Hidden Away for 28 Years, Tiananmen Protest Pictures See Light of Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/asia/china-tiananmen-1989-photographs.html <comment><USER3> Kind of a personal story, but my fiancé is from Beijing. She found out about Tiananmen square about a year ago. She only knew that she shouldn't ask about the Tiananmen incident growing up and that it was a bad thing that happened.

She has been in the states for several years now and when she found out what really happened with our even blurry images and stories we have now it really changed her perspective on things.

Even though its 28 years old, many of the younger generations don't know a thing about what happened, regardless if it's censored in their country or not.

History should not be censored like this. You should not have to move out of country to know what your country has done. I am extremely grateful for the brave photographer preserving his images for the world.

<comment><USER4> And the worst part about having to move out of country to find out things that were censored/hidden? You'll be inclined to believe foreign nations have a negative bias towards China.

At least, that's China's (and Russia's) narrative.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, USA hardly ever reports positive articles about China. We didn't report on their moon landing until a year after it happened and many people don't even know it happened at all.

Same goes with their space station. The only coverage went to their previous one that is leaving orbit into earth.

I know that this is a small sample size and only related to their space program as well as my personal observations, but its really hard (for me at least) to say that the USA media does not have a negative bias towards China

<comment><USER4> For the past couple months the media has pointed out China's successes in tech in Shenzhen, how they have a much better stance on climate change than Trump, and how they have the most prudent position (that doesn't involve all-out war) on North Korea. That's pretty positive if you ask me.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it is getting better. But even then I can't help but feel like it's said in this "See, even the Chinese do better than trump" manner. Just like 10 years ago the only good news about China was about how well their economy is doing, but not without some "they took our jobs" vibe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An inspiring collection of photos, but I'd bet it attracts little interest outside a few select, irrelevant circles. One of the most heartbreaking thing about the massacre is not just that the mass murderers who ordered it were never held responsible but that today it barely even tarnishes their reputations, while the memory of their victims has been thoroughly suppressed.

<comment><USER7> I'm going to take a kind of despicable position. We don't know what would have happened had the protests been allowed to continue.

China is a vast country with mostly poor, uneducated people -- especially so in 1989.

Look at what happened in Syria. Look at the Arab spring. Is it just to kill hundreds, to prevent the slaughter of hundreds of thousands?

If the answer is no, never, I don't see how we can have states at all.

<comment> k-mcgrady What you're saying is that it is better for people to live under authoritarian governments of dictatorships than die fighting for their freedom. It's not a despicable position but it's incredibly short-sighted.

<comment><USER8> Is it? In the long term, it's better to be alive than to be dead. Some would prefer a peaceful, long term transition compared to quick, violent civil war -- which may result in a worse overall state. Wars destroy civilizations, sometimes for generations.

This is something that Americans generally won't agree with, because their foundational myth is closely tied to the revolutionary war. Conveniently this war was a very long time ago, so one doesn't have to feel the personal consequences of it when using aphorisms like "you need to fight for your freedom".

Btw, the Canadians eventually got their independence without a war.

<comment> k-mcgrady NB: I'm not American and I'm also very anti-war and anti-military in general.

>> In the long term, it's better to be alive than to be dead.

That's short term in my opinion. Long term could be hundreds of years. Generally these things don't happen in a generation. There is often some civil rights violations, followed be peaceful protesting which turns violent, followed by war, and then when it's in both sides interest, peace talks.

As someone from a country effected in this way I can assure you 'you need to fight for your freedom' is not an aphorism. In some cases it's necessary - <USER2> a degree. Unfortunately once violence begins it's very difficult to stop again before much more damage than was ever necessary is done. However in the long term (hundreds of years potentially) it can put an end to an evil which may have only gained in strength and oppression otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yet another example of "nothing matters like success." Since 1989, China has gone on to have great success - both economic and diplomatic, and is on the verge (if not already achieved) super-power status.

Because of that success, there is not much anybody can do about human rights abuses, so most people don't pay much attention to it.

<comment><USER10> A variation of Churchill's "History is written by the victors."

<comment><USER11> And Churchill knew what he was talking about.

[https://crimesofbritain.com/2016/09/13/the-trial-of- winston-...](https://crimesofbritain.com/2016/09/13/the-trial-of-winston- churchill/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting how even after all this time that no one knows who "Tank Man" was and within China, few even know he existed at all:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man)

</comment><comment><USER13> Glad to see many reasonable comments here.

I have a vague memory of CCTV(official media, not your backyard CCTV) footage that depicting students and other people as mobs and killing soliders and burning the dead soldiers body.

Over the years, I got more and more piece of information about what happened at the time. clearly Chinese government is still trying to cover up what they did, and many exiles is still making up fake stories.

Nowadays in China people don't really care that much as you thought they would. The general consensus is that they are willing to forget about what happened and move on since it's full of opportunities right now and most people are more focused on getting a better life.

Not saying Chinese government was right they knew what happened was shameful and still forbids open news covfefe or discussion about it. In a booming economy it's just hard to mass up enough momentum to really get into a discussion about what happens in 1989, people just don't care anymore.

<comment><USER14> > they knew what happened was shameful

Do they? Are pro-democrasy protests allowed today? Or would people be shot again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its interesting that they used his english name, to protect his identity (and his family) but then go on to state his approximate age, that he runs restaurants, comes from Dalian, has an uncle in taiwan and migrated to the USA in 2012. Now then, I'm sure many people here could construct a database query to find the guy based on this information; the question is, does China have such a database? I know, they have a billion people but I hope some of this other information is obfuscated..

<comment><USER16> Yup. Mentioned his college, and posted a picture of him. It would be trivial for any intelligence agency to dox this guy from the information in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's inevitably going to be people trying to justify the tragedy here by suggesting America is no better, pointing to instances such as the Kent State Shootings (Vietnam War protest).

For those people I'd like to point out that unlike China, America doesn't actively try to hide the negative sides of its history to the extent China does. I can read about the Kent State shootings all I want, along with the My Lai Massacre, the Trail of Tears, American involvement in Central America or the Middle East, etc..

It is in fact sad that China depends on the West to expose the darker sides of its past, and then claims Western negative bias whenever we do.

<comment><USER17> So the west is superior because their citizens, although having access to damning documents of the actions of their nation, both domestic and abroad, choose not to care?

<comment><USER18> Yes, all other things being equal, open information is better than censorship. But you are obviously exaggerating, lots of people care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Without wishing away the massacre or diminishing the kind of despotic environment that allows this to happen shouldn't the same kind of moral reprehension be expressed for the massive loss of life in the middle east from Libya, Iraq to Syria?

Yet we rarely see this in the same context as these actions continue to be pursued aggressively with little resistance from citizens in the west.

This seems to a very selective form of morality in practice more at ease judging others than examining our own actions.

Tiananmen is past and beyond but the loss of life and destruction of entire countries that puts millions of lives in disarray in the middle east is here and now and continues unabated yet there is little pressure on our leaders to cease these actions from citizens. No western leader is tainted with the kind of moral reprehension directed at the Chinese inspite of far more serious crimes against humanity. There is a definite dissonance here.

<comment><USER20> The same kind of moral reprehension absolutely were expressed during the period of the 'Arab Spring'

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Read some real opinions please:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in- China-s...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in-China-so- poorly-informed-about-the-Tiananmen-Square-massacre-despite-the-ability-to- use-VPN)

<comment><USER22> I wouldn't assume any particular post is a 'real opinion'. The CCP employs many shills posting noise to domestic social media, so it wouldn't surprise me to see chaff on Quora as well.

<comment><USER21> You can write off anything with that, to be honest. It's like the nuclear weapon of arguments that ensures mutual destruction

<comment><USER22> Yeah, it sucks. But we do need to keep in mind now that social media psy-ops (or whatever the spooks are calling it) have become significant -- just as Amazon user reviews have gotten way more polluted, but without the direct personal feedback you get from buying the wrong item.

There was a recent story about an academic study of the methods of in-China Party shills (I forget the link). By my skim they were more about distraction and noise than obvious pushing of the party line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Student protests really scare older Chinese because they remember the reign of terror that the Red Guard kids perpetuated during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't the "Red Guard kids" in the 1960s and the "older Chinese people" at Tiananmen have a large overlap?

<comment><USER25> That would only mean they remember even better what those kids were capable of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I remember watched a fascinate behind the scene documentary on the down fall of Gorbachev by the old USSR conservative leadership which actually caused the rise of Yeltsin in Youtube recently.

Likely in China during that period of time, the high level struggle for power also happened in BeiJing. In China the reformers of the time didn't win.

</comment><comment><USER27> The rich and powerful (note I did not separate government & individuals, increasing these 2 groups are merging together, and seriously, the censorship in this area is way better than things happen in the past) in China have to maintain a great public image. Even if a significant fraction of the population are fully aware of that being superficial, there are definitely larger fraction of people who does believe in the camouflage. Not that such people are ignorant, their life is hard enough to really have the spare time for these stuff.

The reason such history is heavily censored, is precisely for this cause. Such thing will never be freely available, as long as the social structure and political system works in the same way.

</comment><comment><USER28> English Wikipedia still calls it the "Tiananmen Square protests of 1989" instead of the "Tiananmen Square Massacre" which is what pretty much everyone outside China calls it.

Maybe someday we'll stop China from censoring Wikipedia.

<comment><USER29> The article is about the protests as a whole, they ended in the "Tiananmen Square Massacre" like the first paragraph of the article says.

<comment><USER30> It may be a good idea to try blending some massacre (um, because WP:COMMONNAME, a.k.a. "everyone mentions the massacre"?) in and call it some "protest and massacre" though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a 30 year old in the US. Unfortunately all I know is that there was a protest and some of the protesters got shot and there was a person standing in front of a tank. It's not like wikipedia tells accurate information about the event. Rather than alluding to what happened, can someone just spell out exactly what happened? Or give a non-propagandized link to what happened?

</comment><comment><USER32> really wealth legitimized power of the communists and paved they way to insidious regime. had it been not for globalization china could've been the freest country in the world. alas we have this.

</comment><comment><USER33> not sure what has this to do with hacking/IT, but

Tiananmen square massacre is mislabeled event, more people died in other parts of Beijing than average in the square, so more appropriate name would be Beijing massacre or what Chinese use 6/4.

People who died in square were pretty much suicidal since they were warned to leave and were told to leave even by their own protester leaders.

It should be always mentioned that wife of current hard liner president Mao 2.0 She Gin Pimp was singing at that time to murderers in square.

Overall not sure why are media so obsessed with this event were few thousand people died instead or mentioning millions who died thanks to glorified Mao. It's pretty good trade-off with DXP for most of the Chinese compared to trade- off gained with Mao.

</comment><comment><USER34> Still, I gots to know what happened to tank dude. I gots to know.

<comment><USER35> "Numerous theories have sprung up as to the man's identity and current whereabouts." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> read some real opinions please:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in- China-s...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-todays-young-adults-in-China-so- poorly-informed-about-the-Tiananmen-Square-massacre-despite-the-ability-to- use-VPN)

</comment><comment><USER36> Surprised that the article showed up on HackerNews</comment>


Why Do You Participate in Open Source? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/developer/community/fostering/participation

<comment><USER2> I'd like to hear from a company that has done their research and now has interesting results--I don't want to be ping'd everytime a baby company has a wacky, untested theory and a need to generate buzz.

Tell me upfront that you will release this data so I can use it too, or pay for survey respondents like everyone else.

edit: toned down language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we're working on the technology end now but I don't want to show anything until the bits are a little more cooked. You don't want me to waste your time with buggy code now do you?

What I was asking about had more to do with what kind of open source organization do you like to participate with?</comment></comment>


How Anxiety Warps Your Perception - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160928-how-anxiety-warps-your-perception <comment><USER2> The most interesting and useful piece of information in this story is buried towards the end: there is an app which implements a gamified version of ABMT therapy.

The BBC didn't even mention its name! From searching around it appears to be Personal Zen (iOS only): [http://www.personalzen.com/](http://www.personalzen.com/)

Don't know what kind of twisted priorities in the newsroom would focus a story like this on using anxiety to make a political point, versus putting the focus on a way people can treat their anxiety, but hey, that's probably just my anxiety speaking.

<comment><USER3> I just tried that app, but actually felt more stress because of the time pressure to find the one "good" guy vs the one "bad" guy (they only appear for a split second).

It would be more interesting to initially see one good guy surrounded by many bad guys. As you focus on the good guy, you are rewarded by producing more good guys and bad guys disappear. Instead of gamifying the experience, show the user that focusing on the good guys creates positive momentum.

<comment><USER4> This app seems to be designed by psychologists based on several studies to treat anxiety, it is not a stress-release tool. The original article also mentions the goal is to retrain your reaction / attention to negative stimuli, which may explain the quick reaction time needed.

[meta] Your comment is solely about yourself and adds very little to the conversation.

<comment><USER5> The first sentence on the page says it reduces stress and anxiety.

<comment><USER6> Most therapeutic (rather than pharmaceutical) approaches to treating anxiety that have a long-term impact, require you to focus on (or at least acknowledge) the stressful stimuli repeatedly in the short term:

• [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy) requires that you focus on stressful thoughts to "pick them apart."

• [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy) requires that you experience a stress-trigger and "pass through" the initial phobic reaction to get to the point where you can neutrally observe that the stimuli isn't dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somewhat off topic, but if you are having anxiety issues, I strongly recommend the Headspace mobile app. While a lot of mindfulness apps have a lot of fluffy new-age tone to them, this one did not, and it also tends to introduce concepts at a very good pace (a little bit of things to try each day) which makes things memorable. By contrast, you may talk to someone and hear 100 things to do, and you'll explode trying to do them all.

Anyway, for me, it strikes the right balance. The trick here is more about learning to focus but also learning to completely percieve the feeling and know what it is, and then it's less strong than trying to always think about it - rather than identifying with it.

<comment><USER8> On Headspace, I did the 30 day foundation program followed by the 30 day anxiety pack.

It gives you some good methods but as the program says over and over it is not a panacea and requires a lot of work.

I think I've benefited from it but not as much as I'd hoped.

<comment><USER9> I've had a similar experience, although not entirely unexpected. From everything I've gathered, meditation and guided breathing are tools to use to fight anxiety, but are by no means sufficient on their own for many. I've found that daily meditation and guided breathing can sometimes have the opposite effect for me when I'm not struggling as much by bringing me back to an anxious state. At the same time, working through their intro programs has definitely given me some tools and coping strategies that help me when I find my anxiety rising.

Also off-topic a bit, but for me, the single most impactful thing I have found for coping with anxiety is regular strenuous exercise. I'd been told this for years, but it's only recently that I've taken it seriously, and can now feel my anxieties begin to bubble up when I get out of my exercise routine. It's been so impactful that I just always want to make sure I highlight it when discussing anxiety, since it took so much time for it to really sink in for me.

<comment><USER7> Exercise++

My take-away from exercises was more of that it builds awareness that makes it easier to stay in flow states for longer over time, which in turn allows (like he says) kind of not making thoughts go away but getting less attached to them, also over time. It's definitely not an immediate gain, but I think the "noticing you are being distracted" and being able to stop is a good part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a radical leftist with crippling anxiety, the political part of this article was rather unexpected

<comment><USER11> I would be curious to see a similar study oriented along a radical/moderate axis, rather than left-wing/right-wing. Of course, to be of real value, it'd need not to be n=20 psych undergrads, but I may as well wish for a pony while I'm at it.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't that be the same as normalizing a left-to-right scale to [-1,1] and taking the absolute value? Or is it possible for there to be "radical centrism"?

<comment><USER11> Perhaps. I'm not sure the metric used in the study would support such analysis, though, and if they published their raw data alongside their methodology and conclusions, I wasn't able to find it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> _"... know that you're in good company. Actors like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone, musicians such as The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson and Taylor Swift ..."_

Not quite the 'company' I had in mind when thinking about anxiety. If the article started out with 'medical residents' or other jobs that are stressful and anxiety-inducing because your ability to do your job _correctly and quickly_ might mean someone else dies, or the success of the company rests on your performance, perhaps I'd take the article seriously. But actors and musicians? Sure, messing up means failure, and failure might mean lost contracts, disappointed fans, and having to let go of the great team of people that got you to success. But anxiety driven by success is not the 'company' that most people can relate to. It's having to perform duties that are _put upon you_ by your job, society, and family that are hardest to deal with. If you're good at these things, you will be successful. But the long road to success is the hard part which causes most people anxiety. Not already achieving it like musicians and actors have. That's a different type of anxiety that most people can't relate to.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure you don't intend this, but this reads like you misunderstand the anxiety of many of us fundamentally: it's not rational. The fundamental hardship of anxiety for many of us is that we know that it's not rational, and can reason out why it shouldn't be causing such an extreme reaction, yet that doesn't remove the feeling where everything is closing in on you.

> not the 'company' that most people can relate to.

Putting a face to someone else who is struggling with the same issue is very helpful to a lot of us. And while I understand the point you are raising, I can't begrudge the author for not knowing someone I personally know to name here. If this were a profile of someone specific being used to highlight anxiety, then you'd have a point, but this is just a single sentence intended to offer faces familiar to the maximum number of readers.

<comment><USER13> Points very well taken, thanks for offering a different perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article seems to be about a correlation between anxiety and right wing views, which is fine, but obviously not the whole story; generally speaking the opposite is more likely if we're talking anxiety disorders, not just general anxiety[0].

The single anecdote of 'conservatives look at offensive pictures more frequently' is extrapolated to mean that they are irrationally anxious about the future. This is not to mention that this entire line of reasoning is based on the premise that conservatives are looking at 'aversive images' out of fear/anxiety.

There is nothing wrong with rational fear of future possibilities, it is an important and integral aspect of how we make decisions about the future.

[0]-[http://neuropolitics.org/Anxiety-Depression-and-Goal- Seeking...](http://neuropolitics.org/Anxiety-Depression-and-Goal-Seeking-in- Conservatives-Liberals-Moderates.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15> I was surprised the article didn't mention mindfulness. I've found it can provide a strong foundation for rebuffing anxiety.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's a better article which describes how anxiety can change your perception: [1]

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

<comment><USER17> Yes. I've been reading/doing a workbook [1] to help improve my anxiety symptoms. In addition to depersonalization, it teaches cognitive reappraisal [2]. They are both helping me a great deal.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/160623918X/ref=oh_aui_sear...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/160623918X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reappraisal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reappraisal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting to me that fear (even paranoia) was useful for our species for a long time. But now in modern society it actually is used against us.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know a guy who often talks about conspiracy. I would not be surprised to hear that he has acute anxiety issues.

There are mentally sane people who commit crimes because of their belief system, but anxiety could seem to explain why they would go so far with their belief.

For example I don't really like capitalism and i prefer socialism, but those are just ideas, i use them with caution.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to see more discussion about anxiety being fairly justified even in the modern world. Not necessarily useful, but also not unfounded.

The right wing lean surprises me. I guess it depends on where your anxiety is focused on. I'm much more anxious about systems, mobs, and the economy than terrorists.

<comment><USER21> Our lifestyles, particularly in major cities, seem to demand constant anxiety by their very nature. I could certainly envision building a city from the ground up that reduces anxiety.

<comment><USER22> >I could certainly envision building a city from the ground up that reduces anxiety.

Any concrete examples of what you'd do to achieve this?

The only things I can think of offhand are 1) instituting a UBI so people don't have so much financial stress and poverty is alleviated and 2) implanting a very efficient public transit system like SkyTran so that people can get around quickly and reliably.

<comment><USER20> A big driver of anxiety for me is bureaucracy. Forms on top of forms, all sorts of appointments, and lack of properly aligned 9 to 5 time to attend to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article is interesting to think about alongside: [http://www.vox.com/platform/amp/first- person/2016/9/27/13062...](http://www.vox.com/platform/amp/first- person/2016/9/27/13062230/poor-college-scholarship-opportunity)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606829)

That is the HN posting of an article about how the poverty mindset still persists.

</comment><comment><USER24> While differentiating between "good" and "bad" images may seem like an idea that has potential to work, I think it may be pointless to device obvious ways to use placebo effects on the brain. I think training yourself to think critically reduces the chance of your brain falling for poorly-designed tricks.

The biggest takeaway from the article for me was simply the fact that anxiety drastically changes your reality. That is both motivation to find ways to curtail the anxiety even if it hasn't scientifically proven to be "curable" and reason to believe that the anxious brain is not "defective" but has simply been made to focus on the wrong set of thoughts. Here are some ways I dealt with it:

1\. I changed my area of research (I am a grad student). 2\. I got out of a bad relationship.

I said the above to point out the fact that the anxiety may have such blatantly obvious causes for some people. It really helps to sit down and identify each scenario that makes you anxious and try to understand what you can change about your life (no matter how overwhelmingly drastic the change is) to react more calmly in each of these situations. For example, I had terrible (and still have but more mildly) anxiety in moving vehicles and my heart races and ugly panic grips me, when the vehicle accelerates. I never stopped to think what was causing it because my hypersensitive brain refused to think deeply during travel time and even after because simulating travel was enough to trigger it.

I made myself believe that making said dramatic changes in my life would reduce the impact of the motion-stimulated anxiety. I figured that when panic struck me on the bus, I would tell myself that if I could transform my life or at least try my hardest to, I could get over this meaningless panic.

That's how I manage each situation that causes anxiety: by rationalizing as best as I can, by identifying the root causes of my panic and by attacking those root causes with logic. I think this requires strength and unfortunately, I could find no easier way to make myself feel better. For example, talking to a therapist or transferring the anxiety to/hoping for support from people I loved turned out to be much less effective.

Then again, anxiety is very common so panicking at the panic is the first such scenario that must be rationalized away. We do a lot of hard things in everyday life for the purposes of leading a fuller life. Until such a time as a reliable map of the brain is drawn and effective, scientific, non-intrusive ways to change our perception emerge (which may not happen in our lifetimes), establishing a camaraderie with the stubborn brain, through patient rationalization, may be all we have.

This is just my opinion and I really hope it helps someone like me.

<comment><USER25> Try this right now: Pick an emotion. Fear, anger, etc. Now, using logic, make yourself feel that emotion. How did it go? I picked fear. I reasoned myself into feeling a little bit worried, but I sure didn't experience actual fear. So why do we think we can reason ourselves out of emotions?

Something that has been helpful for me is the idea of the 'Wise' mind. How individuals deal with experience like anxiety (or anything else) falls on a spectrum. On one end is the 'logical' mind, much like you described. On the other is the 'emotional' mind. In the middle is the Wise mind. I spent most of my life far into the logical side of the spectrum, and the most useful thing I've ever done for my anxiety is shifting more into the center.

Most of your post focuses on training yourself to think critically and using logic to treat anxiety. I've spent many years working on my anxiety with various techniques and therapists. The common factor among all the things that did help was that you can't just use logical thinking to fix anxiety! We may use logic all day at work to fix problems, but you simply cannot reason yourself out of experiencing anxiety.

Emotions play a huge role in anxiety and really cannot be ignored or just reasoned away. They need to be experienced. They need to be felt and expressed. And once they are, logic is a useful tool, as you said, to dive into them and think more about why you are feeling that way.

This is also my opinion, and I'm glad you have the logical portion figured out. But please don't ignore the illogical, emotional aspect. It's trickier and messier, but it can be figured out.

<comment><USER26> Here's where I found logic _does_ help:

1) Acknowledging that you're not the only one battling anxiety (makes you feel not so alone)

2) Realizing that the negative feelings will pass (whether through pharmacy or death -- nothing's forever)

3) (useful for GAD/agoraphobia) Asking "what's the worst that can happen [if I have anxiety/a panic attack]?" and following that to its truthful, logical end. Unless you're a pilot or tightrope walker, the answer is usually nothing, which takes off some stress and helps.

4) Recognizing automatic thoughts and discarding them. Anxiety is often marked by runaway "snowball" thoughts (my cat is meowing funny, he must be sick, the vet will find cancer, the treatment will bankrupt me, I'll get fired, I'll be homeless, I'm going to die under a bridge). Practicing recognizing the start of those thoughts and intentionally saying, "nope, that isn't true or helpful" and guiding your mind elsewhere helps greatly. This often becomes second nature after a time.

Like you said, there is a continuum. Our thoughts influence our feelings, and our feelings influence our thoughts.

<comment><USER25> Sounds right to me. Worded differently, #4 is the basis of Cognitive behavioral therapy. Except you can't quite just 'discard' thoughts, but I get your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Discrimination affects biological processes such as stress hormones and sleep, which are important for health and daily performance [http://qz.com/334366/why-black-americans-cant-sleep-at- night...](http://qz.com/334366/why-black-americans-cant-sleep-at-night- racism/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Poisonous spiders? Interesting article though.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is an article essentially about how anxiety affects political views, so here's my experience on that matter.

I'm an independent that leans conservative especially on fiscal but also somewhat on social issues, and I know that my worry plays a part in it.

I've voted for independents, Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats in past presidential elections, and plan to vote Democrat this year, and I will do so because of my worry about the Republican candidate. This candidate is unpredictable, and is focused on the wrong side of issues that I care about. I'm a compassionate person, and the candidate is not. I'm also a Christian, and the candidate is the antithesis of the behavior and goals I would hope to have in my country's leader. And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she's not the one that I'd chose typically. So, my anxiety will play a part in the election, but not in the way this article would suggest.

<comment><USER30> _And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she 's not the one that I'd chose typically._

This I find the worst argument for her presidency imaginable. "I am so virtuous and anti-sexist that I prefer the female candidate for being female" It's pure sexism. You stop being sexist when you leave the gender out of the equation. Completely.

<comment><USER31> The trouble is that so many people use that argument while completely ignoring their own biases.

E.g. "I don't care that she's a woman, but she just doesn't look presidential."

"I just don't trust her, she's too shrill." "I just don't trust her, she's too quiet."

Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc and you see that she's treated fundamentally differently than a male candidate.

The presidency has been held by a male exclusively for so long that voters don't know what a female president looks like. When so many (shockingly many) people vote on gut, instinct, or just their emotion, taking the time to acknowledge bias is a useful step.

<comment><USER32> _> Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc_

Strange comment to make considering the constant articles and social media posts about Trump's hair, Trump's orange skin, and Trump's little hands, plus the widespread coverage of the naked Trump painting _and_ naked Trump statue that were created to mock his weight and body parts.

<comment><USER33> Trump invites that sort of coverage by being a thin-skinned, narcissistic buffoon who thinks he's above everyone else.

Case in point: The whole 'small hands' thing would've blown over if Trump had ignored it, but he couldn't help himself:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuSdCXmDOus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuSdCXmDOus)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is complete bullshit.

As a moderately anxious person I have a completely different internal experience on an American subway vs. one in Tokyo. I have almost no anxiety in Tokyo. Why? it is one of the safest big cities in the world. Theft, terrorism, assault, and general creepiness are almost non-existent and everyone knows it and behaves accordingly.

In contrast, you have to be much more aware on American mass transit to avoid problems. American mass transit is far more dangerous than in Tokyo and it is almost instantly apparent to anyone paying attention. You'd be a fool not have situational awareness on an American subway because there is a higher probability of personal harm.

<comment><USER35> > In contrast, you have to be much more aware on American mass transit to > avoid problems.

Okay, but does that have to translate into anxiousness? Paying attention to things, even looking out for potential risks, doesn't have to feel negative IMHO.

Consider the difference between " _hmm, that guy seems to be on drugs and could be armed, I wonder if I 'll only get wounded, or if he'll actually kill me_" and thinking, as you slightly shift position to something more useful while pretending to not notice the person you're bracing yourself for: " _okay, so when this guy thinks he 's attacking me from behind, as I watch his reflection in the window, and just before I ram my heel into his nutsack with the force of a thousand subway trains: which one of these people, who will all no doubt fawn over my heroic move and rush over to see if I'm okay, will I grin at, look deeply in the eye and ask out for dinner?_".

It's the same situation, just day dreaming near an unarmed guy who won't do anything; but one actually gives you energy, the other drains it, for no purpose. Of course the example is exaggerated, but still, being scared doesn't help you at all, some might even say that's exactly what would attract an evildoer, like blood in the water attracts piranhas. They want victims, not challenges.

IMHO anxiety isn't a defense mechanism, it's a leak, an inefficiency. I don't know if the word comes from "angst", but fear and angst are two very different things. That is, one is a thing, the other is just a black hole which can swallow up all sorts of things. I don't mean this in a finger waggling kind of way, but more in a "you deserve even better" sort of way. I have sympathy for anxious people, but not for anxiety, I think it's a poison.

All the best for you and all, if nothing else, take it in that spirit. _(I 'm correct though :P)_

<comment><USER36> Either of your scenarios sound like anxiety to me. To me, not being anxious means 1. being aware that the chances of something going bad are very small, and 2. recognizing that worrying about it is usually not productive at best, harmful at worst. In short I think you should aim to go from constantly developing and updating a plan as to what to do if stranger attacks you, to trusting yourself to be able to develop and execute a plan should the need arise, and not spending time and energy worrying about it before then.

I think the non-anxious thing is to lazily initialize your defense mechanisms / responses to most would-be threats.

I didn't realize the extent of my anxiety until a bunch of months ago, when I had a small dose of lorazepam. Suddenly, the inner voice in my head that when riding in a car would usually be worrying "what if we crash or are pulled over right now" for the duration of the ride was replaced with "ah, there's a chance we might crash or be pulled over, but that chance is small, and worrying about it now isn't going to impact it, so instead I'll let my mind work on imagining what I could do with my free time tomorrow." It was quite the difference.

Benzos are super addictive drugs and I wouldn't want to develop a habit (or encourage their use lest others develop a habit), but seeing the contrast motivated me to work on mindfulness and exercise to decrease my anxiety levels.

<comment><USER35> Fair point, I got carried away a bit there :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Closing Google Apps Free Edition Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/apps/closed%7Csort:date

<comment><USER2> This was an error on Google part, only inactive free accounts are getting closed.

<comment><USER3> These "errors" are just to check community reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I moved from yahoo mail exactly because they started to delete my email if i didn't log in every 3 months... Sigh. There we go again.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just received this email :

      Hello,

      Earlier today you may have received an email informing you that your Google Apps account for the
      domain ******** has been Closed due to inactivity and will be Terminated on **********. This email
      was incorrectly sent to you because of an inconsistency in our records. The problem was strictly
      on our end, and none of the data in your account were lost or affected by the error.

      We have confirmed that you have logged into your account. Your account has not been Closed and will
      remain active. No further action is required on your part. You may continue to use your Google Apps
      account normally.

      We sincerely apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

      Sincerely,
      The Google Apps Team</comment>


Bitcoin Falls Out Of Its Trading Range - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/bitcoin-falls-out-of-its-trading-range/

<comment><USER2> From the TC article, "The recent narrative around bitcoin has been roughly zilch... The price of bitcoin, which is correlated to media and public interest ... its downturn isn't letting up."

No comments on if this is really a downturn or not, but do they see the effect of reporting on BitCoin if it is, as they say, correlated to media interest? Maybe someone at TC has invested in BitCoin and needs to liquidate :-)</comment>


Show HN: Testing Private Functions in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arvindrajnaidu/maineffect <comment><USER2> very interesting idea. I've come across projects where functions are exported for the only reason of testing it. This library makes it so that your helper functions get to stay privately scoped inside the file.

<comment><AUTHOR> With them underscores?</comment></comment>


Electrons May Well Be Conscious - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/electrons-may-very-well-be-conscious <comment><USER2> Doesn't make any sense to me to call such rudimentary objects, electrons, conscious just because essentially they can't make sense of their chance interactions so they think it's not chance, huh? Even in the Orch-Or theory it depends on multiple units of complex structures(Mt) for which a magnitude of quantum events work on. But individual particles with a level of mental does not make sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you use a definition of conscious that is so wide, you can also use a wide definition of alive and say that electrons are alive.</comment>


Objects of consciousness - <AUTHOR> http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00577/full

<comment><USER2> I gave this a chance (seeing there were equations), but after reading the whole thing I still don't understand what they're talking about. It just doesn't make any sense. What would be the one paragraph summary of this paper?

The math in particular seems inappropriate to present in a Psychology journal, even a frontier one. I question the authors' motivation to cover such advanced mathematical topics, from so many different areas of science. Was the intent that the reader will understand, or just be impressed by the math?

The mention of Deepak Chopra in the Acknowledgment section lends further support to my "perception" that this is not a legitimate paper, but an intellectually-dishonest attempt at disguising improv-style nonsense behind impressive-sounding physics jargon.

<comment><USER3> Let's start with this question: What makes an object an object? Find an object in the room, say a chair. What imbues the chair with "chairness"? Why is it considered separate from the floor?

If you investigate this you will find that all objects are mind created. There is no essense or Platonic form of an object inherent to the object. The object cannot be said to have inherent existence apart from the mind perceiving it.

This concept is called "Emptiness" in Buddhism and training the mind to recognize the truth of emptiness frees the mind of all sorts of pathology (except maybe sounding weird when trying to explain this to people)

<comment><USER4> > Why is it considered separate from the floor?

Because it can be easily moved. That is the property all objects share. There are a few exceptions, but they are illustrative. Consider a rusted on bolt. Can it be moved? Not without a lot of effort. However a fresh new loose bolt of the same kind demonstrates movable-objectness. What about a chair bolted to the floor? It was once loose, it's an object. What about a chair welded to the floor? Same thing. What about a chair that's constructed of the floor its self, like a large lump or bend up from steel or molded? I would submit that that's the floor acting like a chair, and not an object chair, but a chair like part of the floor.

An even more technical definition would be along the lines of "Objects are the static locus of continuity within a sharp boundary." And by static I mean to include floppy objects like plants or leather. And by sharp boundary I mean in relative space to the observer and their understanding of their environment. From the ground a cloud looks like it has a relatively sharp boundary, sure, it's complex, but the difference in the color and shading from the sky gives it away. If you're IN the cloud it just looks like fog. Is fog an object? Sure, it's in high contrast to the regular state of the air. Is air an object? Sure, it's in high contrast to the ground, and from a certain perspective interstellar space.

Does liver fit this definition? If it's separated from the organism, sure. If it's still in a living body, it's an organ, not an object.

>all objects are mind created.

I would go even further and say that "All patterns are mind events."

Phurpa drop!

(A phurpa is a triple sided ritual dagger which in Buddhism symbolizes the slaying or destruction of foe or obstructions.)

<comment><USER5> If you apply the same force as you would to a cup handle it order to pick up the cup, to a single atom of the surface of the cup, couldn't that remove the atom?

"Can be removed using a specific level of force" is then not sufficient for determining whether a collection of particles form an object.

Perhaps if one instead uses some amount of force applied on the collection of particles which depends on the mass of the collection?

That seems like it could be tricky, because I don't think I would generally consider fluids to be objects (in the sense we are speaking of), but I would not be too surprised if some fluid could be removed from a glass with a given level of force depending on the mass of a portion of the liquid, applied evenly over the portion, while keeping the portion of the liquid contiguous.

Which would seem to indicate that and portion of the liquid is an object.

However, maybe that is actually a solution, by adding the additional restriction that no part of an object is an object? (In a particular sense of object). Or alternatively, the intersection of any two objects is empty?

So, the section of the liquid is not an object, because a smaller part would then also be an object, and therefore, the individual molecules would be the objects.

That seems plausible to me...

<comment><USER6> _> If you apply the same force as you would to a cup handle it order to pick up the cup, to a single atom of the surface of the cup, couldn't that remove the atom?_

No, because the forces holding the atoms of the cup together are much stronger than the forces holding the cup to the floor. That's the underlying physical reason why it makes sense to consider the cup as an "object".

<comment><USER7> More to the point, if someone decides to reject that the chair is an object, that's entirely fine, it's just a semantic dispute, not a dispute about the underlying reality.

The individual atoms (or really, electrons and quarks) which make up the chair and the floor and the air around it don't behave differently based on what object boundaries some person attaches in their mind.

Some of the atoms which the human considers to be "part of" the chair get left behind on the floor, while the bottoms of the chair legs pick some atoms up from the floor. Water molecules are constantly being traded between the chair surface and the air. And so on.

The object boundary is in some sense arbitrary and porous. The way we define it is based on our own practical use and experience, and the aggregated/emergent properties which are relevant to us, since we don't have the means to simultaneously apprehend every individual particle in our surroundings.

<comment><USER3> "The object boundary is in some sense arbitrary and porous." Yes. All objects are mind created, so indeed their boundaries are arbitrary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "How can consciousness be cast in a mathematical formalism without losing something essential?

The mathematics does lose something essential, viz., consciousness itself. Similarly, mathematical models of weather also lose something essential, viz., weather itself. A mathematical model of hurricanes won't create rain, and a mathematical model of consciousness won't create consciousness. The math is not the territory. But, properly constructed, mathematics reveals the structure of the territory."

[http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full) Bayesian learning of visual chunks by human observers

<comment><USER9> The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious.

The line is very blury between a model of consciousness and the point where it can not only be described as conscious but truly has that ethereally, hard to define quality that we "feel" as consciousness.

Would the first truly general AIs simply be working models of consciousness, or would they also feel consciousness as we do? When does the viz creep into our model?

<comment><USER10> > The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than > models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious.

Wow. That is an extremely good description of the problem of consciousness. Is this your own formulation? If not, where did you run into it?

<comment><USER9> I've been thinking about it a long time and hadn't heard it from anyone else. I'm glad to get feedback :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are some real howlers in here, such as when the author is quick to point out that the theory of natural selection in biological evolution assumes DNA exists even when you aren't looking at it, but we can patch this hole in the argument by saying we aren't talking about _that_ natural selection, but natural selection in the abstract.

It's like using the fact that apples fall from trees as evidence for gravity, but because we plan to use gravity to show that time doesn't exist, we refuse to grant that an apple on the ground was ever previously on the tree, but no matter, we still believe in the concept of "falling." In fact, the principles of falling show us that down is better than up, independent of time.

What I appreciate about the article is it grapples with this deep question (albeit framed oddly): When we model the fabric of reality by inventing quantum mechanics, are we somehow just projecting the building blocks of how we think? This is related to another mysterious question: Is math an invention or a discovery? Were prime numbers and linear algebra there before we came along, or do they emerge from the structure of our brains? There are primitive tribes of humans who have not invented counting, so they are unable to distinguish 10 berries from 11 berries and do not experience integers as part of the natural world; they would probably consider properties of the integers to be properties of the act of counting if they had a mental framework for doing so. So back to the first question, how much of what we find when we peer out into the universe and model it with particles and waves and math is in our heads, and how much is really "out there"? If physics to date is unknowingly identifying the fabric of reality with the fabric of thought, then we should be able to take either reality or thought as primary and use it to explain the other. The author chooses thought (consciousness) as primary.

However, the author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can replace the term "conscious agent" with anything. The author fully acknowledges both of these facts in his responses to objections 1 and 6.

<comment><USER12> I admit that the DNA/natural selection point is somewhat over my head still. However, with my limited understanding of the research, I'd somewhat disagree with this:

> …author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more > provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the > building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when > you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can > replace the term "conscious agent" with anything.

My understanding is as follows: conscious agents, as the foundation, exist unperceived. What we see, however, is not a representation of said agents—not a 'map'. Rather, it's a hugely simplified interface to the world of interactions between said agents. As symbols of the interface, objects or even space-time can't be claimed to exist when we're not looking.

It's like an API spec that describes various entities and whatever manipulations we can request on them. These Users and Posts don't actually exist as such, but for our practical purposes they're always there, helpfully constructed. As API consumer we can fetch a user whenever we need it, but network can be down between our requests for all we know. (A precise map then could probably be raw SQL shell, the complexity of which API hides. I know this analogy is far from ideal, but it somewhat helped me understand some aspects of the idea.)

<comment><USER11> I wasn't very clear when I said, "They are just a different representation." What I meant was that modeling the universe as made out of conscious agents is not that different from modeling the universe as made out of atoms or quantum waves, as far as the reality or permanence of objects is concerned.

We all know that there isn't really a desk in front of me, just a pile of atoms, and when I look at it, I'm not seeing the desk but observing photons that bounced off of it. Our interactions with things are always mediated, and the things are never what we think they are. It's also pretty standard for philosophers to debate whether anything is real, or whether we can possibly know that anything is real. Recasting the electrons in my desk as conscious agents doesn't make my desk disappear when I go out to lunch in some new and meaningful way.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for clarifying. Upon rereading I think I realize where you see provoking claim. Authors start by reasoning that our perception is necessarily wrong (maximizing for fitness is counter to maximizing for truth, etc.), and object permanence gets thrown in the mix. However, their research also makes more fundamental claims that kind of supersede this, such as (emphasis theirs):

> _the entire framework_ of a space-time containing objects, the fundamental > organization of our perceptual systems, that must be recognized as a mere > species-specific mode of perception rather than an insight into objective > reality.

It seems this research can address the Schrödinger's desk problem in two ways, which I can't quite tie together:

1) By their conscious agent -> microphysical object theory, your desk doesn't disappear like that. That is, dynamics of conscious agent interaction _do_ routinely cause particle reconfigurations that reflect as certain patterns of change in relevant microphysical objects' space-time positions, but—as long as we're unable to describe the underlying world—"whoops! desk broke" is all we see.

2) By their interface theory of perception, your desk, as icon on your reality interface, pops up in your consciousness whenever it's brought up for access. In other circumstances it doesn't exist, like this browser window when I switch to another desktop (the data about my window and your desk is persisted by relevant interface layers). It would be fun if we could tinker with whatever mechanism implements these icons, given that the implementation is within us, but—in apparent absence of such ability within scientific framework—this remains more of a philosophical argument.

AFAICT, though, there's at least one definite practical implication—we might have a reasonable way to construct meaningful observers and thus advance quantum theory interpretations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This starts off with a rephrasing of theo-philosopher Alvin Plantinga's claim that evolution makes (e.g. human) perception optimal for survival, not truthiness to reality. Many feel that Plantinga has failed to substantiate this claim even though he wrote a fat book on the topic. He fails to make it clear how a badly unreliable model of reality would have greater survival value. Plantinga _needs_ it to be true though, to prop up his argument for the existence of God, so he treats us to many pages of philosophical hand waving.

It gets worse in Act 2: The ol' Deepak Chopra trick of equivocating on "observer" in quantum experiments. What Chopra and other people fail to tell you is that the "observer" doesn't need to be human, or even sentient. A video camera or some similar piece of recording equipment - even a photographic film plate - will do fine. That piece of kit would faithfully "observe" the quantum event - and apparently influence it - even if all of humanity had wiped itself out hours earlier.

I'm sure there are sensible arguments to be made about consciousness, but these two seriously doubtful premises do not make for a good start.

</comment><comment><USER14> I stopped reading at: "Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics [...]"

[https://xkcd.com/1240/](https://xkcd.com/1240/)

<comment><USER15> Why would you stop reading there? That's when it gets interesting. It's OK to think for yourself :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For the more audio-visual oriented - here is a talk covering the same topic. [http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI](http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI)

<comment><USER16> Associated with IRVA (International Remote Viewing Association)

[http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html](http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html)

and Deepak Chopra

[http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald- hoffman/](http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-hoffman/)

So why not go the whole hog, and listen to Rupert Sheldrake explain to you why materialism is bunk?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting and thought-provoking read, about halfway into it.

I started disagreeing with authors at the point where they define conscious experience: I can't see why it's contingent on subject's ability to interact with the outside world, and I don't follow how subject's messages to the world can be proved as caused by conscious experience. I suppose I just haven't yet internalized their definitions (of 'world', 'subject', etc.), though.

</comment><comment><USER17> No.

<comment><USER18> Do you care to elaborate on your disagreement?

<comment><USER19> I'll chime in with this conceptual map of the article (as far as i read it anyway):

Perception->Visual perception->Ontology of visual perception and consciousness->Quantum physics->No.

edit: Actually, when i think about it, there's something analogous to Goodwin's law in papers/articles about the mind and consciousness. Whenever quantum physics becomes a topic the whole article just unravels into nonsense. This is of course obvious to anyone who've studied the physical properties of the mind (We don't even understand how whole braincells work together to form mental phenomena and conscious thought, so anything on a sub-atomic level is just out on a bike-ride (Norwegian idiom, sorry)).

<comment><USER20> It is true that a lot of woo is produced by people who appeal to quantum weirdness without having a basic understanding of modern physics. This article seems to be no exception (I did not have the patience to read it all).

What you say, however, is dogmatic. You assume the emergentist theory of consciousness: that consciousness somehow emerges from the complex physical interactions in the brain. This theory is itself woo at the moment, because there is not even a proposed mechanism by how this could happen. There is just a magic step: complexity -> magic -> consciousness.

It makes all the sense to take into account the additional information about reality that quantum mechanics provides when trying to understand consciousness, which is so far a mysterious aspect of reality.

<comment><USER21> It's not hard to argue that materialism implies emergentism, since materialism assumes nothing but physical properties and processes exist. No one really believes that individual neurons are conscious, yet no one disagrees that brains are conscious. Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior.

So it's either emergentism or woo, by my reckoning. YMMV.

<comment><USER22> I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. Every micro-video I've ever seen leads me to credit that these tiny creatures are "people" in the same way that any multi-cellular living being is a person.

I think consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of the Universe, which seems to be fundamentally made of it and something we can call the _flux_ which is everything else. The flux has pattern/form and is constantly changing apparently in accord with rules, some of which we seem to grasp quite well. Consciousness, on the other hand, has no properties and does not exist in time, it is always now. In fact the only way we know about consciousness (and give talk of it any heed whatsoever) is that we _are_ consciousness. We often forget this due to the distraction of currently occupying a body (a self- referential "whirlpool" of flux that includes an apparatus for interfacing with consciousness in a way that is as yet entirely mysterious to science) but that soon solves itself in the fullness of time. But let that pass.

More interesting from the point of view of this thread is the way that a human mind arises from the mind of the body's cells, if you credit that they are sentient themselves. It also points to the larger multi-human sentient entities which we can and do comprise.

<comment><USER13> > I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious.

OK, I'll bite: Just what makes you believe that? What evidence convinces you this is true?

<comment><USER22> There is nothing I can point to that serves as evidence of consciousness. As I said above, the only way we know that the word "consciousness" has a referent in the real world is that we experience it. I have no evidence that microbes and cells are conscious any more than I have evidence that I am, or you are.

I have, myself, had some experiences that seem to me to have something to do with some of the statements I sometimes make about "consciousness".

But there is no way to share that experience with you, no symbols I can transmit. There is no consciousness-o-meter (except for consciousness itself maybe.)

<comment><USER13> Fair enough! We share most of our view of what's what, and differ mainly in interpretation.

For what it's worth, I consider consciousness to be a capability, like the ability to digest cellulose or to echolocate; and I consider it to exist on a continuum, with us humid beings being the most capable (that we know of) and unicellular microbes arguably the least. And the degree of capability looks to be strongly related to the complexity of a living being's brain (or what passes for it - microbes cogitate, in a very dim but adequate-to-their-needs way by discharging and detecting chemicals in their protoplasm). From all the examples we're aware of, it appears that consciousness is a process, what brains do, kinda like a flame is what a candle does.

We've only ever (reliably) observed the phenomena we associate with consciousness in living brains. If we work hard enough at mimicking brains in silicon, we may one day see consciousness in man-made machines. I, at least, have a lot of trouble imagining that consciousness can arise independently of structures painstakingly evolved in that direction or even more painstakingly constructed. Humans pay a huge price for their capable brains - the difficulty and risk of childbirth, the prodigous consumption of (I think) one-fifth of the body's energy. If consciousness were something lying around elsewhere, evolution would not have needed to take this costly route.

That's me, science and reason talking. Of course there's always a possibility we're surprisingly wrong about this.

<comment><USER22> I just happened to be checking this right now and saw your reply.

I definitely agree with most of what you've said above, with the main exception that I consider consciousness to be somehow intrinsic or primary to the Universe, even more so than matter/energy and space/time, rather than something that emerges over time.

I do agree that what I would call the capability to _express_ consciousness seems to exist on a continuum, and I agree with your characterization of it, but I believe that what we consider "inanimate" objects express consciousness too. At the risk of sounding completely looney, I'll admit that I've had encounters that make me think that whirlwinds ("dust devils") have or express a kind of sentience!

Although I can't really explain it, experimenting with robotics and augmentation has made me realize (or so I believe) that the interface between our bodies and our experience of our bodies is fundamentally mysterious, that there can be no possible way that any constellation of matter and energy could cause or engender the subjective sense of self. Anyone who has blinked their eyes knows that there is _some_ connection between them and the experience of seeing, but how _you_ see is totally mysterious. A sentient machine would be in the same perplexing situation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone built their own house recently? - <AUTHOR> Have any HNers built their own homes in the past few years? I am in the early planning phase now and I was wondering if there are any essential tech features to include in a new build.<p>Do people still run phone lines? Should I run CAT6e cable to every room? I don't work from home, but I will have a small home office for side projects. <comment><USER2> I have not, but had a friend recently who did. He works pretty much entirely from home doing graphic design and video animations. He does not have a home phone, but did run phone and CAT6e to all rooms. He debated on running the phone, but in the end decided to just in case he decides to sell down the road. Little things like that could be a costly add-on for a potential purchaser.

He also had an "IT closet" built in the house. It houses all the phone, networking, and a media server. It has dedicated circuits, a metal door, concrete walls, and a separate small AC unit built in for cooling. While he doesn't intend for it to withstand any disaster, he did want some added time or at least a little more reassurance. Overall the house is about 4500 square feet, and each room has drops for cable, phone, and multiple ethernet drops. He also has WiFi throughout the house, but for streaming content having the wired connection provides the best quality. Finally for his home office he dropped a fiber connection from the closet. He does have a backup system in the closet and also backs up that remotely, but in general the fiber was probably an overkill for just one room in my opinion.

He has a bunch of other "features" throughout the house for controlling environment, lighting, security, temperature, etc from both inside and outside the house. In the end I don't think it was much more expensive to do since they were starting from scratch. I am sure it probably would have cost a ton more to do post-construction. And I think with the direction the smart home movement is going it probably added to the value of the home in some way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Phone lines for resale makes sense if I end up having to sell in the next few years.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, he had never really thought about it (and I wouldn't have thought about it) and wasn't planning on installing them at all, but a couple realtors he talked to said it probably wouldn't be a good idea to omit them completely. Even if he didn't put them in every room, at least have them in key rooms (i.e. kitchen, general living area, and master bedroom). One realtor told him that installing them wouldn't increase value, but not having them could decrease value depending on the buyer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We are in process on this ourselves. I asked this recently on reddit too and got a lot of unique answers. [https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/3pzmrc/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/3pzmrc/what_technologyfeatures_for_a_new_house_build/)

I have so far identified the following:

\- Central distribution room (have this in my current house and it rocks).

\- Cat6 (shielded) I am running this for both phone and data, yes costs a little more but should help future proof the house a little.

\- IP Cameras (inside and out), mostly hidden inside to record key doors for security purposes, nothing creepy.

\- Television cabling, central distribution room with IR repeaters and no DVR's etc in individual rooms.

\- Stereo in every room & outside

\- Towel warmer in the bathrooms (nice to have)

\- Larger Conduit drops 2-3" in places for running new cables. So far I have laid out separate ones for signal and voltage to make things stay separate.

\- WiFi of course, with likely a automation hub supporting all the key standards.

\- Security system wiring.

\- Temperature sensors across the house to allow me to adjust the A/C (won't happen immediately).

\- Water sensors, flood detection etc

\- Soundproofing specific rooms/walls, my office, utility room, kids rooms, garage walls, insulating all walls etc.

\- Solid core doors everywhere

As things have been progressing I have been documenting (and imaging) all the runs for plumbing, electrical etc. I am being anal about where things are at and being able to find them in the future. The electricians will hate me in the end, but I am requiring lines to be labeled in the attic space every time there is a change in direction and at all entry/exit points. I am also requiring they run all electric in a specific pattern, not just thrown about the attic. The A/C guys already found out I am a real ass about that type of stuff. But in the end it is you who has to live with it and fix things or pay for them to be fixed and if you can cut out the hunting it saves tons of labor costs later.

So far my estimate on extra costs will be around $10-15k above normal, with a lot of that going for the extra soundproofing materials and labor. I am running all signal cables, cameras and extra conduit so that is helping on costs. I also did some of this in my existing house after it was all put together so I have some benefits of learning from past mistakes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the suggestions and the link. I especially like the ideas for soundproofing and interior insulation. I also like the idea of running conduit, at least in key locations. I plan to have a basement with the living areas on the main floor, and just 2 bedrooms or so upstairs. One or two conduit runs from the basement to the attic should make it relatively easy to get a wire anywhere in the house.

I also wouldn't have thought of the cooling issue for the computer closet, so I will make sure that if I plan to enclose it I consider the airflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Add thermal/noise insulation now = $-efficient-comfort/quiet for the life of the structure.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to regret not putting cat5 in, but now that it would have been considered old, and I'm pretty sure messing with conduits to replace those cables would have been a pain and I would use wifi anyway, I think the main things are:

1\. Plan on a spot for wifi and cable modem.

2\. Assume that single wire to your cable modem will need to be replaced, so don't make it too hard to get to, but I'm not sure if I'd bother with a conduit. It's possible that even the main net connection will be wireless one day, but for now it's cable, satellite, DSL, or Google Fiber, typically.

3\. Large conduit for what they call "low voltage wiring" (HDMI, etc.) to where you always want your T.V. _may_ be a good idea, but wireless video being normal is not far off.

4\. Wireless power is not happening anytime soon, so be sure that you have outlets everywhere you'd need them, including in the ceiling if you think you'll need a bridge or repeater. Note that repeaters kind of suck, so hopefully you can just get by with one or more wifi routers instead. If you can't then that is the one (or so) cat6e cables you'd need to run, because POE isn't a great fallback.

The non-networking stuff to think about:

* Putting holes in a countertop for wires if you want to hide outlets. Only recommend that for places where the outlet is easily accessible, otherwise the wire going into the outlet would get in the way of storage space or cause fires.

* Insulation! Get the best you can, imo. Most builders skimp, but you'll regret it. Insulate all doors, etc. to storage space. Might not want to fill electrical boxes with foam unless you really need it, since that can be a mess.

* Get a nice garage door opener and consider insulating garage door.

* Go ahead and get a recommended gutter helmet for your gutters and put in nice siding and roofing.

* Be careful with ceiling fans. If the blades have a weak point in the connection with the blade like a centimeter of brass or similar, that will shear eventually.

* Don't skimp on ventilation, HVAC/furnace.

* Go ahead and put decent windows in if you can afford it. Otherwise they'll get stuck and you'll not use them.

* Plan on cheap carpet rolling up and needing to be retightened, or buy good stuff.

* Go ahead and put in decent countertops and tile backsplash in kitchen. You will eventually if you don't do it now. Put in undercabinet lighting and dimmers for those and most other lighting in kitchen and common areas.

* Plan a "mud area" in some area of the home and place for kids or you to put stuff and hang it as you come in.

* Even if you like natural wood, consider getting the hardier stuff for decks, etc. or stain and treat. Same with hardwoods- use more gloss than you might want.

* Dark hardwoods and counters hide dirt. With dark you get more cockroaches, with light you get more work.

Plenty of other things, but those are just the main ones.</comment>


Machine learning: the new competitive advantage - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2017/04/survey-says-machine-learning-happening-now-and-paying-off?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-May-GCP-newsletter-en <comment><AUTHOR> Link to the pdf [https://lp.google- mkto.com/rs/248-TPC-286/images/MIT_TechRev...](https://lp.google- mkto.com/rs/248-TPC-286/images/MIT_TechReview_MachineLearning.pdf)</comment>


Github Student Developer Pack includes Visual Studio and Dreamspark - <AUTHOR> http://github.cmail2.com/t/i-l-suthkl-ahrsiki-y/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr Nothing new, Microsoft just increased the Dreamspark program's visibility by making it part of the GitHub Student Developer Pack.

</comment><comment><USER3> Real URL: [https://education.github.com/pack](https://education.github.com/pack)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the weird URL. There's no blog post yet, just an E-Mail it got:

´´´ Microsoft Joins the Student Developer Pack Hi there @zeusly,

Happy New Year from the folks at GitHub Education.

To help you get your semester underway, we have some exciting announcements about the Student Developer Pack, events that are on our radar, an opportunity to get an hour of programming mentorship for free, and ways to shine a light on how GitHub is being used in your classes.

backpack illustration New to the Pack: Microsoft DreamSpark with Visual Studio

Today we're making the first addition to the Student Developer Pack since launch: Microsoft DreamSpark with Visual Studio. You can download Visual Studio now and sign up for access to Microsoft's own student developer program, DreamSpark.

With DreamSpark, students have access to a suite of great Microsoft resources including software like Microsoft SQL Server, the ability to publish apps and games for Windows and Xbox with a Windows Store Developer account, and online training materials, all for free.

To download Visual Studio and get access to DreamSpark, head on over to your Student Developer Pack.

A Free Hour of Code Mentoring

Brought to you by the folks who created hack.summit(), hack.pledge() is a network of 4,000 developers offering an hour of free online coding mentorship to students like you.

Sign up for your hour of support at hackpledge.org.

We want to hear from your teachers

We love hearing all the ways GitHub is being used in education. Be it teams of high school students competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition, a professor teaching computer science at UC Berkeley, or researchers working on open source.

We're on the lookout for interesting ways GitHub is being used for teaching, and could use your help getting in touch with teachers. If any of your courses are using GitHub, tell your teachers that we want to hear from them. Heck, we might even feature your story on the GitHub Education website.

Teachers: tell us your story

Upcoming GitHub Education Events Visiting Dev Academy Mon Feb 16, 2015, Wellington, New Zealand @johndbritton will be there. Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Wed Mar 4, 2015 to Sat Mar 7, 2015, Kansas City, MO @johndbritton, @davideg, @jordanmccullough will be there. Taiwan Campus Tour Fri Mar 13, 2015 to Tue Mar 31, 2015, Taiwan @johndbritton, @muan will be there.

See more upcoming events at education.github.com/events. Cheers, John Britton Education Liaison, GitHub email@example.com ´´´

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the VS Community edition free now anyway?

<comment><USER5> This is professional edition. [https://www.dreamspark.com/what-is- dreamspark.aspx](https://www.dreamspark.com/what-is-dreamspark.aspx)

<comment><USER6> The GitHub page explicitly says Community Edition though. Might give a link to Community Edition if user can't enroll in Dreamspark as not all school participate (albeit most do).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "real world tools can be cost prohibitive"?!

It really depend on how poorly you choose which real world you want to live in.

<comment><USER8> Some of us don't mind paying for our tools.

<comment><USER9> Don't mind? Are you so detached from reality?

For most CS students in the world, 'don't mind' is not an option, they simply don't have that money.

<comment><USER10> My universe isn't penniless college students, it's businesses with the funds to shell out for good tools.

<comment><USER11> This post is about the GitHub student developer pack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> max-a I shit you not, MS is going to buy github.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is kinda of off-topic, but I might be able to get some visibility here.

I have been trying to register my "free .me domain" for a couple of days now, and is impossible, since I'm not from the US, Canda or UK. I already tried to contact Namecheap and they basically told me they couldn't do anything.

Does someone know what I should do? (other them using a fake Address and Zip- code)

<comment><USER13> It's really funny you mention this because I just spent all weekend trying to get the free .me while actually living in Canada and going to a Canada school. I tried with my own school email, and they took forever to send the confirmation email, so I requested it again. This invalidated previous emails and sent a new one, but every time I re-requested, the email I would get would already be invalid, perpetually out of sink. I opened a ticket, talked to customer support, they didn't really do anything useful. In the end I used my girlfriends email to confirm I was a Canada student, then used my private email for the actual namecheap account.

The whole thing was not very fun, but in the end you seem to need the US, UK, or CAN email for the initial confirmation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does this make Github's acquisition by Microsoft imminent?

<comment><USER15> Nope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Microsoft acquires Github" \- with the other recent announcements of .NET framework and Roslyn moving to Github, and now this, it may seem the day is not too far off for those headlines to become reality.

<comment><USER17> Why so many comments about this? Why would they even be interested in buying it, and why would GitHub sell it? Doesn't make much logistical sense.

Microsoft is actively trying to embrace open source.. where else would they go?</comment></comment>


United Nations and WHO Call for Drug Decriminalization Jun 27 '17 - <AUTHOR> http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/united-nations-and-world-health-organization-call-drug-decriminalization <comment><USER2> if "drugs" are decriminalized, can we at least extend the decriminalization across the board?

can we also let US residents buy their prescription meds from whatever global supplier they feel like?

can we also let drug makers just market their drugs without a $1 billion effort to test it in FDA approved clinical trials?

<comment><USER3> > can we also let drug makers just market their drugs without a $1 billion > effort to test it in FDA approved clinical trials?

FDA approval is an important step for marketing drugs that don't actually work very well.</comment></comment>


ASK HN: What web application do you need? - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I am an experienced web developer with some free time. I'm interested in some ideas for a web application, something you need that you can't find or is expensive.
I'm willing to work for free following your specifications, in the end you'll get free access forever to the application. I was thinking about some application that will bring me passive income after is done.
Any ideas? :) Share your needs here, or drop me an email to hiulianro [@] gmail com <comment><AUTHOR> Nothing? Come on, it's free :)</comment>


Help us redesign this open source project - <AUTHOR> http://kato-agency.blogspot.com/2009/12/kato-redesign.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your interest. I hope that you take the online survey too <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S8BR3NX> because it will provide the feedback we need.</comment>