Is Matter Conscious? (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious <comment><USER2> The neural network of nematode worms has been modelled in software, and a robotic avatar has been built for this "mind". It behaves very much like a real nematode worm.

Real nematode worms appear to be conscious to an extent, in so far as they forage for food and mates, and retreat from danger or threats. I don't think we would argue that nematodes have the same level of consciousness as we do. If the mechanical model also does this, it it conscious too?

We also know that different animals display different levels of consciousness, in many ways reflected by the amount of brain mass they posess; animals with far simpler brains appear, by and large, to be less conscious than animals with larger, more complex brains. We also know that damage to brains alters the properties of consciousness, as do interference with brain chemistry or electrical activity. It seems more likely that consciousness is an emergent property of the _interactions_ between the physical structure of the brain/nervous system and electrical/chemical messaging.

I think that assuming matter has a special, magical property of "consciousness" is just re-hashing the unfalsifiable concept of a "soul".

<comment><USER3> With infinite time and infinite space, you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer. Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious?

Does the speed of computation cause emergence? How?

Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness? How?

"Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking and lack of understanding the hard problem of consciousness.

Roger Penrose has some plausible ideas on this, not sure if they are correct, however to me it seems that they must happen at a sub-neural network level.

<comment><USER4> > you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural > network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer.

Yes.

> Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious?

No. But your experiment involves "you with a pencil and a paper" where "you" is conscious.

> Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness?

It's not necessary to use organic particles. We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even better one.

[https://www.amazon.com/Makoroni-REPLACE-SCRIPT-License- Holde...](https://www.amazon.com/Makoroni-REPLACE-SCRIPT-License- Holder/dp/B07JVWN5C7)

> "Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking

Calling "emergence" lazy thinking is lazy thinking.

> and lack of understanding

... and lack of understanding of what emergence even means.

Emerging properties are everywhere and they don't have to have anything with humans or their behavior to be recognized:

[http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is- time-...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-time-real/)

"Temperature and pressure didn't stop being real once we understood them as emergent properties of an underlying atomic description."

Yes, temperature is an emergent property.

<comment><USER5> > _We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the > perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a > conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the > computer will be able to make even better one._

This is wrong. We are absolutely nowhere near anything even remotely resembling this.

<comment><USER4> No. We already have a complete nematode implemented as a computer program. We already have a realistic simulation of the living creature.

Twenty years ago the current output of Google Translate was a pure science fiction, compared to what it was possible then. Today it already often translates better than a lot of humans knowing both languages. Had anyone seen the output of Google Translate of today some 20 years ago, nobody would have believed it was produced by the machine. Note I don't say that it's always good. It's not. But it can produce amazing outputs already, which can't be recognized to be produced by a computer.

Also read about AlphaZero:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero#Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero#Training)

"AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play, using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks. In parallel, the in-training AlphaZero was periodically matched against its benchmark (Stockfish, elmo, or AlphaGo Zero) in brief one-second- per-move games to determine how well the training was progressing. DeepMind judged that AlphaZero's performance exceeded the benchmark after around four hours of training for Stockfish, two hours for elmo, and eight hours for AlphaGo Zero."

Apparently, the computer learned chess better than the long developed programs by only playing the game with itself for four hours! And the programs are already better than humans there.

<comment><USER6> >>Apparently, the computer learned chess better than the long developed programs by only playing the game with itself for four hours!

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the- man...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who- would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/)

Basically the machine isn't exactly thinking. It _simulates_ a model of thinking.

There lies the biggest difference.

<comment><USER7> Congratulations, you have re-discovered Searle's Chinese Room argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Enough credible people have publicly considered the idea credible for me to open my mind.

But... I have to keep my mind open with a brace. otherwise, it'll call occam's razor & snap shut.

At the heart of consciousness particles ideas (I think) is the idea that conciousness _can 't_ emerge from nonconscious stuff. This is counterintuitive to me. We now know of all sorts of emergent phenomenon.

Species emerge (from other, sometimes simpler species) and that emergence dynamic turned slime into ND Tyson. Substances like coffee and coffee tables emerge from basic particle characteristics like charge (to borrow their example). Chemistry emerges from particle physics. Biology emerges from chemistry.

Can someone point me to the starting point? I must be missing something. Why can't non-conscious matter, arranged precisely, think?

<comment><USER9> How does Occam's Razor apply here?

You have evidence that some matter (yourself) experiences its existence. The simplest hypothesis that explains this is that all matter experiences its existence. Any hypothesis that posits that SOME matter experiences its existence and other matter does not requires two different kinds of matter (conscious and not) and a mechanism to switch between the two. Seems that hypothesis requires a lot more assumptions.

<comment> 0-_-0 > You have evidence that some matter (your PC) can run Windows. The simplest > hypothesis that explains this is that all matter can run Windows. Any > hypothesis that posits that SOME matter can run Windows and other matter > does not requires two different kinds of matter and a mechanism to switch > between the two. Seems that hypothesis requires a lot more assumptions.

<comment><USER9> So, you'd rather posit some mystical juju that makes matter gain consciousness, that somehow magically only happens to humans, and happens to matter when humans eat it, but yet is totally undetectable?

<comment><USER6> No I guess the parent's point is consciousness is inherent to all things. But it's just that it needs some minimal amount of biological configuration for it to manifest in a way that is meaningfully observable.

Which explain things like eating food(above minimal configuration) and death(Some cells die, failing the minimal configuration criteria).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most questions of this sort remind me of "Can submarines swim?"

If we build an AI that can interact via natural human language, and ask it about its internal state, and it replies "I am happy.", is it happy?

And whatever criteria we use to decide that machines cannot really be happy the way we can be, could a hypothetical species that thinks at a "higher level" than us, use similar criteria to determine that humans can't really think?

<comment><USER11> An AI would have a goal, even if it is simple curiosity, and its happiness is related to the distance from its goal. It would evaluate each situation and action with regard to the goal and decide on actions that lead to it, learning from past mistakes.

'I am happy' is possible for us because we have an innate goal - to live, to reproduce, to maximise our rewards, rewards which have been programmed into us by evolution. AIs can have rewards and can learn to act towards them, thus they can have emotion which is just a map from the present situation to the goal.

<comment><USER12> I disagree with basically everything you just said. An AI might not have a goal. If it did, its happiness may or may not be related to the distance from the goal. It might not evaluate every situation and action with regard to it's (presumed) goal.

I don't think we do have a (single) innate goal. Everyone has different goals, and they are not innate.

Emotions are not a map from a present situation to a goal. AI might not have emotions.

<comment><USER11> > I don't think we do have a (single) innate goal.

Survival. And that includes many subgoals such as feeding, safety, autonomy, being part of a group, curiosity, and making offspring, all preprogrammed into the brain by evolution.

Artificial agents would have goals preprogrammed by humans instead, such as 'winning at Go'.

<comment><USER12> what about suicidal people? Are you saying they are not consious? Artifical agents _might_ have goals preprogrammed by humans, but I don't see that as a prerequesite for intelligence or self awareness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the very few articles I've read about the nature of consciousness where the ideas presented are cogent, consistent, and novel (to me). She does a terrific job of explaining the current state of affairs in philosophy of mind, about as clearly as anyone could, and then describing a new paradigm.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I read it after reading the comments on this page, expecting a silly mess. But no, it was well-written, for that kind of piece - it's popular internet journalism, not a professional philosophy journal, people! For what it's worth, the 'matter is made from consciousness' view does seem unlikely in the extreme to me.

I thought it was strange the term '(philosophical) idealism' wasn't used once, as it seems that's what most of the article was describing. Maybe she didn't want to confuse people with the more common meaning of 'idealism' today (to do with ideals, not ideas). Russell was a Hegelian idealist for a few years in the mid-1890s, like a lot of British (and American) philosophers, and published a book on Leibniz in 1900. (It's probably not a great introduction to the subject, but David Stove's _Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story_ is a very funny long essay by the Australia philosopher, mostly ridiculing the arguments used in support of idealism, in detail. Stove's _Gem_ \- winner of his Worst Argument in the World competition[0] - is worth being able to recognize in the wild.)

[0] [https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html](https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html)

<comment><USER15> "Maybe matter is made from waves/vibration could be more plausible?" Thinking about Quantum Double Slit Experiment and such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jürgen Schmidthuber (an AI researcher for those not familiar with the name) gave an interesting explanation what conciousness is in an AMA that he conducted in 2015 on Reddit.

I just submitted that in an extra thread [0] because it seems worth discussing.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241278)

<comment><USER17> This is interesting, very interesting take, but it still doesn't explain where _other_ people's consciousness comes from. Through reductive reasoning, it doesn't explain why calculators and any matter shouldn't have consciousness.

<comment><USER18> A calculator processes maybe 64bits, in a machinery that is rather limited, certainly not enough to emulate it's environment, unless a more complex machine operates it.

<comment><USER19> However, bits, information and software have the same problem as math that was mentioned in the article. And that is that they are abstract and relational, unlike the concrete qualities of experiencing color, pain, a dream, etc.

So I doubt that any amount of bits will do any good, just like no math equation is going to become conscious. What would it even mean for an equation or bits of information to have conscious experiences?

<comment><USER18> That's nonsense. A large part of maths is having the right feel for it, numbers are--paradoxically--qualitative.

An equation is the application of a join operator, a formula is an operation, thought is operating and you are just thinking of lines scribled on paper instead.

<comment><USER19> You're confusing the feel of doing math in your head with it being applied to describe something, which is abstract. A mathematical model isn't the thing itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does consciousness produce any measurable effect? For a time I thought consciousness is some kind of by-product of some kinds of computation which doesn't influence the computation itself. But how can I then _know_ that I am conscious? And if I know that I am conscious, then consciousness must have a measurable effect, right? Because the knowledge that you are conscious should be reflected somewhere in your brain.

However, whenever I think about consciousness, I have the feeling that I am missing something obvious but important. It's just so confusing.

<comment><USER11> > Does consciousness produce any measurable effect?

In the morning when you wake up do you make a sandwich? If you didn't have consciousness, you wouldn't. So your body would cease to exist in a short time. Consciousness has measurable effects - every time it saves us from hunger, danger, and other bad situations, or when it leads us to good situations.

<comment><USER21> Following that logic, a robot vacuum that can have itself charged is conscious?

<comment><USER11> It's at least conscious of its energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice interview with Phillip Goff on CBC Ideas: [https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4822151](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4822151) . He reiterates B Russell's point: The _least_ extraordinary thing we know is that we're aware of nature, and we're made of the same natural substances that make up the external world. Therefore the extraordinary claim is that there can be no consciousness outside of the body. In other words, it requires extraordinary evidence. He makes the conventional dismissive attitude sound pretty chauvanistic. It's a good interview.

<comment><USER23> I think opinions like these ignore the immense complexity of the animal brain compared to other natural materials. We are not made of the same stuff as the rest of the external world—living things have a very precise configuration of cells and connections, and the slightest deficiencies or disturbances lead to complete loss of consciousness

<comment><USER7> Exactly. The sand on the beach and a CPU are made of the same stuff too, but arguing that therefore beach sand can compute is obviously absurd. The consciousness of all matter is just as obviously absurd.

<comment><USER24> But beach sand DOES compute, once treated and arranged in a certain way.

The ability to compute is present in all matter. The ability for consciousness is present in all matter in the same way.

Perhaps these abilities are one and the same.

<comment><USER7> I can cut down a tree, mill it into lumber, and build a house out of it. It does not follow from this that a tree is a house. Once a tree is "treated and arranged" in the particular way that turns it into a house it is no longer a tree. Likewise, once beach sand is "treated and arranged" in the particular way required to make it compute, it isn't beach sand any more.

> The ability to compute is present in all matter.

No, it isn't. If you think it is, tell me how to build a computer out of a single hydrogen atom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What if your consciousness exists outside your physical brain, and within your brain is basically an aerial that is "tuned to your frequency", so no matter where you are your brain will always communicate with the same consciousness. I suppose with that theory comes the ability for two brains to tune into the same consciousness, and various other fun implications. Is there already a name for this?

<comment><USER26> Dualism.

Or 'Mind-body dualism' to disambiguate with other uses.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_dualism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_dualism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > And a radical change it truly is. Philosophers and neuroscientists often > assume that consciousness is like software, whereas the brain is like > hardware. This suggestion turns this completely around. When we look at what > physics tells us about the brain, we actually just find software—purely a > set of relations—all the way down. And consciousness is in fact more like > hardware, because of its distinctly qualitative, non-structural properties. > For this reason, conscious experiences are just the kind of things that > physical structure could be the structure of.

I'm not sure I buy the thesis, that conscious experience is the "hardware" and the brain is the "software".

It's hard for me to understand how a rock is ultimately comprised of conscious experiences, at its most fundamental level.

The attempt to tie together the "hard problem of consciousness" with the "hard problem of matter" comes across a bit square-peg/round-hole to me.

If I had to take a wild guess at these-

Hard problem of matter: it really is just vibrating strings at the bottom, and this is indeed where physical reality and math become indistinguishable. Blows the mind, and still so much more we can learn.

Hard problem of consciousness: I wish I knew more about the evolution of nervous systems, how can we tell when chemistry/biology becomes conscious thought? It's clearly some kind of feedback loop. In the future we could safely & non-invasively study the "bootstrap sequence" for various species brains as they make their first neural signals, from the earliest stages.

I really think we can solve this, or get a lot closer, but it will require some far-future technologies.

<comment><USER28> Being a rock would be a much heavier experience, weighted with the gravity of expectations for it to support the structures of shorted lived beings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For an entertaining examination of the question of consciousness and its implication for philosophers, I recommend Rupert Sheldrake's lecture here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhsObpja8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhsObpja8A)

</comment><comment><USER30> I recall as a child once that I literally thought the following:

> I can accept that the universe can give rise to agents with RI or AI. I can > even accept that as a consequence of this, some of these agents may have > self awareness. I am such an agent. Yet, I struggle comming to terms with > the fact that "I" am aware of myself.

I wish I could live long enough to find out how.

<comment><USER31> Yeah. I think a lot of people have that issue.

I have read about and understood a lot of physicalist theories of consciousness, but I have yet to see one that explains my subjective bubble of experience. I could see how this is all an illusion, but I can't see why I can perceive it then, why I have these vivid subjective experiences.

Conciousness is really quite odd, especially because I realized that most of the important functions in the brain are unconcious.

I don't find dualism satisfying either; it is not a testable theory.

<comment><USER32> > I don't find dualism satisfying either; it is not a testable theory.

I understand the sentiment here, but I also think we should be careful when it comes to the assumption that the truth -- whatever it happens to be -- will be a testable theory. Whether or not something is true is a fact independent of larger epistemological concerns.

Then again, perhaps you're just saying that if the truth turns out to be non- testable, then the truth won't be satisfying, which is a reasonable position (and I might agree).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Panpsychism is exciting. But there are two problems in it. One is the combination problem: what sort of collection of atoms are conscious and what are not. If you propose then that only agents or complex systems are conscious, you are faced with the second problem: the boundary condition. What do you call an agent, and why?

I'm ultimately hopeful that subjective experience will come to be seen as something fundamental. But the difficulty is that we can't just make up new entities / concepts in the world that don't agree with current scientific facts. So such a science of consciousness has to be compatible with modern findings of neuroscience and psychophysics.

It's exciting times! Let's hope that we're able to get a grip on this question of why we have this subjective experience of red colour.

<comment><USER34> I think panpsychism argues that everything is conscious, at all levels, simultaneously. There are no boundaries. What you experience as a boundary is just the limit of your awareness. Just as you don't consciously beat your heart or heal your wounds. And if you think about it a lot it's tough to really tell where your own boundary brain/body ends and the environment begins.

I like the panpsychism stuff because it resolves some other problems as well 'the transporter problem' \- are you the same person after transporting star trek style? Under panpsychism it doesn't matter because you are unawarely everything anyways.

Also the 'the split problem' \- say I separated you atom by atom to create two new people with half your parts - which one would you be? or both simultanously? or none? Panpsychism makes answering these questions easy as it argues that you are unawarely both.

A lot of people are trying to explain how we are discreet entities that arise from non-discreet pieces. Trying to figure out where boundaries end/begin. When do you become conscious. What is conscious and what is not. The paysychism theory explains all these things in the other direction by saying nothing is discreet. The sense of discreetness may as well be an evolutionary illusion for the survival of my bag of atoms.

Who knows what is true though, it'd be a breakthrough if there were a way to experimentally validate any of these theories..

<comment><USER35> Like Fourier analysis, every component sine wave is conscious, and every possible superposition of sine waves is also conscious. It's turtles all the way down.

What does it mean for an atom, an electron, a sine wave to be conscious? What can it perceive, consider, how can it act? But those are awarenesss, reason, agency... distinct from "consciousness".

Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is not conscious.

<comment><USER33> > Just because an entity cannot assert itself, does not mean it is not > conscious.

This does not give any more purchase on the world than we currently have. It's similar to saying that just because we have never seen laws of physics change, it doesn't mean they can't change. Of course, that may or may not be true. But would you bet on sun not rising tomorrow? New scientific theories / entities must have give us additional predictive power (grip) than what's currently possible. Otherwise why invent new assumptions?

<comment><USER35> For sure. The one thing it does is "solve" the problem of consciousness in a surprising, entertaining, and absurd way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My favourite explanation of the emergence of consciousness inherent in matter is an article by Elizabeth Grosz. It makes an argument for what i guess is a version of panpsychism that sounds, philosophically, very practical.

[http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia15/parrhesia15_gros...](http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia15/parrhesia15_grosz.pdf)

<comment><USER37> "Except you were not replying to the nautilus article, you were replying to the one i posted by Grosz"

Good point - there are so many cranks around I lose track.

I had a look at the Grosz article. I have never seen such pure excrement in word form. Can I get a job at Duke if I publish used toilet paper?

I think the following waffle in the article is beyond the Standard Model and therefore contradicted by the physicist's argument:

"It will be my claim here that materiality, bare matter, matter not in its simplified form but before being animated by life, is nevertheless always involved in and invested by incorporeal forces, forces of potential sense, forces of virtual significance that living bodies, in elaborating their own ends or finality, affirm and develop"

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> In summary, neutral monism.

In my opinion, here is a far better article on the same topic: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral- monism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/)

<comment><USER19> I thought the author was advocating for panspsychism, where all matter has a least a minimal amount of consciousness (or consciousness is what matter is non-relationally).

Neutral monism means that matter and consciousness emerge from something which is neither (like math in the platonic sense or something we have no conception of).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14066341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14066341)

</comment><comment><USER40> I can only know for sure that I am conscious, I only assume others are conscious because they are built kind of similar to the way I am. Though if we weren't conscious then would we talk about consciousness? What other topics wouldn't we talk about if we weren't conscious? We could still talk about experience because it would be functional, e.g. "I am experiencing pain" could be something I expect to come from an unconscious thing that has evolved to communicate pain in order to avoid death.

Could a conversation about consciousness occur from unconscious things?

<comment><USER41> Yes, but more specifically you seem to be fumbling your way towards a well- known though experiment in philosophy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie)

<comment><USER42> P-zombies bug me. For a p-zombie to be functionally identical to a human, it would have to process all of the same inputs as the human, including its looped-back internal inputs regarding its own state. Asserting that it's possible to do so _without_ producing an equivalent inner life to that of a 'real' human is just asserting some kind of supernatural basis for consciousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is an interesting essay, but as someone who agrees with Brentano that intentionality is the mark of the mental, I have to disagree with the second half of this passage:

> Our own consciousness is also usually consciousness _of_ something -- it > involves awareness or contemplation of things in the world, abstract ideas, > or the self. But someone who is dreaming an incoherent dream or > hallucinating wildly would still be conscious in the sense of having some > kind of subjective experience, even though they are not conscious of > anything in particular.

I have no way to prove this, but I firmly believe that even in extreme states of consciousness, we are still conscious _of_ something, in the sense that our attention is directed somewhere... our mind is always attending to something in particular. That "something" could be a bizarre fragment of a bizarre experience, but it's still something. I don't believe it's possible to be conscious without our attention being directed somewhere, even when the content of our experience appears to be maximally diffuse and unfocused. (In those cases, the content just _is_ the object of our attention, the thing we are conscious of.)

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe I'm super naive and if so please educate me, but honestly why are we even considered conscious?

Can't basically everything we do be just explained by the brain reacting to its environment? Even the derivative thoughts and actions and stuff you perform is just the brain reacting to itself as well. It's not like the brain is disconnected from itself, it's connected to sensing organs and everything everywhere inside.

Other observations: The older you get, the more robotic people seem, especially younger people and the mentally ill. It's like you can exactly see why they would say or do something based on what you know about their life or situation or even just the contexts beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes! Humans are matter and Humans are Conscious ergo at least some matter is conscious. Rather, matter is the conscious. But it's not just the matter, it's also the radiation and what have you between it.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've hypothesized something very similar on my own. Perhaps we'll discover that consciousness, or rather the _experience_ of consciousness, is either a property of matter in specific complex arrangements. Or not matter but perhaps spacetime in some respect. It doesn't really _explain_ how consciousness works, but could explain _why_ it's been so hard for us to understand, just as we don't really understand the nature of existence.

I don't believe it, but it's a nifty thing to ponder over.

<comment><USER19> That would be a form of strong emergentism, which is kind of magical in that properties that don't exist and can't in principle be predicted from earlier states come into being. But it's not like we get to make the rules of what's real. Something about existence is deeply mysterious, so why not consciousness?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If you find this topic interesting I think you'll benefit from reading "The unfortunate dualist"

[http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-23-unfortunate-...](http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-23-unfortunate- dualist.html?m=1)

The whole book "The Mind's I" is a fascinating collection of stories and essays dealing with this topic.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't get the need to push consciousness down the stack. Where is the beach in a grain of sand? Where is the song in a molecule of air?

</comment><comment><USER47> Recently learned about what I call the curse of consciousness: the ability and constant urge to question the world, this condition that comes with intelligence and never goes away.

So, what is consciousness? Life? How does the world works? Why didn't life come with an instruction manual? What is there to do? And why do I have so many questions that no one already solved?

</comment><comment><USER48> Some matter is conscious. My fingernail is not, but it's a subset of the matter that equals me, and I am conscious (you'll just have to take my word); I am a subset of the matter that equals all matter, so it has to follow that the set of all matter is conscious, though subsets of it are not.

It's all a matter of where you draw the boundaries.

<comment><USER49> Ummm. It's clear that the you that you think of as you does not identify with your fingernail, but is it not arrogant to assume that there is not a greater or lesser entity that incorporates your fingernail in its identity that might be conscious?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I for one fail to understand what is it so mysterious about consciences. Also, the article spends way more time lamenting the mystery than explaining what the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" is.

Yes, we can not build consciousness yet, so what. We have a very good reason to believe it is completely based on matter and physics because everything we have seen so far seems to be based on matter and physics.

One way or another, our brain seems to be some kind of computing meat machine that runs some kind of program(s). In order to keep us alive, this program is trying to predict what will happen next. A lion appears to be running in our direction? I predict it will get closer and closer and then it will eat us. Next step: in order to better predict the future, model in also your own actions. I will not stand here if I know a lion is going to eat me, I will run to that nearest tree. So the brain predicts that we will end up climbing that tree. Then, model in your understanding of the future and better grab a rope before you start running to that tree.

Throw in all kinds of imperfections, remnants of older systems, evolutionary pressures, instincts and emotions and voila, you appear to be conscious.

<comment><USER51> That describes behavior, but not the sense of self-awareness?

If conscious means, reacting to the environment (opposite of unconscious) then that could make sense.

But if it means self-aware it doesn't get any closer to explaining that.

<comment><USER50> Maybe I don't understand the question. What else is "self-awareness" than a program calculating its own actions based on the knowledge of its own prediction ability? Can you disprove such program will be self-aware? Can you prove your self-awareness is something more?

<comment><USER51> That's the whole conversation right there. I'm aware of my surroundings in an immediate sense with many states of being inside my head, immersed in my surroundings, caught up in the moment and many others across the spectrum. Unrelated to my cognitive function, logic or fitness for calculating action.

I could create a device that says "I'm self-aware" but does it make it so? You can get your Echo to do that.

<comment><USER50> The sense of a moment or you being in your head is only an illusion. You think you see your surroundings outside of your fovea spot, you feel an orgasm in your abdomen, you hear music filling the room - nothing new for the brain. Ask your brain who is doing the thinking in your head and it tells you it is YOU, and you believe it because it is the only answer you ever got.

Interestingly, the self-aware YOU is merely a thin layer of self-propelled lies on the surface of the animal brain. Once you get infected with toxoplasmosis you have a higher risk of automobile accidents or higher chance of promiscuous behavior. You think YOU made that decision? How sweet :)

A simple device that says "I'm self-aware" is easy to fool. But if build a device that is so good at answering the self-awareness question that you can not distinguish it from a human, and by definition, you will no be able to prove that it is not really self-aware.

<comment><USER51> All that seems to be couched in terms of somebody being fooled. Who is that somebody? Who is 'you'? I think that description is a contradiction in itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> If matter can't be conscious, then what can?

The choices seem to be:

1) consciousness can emerge from matter, and human beings are exhibit A for this.

2) human being are not conscious.

c) There's a "ghost in the machine", a soul, spirit or some other kind of supernatural ghost that's not reducable to matter as we know it.

<comment><USER53> Arrangements and patterns, perhaps. The matter isn't conscious. Consiciousness is in the arrangement of matter.

<comment><USER52> > Consiciousness is in the arrangement of matter.

Right, that's what "emerge" means in option A.

[https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_definition_of...](https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_definition_of_emergent_properties)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> For a phenomenological treatment, see The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram.

The idea that consciousness exists throughout the world as a gradient is not new.

The modern industrial conception of mind (newly transformed by the technological revolution) prescribes a more limited domain for theories of the mind.

</comment><comment><USER55> Has anyone read Schopenhauer's books like _The world as will and representation_?

His idea doesn't seem to be talked about much. However, I would admit that I don't fully comprehend the ideas of that book either.

</comment><comment><USER56> Do any of you know about Process Philosophy: [https://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/) ?

</comment><comment><USER57> we have the viewpoints of a lot of living beings here, but none from any actual, static, dead matter. sometimes our voices can be so numerous and loud they crowd out and frighten others. i guess what i'm saying is: can we perhaps take a breath, create some space and hopefully encourage some dead matter to step up and offer _its_ perspective?

</comment><comment><USER58> I think you could switch around nouns randomly in this article and arrive at an article that made as much sense.

</comment><comment><USER59> Are we all just the same universe perceiving itself?

(Which philosophies have developed this thought?)

</comment><comment><USER60> A draft of a paper exploring a novel, fundamental theory of consciousness, rooted in physics:

[https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/psyphy/PsyPhy.pdf](https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/psyphy/PsyPhy.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER61> I think there is a mutually intertwine relationship between Time and Consciousness.

Time => Consciousness => Time => Consciousness.

I don't think Time is inside Consciousness.

<comment><USER15> Even Time is a variable construct - affected by Gravity (Time Dilation etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The other way to look at this is that consciousness emerges from a certain kind of structure and processes independent of the matter it is represented on.

Consciousness would emerge in our brains from the neural structure and activity, but it would also emerge when computed in a computer simulation or (as a thought experiment) calculations on paper or xkcd-esque pebbles in sand.

That would make the computer, calculations on paper and pebbles in the sand as conscious as a human.

Which, admittedly sounds just as crazy as the idea of consciousness being tied to all matter.

</comment><comment><USER63> If you have a theory of consciousness, but it doesn't include something about learning, the theory is incomplete, most likely wrong.

</comment><comment><USER64> It's a good thing that Betteridge's law of headlines continues to be true.

I never understood the appeal of this idea, to be honest. This article also doesn't seem to think there are any strong arguments for it. Or at least, if the writer has them, they do not present them in any cogent way, instead piling appeal to emotions one upon the other until the entire thing collapses under its own weight.

</comment><comment><USER65> No, but information is.

</comment><comment><USER37> No. Next question!

</comment><comment><USER66> I could have been born at any time, in any place in the universe - or not at all, for that matter. Why do I get to experience the universe in a unique way? What gives rise to this?

<comment><USER67> You're wondering why you weren't also born at a different time and place? You were.

You were also born in 1988 in CT. This other you was born to different parents, had a different childhood, and has different memories. You think you are different from this other you (and you are!) because you have separate thoughts and memories. You remember your own life and not your _other_ life because humans aren't telepathic.

In case it isn't yet clear, this other you is _me_. Hi, other me. We haven't talked before, I don't think.

In other words, if you _were_ born in a different place at a different time in a different community... then that you wouldn't be you. It would be a different person. So it doesn't really make sense to ask "what if _I_ had been born at a different time or place".

<comment><USER68> >There but for the grace of God go I

I like to entertain the idea that humans are the host of a species of sentient alien bacteria that lives in our guts and controls us through the vagus nerve and uses humans to build technology to advance to the point where they can build space ships to colonize other planets. Could make a good sci-fi book if anything...

<comment><USER18> Bacteria don't have enough memory to represent technology, nor the necessary organization to ... I don't know, as whole they are rather complex and can at least share information like antigen markers to kill us effectively. There are actual sci-books on the matter, you know.

<comment><USER69> Then we don't have enough memory to understand our technology either. We accomplish that as a superorganism, and by building tools to augment our abilities. Maybe bacteria built us as complex, extraterrestrial spore capsules.

<comment><USER18> We _are_ nothing but a symbiosis of single celled organisms and then some.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Of course. We are matter.

<comment><USER71> So are rocks.

<comment><USER72> Rocks react in a simple way. If you strike them, they reverberate. One could argue this is a very simple type of consciousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> These kind of silly ideas refuted here: [http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont- thin...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-think.html) Tl;DR only the physical properties of matter observed in the Standard Model can contribute to consciousness at the energy levels in the brain, apparently.

These kinds of problems are not going to be solved by "philosophers" who don't know enough neuroscience or physics, as any proposed ontology will have to fit with scientific observation.

When will cranks like the author of this article be booted out of the academy? The article is utter drivel.

</comment><comment><USER73> If so, then some math equation is conscious, too. It is like asking what color is that smell?

<comment><USER74> No and no. Math equations are abstract concepts within the mind. This question is about how the mind exists _in the first place_. Nothing here even remotely implies that math equations are conscious.

<comment><USER75> Does the Mandelbrot set exist? We have a mathematical description of it. It's easy to write software to create pictures "of it". Mandelbrot himself wrote software to create an image of it based on his definition - prior to knowing what it looked like. Indeed, he was surprised at the complexity of what he saw. Did that set of points exist prior to a human stumbling on its definition? Does it exist independent of someone rendering an image of it? I would argue that it does exist - and always has - in some form.

<comment><USER76> This is effectively Max Tegemark's TOE, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.

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

 _Tegmark 's MUH is: Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.[3] That is, the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics (specifically, a mathematical structure). Mathematical existence equals physical existence, and all structures that exist mathematically exist physically as well. Observers, including humans, are "self-aware substructures (SASs)". In any mathematical structure complex enough to contain such substructures, they "will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically 'real' world".[4]_

<comment><USER75> Well said. In my previous comment I deleted a paragraph where I wrote something like: If there exists a mathematical model/definition of our universe - weather that has been discovered by humans or not - that is sufficient to ensure that it exists. While I have read of the "existence" of mathematical objects I was not aware of anyone writing that we live in such a thing - I figured it must be out there somewhere. Thanks for the link and providing a name for the concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I've been wondering this for a long time: if we can understand every detail of the inner working of the brain, what happens if I observe my brain in real time? Is it like calling a function recursively without an exit condition?

<comment><USER78> Obviously not? Looking at your brain is not the same as executing it. You'd just be looking at pictures.

It'd be more like calling a function that reformats it own source code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Let us reduce this to a simpler question. Can Matter detect i.e. collapse quantum wave? If it is conscious but cannot even detect quantum event, is it really conscious? As this is physical event we can check, we can at least determine that.

<comment><USER78> Best learn some actual quantum physics before you start pretending to understand it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not quite all the matter, but self replicating agents under the right circumstances (evolution) can be. Consciousness is fundamentally a function that preserves the agent in its environment. It's a combination of two optimisation processes - massive random search for its architecture, and learning. It's only purpose is to exist, thus it has to protect the needs of its body and make more of itself. If it doesn't take this purpose, then it is replaced by other agents that do.

<comment><USER74> Not a good explanation. Why would a physically instantiated function feel like anything at all, rather than just a bunch of matter moving around? The question is about why the feelings _themselves_ exist. "Functions" do not ever describe the feeling of the smell of chocolate or falling in love. That is the mystery. You have not remotely touched it.

<comment><USER11> > Why would a physically instantiated function feel like anything at all

Because its life depends on it. Seeing a berry and not distinguishing its colour could be fatal.

> rather than just a bunch of matter moving around

We're all a bunch of matter moving around. But we have perception - which is just a neural net converting images to image representations (and other senses in a similar way), and a value function - which rates the expected future rewards in a situation. Perception + value (emotion) creates what philosophers call qualia. These systems have been created by evolution because they are useful for survival.

> The question is about why the feelings themselves exist.

Again, because we have specific apparatus that computes perception representations and estimates future rewards related to our current situation and action, and because these representations are essential for life to continue.

The key differences between an agent and a non-agent are self replication and learning. We have these qualities while rocks don't. Self replication enables evolution and gives an intrinsic goal, a constraint if you will, to the agent. The constraint is what learning and evolution optimise against.

More fundamentally, it's a process that maintains low entropy (order) of the body inside the environment by actively compensating for perturbations.

<comment><USER74> > Because its life depends on it. Seeing a berry and not distinguishing its > colour could be fatal.

Not at all. There is absolutely no reason that the behavior of distinguishing berries should have any felt experience at all from a functional perspective. What we'd like to explain are the feelings themselves. A robot can distinguish berries without feeling a thing.

> Again, because we have specific apparatus that computes perception > representations and estimates future rewards related to our current > situation and action, and because these representations are essential for > life to continue.

This is just sidestepping the actual question. This doesn't explain the nature of felt experience at all. The question is why these feelings exist at all. What about "computation" leads to the complex experience of falling in love or tasting chocolate? And why would it lead to the particular qualities that we actually experience, rather than some other qualities? Even if you believe that qualia exist to causally affect our behavior (a contentious and problematic view, given that we can't measure them), why _those_ specific qualities and not some others that could produce the same behavior? There are so many deep mysteries here that you are simply handwaving by feigning understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> >Is matter conscious

Not gonna read that.

No. No, matter is not conscious. Go home nautil.us, you're drunk.

<comment><USER81> Are you not made of matter? Or are you not conscious?

<comment><USER64> Toast is made of matter. You are made of matter. Therefore, you are toast.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would anyone else like a recommended reading section? - <AUTHOR>

I'm reading a book that's really good for entrepreneurs but I have no way to post it.<p>Harvard Business book - Innovator's Solution <comment><USER2> Isn't all of Hacker News a recommended reading section? You can post a link to the amazon page or better yet, to a book review.</comment>


Buyer Beware: Hollywood Special Effects Now Permeate Property Listings - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-sellers-doctored-photos-challenge-buyers-bots-11551708001 <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/avH5Lr](https://outline.com/avH5Lr)

I don't really understand this. If I showed up to look at a property with my agent and it didn't look anything like the photos in the ad, I would be angry that my time was wasted. It'd guarantee I wouldn't be interested in buying.

Are there really enough "sight unseen" buyers that these deceptive ads are still worthwhile?

<comment><USER3> I think I saw an article... I did I did see an article!!

> Sight-Unseen in 2017: 35% of Home buyers Bid on a Home Before Seeing it in > Person

[https://www.redfin.com/blog/2018/02/sight-unseen- in-2017.htm...](https://www.redfin.com/blog/2018/02/sight-unseen-in-2017.html)

I've seen hundreds of home photo's on real estate sites. Almost all of them are heavily edited.

Tip: Get the disclosures before looking at the house. And also understand disclosures are to protect the seller not you.

Tip: Put your bid at the last minute and check disclosures right before. I've seen realtors drop bad news at 11pm Sunday with bids due 8am Monday.</comment></comment>


SICP translated to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs1101s/sicp/ Sections of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs translated to JavaScript by Professor Martin Henz with executable examples. <comment><USER2> Obvious objections - JS has no tail call elimination, no macros, and state- changing is managed with entirely different conventions in Scheme. Also the conceit of SICP (not really justified) is that they don't have to teach you syntax, because homoiconicity. Still, I think it's a worthy pursuit to try to bring the insights of this book to a wider audience.

Side note: the navigation is really irritating. The back button only works sometimes, because it's replacing content without doing some kind of pushState. So you have to hunt for links.

Another side note: Sean Burke and Piers Cawley have ported some of mjd's excellent book Higher-Order Perl to JavaScript. This might be even better, because both Perl and JS have C-like syntax hiding some impressive functional capabilities. I wish someone would finish that, but I guess few people even know about HOP, these days.

[http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html](http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html)

[http://www.bofh.org.uk/2010/11/18/higher-order- javascript](http://www.bofh.org.uk/2010/11/18/higher-order-javascript)

<comment><USER3> I know HOP.

It depresses me how much of HOP is irrelevant in Python because they have proper iterators. And how few Perl programmers realize that these days the lack is a major omission in the language.

<comment><USER4> JavaScript doesn't have them either, until you include a functional toolchain library like Underscore. Does Perl have any similar library?

<comment><USER2> JS 1.7, already available in some browsers and bleeding edge Node, has iterators and generators.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guid...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Iterators_and_Generators)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's next? "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment: Now with Javascript!" ?

Or "Linux Device Drivers: Javascript edition" ?

Can we just accept that JS is not for everything?

<comment><USER6> I just want to meet one programmer who can work on server side code, client side code, etc who can't handle them being written in different languages. This fad just doesn't make any sense to me. Let's reinvent the wheel so we can have JSON literals instead of Ruby hashes!

<comment><USER7> I always thought this would be self-evident to people, but apparently not: The reason why I want to have Javascript on both the client and the server is so I can re-use code.

My software has a fairly large chunk of code which is a gardening expert system. I'm hesitant to call it AI because it's so dumb, but it's along those lines. It knows things like "If you live in Phoenix and it's April, you should wait to plant your lettuce until September".

It's useful to have it on the client, when you're in the garden and there's no connectivity, or when you tweak your settings and don't want to have to download a bunch of "conclusions" from the server. It's useful to have it on the server so that the server can send emails, pre-cache HTML for faster loading pages, etc.

If my server is written in Ruby (which is is right now) then I have to re- implement that entire system twice. That's double the code. It feels gross. And I can't help but feel like most web-apps have code like this that could be shared between the client and the server.

<comment><USER8> Fortunately, I think we're entering an era where JS can be a nearly transparent target language for translation from the languages of our choice, with things like asm.js and source maps. We're not quite there yet, but it definitely seems like where we're going.

<comment><USER9> I'd prefer the other way round. JavaScript is better than most popular programming languages (including Python). It is not perfect, so I consent there might better languages out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really sad to see that such amazing book that uses such nice language is now transformed to monster with JS. Why would you do that? Painful to see all that...

<comment><USER11> This will only serve to perpetuate the stupid meme that "Javascript is basically Scheme with curly braces and semicolons"

<comment><USER12> [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript- isnt...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt-scheme/)

(Note that the author intended this to be humourous/exaggerated - Some people took exception though.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of chapter 4 will be impossible to really translate to JS because JS has no macros (required to implement some of the special forms like delay) and isn't homoiconic.

<comment><USER14> [http://sweetjs.org/](http://sweetjs.org/)

<comment><USER15> It's not about macros, it's about homoiconicity. I encourage you to read chapters 4 and 5 and think about how sweet.js would help you port those chapters to JS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Some people will stop at nothing to convert the world to JavaScript and Ruby.

(please don't do the latter... or is it too late?)

<comment><USER16> The web developers have taken over, it seems.

Edit: I say this as a web developer. I feel like it's often forgotten that Ruby and Javascript aren't the only languages worth using.

<comment><USER17> Well, I never used Ruby, besides to see what this Ruby on Rails was all about and I already knew Python since the version 1 days.

For me the only place for JavaScript is on the browser.

For anything else, there are endless languages to choose from.

<comment><USER18> _For anything else, there are endless languages to choose from._

The Americans have taken over and the Americans have, based on their own linguistic experience, decided most people can only handle one spoken language and one programming language.

For some of us, we can handle six programming languages and be fine.

For "average" people, they're lucky to get one programming language, so it was decided to fad-hype-hipster promote One Language To Rule Them All for fronted, backend, sideend, middleware, topware, bottomware, programming your embedded system, programming your car, scripting your operating system, and programming your blender.

Look on github for how many people write shell scripts in ruby because they don't know how bash works. You can find the same over-syntax'd-programming- environment-as-shell-script with node too. We're the exceptions. They can't handle the truth.

<comment><USER19> > Look on github for how many people write shell scripts in ruby because they > don't know how bash works. You can find the same over-syntax'd-programming- > environment-as-shell-script with node too. We're the exceptions. They can't > handle the truth.

As someone who has done this (and who currently works in C), I will say only that shell scripts translated to Ruby can be a lot easier to read and maintain than those written in bash... if I get to the point where I'm having to pipe to more than two of awk/sed/grep I will generally just write it in Ruby, because then my mother could read it. YMMV though. In every other sense I agree with you entirely, and I think the proliferation of JS rewrites of things that work in actually-designed languages is appalling.

<comment><USER18> You found the one exception. There's a fuzzy line when dealing with shell scripts.

If you're just iterating over a directory and checking some files, that's great shell script territory. If you're making a launcher script for another program to set the environment, check directories, fix permissions, and run pre-flight checks, that's great for shell script.

But, sometimes we end up with feature creep. You start out with "Well, this shell script just has to parse some CSV and insert into sqlite" then before you know it, it also has to check another pre-existing DB for redundancy checks or constraints, then you're 100 pages into the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide trying to make Bash do something that would be a six liner in Perl 4.

The benefits of over-programming bash scripts is extensive portability though (if you make sure you aren't using features only in very late version of the shell).

<comment><USER20> Except if by portability you include non-unix systems. Then you're probably better off with Perl (for example) again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Porting it to javascript kinda defeats the idea that principles described here transcends any current trend.

<comment> francis- BINGO!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What an abomination.

<comment><USER22> Wow, stay classy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Background: this is the textbook used for a class at NUS (National University of Singapore). Previous iterations of the class, CS1101S, used the original scheme version of SICP, but omitted chapters 4 and 5 in the interest of time. [1]

I took the scheme version of the class and learned a ton. From what I've heard, the reasons for the switch included javascript being more practical and the previous professor deciding to take a break from teaching that class. Basically, many of the reasons overlap with that for Berkeley switching 61A from scheme to python [2].

I've also heard that the javascript version of the class is just as rigorous and challenging as the scheme version.

Shameless plug: if you want an interactive version of SICP in the original scheme, check out [http://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/1-1-elements.html](http://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/1-1-elements.html)

[1] Which might explain why the lack of macros in javascript wasn't a concern

[2] [http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/61a.html](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/61a.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> why, God, why?

<comment><USER25> Perhaps due to the increasing popularity of JavaScript and the decreasing accessibility or usage of Scheme.

<comment><USER26> Due to the increasing popularity of casual dining and the decreasing accessibility of Danish nobility, I've rewritten Hamlet to be an Appleby's assistant manager.

The fifth act of SICP is meta-linguistic abstraction, and among Javascript's merits it is not. SICP is no more a book about Scheme than _Moby Dick_ is a whale tale.

I admire the effort, and understand the sentiment behind the project. I just think the authors are missing the big picture of SICP. In fairness, few of us are Ablesons or Sussmans.

<comment><USER27> > Due to the increasing popularity of casual dining and the decreasing > accessibility of Danish nobility, I've rewritten Hamlet to be an Appleby's > assistant manager.

Replace "casual dining" with "megacorporations" and you get an actual movie made in 2000 [1]. And, of course, that example is not unique [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10].

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171359/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171359/)

[2] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114279/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114279/)

[3] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/)

[4] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184791/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184791/)

[5] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265713/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265713/)

[6] _et cetera_

[7] _et cetera_

[8] _et cetera_

[9] _ad nauseum_

[10] _ad infinitum_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cool - next they should try "How to Solve it by computer" ([http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Prentice-Hall- International-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Prentice-Hall- International-Series-Science/dp/0134340019))

</comment><comment><USER29> Meta-gripe: the navigation seems to use some kind of asynch loading without pushing to the browser history stack, and I'm finding it very difficult to move back and forth from the ToC to chapters. Maybe this can be addressed.

<comment><USER19> Check out my new library, SICPinJSnavigation.js

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why so square? Translating SICP to Forth would be at least eclectic and truly creative gesture.

<comment><USER31> JonesForth at least seems in the same spirit as SICP, though what it accomplishes is different.

It explains and implements a Forth environment from scratch, initially in literate assembler code (yes, that exists) and then, once that's bootstrapped enough, in literate Forth that it runs using itself.

[http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wstein/www/home/wbhart/...](http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wstein/www/home/wbhart/jonesforth.S)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted" \- [http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo_quote](http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo_quote)

This generation is going to be rewrite in Javascript/v8, everything that can be written in Javascript.

<comment> qu4z-2 And a few things that can't, I suspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Btw Prof. Martin Henz was one of the major contributors to the design of Oz.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's like you didn't even understand why it was done in scheme...

</comment><comment><USER35> Wanted to care but the page wouldn't display without Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER36> blasphemy!</comment>


The Choices We Make - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-choices-we-make-a1b794689018 <comment><USER2> I enjoyed this opinion a lot. Code anxiety can be a real problem, but sometimes you just have to let the interns do their thing and hope for the best. Perfectionism is a killer when it comes to productivity.</comment>


Live global map of WannaCry infections checking in - <AUTHOR> https://intel.malwaretech.com/WannaCrypt.html <comment><AUTHOR> Comment from the person who shared it on the "Internet is Beautiful" subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/6auwty...](https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/6auwty/watch_existing_wannacry_infections_checking_in/dhhm1fy/)

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

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice! Lots of infections checking in from Europe and coastal China</comment>