly increases the quality of the book because I keep going back and adjusting the presentation, etc. But others don't think that. Rather the opposite; I have been told that it is work only appropriate for grad students.

2) I have gotten a fair number of emails along the lines of "I'd like to adopt your book but since anyone can download the answers, I cannot teach out of it."

It has not in the past proven to be a fruitful strategy for me to inform the email writer that the first thing any 2018 undergrad does on getting a text asignment is to google for the answers pdf, and that those students always succeed.

So one reason to not provide answers is to get more adoptions. This ties in with (1) because my five year reviews are not impressed that random self- learners find the text useful. They ask about adoptions.

<comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I have studied linear algebra with your book. Thank you for writing it. Special thanks for making it completely free and open-source.

 _I have gotten a fair number of emails along the lines of "I'd like to adopt your book but since anyone can download the answers, I cannot teach out of it."_

When we had an introductory course in linear algebra, we were not given any home assignments. Instead, we were told that if we want to train and exercise some concepts, we should find third-party materials and self-study -- and so, I used your book. I really like that approach, it allows more capable students to do whatever they like instead, and to less capable -- work on it, if needed. Thus, I don't understand the rationale of not teaching out of something that contains solved exercises, because there is no reason to assign _mandatory_ exercises in the first place. It's enough to have tests.

And of course, such books are extremely valuable for non-mainstream (that is, not enrolled into a high school or wherever) audience, which can be smaller, but has more impact regarding feedback.

<comment><USER5> Not all resources are of similar quality and profs aren't going to let the students judge that for themselves. I imagine a prof wants questions that specifically walk students through what they are teaching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I studied so much discrete math in undergrad.

Characteristic polynomials, rook polynomials, derangements, counting, recurrence relations, elementary number theory, elementary p-adic numbers, logic, geometric series, abstract algebra.

I have never needed any of it, and never faced a situation where knowledge or intuition in those topics helped me to think differently about a problem, never faced any type of computational complexity questions that I didn't solve just by looking various things up as-needed.

The only thing discrete math did for me was help me boost my GRE math score to get into a good math grad program, where I switched to machine learning and MCMC topics.

Very occasionally you might encounter a simple permutation or combination counting argument in a paper or something, but it's rare.

I enjoy discrete math, but really felt misled about it's actual usefulness in almost any corporate software / research / engineering job.

If you don't know this stuff but you can grok most basic counting arguments after looking a few things up on Wikipedia, you'll be fine. Deeper command of these topics really doesn't yield economic returns to your effort in almost all cases, unfortunately.

<comment><USER7> this experience could depend on the field of work you are in.

Being fluent in statistics/linear algebra & discrete math/category theory -- makes you 'head and shoulders' above others, when it comes to assessing industry trends, and deciding if some are applicable to your work.

Having those skills, does not mean, of course, that they would compensate for the lack of creativity, hard work, risk taking, constant year-after-year-self study, or inter-personal & presentation skills.

Some examples:

Being able to understand word-vectors and related techniques, for chat boats, or compliance -- is very helpful.

Being able to reason about degrees of security of data published on 'immutable databases' or 'data streams' \-- is useful, again in compliance (as in making records tamper-proof).

Being able to design protocol/interaction across systems with context-free grammars -- is helpful, in protected against certain types of attacks. I would say this is reasonably relevant for systems that are exposed on public internet.

Being able to read reasonably recent (or 20-30 year old) papers on Differential privacy/homomorphic encryption -- allows you to reason how effective your data protection strategy could be (again relevant for compliance).

Obviously, understanding financial service models, performance models of distributed queuing systems -- require understanding of the maths I mention above.

Being able to recognize where in your, even basic business workflow or database/state management -- there is an appropriate place to introduce finite-state-automate (to reduce number on 'unanticipated conditions') -- is also helpful.

Being able to recognize database mapping through the lens of category theory, improves how you could design your data models (because right at the time of designing your data layout you are also thinking about transformations between them -- which is basic need for non-trivial business system integration).

Opposite to the above post, I always feel that I need more math background that I have. And I would love to go back in time and significantly beef-up my education in that area.

<comment><USER6> My work has spanned almost all of the different examples you listed, and I don't believe my ability to work in those topics or understand them was aided or helped by studying discrete math at all.

(Note: you lump linear algebra in to the discussion but it is dramatically different than what is typically called "discrete math.")

Additionally, many of my colleagues on machine learning and intense distributed scientific computing applications that I've worked on have had zero discrete math education or self-teaching.

I am more effective at engineering in these applications than some of these people, and less effective than others. Prior exposure to discrete math seems to have no effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I took this class. Professor Aspnes is a great teacher and his notes are ridiculously thorough.

On the first day of class he told us (paraphrasing) "I never went to class in undergrad, so I don't expect you to. But the lectures will help you on the problem sets, so I encourage you to attend."

For those of us who may have had... less than thorough attendance... these notes were a real godsend!

He also has some for his randomized algorithms class: [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/469/notes.pdf](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/469/notes.pdf)

And also for his other classes which you can find here: [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/)

(Professor Aspnes is now the DUS of the CS department at Yale)

</comment><comment><USER9> I see notes like these every once in a while and I always wonder, if the material is the same, how come there isn't a unified source for all of it? Why is there a need for every professor to create their own notes that cover the same things? For example, probability theory is still the same after all these years why can't we create a one true reference for people learning it.

<comment><USER10> Nobody teaches the same topic in the exactly the same way.

There is, for one, far more material in any given subject than an introductory course or textbook can (or should) cover, so the author/instructor must choose what to include.

Plus, the order of presentation matters. For example, here are two standard ways of introducing the real numbers:

#1 (Dedekind cut). Picture a square of side length 1. The length of the diagonal, √2, cannot be represented by a ratio of integers, so we need a new number system to represent it. These numbers "in between" rational numbers are called irrational numbers, and together they form the real numbers.

#2 (Cauchy completion). Non-repeating decimals, such as π ≈ 3.141592, cannot be represented by a ratio of integers. We call such decimal numbers irrational numbers. Any number representable by a (finite or infinite) decimal is called a real number.

You can deduce #2 from #1, and vice versa. It's entirely up to the author/instructor to decide which one to start with.

Lastly, there is always a better way to explain the same material.

<comment><USER11> Besides, books have different levels and audiences. I learned Linear Algebra from three books:

1) Gilbert Strang's "Introduction to Linear Algebra" was great because Gilbert goes straight to intuitions, the proofs are simple, most exercises have answers, but it does not cover advanced material. I used this book for self- teaching. You could probably learn from it with just high-school level maths. Good for engineers.

2) Hoffman and Kunze's "Linear Algebra" was given as a textbook for my first LA course. While it covered some topics that weren't found in many other textbooks and are not really "standard curricula" in many other universities for (jordan normal form, rational canonical form). I found it more similar to a reference than a textbook; it is intended for math majors. The proofs are imho a bit obtuse and it usually introduces topics without much justification. Determinants are introduced early.

3) Axler's "Linear Algebra Done Right" OTOH covered many of the topics in Hoffman&Kunze but the organization and the proofs were (imho) mucho more clear and motivated. Also intended for math majors. No determinants until the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not complete without some finite calculus: [https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dgleich/publications/Gleich%...](https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dgleich/publications/Gleich%202005%20-%20finite%20calculus.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the link, very nice.

It also led me to _Concrete Mathematics_ by Knuth, _et al_ ...

[https://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~r97002/temp/Concrete%20Mathemat...](https://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~r97002/temp/Concrete%20Mathematics%202e.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > [Foundations and logic] Why: This is the assembly language of > mathematics—the stuff at the bottom that everything else compiles to.

> [Basic mathematics on the real numbers] Why: You need to be able to > understand, write, and prove equations and inequalities involving real > numbers

If logic is the assembly, real numbers must be the Enterprise Java frameworks :)

But really, aren't they from non-discrete (continuous?) mathematics? How are they useful for computer science? Like, sure we have approximations of them on computers (floats, rationals) but aren't they mostly used for those pesky boring real-world-ish calculations? Isn't CS mostly about integers?

<comment><USER10> You can't have calculus without the real numbers, and you can't have asymptotic analysis and probability theory without calculus. There goes the whole field of the analysis of algorithms.

<comment><USER15> You can do discrete math (including analysis of algorithms) without reals.

Reals are only needed for calculus on infintesimals, which are not relevant to much of CS. Everything you can do with formal Taylor expansions doesn't need reals. In fact knowing calculus on the reals often causes confusion in students learning formal expansions for CS.

<comment> Ar-Curunir All of optimization, stats and theoretical ML involves solid grasp of calculus over the reals

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any analysis aside, the introduction chapter (chap. 1) is really pleasant to read.</comment>


ECS, Fargate and EKS (Kubernetes on AWS) Compared and Explained in a Nutshell - <AUTHOR> https://sysdig.com/blog/ecs-fargate-eks-kubernetes-aws-compared/ <comment><USER2> Looking forward for updates!

<comment><USER3> So if I use Fargate and do "kubectl get nodes" what do I see?</comment></comment>