Ten Years at Google - <AUTHOR> https://neil.fraser.name/news/2016/12/18/ <comment><USER2> This guy (Neil Fraser) wrote [https://github.com/lqc/google-diff-match- patch](https://github.com/lqc/google-diff-match-patch) right before joining Google, which is an incredibly useful foundational library for realtime synchronized text editing. He was very influential in open source work on realtime sync until going to work at Google, when he just sort of disappeared.

<comment><USER3> Blockly has been a reasonably widely-used open-source contribution, especially given that it's mostly a one-person project (the last time I checked, but that was a few yrs ago).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" My biggest contribution so far at Google has been Blockly."_

Nice - [https://developers.google.com/blockly/](https://developers.google.com/blockly/) no real fan of google, but the tools and code churned out by individuals there is pretty interesting. This I will play with.

<comment><USER5> Blockly is awesome and often overlooked. It realises the idea of a real time scripting language, and should really be the thing devs reach for over flowcharts when they decide to implement a visual programming environment.

<comment><USER6> I saw the exact same app circa 1996 sans the web stuff. Our professor was trying to force this on us because it was his big research idea. It's not overlooked, just a really old idea that didn't pan out 20 years ago.

<comment><USER7> IMO, the use case for blockly is those structured search and filter interfaces. Like RequestTracker or your email filter rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recognized his site for being the source of one of the most inspiring posts on the potential for what CS education could be: [https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/](https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/)

<comment><USER9> From that article:

"""The CS teacher was excited and promised to teach Blockly the next day. But there was another issue compromising the class. Due to a lack of funds, the school could not afford two CS teachers, so half the school was unable to take CS. I asked what a teacher's salary was. $100 per month. So I went to an ATM and bought them a second teacher for the next year."""

Sad and awesome at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone had built an open source graphical Perl code generator that used blocks very similar to this. Looking back in your blog you used to be a heavy Perl programmer. Was it you that did that? Where's that original project, iirc it used to be on sf or something.

<comment><USER11> I can not think of the name of this!

My first real paying gig was for a local Pennsylvania company who distributed pBasic boards and merkur sets. They used an open source Perl IDE that allowed 3-5 graders to program the bot visually.

I didn't know Perl and was still in high school, but was able to make some great contributions (to the company version). Taught me how to manage very small amounts of memory. I owe the original author a thanks for making such a solidly coded tool.

The tool may have come from parallax software.

<comment><USER12> This?

[https://www.parallax.com/downloads/s2-gui- software](https://www.parallax.com/downloads/s2-gui-software)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Correct me if I'm wrong. Here of all places on the internet, an article with the title of "Ten Years at X" is expected to encapsulate some kind of intellectually rigorous narrative about the passing and the meaning of those 10 years to both the author and the organization. Or are we to assume that such standards no longer exist in order to receive upvotes on HN?

<comment><USER14> Clearly, you are wrong. People up-vote articles they find interesting based on the criteria of their own choosing. You can't expect every HN reader to share your own particular standards for what an article "should" be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Neil wrote/maintains a wonderful javascript interpreter (written in javascript) -- [https://github.com/NeilFraser/JS- Interpreter](https://github.com/NeilFraser/JS-Interpreter)

I think he's the most responsive maintainer I've ever come across!

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazing to work for 10 years at one place. The only place that comes close is working for my own company back in the later 80s, early 90's. Who stays with one employer anymore these days?

<comment><USER17> "Who stays with one employer anymore these days?"

Google will keep anyone talented that's 'producing stuff', they have massive surpluses of cash.

I think a lot of people would love to work at Google for a long time so long as they fit in the culture. Who wouldn't want to work on fun stuff that the word is using?

And a high, stable income is the next most valuable thing after stock options in a high flying company :)

What are the alternatives? A startup wherein you will likely lose your job? Oracle? Cisco? Probably not nearly as interesting.

Alt career choice? Might cut their salary in half ...

Maybe a different way to frame it: why would they leave?

I wouldn't even like to work at Google, but I have no trouble understanding why people would park there for a long while :)

Kudos to them for providing a place for so many talented folks to create cool things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title of the article is very misleading. I would have loved to read how Google changed on the inside over the last 10 years. Or maybe even how the author changed. Instead, we get some spam about some tool that is neat.

<comment><USER19> I was also a little disappointed, although I don't think I'd have written your comment...

I wonder if anyone has a favourite article that reflects on how they and Google changed over the ten years that they were there?

<comment><USER20> If i ever leave (10.75 years so far), i'll write you one :)

<comment><USER21> What's your motivation for staying? Or what's your motivation for not leaving?

(whichever question makes more sense)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> iso-8859-1 There was a project this summer to develop a functional programming language using Blockly: [http://stefanj.me/funblocks/](http://stefanj.me/funblocks/)

</comment><comment><USER22> The laminated blockly story is awesome. Can't imagine how it must feel to see your work being used like that.

</comment><comment><USER23> The robot moving aspect of blockly reminds me of one of the awesome Dr. brain game (1994)[1], is there other kid-friendly games like this those 2 were inspired from?

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDGPYMcWGk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xqDGPYMcWGk)

<comment><USER24> Many suggestions on HN here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6345975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6345975)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Title should have been ' blocky is so dope'

</comment><comment><USER26> I heard a little about Niel's next project last night, and it does sound exciting. I look forward to trying it out.

<comment><USER27> I did not expect to see this here (nore Neil's post). Nice meeting you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thanks Neil. We use Blockly in our little startup teaching kids to code and it's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can't wait to see what the next big project will be!

</comment><comment><USER30> Not sure but Blockly crashes my firefox. Weird!

50.0.2 on Ubuntu 16.04.

</comment><comment><USER31> That mouse is scary.</comment>


EU plans €100B fund to build European competitors to US and Chinese tech giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/article/exclusive-european-commission-leaked-plans/ <comment><USER2> Millions of small companies, not few large ones.</comment>


QEMU Advent Calendar 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.qemu-advent-calendar.org/2016/ <comment><USER2> We still have some slots left for the 2016 edition, so feel free to contact (info at the bottom of the website) if you have a cool disk image to contribute.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Webapp- Fennce.com - <AUTHOR> http://fennce.com/ Please check out the website before you read the description.. Hopefully it matches our impression of it. If not let me know why, & what you thought of it.
Today we are launching Fennce in open beta! In a nutshell we are all about creative critical thinking & constructive debate. Using social media we will create an environment where people can gauge public opinion on issues of varying importance.
Our main objectives with this project are to make it easier for people to build meaningful relationships on twitter, whether by persuasive typing, clever topics, or frequent encounters. We've given a sense of "alliance" with teams to help bring out multiple compelling arguments for each side. Finally we want to provide a place where both serious & playful debates can exist!
We really are looking for any feedback possible. There are many thing we wanted to do that we could not in the available time.
Also if it's something that appeals to you, help us out and use it! We just launched a few hours ago and are desperate for early users!
Thank you for reading <comment><USER2> you need to work on articulating what this product does.

> It's simple, Fennce is a SME for "conversation on controversy & perspective"

is way confusing.

it seems like you ask a question which has two answers and see who swings which way?

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, We answeed that question before with

> It's simple, Fennce is a Web app for "Conversation on controversy"

does that sound better?

We are torn on this because we did'nt want to limit it to just plain kinda mainstream controversy. It could be anything that involves two sides. So we decided to add perspective there to make it seem less limiting. Maybe just saying "conversation on controversy" is our better option.

<comment><USER3> Even that's not immediately gettable. "A place for debates" (or some variation: "A place to debate your friends.", "Take on the world.", etc.) does it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh I see. I wanted to avoid using the word debate, because I found it made people think of everything as plain serious.

I tried to exchange that word with "battle" but that isn't as descriptive as the word debate. I'll defiantly have to change that specific sentence so it clicks easily.

To be honest I had the idea that we should simplify that phrase. One shouldn't have to be confused by the 5 words that describe the website in a nutshell.

Thank you for letting me know what you think I really appreciate it man! Thank you</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing WebSockets: Bringing Sockets to the Web (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/websockets/basics/ <comment><USER3> Append to title: (2010)

Oh, Websockets! Never has a technology so unambiguously demonstrated that we abused the web to become a new desktop where we run (mostly) cross-platform pieces of minified blackbox JS and need the same types of abstractions like you'd find in a real OS, like, say, sockets.

That being said, it was better than imperfect emulations of the same concept that pre-dated it by ~6+ years (like long polling). I'd even go so far as to say that the rise of websockets and the excitement over streaming real-time data between webapps greatly contributed to the traction of Node.js, which was the runtime for socket.io.

Socket.io offered one consistent API that just worked, and internally it wrapped websocket or its workarounds, depending on where the code ran. It was beautiful. I remember many tutorials about Node.js starting off with socket.io.

Now, with HTTP2, Websocket is sort-of abandoned -- not because HTTP2 is that good, but no one is excited about WS anymore. But once QUIC becomes mainstream and HTTP2's imperfect attempt to reinvent a transport protocol over an existing transport protocol is subsumed into HTTP2-over-QUIC, there will be zero need for WS.

<comment><USER4> It's true that WebSockets is nothing new, and the title did make it sound like the next new shiny thing. I wouldn't say that it's abandoned though - <USER2> adoption is still spreading from where I see, and it's very useful during build/development too, i.e., live-reload on code change.

"..that we abused the web to become a new desktop"

Yesterday's hacks become tomorrow's standards..!</comment></comment>


The Banqiao Reservoir Dam Failure of 1975 (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringfailures.org/?p=723 <comment><USER2> Not discussed in the article, but did the dam failure add that much to the body count? Such apocalyptic rain would have meant desolation anyway...

<comment><USER3> "6,000 deaths were attributed to the floodwaters, while nearly 145,000 people lost their lives because of epidemics and famine."

Wow.

<comment><USER2> There would have been huge flooding anyway, it's pretty unclear if the dam failure added to the death toll. With one meter of rain in a few hours, very little infrastructure stood a chance anyway...</comment></comment></comment>


Police stop people for covering their faces from facial recognition camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recognition-cameras-technology-london-trial-met-police-face-cover-man-fined-a8756936.html <comment><USER2> The UK really does seem to be eager to copy "1984".

<comment><USER3> yeah indeed... loads of scifi distopias seem to be well suited on a British stage. Also I wonder after Brexit the UK goes a total different path considering privacy etc. than the EU will go.

<comment><USER2> That's assuming Brexit actually happens. That seems to be up in the air at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The role-playing game "Paranoia" come to life.

</comment><comment><USER5> And get fined £90</comment>


2016 Ipsum - <AUTHOR> https://www.2016ipsum.co <comment><USER2> Although the goal of Ipsum Lorem is meaningless text, and this satisfies that requirement, the other goal is that it not be distracting, and I found this text to be incredibly distracting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this just a concatenation of the top Google trends keywords?</comment>


Project Hololens: Microsoft's Audacious Plan to Make Anywhere a Holodeck - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/microsofts-wants-to-turn-your-living-room-into-the-holo-1680924508

<comment><USER2> It is awesome to see more augmented reality projects. It is also interesting see how each company's technology differs.</comment>


Global warming will happen faster than we think - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5 <comment><USER2> Will these people lose any reputation if the possible grand solar minimum happens?

EDIT:

Also: _" The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change announced last week that 157 million more people were exposed to heatwave events in 2017, compared with 2000."_

There are about 1.5 billion more people in 2017 vs 2000, only 10% being exposed to heat waves seems like a good thing. [http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world- populati...](http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population- by-year/)

<comment><USER3> No, as that would not have a huge impact on global warming, and it would be a short term impact at that.

[https://www.skepticalscience.com/grand-solar-minimum- barely-...](https://www.skepticalscience.com/grand-solar-minimum-barely-dent- AGW.html)

<comment><USER2> That page does not address the actual issue. It argues:

> _" We're fortunate that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's > surface is very stable."_

The actual issue is totally different. It has to do with a (supposed) link between solar magnetic field activity and cloud formation on earth.

Your source is simply irrelevant since it argues against a strawman.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell no domain expert thinks that is an actual issue. You are at this point wondering if a magnetic activity event MIGHT occur in the future that then MIGHT have some indirect effect on clouds that then might impact global warming substantively.

We might also get a supervolcano eruption which would cool things for a while!

<comment><USER2> It all depends on who you call a domain expert. That is a political (in the general sense), not scientific, term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking at the comments here so far, it is, as ever, the never-ending debate as to whether climate change is real or not.

I look at this really straightforwardly:

You discover a lump on your skin. It looks like cancer. Do you go to a doctor, or do you sit at home assuming it'll all be fine?

What is so wrong with seeking to mitigate risk? Would you sooner wait until it's metastatic, and probably going to kill you, or have a potentially pointless surgery but definitely exclude the possibility of a painful death?

<comment><USER5> That analogy doesn't speak to me. It brushes over a lot of complexity, infuses value judgments and trivialises important issues.

1) Global warming is not really comparable to cancer. Cancer is a healthy system getting disrupted and ending, global warming is simply a system changing. The type of change threatened by AGW is very scary and expensive, but the future is going to involve radical change anyway. Deciding what the change is likely to entail and how many resources to set aside for dealing with it is an important part of the debate.

2) It appears you are invoking a variant of Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager is fundamentally unsound. It ignores the fact that we make decisions in a finite world, and some risks are too small to devote attention to (because there are an effectively infinite number of trivial risks that we need trivial effort to deal with, resulting in an infinite demand for finite resources). Resources are limited, if we did believe that climate change was 'not real', then devoting anything to motigating it would be unacceptable.

<comment><USER6> If we should change the perspective over from a person to the immune system of a person, it should be an apt analogy.

Death by cancer is a system changing from an environment hospitable to the immune system to one extremely hostile to the immune system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing how after decades of deterioation broadly along the lines predicted, people still have time to talk of climate change like it is a political conspiracy.

</comment><comment><USER8> A counter argument is presented here that I encourage everyone to consider.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HntrGv_d8XU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HntrGv_d8XU)

<comment><USER6> The argument here is this: scientists have each identified, in isolation, various factors that work opposite global warming, and have determined, in isolation, that these factors, considered individually, cannot balance out global warming. In video 3, the author identifies natural phenomena that he says climate models have failed to factor in, such that the effect is that they far too heavily weigh the impact of humans on the climate.

Unfortunately, the video author makes a failure common to many climate change skeptics. First, the author failed to make a positive claim with justification that yes, indeed, the cooling phenomena identified in isolation when considered holistically counteracts warming. Next, he fails to propose a model that provides a cause of the extraordinary current increasing trend.

Considering the lack of a positive model, I would still have to accept the IPCC findings as the most plausible model.</comment></comment>


YourTaxReceipt.org - personalized tax receipt - <AUTHOR> http://www.yourtaxreceipt.org

<comment><USER2> The denominator should be tax receipts, not federal spending. Foreign countries and our Federal Reserve actually made large contributions this past year (both do every year we have a budget deficit and every year the money supply increases- this is most every year for the past few decades). This is not to suggest that Americans won't eventually pay for all of this year's expenditures, we eventually will. In the case of the Fed, consider the new money printing and subsequent spending by the Fed to be a tax on everyone that holds dollars at the time of the printing/spending.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think this is right, I think they've done a straight percentage for each item, but your FICA contributions should cap at about 15K for SS and Medicare because it is approx 15% of the first ~$100K (for 2009) and you don't pay anything beyond that. Medicaid while part of FICA doesn't have a cap on earnings (its around 2.5%). If you tell this page that you've paid 100K in taxes, it says that you've paid $30K total to FICA.

Now, part of the way Obama was proposing to pay for health care reform was to kill the cap on the earnings that are subject FICA taxes - without any additional benefit. This would fundamentally change SS from an insurance scheme to a wealth redistribution scheme.

(for those of you outside the US. FICA is an umbrella term for Social Security and Medicare)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reality check. I threw this up on a whim after skimming this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745133>. It was fun, regardless, because I suspected I was competing with others to get it done first. I spent about 20 minutes getting it functional and another 15 making it prettier.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I get a job at Google? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Apply for one and be better than the other candidates - [https://careers.google.com/jobs/](https://careers.google.com/jobs/)

<comment><USER3> This. A vague question gets a vague answer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Facebook's stock at all time highs? - <AUTHOR> Today Facebook's stock hit an all time high during what is supposedly the greatest economic challenge we are facing in a decade or longer. Can anyone explain the reasoning? What am I missing? <comment><USER2> They announced better business tooling (a multi-party videochat / $ZM competitor), e-commerce integration and partnerships with $SHOP (Shopify) and have a decent amount of cash on hand. Why shouldn't they be at ATH?</comment>


A numerical analysis of Quicksort: How many cases are bad cases? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.04220v1.pdf <comment><USER2> If you're going to post articles from arxiv, please post the top-level description so I can read the abstract before being forced to download a PDF document.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.04220](http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.04220)

</comment><comment><USER3> > An attempt to solve this problem has been randomization as shown already in > Hoare's first articles on Quicksort [1]. On the other hand, this does not > change the statistical probability for bad cases.

I really like the randomization solution. Worst case? What worst case?

<comment><USER4> Well, the worst case is still there. You're just going to have a very hard time crafting an input that triggers it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember, at uni, in the second semester, we had an assignment to specifically craft a sequence of n numbers 1..n that would trigger the worst case (#permutations) in a quicksort algorithm that always takes the first number in the array as the pivot. It was a nightmare. I spent days on it, and I was barely able to scrape together a notation to specify such a series. Turns out the sample solutions were like "The appropriate sequence is not easy to write. The sequence must be designed such that every chosen pivot halves the area that will be stored." Well, yeah.

EDIT: I wrote worst case #permutations. That's the best case #comparisons. So, no, I don't mean a sorted sequence ;)

<comment><USER6> If quicksort always takes the first element in the array as the pivot, then an array that is already sorted is the worst case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Quicksort worst case performance is a problem then use Introsort ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introsort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introsort)), which the paper fails to mention.

</comment><comment><USER7> It strikes me that, if three way partitioning is useful only if you are dealing with a limited set of values in relation to n, you could hash or insertion sort into an array the values for the first pass of the algorithm over the whole array (stopping if the count of uniques got bigger then some value based on n), and then decide to threeway partition if you hadn't stopped.

I feel like the recursive median of medians throws away a great deal of information, given all the comparisons you make. At the very least, for the final step, you know where the high and low values go, and could easily place them in the appropriate sides of the array.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love quicksort, and enjoyed the paper. Yes, I'm a nerd. Thanks for asking.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good but forgotten ideas in ML? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Is feature engineering still a thing? For example transforming circular images (like coins) to log-polar coordinates and maybe even taking the absolute value of Fourier transform to get rotation-invariant features.

</comment><comment><USER3> Manifold learning is not very common anymore

</comment><comment><USER3> I would also like to see a lot more probabilistic graphical models/ Bayesian networks.</comment>


Valve's Newell: Windows 8 "catastrophe" driving Valve to embrace Linux - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/steams-newell-windows-8-catastrophe-driving-valve-to-embrace-linux/ <comment><USER2> So...Steam is a closed platform as well. We have a game on Steam, and I can tell you that the sales on the Steam platform are much better than the other open ones. One of the reasons for this is the big user base, but the closed nature of the platform is also a large factor.

Kinda seems like the pot calling the kettle black.

<comment><USER3> It's one thing for an OS to implement a Store, it's another for a third party application to do so. It's the same thing people say about Gatekeeper and the AppStore. I think it's too early to get too scared.

That having been said, I don't understand why Steam being a closed platform makes your users more likely to buy from them. And in that sense, what is an "open" store? Apt/Yum/etc?

<comment><USER2> Because there is less competition. Open game stores are flooded with games, mostly of low quality. It makes it very hard to stand out and you just fall off the front page really fast. There is too much noise and everything gets the same billing regardless of quality, unless you hit a top sales spot. However, top sales spots frequently have less to do with quality and more to do with appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Just look at the ios app store, the top is generally freemium games or games that are actually thinly veiled skinner boxes with some nice art. Either that or casual games that have broad appeal because they are simple games.

On Steam you get top billing for at least 2 weeks after release.

Some open store examples: Desura, Indievania, XBLIG, android, even the mac app store is pretty open compared to Steam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, Steam breaks on Windows 8.

But people shouldn't take that motivation as something that makes what Newell is saying automatically wrong. He's far from the only person to say Win8 is going to be a disaster for MS - perhaps it is worth looking at the possibility he is actually right.

<comment><USER5> I don't see anything in the article about Steam breaking on Win8. I haven't heard that anywhere before your comment.

According to the article, Gabe is concerned with Windows Store and Xbox Live integration, fearing those would compete too strongly with Steam.

 _Features such as Xbox LIVE integration could make the Windows Store and Windows 8 a more appealing platform for gamers and developers alike than Steam._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see the Windows 8 app store as a competitor to Steam though, in the same way that I don't see the Google Play store as a competitor to Steam. Steam already has a strong community knit directly into the gaming experience that I doubt Microsoft will be able to reproduce, if GFWL is any indication. And there's no way I'd pay a monthly fee like on Xbox Live.

Hell, Origin isn't even that threatening to Steam, and that's a directly analogous service.

<comment><USER7> If you've tried to use Games for Windows Live, it makes seppuku seems like an enjoyable thing to do after dinner.

The user experience of what should have been mission critical Microsoft products - from Windows Live for Games to Adcenter is horrible. Horrible to a degree that whoever is responsible for them either never cared or should have been left managing McDonalds. That's too bad.

Yes, nothing Microsoft has right now comes close to comparing with the Steam user experience. (EA's Steam copycat also sucks, Gamestop's purchase of Impulse leaves a lot of judgement questions as well.)

<comment><USER8> _> If you've tried to use Games for Windows Live, it makes seppuku seems like an enjoyable thing to do after dinner._

Too right. My first experience of G4WL was GTA-IV. That experience is the reason I didn't bother reinstalling GTA-IV when I rebuilt my machine not long afterwards, and why I've not bought any games use/require G4WL since.

My games purchases since have all been through Steam, GoG, and Humble Bundles. Even games I might otherwise have paid full (or near full) price for have not been touched if they have G4WL anywhere near them.

Be careful when getting Games through Steam: there are some that still force you to faf around with G4WL (i.e. they will refuse to run if you don't) rather than having the option of using Steam's features instead for the same tasks (syncing of game saves and such).

The experience was irritating enough that when making a game buying decision I make a concerted effort to make sure I avoid a repeat in future. Compared to the Steam experience it, well, really didn't compare.

(I have some complaints with Steam too, nothing is perfect, but nothing that irritates to the point of stopping me using it to purchase and maintain games)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm.

How much work would it take to get Adobe apps working on Linux?

I ask because aside from games, which Mr Newell is clearly all over, Adobe is one of the main reasons I hear quoted for why people can't switch to Linux.

<comment><USER10> Gimp is an alright alternative to Photoshop, as a web developer you could manage, but I couldn't see any designers making the switch.

I've also noticed that Gimp makes jpgs of lesser quality, smaller, but noticeably trashier.

<comment><USER9> Speaking as a visual arts professional, GIMP won't do as a replacement for Photoshop for me. In addition, there's no replacement for After Effects, and no equally good alternative (IMO) to Premiere as a current-generation video editor.

I take it the difficulty of making these apps work in Linux is basically impossible?

<comment><USER11> what about wine? does performance suffer too much?

<comment><USER9> I've just looked through WineHQ, and my understanding is that even on CS5, After Effects doesn't work at all, Photoshop is fairly buggy, and Premiere doesn't work at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> TLDR: Windows RT lock-down move is what forced Valve to go to Linux.

It was previously discussed here: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4253887>

PS: why is hackerne.ws better indexed by Google than news.ycombinator.com ?

</comment><comment><USER13> If he is sincere then he is brilliant because he realizes the open path.

</comment><comment><USER14> when closed systems collide, platforms change...

</comment><comment><USER15> I think Newell has misjudged why Linux hasn't taken off as a personal computing platform. Sure, the lack of games doesn't help, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER16> sure, most of my friends are CS majors, but if they aren't linux users already, the reason they always cite is the lack of support for games. What else is there for an end user?

<comment><USER17> I use a Mac as my main computer, but keep a PC just for games. I would love to use Linux on it and not have to pay for Windows. Is there another category of software that is as exclusive to windows as games? I can get everything else I need via web apps or OSX.

<comment><USER18> There are a lot of windows-only apps in the business world.

<comment><USER19> There are also a lot of apple-only apps in the business world.

And how many business apps are being built for windows right now, compared to the number that are being built of iOS and osX right now?

I guess that the latter has much more activity...

<comment><USER18> I think the latter has a lot more visibility, at least.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure there are a lot of custom and legacy business apps out there tied to windows. But thinking of broad categories of business software (Office/productivity, browser, IDE, graphics editing, accounting, contact management), there are lots of alternatives that will run on a non-Windows PC. But looking at games as a category, you don't have comparable options on Mac or Linux.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Firefox is now placing ads on your home page - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/aax1r5/firefox_is_now_placing_ads_on_your_home_page/ <comment><USER2> I am a fan of Firefox. Firefox saved us from the stagnation of IE. And it is a browser you can expect to see around trying to innovate.

I don't mind them trying to make money in the process so long as they screen those ads properly.

That said, what I _do_ absolutely mind is them claiming to be privacy and user friendly and at the same time pre-installing pocket but not ublock origin.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think this is a terrible thing. I don't enjoy it, I would much rather have an ad free web, but I've come to terms with how many things on the internet have to make money. It isn't intrusive at all and is situated at the bottom of the page where I do not even glance at. As long as that is where it ends, then I am fine with it. It becomes a problem when we have browser forced banner ads that stretch across the screen obscuring parts of pages.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From Neowin:

"This snippet was an experiment to provide more value to Firefox users through offers provided by a partner. It was not a paid placement or advertisement. We are continually looking for more ways to say thanks for using Firefox. In a similar vein, earlier this month we offered Firefox users a free opportunity to enjoy a live concert from Phosphorescent."

<comment><USER4> BS... :/

partner as in romance or as in business?</comment></comment>


Consciousness Isn't a Mystery, It's Matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html?_r=0 <comment><USER3> This is terrible. Is is even an argument?

I was reading "Hard problem of consciousness" Wikipedia article this morning: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness) I'm not sure this adds anything to that.

The author seems to want to say that consciousness is primary and that the physical universe, matter, _is_ consciousness somehow, so __poof __no more mystery.

But this doesn't touch the "hard problem" so who cares?

There is what I like to call the _flux_ : form and movement. I lump together "external" and "internal" experience, including all proprioceptive experience, etc.

Then there is the subjective awareness. It is primary. As the author points out, every other fact we know is contingent upon the fact of subjective awareness. Everything is content to this whatever-it-is observer. This awareness itself seems not to have any qualities or properties whatsoever, making it extremely difficult to talk about (and rendering it forever beyond any scientific treatment!)

Somehow, this awareness _is_ our "self". (It may or may not also be tied into the quantum "Measurement Problem" but that is a whole 'nother story.)

You have a body but you're not your body; you have emotions but you aren't your emotions; you have thoughts but you aren't your thoughts; you are _that awareness_.

Now, if that awareness created or creates the physical world (as the Bhagavad Gita seems to state) that would be pretty amazing and I'd love to read about it. This article doesn't really expand on that.

<comment><USER4> > You have a body but you're not your body

Not only that, but you're _you_ because you're not someone _else 's_ body. That sounds tautological but I think it's important. I think a big part of what gives someone consciousness is identity, and what gives us identity, is the idea of us being an island isolotated within our body and therefore distinct from other conciousnesses.

Which sounds pointless, but I think it's actually significant if you start to consider the eventual effect of identity on "shared consciousness" via technologically-enabled telepathy, which we may actually see one day in the far future.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps consciousness _is_ shared, only memory isn't, and the distinction is mere an illusion due to distinct memory. Perhaps that's how aiming to be "self-less" is a thing in Buddhism, Sufism, Zen, etc.

<comment><USER6> I'd say perception is more relevant to the experience of unique identity than memory; I only see out of my eyes, which makes me feel separate from those around me, even if we'd have lived through all the same experiences.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure perception and memory are all that different. What are memories except echoes of perception? I actually wonder if memory is not our perceptual signals caught within neural loops that are able to feedback and trigger pattern detection circuits. When this happens for multiple patterns in synchrony, we form associations. Is it right? Who knows.. no idea how even neuroscience can start to answer that..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Consciousness is a suitcase word, which makes it challenging to debate. From [1]:

"In The Emotion Machine, Marvin Minsky discusses suitcase words—words that contain a variety of meanings packed into them, such as conscience, emotions, consciousness, experience, thinking, morality, right, and wrong.

"The word 'consciousness' is used to describe a wide range of activities, such as "how we reason and make decisions, how we represent our intentions, and how we know what we've recently done [p128]." If we want to better understand the various meanings of consciousness we need to analyse each one separately, rather than treating it as a single concept.

[1] [https://alexvermeer.com/unpacking-suitcase- words/](https://alexvermeer.com/unpacking-suitcase-words/)

<comment><USER8> Every word is a suitcase word.

<comment><USER9> My words mean exactly what I wish them to mean.

<comment><USER10> I got the Alice reference, but not the point of the comment.

Obviously they don't, and it's not up to the one saying the words but to the listener too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Those who make the Very Large Mistake (of thinking they know enough about > the nature of the physical to know that consciousness can't be physical) > tend to split into two groups. Members of the first group remain unshaken in > their belief that consciousness exists, and conclude that there must be some > sort of nonphysical stuff: They tend to become "dualists." Members of the > second group, passionately committed to the idea that everything is > physical, make the most extraordinary move that has ever been made in the > history of human thought. They deny the existence of consciousness: They > become "eliminativists."_

What's problematic about the "say no to consciousness" case? It seems to be based on their preference for other descriptions of human brain activity, especially when the alternative description (consciousness) has been so ambiguous, vague and unhelpful.

> You cannot describe first-hand facts using only third-hand facts. This is > the core philosophical dilemma in the hard problem of consciousness.

from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381348)

(or more accurately, I think third-hand factual systems could probably posit first-hand facts-- but be unable to assert validity or something. I am not a philosopher.)

<comment><USER12> Saying that conciousness isn't real because it's an emergent phenomenon of non-conscious processes is like saying that turbulence isn't real, because it's an emergent property of non-fluid particles. I mean sure, at the level of atoms, it's just particles interacting locally, but that doesn't mean that at certain scales, turbulence isn't a better way of looking at their group behavior.

<comment><USER13> Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one.

Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported by other people.

So you have the question of why I can only directly perceive that emergent property in exactly one brain and not others.

Likewise you'd have to explain why the emergent property is apparently continuous through my whole lifetime over which my brain changes enormously.

Finally you'd have to deal with the hypothetical case where I am duplicated molecule for molecule and then ask which consciousness would I have direct access to, the duplicate or the original.

So while dualism is obviously patently absurd, the idea of consciousness as epiphenomenon, while promising, needs work too.

<comment><USER14> Why is dualism's patent absurdity obvious?

<comment><USER15> Because if something occurs outside the current laws of physics it does not mean it's not natural, rather that the laws of physics need to adjust and take it into account.

<comment><USER16> Except that if your conscience (and everything in you) is under the _laws_ of physics, it implies that you are a deterministic or randomized machine. But then it is not easy to explain free will, for example. You could say that if it exists, it is a physical phenomenon, but what laws does it conform to? So most naturalists say that free will is just an illusion, but I personally would not call this a "patently obvious" choice. (I think it is a "Very Large Mistake")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Human conscious experience is wholly a matter of physical goings-on in the body and in particular the brain."

Is there any proof of this? The while article seems to hinge on this assumption and then go on from there. We can't see or measure consciousness (brain activity yes, consciousness no). We only experience it. The article makes far to many naive assumptions without any proof.

<comment><USER18> All the proof you need is the existence of psychoactive chemicals, the effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation, evidence from fMRI studies, and the selective personality alterations that occur in cases of localized brain damage.

<comment><USER19> All of those only imply that the physical state of the brain affects consciousness, which both camps agree on.

<comment><USER18> But physicalism explains it while dualism has to work around it, violating Occam's razor.

More points in favor of physicalism: scientists' ability to alter rat neurons to be photosensitive and attach them to fiber optic cables, the ability to implant memories in rats by altering a neuron, the mapping of place neurons in rats -- or perhaps the fact that brains are produced entirely from matter consumed by the mother during gestation and by the creature afterward, so where does the dualistic mind get a chance to insert itself?

I'll note that I used to be a staunch dualist for religious reasons, but became convinced of physicalism over a period of years of semi-active reading.

<comment><USER20> Or, matter is entirely imagined. Neurons are imagined. Atoms are imagined. Reality is inseparable. Only one thing exists, as you say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If consciousness is just a complicated computation, which seems the simplest explanation, then it can be analogous to the attitude toward "old computer science beliefs". As a side issue, someday much like people make furniture using 300 year old technology there will be craftsman making programs using no algorithm discovered (learned? found? created?) post 1970.

Its a good thing we invented computers in recorded history and they're not prehistorical or delivered from space aliens, or we'd be having the same sophistry about philosophical discussions about computers as we do about consciousness. What, you claim a mere arrangement of impure silicon atoms implements the majesty and beauty of the lambda and the red black tree? When you think of binding a value to a variable, how do you propose to do that with mere atoms alone? So you think you can build a computer completely out of NOR gates, well, that's very nice but seeing as computers came from space aliens and no human has ever made a computer we'll wait on that theory until we see you run "hello world" on it. Surely an "intelligent designer" created computers and such complexity cannot operate via mere atoms, much like mere atoms arranged in peculiar shapes makes hard steel.

Something like this already almost exists between the EE/microcontroller type people vs the CS/algo people. Note my plethora of weasel words, something, almost, etc.

Aside from the philosophical analogies being entertaining by themselves, it would make interesting hard sci fi. Imagine a world where god is blamed for giving us clay tablets containing most of automata theory. Wouldn't that be an interesting sci fi setting?

<comment><USER22> The problem with claiming that consciousness is just a complicated computation is not merely that we simply haven't advanced our study enough to understand it. The problem is that what we know so far about the nature of computation seems to _directly contradict and falsify_ the notion that consciousness is just computation. To put it simply: our knowledge of computational complexity, algorithms, and general problem solving shows that our human intelligence performs _far_ more sophisticated operations than are possible given the number of neurons that exist in our brains (unless there are some super-fast algorithms that we haven't discovered yet, which would have massive implications on the P=NP problem, and our understanding of physics).

Related video about why we don't have AI yet: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3of7xYoMQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3of7xYoMQM)

<comment><USER23> > our knowledge of computational complexity, algorithms, and general problem > solving shows that our human intelligence performs far more sophisticated > operations than are possible given the number of neurons that exist in our > brains

This is not true.

I wish I could respond with something more interesting, but that's all there is to it. You are just saying something that is incorrect. Our brains are information-theoretically and complexity-theoretically entirely reasonable.

<comment><USER22> > Our brains are information-theoretically and complexity-theoretically > entirely reasonable.

I know this has been the traditional view of most information theorists. But many philosophers (and a few computer scientists) challenge that view. See Fodor's frame problem[1]. The basic idea is this: yes, our brains are complexity-theoretically reasonable _after_ the problem is defined given a set of inputs, outputs, and problem states. However the real issue is how our brains formulate the problem in the first place - how to sort through the combinatorially explosive amount of information in order to narrow down what is relevant to a problem. This objection has never been satisfactorily answered by information theorists in my opinion. The answers given by info theorists always seems to presuppose the existence of a problem formulation before solving it.

[1] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame- problem/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame-problem/)

<comment><USER24> Everything in the brain is natively probabilistic. Representations which have low to zero mutual information with the current sensory input are simply not computed-with. You could say that almost all representations will have nonzero mutual information with almost all real-world sensory input, but the sensory input is precision-weighted, so it will take both a sufficiently high degree of mutual information _and_ sufficiently high precision of the activating sense-data to make a given branch of the hierarchy (the whole model is hierarchical, and very large) relevant enough to load it into working memory and use it for prediction.

<comment><USER22> > Representations which have low to zero mutual information with the current > sensory input are simply not computed-with.

Who decides that a particular representation in the brain has zero mutual information with current sensory input? This requires a comparison of some sort (i.e. computation).

<comment><USER24> It's a distributed computation that has been mostly precomputed, ie: brain connectivity. And a very popular theory of the brain says it does calculate second-order (precision/entropy) statistics about what it models.

<comment><USER22> The combinatorially explosive amount of information that we deal with at every single moment is too large to be dismissed as "precomputed by brain connectivity". If such a large amount of computation could be "precomputed", it has massive implications on our understanding of complexity-theory. Besides it contradicts our subjective feeling of free will, which is why it is not a satisfactory answer for most people.

<comment><USER23> >combinatorially explosive amount of information that we deal with at every single moment

What are you referring to? The sensory input to the brain takes, as a ridiculously high upper bound, perhaps terabits per second. In reality it's probably a few megabits. It's really not much. Vision is, I suspect, by far the highest bandwidth input to our brain, and computer vision has met or exceeded human vision in many tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Integrated Information Theory[0][1] is the first approach to solving these problems that make sense for me. It takes an axiomatic approach and provides a computable method to associate both a level of consciousness and the content of the experience to an arbitrary causal system. Unlike all these unscientific philosophical considerations it can actually be used to create testable hypotheses.

[0] [http://integratedinformationtheory.org/](http://integratedinformationtheory.org/) [1] [http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588)

<comment><USER26> Have you read Scott Aaronson's "Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist" ([http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799))? He commends IIT for making falsifiable predictions, but argues that some of those predictions are, in fact, false.

<comment><USER25> Yes. In the follow-up linked above he also describes the authors' responses to this. The predictions are not de facto false. He argues that they are intuitively false, which is a matter of personal belief but not empirical research. The same goes for some counterarguments.

<comment><USER26> What predictions does IIT make that could be 'de facto' falsified in the sense you're imagining?

<comment><USER25> It will probably depend on how well large systems can be approximated.

In terms of reproducible results, it would be most interesting to research the shape of different qualia and how they progress if the underlying network changes (both in function and connectivity). Right now, we can only rely on self-aware and -reporting systems. But if we know how actual experiences integrate if two systems merge it might be possible to get a "feeling" for others.

Cases such as these[0] are therefore extremely interesting. If it is possible to gradually change the connectivity between two systems, according to the theory, there should be a sudden "split" into two experiences. High bandwidth brain-computer-brain interfaces could possibly provide such a possibility in the future.

[1] is another reason why I tend to be pretty agnostic about intuitive arguments.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins) [1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with- tiny-b...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain- shocks-doctors/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> To echo callesgg elsewhere in this thread, my own pet "theory" is that conciousness is a metacomputation, i.e. not just a process of neural reactions to outside events, but reaction to a process of reaction. For example, understanding the need to convey acquired information to another being to the same species eventually led to the development of language. Figuring out that brain forgets information led to the development of storytelling (hoping that someone else will remember) and eventually writing. And so on. Conciousness to me is not black and white but instead a spectrum of traits made possible by thinking about thinking.

<comment><USER28> "metacomputation" \-- that reminded me of this from Wikipedia on metasystem transition:

"Turchin has applied the concept of metasystem transition in the domain of computing, via the notion of metacompilation or supercompilation. A supercompiler is a compiler program that compiles its own code, thus increasing its own efficiency, producing a remarkable speedup in its execution."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _The reply is simple. We know what conscious experience is because the > having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is._

That's sidestepping the issue. Of course we know what consciousness is in this sense.

What we don't know, and what we actually mean when we say we don't know what consciousness is, is what causes it and how it emerges.

<comment><USER29> You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can emerge from. Most likely you intend the physical world.

Why is consciousness in need of being explained in that manner, is what I think the author would ask. It's similar to saying that physical matter or energy are hard problems, as we don't know what causes them or how they emerge - not in the sense of conversion from one form of energy or matter to another, but what generated matter or energy in the first place.

(With that said, I do think there are strong arguments for favoring the physical world, and that pose a challenge for the author's position.)

<comment><USER10> > _You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes > something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can > emerge from._

And why not? Most (all?) including rocks, have a cause and constituent elements that need to be arranged in a certain way for them to have a particular function.

The strange thing would be to presuppose consciousness as without something before it. Which would be like what Christians for example consider for the "soul".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My personal theory of what consciousness is that it is a feedback loop.

I have major issues explaining why i think that but somehow it fits my model.

When thinking of consciousness as a feedback loop, stuff sort of makes sense. I have been unable to poke holes in the theory but also unable to add strength to it.

<comment><USER31> You might be interested in reading Douglas Hofstadter's book I Am A Strange Loop.

<comment><USER30> Ordered a copy, thank you.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness _could_ be some sort of feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and everybody else) possibly via quantum entanglement. I know that's terribly hand-wavey and soupy, sorry about that, just felt I should mention it.

Related: meditation (at least some kinds) seems to operate by turning the subjective awareness back onto itself, becoming aware of becoming aware of... etc... A little like a camera hooked up to a monitor that it's pointed at, you get an infinite regression.

In the camera-monitor system there is a physical loop of information from the lens-to-screen-to-lens-to...

When you do it with you awareness, there _must_ be something looping somewhere, regardless of the physicality or otherwise of consciousness, eh?

<comment><USER23> > FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness could be some sort of > feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and > everybody else) possibly via quantum entanglement

Then this book sounds like it's not worth reading. There is absolutely no need to invoke pseudo-quantum mumbo-jumbo to investigate consciousness. We don't understand the chemical operation of neurons well enough to say whether quantum effects are necessary for neural functioning (although they probably aren't). Most "quantum-looking" (i.e. obviously non-classical) processes happen at much smaller space and energy scales than the chemical processes we know are involved in cognition.

Quantum entanglement almost certainly isn't involved because it can't be used to transmit information and it requires high degrees of precision to make use of in the first place.

The brain's thermal noise floor is vastly larger than the scale of most "interesting" quantum effects.

<comment><USER3> Don't pan G.E.B. due to my wild-eyed speculation. I'm the one saying "quantum!" and waving my hands here, not Hofstadter. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is an almost stereotypical reductionist view - yes, we know a lot of fine details of how consciousness and cognition and experience work, but we absolutely do not understand their nature. That's like saying chemistry is all you need to understand how a bacterium works. You'll be able to decipher a lot of the mechanisms, but how the system developed and how the pieces fit together is always going to remain beyond your grasp without more specific research.

</comment><comment><USER28> After reading all of the interesting comments and debates, I think that as far as having fun wasting time with amateur philosophy, consciousness can be quite a fun topic.

But beyond that I think I just want to echo what paulsutter said in his comment -- consciousness is a suitcase word with too many different meanings. To have a 'real' discussion you would need to unpack all of the different meanings at the beginning, but no one is going to do that.

Also, the word consciousness is directly tied into belief systems, so if you want to understand someone's belief system, you can ask them about it, but the nature of beliefs is that you are not going to have a constructive conversation.

If anyone is curious about my own beliefs, I think that we can generally answer the Leibniz machine question with 'emergence' so perhaps I am an emergentist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism)

I like the general explanation of how something like consciousness arises from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition)

</comment><comment><USER33> i'm struggling to identify the point of the article.

mystery and matter have never been mutually exclusive. depending on it's configuration, matter can lead to some mysterious things. "it's matter" is a bad answer to pretty much every question.

<comment><USER34> The point I got is this: Just because we can't figure out a physical picture of consciousness doesn't mean there isn't one. Furthermore, it is the physical part that is the big mystery, rather than the consciousness part.

<comment><USER33> > _Just because we can 't figure out a physical picture of consciousness > doesn't mean there isn't one._

didn't Descartes try to explain this hundreds of years ago?

> _it is the physical part that is the big mystery, rather than the > consciousness part._

you say tomato, i say tomato. seems like the author is trying to mince words or use people's connotations of these words to start an argument.

<comment><USER35> The author is stating that physicalism (formerly materialism) is true, however, physics fails to fully capture what it is to be physical, because it doesn't not include our experience of said physical world.

Basically, our conceptual understanding is lacking. But dualists or idealists might say the same thing, so ...

<comment><USER33> > _Basically, our conceptual understanding is lacking. But dualists or > idealists might say the same thing, so ..._

my point exactly. :) i'm not sure whose eyes the author is trying to open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I feel like a lot of the replies here are missing what's actually a quite subtle, thoughtful argument:

 _The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made the point vividly in 1714. Perception or consciousness, he wrote, is "inexplicable on mechanical principles, i.e. by shapes and movements. If we imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and be conscious, we can conceive of it being enlarged in such a way that we can go inside it like a mill" — think of the 1966 movie "Fantastic Voyage," or imagine the ultimate brain scanner. Leibniz continued, "Suppose we do: visiting its insides, we will never find anything but parts pushing each other — never anything that could explain a conscious state."

...

Many make the same mistake today — the Very Large Mistake (as Winnie-the-Pooh might put it) of thinking that we know enough about the nature of physical stuff to know that conscious experience can't be physical. We don't. We don't know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff..

We find this idea extremely difficult because we're so very deeply committed to the belief that we know more about the physical than we do, and (in particular) know enough to know that consciousness can't be physical. We don't see that the hard problem is not what consciousness is, it's what matter is — what the physical is._

People making computer analogies below are engaging in the exact fallacy the piece is arguing against. A turing machine is a mathematical model for symbolic manipulation, and yet it's assumed one could somehow "map" consciousness 1-to-1 onto such a machine. The fact we can't simulate a single protein fold on a supercomputer gives me real pause in believing we've begun to grasp or have the ability to digitally emulate the kind of tricks life used to bootstrap consciousness out of matter.

I know the "no real evidence" / "too warm & wet & macro" arguments against quantum consciousness, but that to me looks like by far the most fruitful path to investigate to break out of dualist/"eliminativist" dilemma we find ourselves in. Recent research on quantum biology already makes clear life makes is far more quantum than I think almost anyone would have believed possible a decade or two ago. Considering just photosynthesis, arguably no life as we know it on earth would be possible without clever non-classical hacks by nature.

<comment><USER28> This quantum biology stuff is just a way for dualists to hang on to their religious or mystic beliefs.

<comment><USER37> Not exactly. We've pushed determinism down to the level of quantum mechanics. Bell's theorem strongly implicates that the universe is fundamentally non- deterministic. The way I see it, you can interpret this non-determinism as randomness, or you can interpret it as choice. The thing I find ironic is that most scientists - who espouse parsimony and deduction based on observation - choose the random explanation. If quantum indeterminacy is random, it is the first truly random process we've ever discovered. Additionally, when a scientist states that their perception of choice is mistaken/an illusion, I have to ask, then how do you trust any of the data you base your science on?

<comment><USER36> Yep, mostly agreed. I think if you squint a little, it's possible to see how real non-deterministic "choice" can bootstrap itself out of QM. Do we have a theory describing how? No, but such a theory would inherently upend the foundations of science and western philosophy, so even if we don't have it in hand, it's worth pointing out there's a fair amount of ... circumstantial evidence(?) in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is

I guess it's solved. I'm glad the NY Times is where I go for my scientific analyses.

</comment><comment><USER9> " _I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by "consciousness" I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It's the most familiar thing there is, whether it's experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious._

" _The nature of physical stuff, by contrast, is deeply mysterious, and physics grows stranger by the hour._ "

The author seems to be traveling a road very close to solipsism.

If the only thing you can know is your own consciousness...

<comment><USER39> Even though solipsism is considered unfalsifiable, it can't explain why the world is so regular and yet complex, much more complex than human imagination. We can feel the limits of our imagination, but reality is much more complex. So there is the proof that there is an external world. It's not all in our imagination, because our imagination is less complex than the world we experience. If we said that our own imagination created the world, then it must be a Godly power. Basically we attribute divine powers to our own minds, which is absurd.

<comment><USER40> There is no proof of an external world, since nobody has ever experienced it. Everything you consider to be a part of that external world is mediated through your mind.

In short, you exist in virtual reality which is really manifested by your mental map which is layer upon layer of memories, personality traits, beliefs and thoughts.

That does not necessarily mean that "you" create _the_ world, only that your mind gives raise to the subjective reality you have access to, the only reality you have access to.

There may be an external, objective world out there, but we wouldn't be able to directly access it.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. That's the point of the solipsism argument: you have to assume there is an objective external world or you get into a trivial corner.

At which point you need to explain consciousness in other people, which you cannot perceive directly.

<comment><USER40> Well the assumption of an objective external world I find a bit silly. We can assume that other minds exist since we have direct experience of our own. It's a small leap from one mind to many (a leap nonetheless).

But to assume an objective external world exists when nobody has ever experienced such a thing, is a leap of quite different proportions, akin to believing in a bearded man in the sky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I didn't realize until reading this comment section that there's an entire demographic of intelligent people in denial about why we are conscious (generic cognition is an evolutionary advantage in responding to circumstances that are too dynamic to be accounted for by a process measured in generations) and whether it persists beyond death (no, because it's hooked up to the brain).

And by the way, it clearly worked : we colonized the planet. And now we have arrived at a juncture wherein we are left having to explain our existence when the reality is that our only identifiable purpose is to reproduce. Everything else is incidental.

<comment><USER42> You are talking about behavior. Qualia is something else. Why does it exists?

<comment><USER41> Because evolution ultimately reduces entropy in response to stimuli. This process, combined with time, can yield complexity. Countless studies abound ascertaining rudimentary aspects of cognition in even fairly primitive organisms. It's hardly a trait upon which humans hold an exclusive claim - <USER2> just evolved the best version of it.

<comment><USER37> He's asking why we aren't just philosophical zombies. There's no reason that systems that display intelligence have to experience existence.

<comment><USER41> That's another way of asking if we could (theoretically) simulate intelligence. Scientific consensus offers an emphatic 'yes' to this question. We debate the when and how (not the whether) of AGI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The article postulates that "everyones" definition of consciousness is "experience of any kind whatever." That's not my definition at all. My camera is not conscious because it experiences images. My speakers aren't conscious because they experience the sound vibration they emit. Consciousness may be an important part in us humans interpreting our experiences in some context, but it is totally different from those experiences. I can be conscious for a while in a sensory deprivation tank!

Separately, saying we "know nothing" about physics, just because we have to experience physics through our senses, is somewhere between disingenuous and false. We know how to predict the behaviour of physical systems very well. We know much less about how to predict conscious systems. So, if by "knowledge" you mean "ability to predict outcomes, possibly as result of stimuli," we know physics much more than consciousness. Or, perhaps, we know simpler physical systems, but but the complex systems that give rise to consciousness -- again, we know more about physics than consciousness, but not enough physics to explain consciousness as a physical system.

Finally, arguing that the mind is just its physical/chemical make up requires a lot more proof than we currently have. That argument reduces to "there is no free will." It may be true, but we don't know enough of quantum processes in the brains function to say that for sure. We certainly can't simulate or predict a couscous human brain yet.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think more interesting is the question: What has consciousness? Or from what point on humans carry one?

</comment><comment><USER45> From other news: Consciousness Isn't a Mystery, It's Backpropagation

<comment><USER46> This is the most interesting comment in this thread.

<comment><USER19> Maybe, but it makes little sense.

<comment><USER46> Makes perfect sense to me. Consciousness is how the process of backpropagation _feels_ to a sufficiently complex neural network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to understand what the hell this article is driving at. But I'm pretty confident in my personal understanding of "consciousness": it's a word that we use to describe our "experiencing" of the physical world, which is an emergent property of our incredibly complex neurological infrastructure.

Is this article agreeing with me, or disagreeing with me? I can't honestly tell.

<comment><USER48> "[T]here is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the stuff of the universe is unknown to us — except insofar as it is consciousness"

I think the article finds "emergent property" mysterious. It intuits that there is a link between knowing what the "stuff" is that behaves as physics describes it, and "consciousness", by which we know there is something rather than nothing. I think that's a mistake: it's like thinking you couldn't understand an article on the web without directly observing all the electronics that created it. I don't believe that fundamental particles (e.g., quarks) have any identifier attached to them to distinguish them from other fundamental particles, except those that describe their behavior: (probability distribution of) location, (probability distribution of) momentum, (probability distribution of) mass, etc. There is no "stuff" that is not behavior. Physics works to refine our model of the fundamental particles; everything after that is "emergent property". A sorting algorithm in a high level language doesn't depend on what CPU it runs on, given sufficient RAM and that there are no hardware faults. It may have been designed by a human, but it may also have been generated by simulated evolution (genetic algorithm). Fundamental particles/waves don't have hardware faults, but they do have probability distributions. Atoms are an emergent property of their constituents and decay when their constituents reach a low probability state incompatible with the constitution of the atom. Molecules are an emergent property of atoms and become different molecules when their constituents decay or their components react to some external force (usually the electromagnetic forces of another molecule). Cells are an emergent property of some kinds of molecules, and so on up the complexity scale. Consciousness is perhaps the top of the pyramid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Given the world is analog, with states never reaching a state of absolute zero (e.g. there is no distance from a nucleus at which there is zero probability that an orbiting electron will be found), I think consciousness does not ever diminish to nothingness at physical states simpler than our own. It could therefore be reasoned that all matter in the universe is conscious.

</comment><comment><USER50> > where by "consciousness" I mean what most people mean in this debate: > experience of any kind whatever

Really? Most people I know would throw self-awareness into the mix. When you make such a bad start, the rest of your article isn't worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER51> "It's ironic that the people who are most likely to doubt or deny the existence of consciousness (on the ground that everything is physical, and that consciousness can't possibly be physical)"

We don't doubt that consciousness exists, what we do call into question is the assertion that it is of a non-corporeal nature. Therefore it has to be physical in nature.

panpsychism: 'the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.'

</comment><comment><USER52> If consciousness is just matter, why isn't yours accessible to me. There is something deeper at play.

I have a hypothesis that a consciousness is a function of a universe. Each universe has just one consciousness.

Another person's consciousness is inaccessible because it's in a different universe. Only the matter part of that is projected in your universe, not the actual identity.

Without a hypothesis like this, we are left with postulating hidden variables: some hidden context pointer which resolves to you or me or such.

<comment><USER47> > If consciousness is just matter, why isn't yours accessible to me.

Because my matter and your matter aren't in close enough physical proximity or the appropriate configuration to have any communication with one another. Same way that you and I both live in houses, but my front door doesn't open into your living room.

<comment><USER52> You can visit someone's home, or move to a new one.

I think that being locked to a particular consciousness and having no access to another one is on par with not having access to parallel universes. I'm going to click Update right now. In another universe, a parallel me closes the page without clicking Update. I have no access to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Mechanicists confuse Consciousness with behavior. Of course we have behavior (mind) and that, in a mechanistic world, is enough to survive and reproduce. But Consciousness is something else. We are not Philosophical Zombies. Qualia is there and is a hard problem that resist most hypotesis.

</comment><comment><USER53> Scientific rationalism at its worst: trying to apply logic for something that is beyond logic, and all the way not realizing the basic mistake of thinking that everything in experience can be expressed or understood with logic, thought and scientific experiments.

The writer (and a very large part of society) is so oblivious to the unconscious dogma "Everything can be explained in a consistent scientific system" that he doesn't even see it he's holding it - precisely like a Christian will tell you "Look stuff is like this, it says so in the bible".

All this mental masturbation about trying to locate consciousness in the brain/body is utterly ridicoulous. Why do you think you haven't found it yet? Hello?

But according to scientific rationalism everything that exist is matter (for only matter can be PROVED to exist with a scientific experiment...), so consciousness must be there too right? Just like a man who's lost his keys outside, but the street is very dark and cold, so he decided to search for them in his house, which has lights to see better and is much more comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER54> People with mitochondrial disease get autistic symptoms

autism is like lacking of part of the conscious experience of interpersonal interaction

your cells are processing reality for you and when you lack the energy you will lack some of that processing

</comment><comment><USER55> This article just kicks around concepts with no real insight. It's easy to demonstrate that consciousness is matter. Put a bullet through someone's brain and that person will cease to be conscious.

What is difficult to demonstrate is if that is all there is to it. For this we can turn to math. Do the intricacies of the rules of mathematics actually exist anywhere? Obviously not, unless you consider words and symbols written in books to qualify. Math exists everywhere, because you can use it to describe the physical, and it exists nowhere, because there is no literal physical representation of it anywhere.

But we _can_ actually _build_ physical representations of particular math equations, inputting them as programs into a computer. The representations obey the rules of mathematics, as well as the rules of the physical world, if you destroy the computer, you also destroy the operation of the program.

But yet there is more to these programs than meets the eye physically. There are hidden rules that they operate by, more than just the physical affects them. These are the rules of math. We can analyze the programs using various mathematical techniques and prove things regarding them.

It is the same way with consciousness. We only see the physical affects because that's what we're looking for. We don't see the countless hidden rules that also affect consciousness. They are so numerous and manifold that they look wholly continuous with the physical world and physical rules.

What are these rules? In a word, they are ideas. Ideas have logic to them and can be compared with other ideas. We can say that one course of action is good or bad, when compared to other courses of action. Ideas and thoughts themselves are so comparable to computer programs that it's amazing to me that we programmers scoff at the idea of thinking machines.

You analyze thoughts with other thoughts, with tools of logic. You analyze computer programs with the rules of math, many times those rules are implemented with other computer programs. The question, "what is consciousness," is purely the domain of philosophy. Biology and physics can only takes us so far in our quest to understand ourselves.

To attempt to do so would be like trying to analyze a running computer system by smashing it apart and looking at the silicon under a microscope. It fundamentally mistakes what a computer program is. And knowing that it is just electrical signals traveling across transistor gates doesn't get you very far either. Even analyzing the voltage levels across the entire running system isn't going to tell you much either.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is how I see it:

\- Consciousness is out of the scope of physics. You have to leave the common "physics is everything" perspective to understand consciousness, however counterintuitive that is.

\- Physics is just a tool to describe the patterns of our subjective experience / consciousness.

\- The hard problem is, why does positioning atoms in a piece of matter (brain) trigger the perception of color or pain?

\- Dualism and solipsism are approximately correct, depending on the specific definitions, which vary a lot.

<comment><USER56> Physics seeks to find out how things work. Questions might not be answerable but that doesn't put it out of the scope of physics.

The hard problem you pose (positioning atoms... triggering perception of color or pain), what else is that but a physics problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> "philosophers have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness"

Many philosophers today, including materialists, are heirs to Cartesian metaphysics, the same metaphysics that brought us the mind-body problem and the problem of qualia. The difficulties the author has in mind are very much bound up with this Cartesian (and Galilean) legacy.

The idea that material beings can be conscious is often treated like it's some new and shocking claim. The reason for that is, again, the broadly Cartesian heritage at work. For Descartes, it takes an immaterial "res cogitans" to be conscious. The material body, as a desiccated "res extensa", is incapable of functioning as a substrate for anything we might call "consciousness". And because Descartes holds that only human beings possess minds understood as "res cogitans", only human beings can possess consciousness. Furthermore, "res extensa" lacks sensory qualities like color or sound. As a result, these qualities are located in the "res cogitans" as immaterial "qualia". Materialism does not escape the Cartesian paradigm. Instead, it denies the "res cogitans" and tries to locate what was ascribed to the "res cogitans" back in the "res extensa" while maintaining many of the metaphysical and methodological tenets of Cartesianism. This is where the problem of qualia occurs. The problem is insurmountable as long as the Cartesian suppositions are maintained. No amount of "keeping at it" with the current methods will ever resolve the issue. (See Nagel for more.)

For what it's worth, Aristotelian metaphysics encounters no such difficulties because it does not adhere to the dualism of Cartesian metaphysics (though sadly, few philosophers understand Aristotelian metaphysics; there seems to be a resurgence of interest, however). Indeed, for Aristotle, "consciousness" (though he does not use this term) is part and parcel of what it means to be an animal, human or otherwise. (See Jaworski and Feser for more.)

"It's true that people can make all sorts of mistakes about what is going on when they have experience, but none of them threaten the fundamental sense in which we know exactly what experience is just in having it."

If there was any doubt about the Cartesian flavor of the author's reasoning, this statement should have dispelled it.

"Members of the first group remain unshaken in their belief that consciousness exists, and conclude that there must be some sort of nonphysical stuff: They tend to become 'dualists.' Members of the second group, passionately committed to the idea that everything is physical, make the most extraordinary move that has ever been made in the history of human thought. They deny the existence of consciousness: They become 'eliminativists.'"

Ah, but the eliminativists haven't escaped the legacy of Cartesian dualism either! They've eliminated not only the "res cogitans", but the facts of experience (e.g., "qualia") altogether! It's a notoriously incoherent position.

Strawson says he's a panpsychic physicalist, but that falls into the dualist camp once you get down to it. He offers no third way between Cartesian dualism and eliminativism.</comment>


Show HN: Monster Crew, our startup's first game - <AUTHOR> http://bonusxp.com/monstercrew/

<comment><AUTHOR> Three of us quit our jobs about six months ago to start a new mobile game studio. It was one of the most exciting yet terrifying things I have done. I mostly lurk here on HN, but I got a lot of the inspiration/courage to take the plunge from the community here! Our first game is out today on iOS ([https://itunes.apple.com/app/monster-crew/id561545477?ls=1&#...</a>). Other obvious platforms will hopefully follow soon.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like it could be entertaining! The video was well produced, but I would suggest shortening it and showing some actual gameplay on the homepage. 30-45 seconds tops. The rest of it looks like cutscenes from throughout the game and doesn't really tell you what you get if you download it. Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good suggestions. We just have the current "teaser" trailer we used to announce, but now we're out, we'd definitely benefit from a more straight up gameplay-oriented trailer.</comment></comment>