Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/06/28/483805061/has-physics-gotten-something-really-important-really-wrong <comment><USER2> This is Smolin, making his usual, and valid, criticisms of modern physics. Smolin's basic complaint is that there is no experimental evidence for string theory. The math is pretty, and a whole generation of physicists have worked on it, but nothing is experimentally testable. Everything is too small or at too high an energy level. A practical implication is that it doesn't lead to any technology.

Smolin also doesn't like many-worlds, because it talks about unreachable regions. This he considers too speculative. There's a basic problem in quantum mechanics, which leads to Schroedinger's Cat, the Copenhagen Interpretation, and, in the end, many-worlds.[1]

Physics has been stuck on this problem for almost a century now. Philosophy won't help.

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

<comment><USER3> Which is exactly why people still work on things like Bohmian Mechanics/Pilot Wave theory[0, 1].

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory) [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_wave)

There's a lot of really strange stuff going on with QM and ST, even tho Brian Greene works primarily on ST he did somewhat coined the concept of the "giant leap" that to some extent theoretical physics has run off way too far from anything that can be proven using experimentation.

>Physics has been stuck on this problem for almost a century now. Philosophy won't help.

Philosophy does help, infact it might be the only thing that would help in it's essence philosophy is about how you approach and solve problems, and more importantly how you think about them. It might need be that we do need a major philosophical change in the world of theoretical physics and start thinking about QM and the universe in general in completely different matter.

There is a lot of natural bias that pushes your thinking into a very predictable path and this plagues theoretical physics just like any other field if not more. The bleeding edge of theoretical physics, especially in the past 60-70 years has really shifted towards almost the metaphysical regardless of how much elegant math there is behind it.

<comment><USER4> What is this idea that making the math prettier or more elegant is not important? That's like saying a new algorithm isn't important; new math or models make problems potentially tractable that aren't now.

All of our math is an attempt to represent things or ideas. The most important thing I learned in my physics education was how to read math as a metaphor for putting together things I understand into a picture of a thing I don't understand. But I don't think anyone serious thinks that their math is "true", such an assertion just makes no sense. The point of it is to find new ways to approach the evidence to see if it gives some different metaphor that wasn't obvious before.

I don't know enough modern physics to have an opinion on whether this is the case for cosmology or string theory, but I do know that in recent history just formulating a problem slightly differently can suddenly make the solution fit in the same framework as a known simpler problem. Not unlike things I read all the time about algorithm research at all, right?

Teaching and understanding models is predicated highly on metaphor, it's much easier to explain for instance that MRI works via a quantum effect that has the same math as a harmonic oscillator than it is to just... dive in. The model isn't the universe, but humans live by metaphor and so the model is important.

Which is perhaps not the point you were trying to make; I don't know enough modern physics to know whether a critique of these new areas as purely fantastical is justified, but it's also pretty fantastical to think of a particle in a box as if it were like a weight on a spring. Who am I to say that something about this approach can't make a currently intractable, approximate, or computational impossible problem solvable with time?

<comment><USER5> The danger with math is that it can prove its own truths based on its own internal rules, so there's a temptation to believe that whatever you can describe mathematically describes something that actually exists in the real world. But until you've tested it experimentally, you don't know whether you're describing a total fantasy world, like The Lord of the Rings, or something actually real, but boring, like an apple. Just because you've proven with mathematical certainly the existence of hobbits doesn't mean you'll actually find any.

<comment><USER6> > The danger with math is that it can prove its own truths based on its own > internal rules...

Actually, there's a theorem about that ;) Godel's Incompleteness theorem.

I would describe the problem more like: The new model matches the old model in almost everything (because we've observed a lot). But the math works out quite nicely if itty bitty particles behave this way when exploded at super high temperatures. We have a hard time watching those particles explode, so it's not really tested. Either way it works out, it's not really going to matter for anyone who doesn't explode tiny particles.

<comment><USER7> I believe you've misconstrued d13's intended meaning. In short, what they said is something can be mathematically consistent without being physically realistic. GIT is not really pertinent here.

<comment><USER8> Gabriel's Horn is probably more appropriate: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel's_Horn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel's_Horn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think the problem is string theory _per se_ — I think the problem is that we're running up on the bounds of what we can test experimentally, and further progress is going to require some really cleverly designed experiments that can probe Planck scale events. Although the greatest physicists throughout history have for the most part been theoreticians, it may be the case that in the future, the greatest physicists will be experimentalists because of the extraordinary amount of creativity needed to design novel experiments that can probe the most obscure corners of reality.

String theory isn't pseudoscience, because it does make testable, falsifiable predictions. In fact, it makes the same predictions that quantum field theory does for the phenomena that we are currently capable of testing (and arguably using a more elegant framework than QFT provides). The problem is that the predictions that string theory makes _beyond_ QFT are currently way outside the realm of experimental assessment. This doesn't make the predictions false — if that's the way the universe really is, we just may be incapable of knowing that for a long time. There are a few hints that at least some of the predictions of string theory may be incorrect — we have yet to find any evidence of supersymmetry, and many physicists thought the LHC would turn up at least _some_ evidence of this if it existed.

Regardless, I think people get too hung up on buzz-phrases like "is time real?" or "are we in a multiverse?". A lot of these are what I consider irrelevant to science, as the goal of science is to make accurate predictions about the future. If there is another universe out there, it is _by definition_ unreachable from our current universe, so it makes no difference to science whatsoever. Likewise, what is or isn't "real" has no bearing on how accurately one can compute the evolution of some system's state through time.

<comment><USER10> > String theory isn't pseudoscience, because it does make testable, > falsifiable predictions.

I feel like it's also worth pointing out that string theory is also a possible solution to an extremely difficult mathematical problem. You don't fully get an appreciation for this when reading popular accounts. You don't realize that string theory is not just mumbo-jumbo about strings that someone made up but rather that the extraordinarily sophisticated math behind it actually works out, something that can't be said for the vast, vast majority of attempts at resolving the issues that string theory does resolve.

The difficulty of this problem is such that even coming up with possible solutions is itself a Herculean feat (witness the fact that Edward Witten, who proposed M theory, was awarded a Fields medal). This is ultimately why string theory has ever been taken seriously. None of this means string theory is correct, of course.

<comment><USER11> > resolving the issues that string theory does resolve.

Is there a list of such issues somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a layman, one thing I don't understand is why we suppose there has to be dark matter and energy in the universe.

I understand that dark matter is used to explain gravitational irregularities when observing galaxies. However, saying 'there is x amount of unobservable stuff there' in order to make our calculations correct seems like lazy science.

Are there any theories that don't include dark matter or energy? Can gravity function differently depending on its location (space or time) in the universe?

<comment><USER13> > However, saying 'there is x amount of unobservable stuff there' in order to > make our calculations correct seems like lazy science.

That's not how this works.

Dark matter and energy are placeholders for anything that can explain the discrepancy. The most likely explanation for dark matter is just undiscovered particles, but changing the physics of it to make the calculations come out right is also something that people do.

There's not really a difference between the two either. Post-QFT the concept of a particle is much blurrier than before, and "changing the physics" might just involve introducing a new background field that behaves differently in different places based on its concentration. In essence, you have introduced a new particle.

Please note that while it feels like lazy science, coming up with alternate theories that have the same success and rigor as QFT is very hard. Its not that they are hanging up their pencils and declaring premature victory. It is that literally the best description of physics out there to date doesn't explain this, and within that description yet-to-be-observed particles is its best bet. They are working on better explanations, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

<comment><USER14> "The most likely explanation for dark matter is just undiscovered particles" <\--- all valid points but I'd argue that dark matter may actually be strictly the result of yet-to-be-understood underlying fields. e.g. dark matter may not have any particles itself but could be the gravitational of spacetime in a sense

Just a nit.

<comment><USER15> Unless the field is not quantized, this is not a distinction. Electrons, protons, etc. are a fields as well.

<comment><USER14> The fields that results in the Casimir effect are non-quantized, correct?

<comment><USER15> On the contrary, Casimir forces only arise because the field is quantized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So as per usual with headlines in the form of a question, the answer from the article appears to be no. It might be more accurate to title it "Physicist and Philosopher question the empirical underpinnings of physics". There's not really anything here to disprove anything from the current standard models.

<comment><USER14> The word "empirical" implies that there's some evidence to back up the claims in the work on string theory and the multiverse. A more apt summary may be "Physicist and Philosopher point out lack of empirical underpinnings for esoteric branches of physics"

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That we aren't capable of experiments that distinguish between various forms of string theories doesn't negate the fact that string theories are _already compatible_ with all the experiments we've already done and are likely to be done in the near future. This is no small achievement. There is no other framework that is even in contention right now.

Perhaps when we have some alternative theory that survives that basic hurdle, we can discuss whether we're wasting time pursuing string theory rather than some other idea.

<comment><USER18> Supersymmetry is one (although it's not really a competitor to string theory, more an orthogonal theory).

One of the complaints on string theory, as I understand it, is that it ends up being too general: it sort of implies that just about any phenomenon could be plausible, which makes it really hard to falsify. It's not so much that it's made predictions that turned out to be true, but rather that it can be accommodated to fit prior experiments. From a Bayesian perspective, we haven't received any evidence of its truth, only evidence of nontruth of other theories.

<comment><USER10> I'm not a theoretical physicist, but my understanding is that supersymmetry is in fact a _prediction_ of many versions of string theory. So it's definitely not orthogonal at all. It's a fundamental part of superstring theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you disregard aesthetics, what are the questions we're trying to answer in physics, particularly those that involve observable phenomena? I get that string theory replicates the predictions of the theories that preceded it, the critique I'd infer is that it doesn't offer any practical advantages over the previous theories, it doesn't predict anything new that we can observe, and it does not make any problems more tractable (I think the opposite? Ie most problems are far more intractable using string theory)

It seems like there's some lack of imagination here, like physics is "done", there's nothing more to answer, it's all just up to other sciences to answer the rest of the (many) questions about why the world is what it is and how it works. A reset of approaches is interesting, but it still needs to be in service of something, doesn't it?

<comment><USER20> > what are the questions we're trying to answer in physics, particularly those > that involve observable phenomena?

(disclaimer: I am not a physicist, etc.)

Between GR and QM, we can explain most observable phenomena, but it's intuitively obvious that both are emergent properties of some deeper law.

I don't suspect frontier physics is ever really studied with an eye to application. Those tend to follow, but the bleeding edge of physics is usually advanced just out of intellectual curiosity, to try to understand the universe.

In this sense, String Theory is just an attempt the unify General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. The fact that it's not apparently testable is unfortunate,

We can have pedantic arguments about whether that's "Real Science", since science by definition requires testable hypotheses, but at the end of the day, I don't think it's crazy to pursue a model to encompass QM and GR, even if it can't be called "Science".

<comment><USER19> > I don't suspect frontier physics is ever really studied with an eye to > application.

Previously they did have experimental results they were trying to understand. There might be follow up experiments to confirm, but there were already experimental tensions.

> I don't think it's crazy to pursue a model to encompass QM and GR, even if > it can't be called "Science".

I'm not so concerned about whether something is science, it just seems like vanity to pursue unification that provides no insight into the complex world around us.

<comment><USER21> If calling it science bothers you, then call it mathematics instead.

It's obvious to everyone involved that GM and QM, both the best physically verified theories at their respective energies, are deeply incompatible with one another.

Unfortunately, physical situations where we can see them disagreeing are outside of our reach at the moment. You're suggesting the entire physics community just give up theorizing until we can plausibly reach unification energies, even if that's a thousand years from now?

> it just seems like vanity to pursue unification that provides no insight > into the complex world around us

Pure theory has a funny habit of finding applications in the most unexpected places.

Anyway, if it's an interesting problem, and people want to spend their time thinking about it, who are we to tell them to stop?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They should take their own medicine. How would one test those three assumptions they make?

As for Mathematics being selectively real, I agree with that totally. Mathematics is just a language we use to describe models and their properties in a most rigorous way. That's all. Can we find a model of the universe from which we can derive all its properties? Unlikely (see Gödel), if so the model would have to be pretty "primitive" and thus too large for comprehension. But so what, we can find great models for certain aspects of reality, and I don't see a limit for how far this can be taken to get better and better models for more and more areas of reality.

</comment><comment><USER23> Logical and structured thinking is good tool when doing physics, because a precise model can be used as a language and communicated and taught, since it's simple.

But those models are correct only in what they describe, they don't completely describe nature. They are just that, models. Every time science has progressed, it's either an "exception to the rule", or a re-understanding of an incomplete theory.

I'm not a scientist, but I vividly remember how a physics professor warned us about the laws he was teaching. Those laws work well, use them, but never pretend that they're universal and that they will be for the next 20 or 100 years.

You can see this problem in quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is being very hard on philosophy and certainty in general. Up to a point, using models might be a limit to physics.

<comment><USER24> I am a physicist and one thing that you realise, as you develop as a scientist, is the fact that the perception that "physics describes everything perfectly" is not true. When you start out, lets say as an undergraduate, you feel the pressure to be "correct". You struggle to find the correct answers or construct them. The breakthrough comes when you realise that we use mathematics as a tool to extract answers; we do our best to make the best educated guess we can and interpret the results.

A great example would be with something like density functional theory (DFT), where we make extremely crude approximations for exchange and correlation functionals. By understanding the limits of our model we can use this information to improve the results; as Feynman said: "The first job of a theoretical physicist is to prove yourself wrong as fast as possible".

I'm not sure I agree with your last statement:

>Up to a point, using models might be a limit to physics.

I argue that this is the most important thing to physics. The moment you start to leave a model, you allow for subjective speculation. I argue that this has no place in physics and is the prime reason that physics has broken away from philosophy.

<comment><USER23> > you allow for subjective speculation

Don't you need to speculate at one moment or another to improves physics?

Of course you can only do that once you studied physics a lot, but if you want to be creative in physics, don't you have to "speculate" that work with the data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And yet, that's all the point of theoretical science. To think in ways even if they are not provable at this time. And then experimental scientists come along, look at the theories and then think about how to experiment on them. That's how it works. And I think if they want to disprove any of this they need to show that this system is broken. I need to google but I'm sure everybody can remember hearing a few times in their life that there were scientists like Einstein who had ideas that could not be proven in their life time but could be proven now with modern computers and now we know they were true. We admire that and we need that. And that's the thesis they need to fight if they want to convince me of theoretical science being wrong or bad.

<comment><USER26> Nope. The point of science is to follow scientific method, which is, contrary to the popular opinion, not about piling up meaningless abstractions cemented by dogmas and wishful thinking, but throwing every possible _objection_ to the hypothesis, finding controversions and inconsistencies with other aspects of reality, and only when it stands nevertheless, that hypothesis could be accepted as a current approximation to the truth.

This "science" is as bad pile of nonsense as Hegelian "philosophy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Shallow criticisms of string theory usually miss how difficult it is to come up with physical theories that don't lead to some kind of contradiction. For this reason, lots of new physics has been discovered by looking at mathematical constraints first and experiments second. The math of string theory is pretty, but more importantly it works out, and this alone makes string theory worthy of some attention. If it's getting too much attention, that's probably more a sign that there are very few interesting research directions left in physics than that all the physicists are deluding themselves.

</comment><comment><USER28> Genuine confusion here -- how can you assert time is real?

From my limited understanding, time is merely the measurement of change. A comet goes from point A to B, and like a screen flickering, it is in a discrete point in space every step along the way. It is time that is introduced when asking ourselves, "how long did it take?" or "when was it at X?" but how can it be woven into the fabric of the universe? If we take reality to be right here, right now, it doesn't seem to exist but rather is a human invention to help us map change.

<comment><USER29> Thing to understand is that time is not a measurement, time is what we measure - as a phenomenon that has independent existence as part of the physical reality. More accurately (and perhaps more confusingly), time should be thought of as one of the aspects (components) of the 4-dimensional "spacetime", where spatial dimensions are, in fact, inseparable from the temporal dimension - so that the results of measurements of each component individually end up being dependent on the frame of reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This was a pretty useless article with no real information or details to counter existing theories. I know the layman usually isn't interested in the details, but you can't just write about _nothing_. Are there consistent theories with those three features? What are features of existing models of cosmology which will have to be changed if the three features are assumed? The reader will never know.

</comment><comment><USER31> To me, it's all a matter of the empirical data and the math that attempts to model that data. Those two sides of science have continually bootstrapped each other to the point we've arrived at today.

Quoted from the book in the article:

"Our mathematical inventions offer us no shortcut to timeless truth... They never replace the work of scientific discovery and of imagination. The effectiveness of mathematics in natural science is reasonable because it is limited and relative."

I'm not sure what the authors mean by this. Are we to ultimately abandon our attempts at a consistent, logical explanation of what we see? If so, that's when we revert to un-scientific and, essentially, religious ways of thinking. I'd argue that the pursuit of a mathematical explanation of observations _is_ the work of scientific imagination. Mathematics is merely the most reliable way we've devised of communicating what we imagine to other people. And sometimes the math, itself, sings to you and that drives advances in understanding that are totally valid.

<comment><USER32> Smolin wrote a paper on the "reasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in science. [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03733v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03733v1.pdf)

<comment><USER31> Thanks for this. Very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I agree with Smolin that much physics has moved away from experimental observation, especially string theory, I think the three numbered points in the article are wrong.

My take - the only way the universe could have got here from nothing as it were is if it's basically maths and seems real to us. I mean what does basic particle behavior look like - a bunch of maths and not much else, and what exist without needing creating - mathematical patterns and relations and nothing else. Hence from observation it's probably all maths.

Hence:

1) There is only one universe. - Nah probably all mathematically possible universes seem real to their occupants.

2) Time is real. - Sorta but more like how time exists in a DVD of a movie. Or as some guy wrote "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

3) Mathematics is selectively real. - Nah it's real.

</comment><comment><USER34> Problem with philosophy is that it views all anthropocentric. On the other hand, we are beyond anthropocentrism in modern physics in the sense that sensorial / bodily experience (our way to interact with the outer world) doesn't help any more and thinking / mind abstraction (our special way to represent the outer world) is unprovable because technologies and tools are not there yet. More than philosophy, it is literature to stand up when we need a change of paradigm, in particular science fiction: minds trying to carve skewed views of the universe starting from non-mainstream philosophy. Suffice to say, it will be many more misses than hits but gold is there.

<comment><USER35> I didn't understand any of that.

<comment><USER34> It's literature before philosophy and physics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm quite surprised that there's not a consensus about the philosophical framing of physics (metaphysics).

The way I see it:

\- Consciousness (perceptions, feelings, thought) is the only thing that really exists.

\- There are patterns in what we perceive, for example, when we drop a rock, we _see_ it falls and _hear_ the impact.

\- So we develop models to describe patterns in our consciousness. Physics is just a description of those patterns. So the physical world doesn't really exist, it's just an idea in our minds.

<comment><USER37> This is called Idealism. I wouldn't go so far as to say I "believe in it", but I often think its implications should be explored much more. Unfortunately, hardly anyone takes it "seriously" enough.

<comment><USER38> They don't seem to take anti-materialistic monism seriously either! :-)

It's hard to get tenure these days if you ever mention solipsism, the direct conclusion of Descartes' cogito (which he never seemed to quite get to himself) or solipsism seriously. Individually or in some creative combo move. I don't know if that's because people think that Kant has been beat up enough that they don't want to be seen standing near his stinking corpse, or thinking about it just makes some people feel 'icky' or what.

Which is too bad, because I find that Johnson's (to Berkeley) "I refute it thus!" to be more of a hissy fit than a satisfying response. IDK. Maybe I'd just like someone to use more words? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In other news: 1\. Time Gravitates! Physicists discover stable wormhole configuration by accounting the effect of gravity on time! and then 2\. First wormhole to another universe successfully created! The final experimental proof of multiverse theory, which grants us access to all 10^500 universes, and any place in our own corner of the world" and then 3\. Now in portable format, just for $299!

Stop being impatient!

</comment><comment><USER40> I read this book a couple of years ago. About 1/3 (Smolin's) of it is really interesting. The main point about the primacy of Time is that traditional models of physics have an implicit time dimension for the laws, in additional the the time dimension of spacetime. Smolin suggests that the the laws of Physics are dynamical, evolving as a function of the state of the system.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hm i wonder why someone thought there is some invisible, unobservable dark matter instead connecting gravitational waves with super massive black holes in center of every galactic. It seems for me like a lot better answer to question what is keeping galaxies together if observable mass is not enough.

<comment><USER42> I found it a bit hard to understand before I actually took the course in university, but I'll try to explain simply:

You can infer the mass that is interior to an orbit by measuring the speed at which an object is orbiting. By measuring the redshift and blueshift, we can get speeds of different parts of the galaxy. It turns out that we can account for more-or-less all of the mass near the centre of galaxies, but as we get further out, orbital velocities seem to be higher than they should be implying more mass is there than we can actually see.

In other words, we can tell that the missing mass is not at the centre of the galaxy, but rather spread throughout it.

<comment><USER41> I see, it makes sense now, thank you for very clear explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > ... reification of mathematics can lead physicists into dangerous territory > where mathematical "beauty" and "elegance" get substituted for real > information about the real world.

If it can happen in physics, it can happen anywhere -- maybe even your neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER44> I agree with much of the sentiment such as string theory and multi universes are nonsense. Yes math is just an abstraction tool, with mutually understood/ agreed rules , the rules and representations are not exactly true in the real world, users just agree them to assist with communication between users and over time. Time is Not Real, it's an abstraction / quantification of change, but yes change is I think real i.e. the universe is always changing. However his statement- Our ability to map out the history of the universe back to a fraction of an instant after its inception is a triumph - ruined it for me - an absurd statement for a scientist - we have no idea how the universe started we are only guessing it's history, the big bang theory is just a theory, probably no more real than Lord of the Rings.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like you haven't seen much of the evidence for big bang theory. I'm going to call your attention to the COBE mission.

[http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/](http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/)

This took the predictions from the big bang theory about a small hot dense universe, and measured the cosmic background radiation, and it matched perfectly.

The idea is that when the universe was young, it was so hot that all the matter was in a plasma cloud, and that photons (and other EM radiation) couldn't travel very far at all before being absorbed and re-emitted in a random direction. Then, the universe expanded and cooled enough that the cloud became transparent. But there were still those photons (etc) that now just kept going in all directions. Some of them happen to be arriving from all directions no matter where you are (unless you're on the rim of the universe or something). That's the cosmic background radiation.

And we measured it, and it matched so well with the predicted numbers it was astounding.

This is also the graph that shows up on the "Science, it works bitches!" xkcd shirt.

[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/54:_Science](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/54:_Science)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Was expecting pseudo science based on the click-baity title. Instead got a take down of the pseudo science infecting cosmology. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER46> I like how they see cosmologists as historians. Observe and describe the past, speculate, and muse about the future :-)

</comment><comment><USER47> Nice clickbait title..

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes, by producing disconnected from reality abstractions.

</comment><comment><USER48> That's nice. Have any falsifiable claims been made?

<comment><USER36> Some claims don't have to be falsifiable to be true. For example, some people say that solipsism is not falsifiable - I don't see what's wrong with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> You know what's cool? If they can reach better prediction, faster, with that approach, it will strengthen. If they can't, they will be a footnote. At least, if the scientific method is alive and well.

<comment><USER13> The scientific method has been "on hold" in theoretical physics for a while; because our experimental technology just can't cope up with it. This is one of the main criticisms of string theory, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is like Fermat's last theorem. A whole lot of smart mathematicians spent their time solving this theorem instead of finding better things to solve that can benefit humanity.

</comment><comment><USER51> "We're tired of the un-proven assumptions underlying modern physics. Here's some un-proven assumptions to get us back on track."

What? How is this helping?

</comment><comment><USER52> I very proudly have not clicked the link, because it so such wild click bait, that it would be against my integrity.

</comment><comment><USER53> Betteridge's law of headlines:

"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Has the Hacker News upvote system gotten something really important really wrong?

</comment><comment><USER54> define event

</comment><comment><USER55> Clickbait of the year.

Yessss, keep feeding me more of those delicious downvotes.

<comment><USER56> We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> NPR is not immune to betteridge's. Physics isn't "wrong" about string theory. String theory is a currently untestable theory, a mathematical model, and that's fine but minimally useful.

</comment><comment><USER58> > There is only one universe

        ok, except what else just has 1 of them

> Time is real

        ask a photon that

<comment><USER13> The whole "time is real" part of the article read like meaningless drivel to me. I have no idea what they were trying to communicate.

<comment><USER59> As far as that goes, we arguably don't even know what time _is_.

<comment><USER13> That can be said of just about anything in physics.

<comment><USER59> Good point!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Essential Phone gets a $200 price drop, existing customers get credit - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/22/essential-phone-gets-a-200-price-drop-existing-customers-get-credit/ <comment><USER2> Ironically their 4 great colors are black, white and 2 shades of grey. While this seems like a cool phone, I'm not sure what differentiates it to the point anyone would seek it out over the other choices available.</comment>


4 geeky laws that rule our world - <AUTHOR> http://www.neatorama.com/2012/09/05/Four-Geeky-Laws-That-Rule-Our-World/ <comment><USER2> 3 of the 4 are good.

The last is not. Reed's law is a extremely optimistic version of Metcalfe's law which gives clearly nonsensical results. And Metcalfe's law in turn seems to be overly optimistic. See [http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law- is...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/metcalfes-law-is-wrong) for evidence that the real scaling law tends to be more like n log(n). (See <http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf> for several other lines of argument leading to the same result.)

Note that when I say "tends to be" I mean that, depending on the details of a social network, the scaling law can differ. In particular a network that relies on relative strangers having interactions with other relative strangers, as happens with eBay and Airbnb, is going to scale much closer to Metcalfe's Law. By contrast one that depends on developing a circle of friends, such as happens with Facebook, the scaling law will be closer to n log(n).

Disclaimer, I have a bias here since I'm one of the co-authors of the n log(n) law. (Andrew Odlyzko did all of the work. And then we found out that Bob Briscoe had independently arrived at the same conclusion based on data that he had access to at British Telecom.)

<comment><USER3> The trouble I have with Metcalfe's Law and similar is that all of them are far too optimistic. Most English speakers have heard the phrase, "Point of diminishing returns," and such points do exist. Worse yet, there's also the phrase "Collapse under its own weight," describing the point where something got so big or widespread to retain its integrity, so its groth essentially harmed itself and failed.

If you look around, you'll see this kind of diminishing returns and self destruction in a lot of different places, from "social" environments like this forum, to your over-flowing email box, to the constant interruption of your cell phone.

<comment><USER2> It is definitely true that a vocal minority of users are destructive to any network they find themselves in. Examples of negative users include things like trolls and spammers.

Another problem is that the natural desire of the people running the network to monetize it creates incentives to weaken the experience.

Both of these can lead to sub-linear growth in overall value as a network grows. But measuring value is already hard. Modeling all of the ways to screw up a network is even harder, and I doubt that there is any simple approximate general law that describes it.

<comment><USER3> Same here. I've never seen a simple general law, rule, or even guideline to accurately predict the stagnation and decline of complex systems, or more accurately, growth-decay cycles. It's a bit like knowing the sun regularly rises somewhere over there ( _jcr points vaguely towards the "East-ish" direction_ ) but having no idea _why_ it does, and hence, having no way to accurately predict where it will rise. Trying to figure it out can be both fascinating and frustrating.

There was a mathematician or scientist who said, "To measure something is to know it," but unfortunately, I can't remember his name. Anyhow, I agree our inability to accurately measure and model (or even notice) a lot of the factors involved in complex systems results in our inability to describe or predict them.

BTW, I kind of look at "measuring value" and "modeling ways to screw up the network" to be mostly the same thing. In one case you're identifying, measuring, and modeling the beneficial (value-increasing) factors, and in other, you're identifying, measuring, and modeling the harmful (value- decreasing) factors. --I have a funny feeling that I've missed some thing obvious, so did I misunderstand your statement?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Our inability to accurately measure and model (or even notice) a lot of the factors involved in complex systems results in our inability to describe or predict them_

Structured processes | SDIC [1] vs Resolution is a legitmate issue. Not at all processes can be modeled the same, like a "complicated" but ultimately simple one. In the latter, Logic helps "bridge" the resolution issues. Many deterministic processes cannot be brute-forced, though.

[1] ie, displaying Sensitive dependence upon initial conditions; just how accurate is your measure and can it ever be accurate _enough_ to deduce an originating function?

<comment><AUTHOR> Edit: If I may expand on the point above. Which may seem cryptic.

Complex systems are interisting in that they can be both predictable (in theory) and not predictable (in practice). What's more is that they can be _mischaracterized_ by analyzing the data. Ie, this data is a mess, it must me unpredictable. There are a whole class of deterministic processes which generate these types of results. Whereas a normal, linear process can be infered from medium/high resolution data, even with higher-resolution data we can't infer the underlying logic of the complex system. We may, as a result, either oversimplify the model or proclaim the data to not support _any deterministic process_ at all. The classic example is the class of processes that exhibit sensitive dependance upon initial conditions. ie, variations on the notion of deterministic Chaos. Their sesitivity is such that the resolution of the dataset required to deduce or infer the origination function would never be feasible if it was anything other than complete. Whereas, with deterministic processes that are more traditionally tractable, you can make progress in your knowledge with data-sets of increasing resolution. ie, you can run a regression to infer y=mx+b or a monte-carlo to fit a gaussian curve or what not. But you cannot "brute" force a fit to a choatic process from a montecarlo, becaue you will never have enough resolution nor enough precision in your data set to infer an origination function. [1]

The summary thought is tha sometimes gaps in data can be bridged with higher- level logic or heristic, but this is not always possible (either in theory or practice). Yet, we should _not_ infer a problem is unsolvable or untractable just because of this. =D

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Sensitivity_to_ini...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Sensitivity_to_initial_conditions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am consistently amazed by the durability of this "cloud" hype. I mean, it's been at the peak of the hype cycle now for what, six years? I have been expecting a backlash for most of that time, and even now, when I make comments that are not glowing about "cloud" I get funny looks.

Part of this is that 'the cloud' is now how we refer to perfectly ordinary services that have been around as long as the web, like FTP space. I mean, I walked in on a group of guys discussing their 'time machine' backup scheme for their mac. Now, being a service provider with a whole lot of disk, my first thought, of course, was "can I sell some kind of standards-based something that will let people time-machine to my hard drives in a datacenter?" I got about half way through asking if such a thing existed, and they said, "Oh, you mean backup to the cloud?" at which an involuntary scoffing noise escaped my throat.

(the upshot is that apparently you can backup the time machine data to 'the cloud' but the people I talked to did not know what mechanism was used to upload/store the data.)

<comment><USER3> I think what we're observing is just the evolution of marketing to people with increasingly lower amounts of technical acumen. At one point, "on the system" was understood to mean something is stored on the time-sharing mainframe, simply because everyone used dumb terminals to access the infamous "system". As technology progressed and computers became smaller, more affordable, and more capable, the lingo changed to "on the server" since you actually had the capacity to store something on your "system". The odd part is we still expected the "server" to be located locally (in building, on campus, &c.), When a server wasn't located (implied) "locally", it was called an "off site" server and was typically accessed over private, dedicated lines/connections. This lingo survived for a while when access methods changed to using connections over the public Internet -- TYPICALLY DRAWN AS A CLOUD IN DIAGRAMS!

Some marketing person who didn't really understand technical diagrams of networks saw the amorphous "cloud" representing the Internet in the drawings and started referring to "the Internet" as "the cloud." Needless to say, this lingo caught on with the non-technical folks, and has been used ever since. I sincerely doubt we'll get rid of the phrase any time soon since the majority of people on this planet are non-technical and they tend to use the simple "hype" names they have leaned.

The most interesting bit to all this linguistic history is you can accurately profile people with it. For example, "Did he capitalize 'Internet'?" --definitely an old fart.

<comment><USER5> No, we've already lost to the people using "the cloud".

When you've got players like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Oracle, Cisco, Amazon, Sales Force, etc - all referring to important parts of what they do as being "the cloud" (and all having different explanations of what "cloud computing" is), it's clear the the terminology is here to stay, no matter what it's origins or the intents/uses people once had for it.

<comment><USER3> If you read my post again, it seems we're "violently agreeing".

As I said, I doubt we'll get rid of the phrase.

Then again, from this point forward, I have every intention of depicting the Internet in network drawings as a fishing net labeled "Net" with the hope of tricking the marketing types into using "In the Net" rather than "In the Cloud". I doubt it will work, but it would still be fun to try. ;)

<comment><USER5> Heh. I think I might start drawing Visio diagrams with what used to be labelled "the cloud" instead labelled "the marketing department". When anybody asks, I'll say "nobody knows or can explain what happens in there or why, we just know that you put data in, and usually _something_ arrives at the destination. Company policy dictates that we have to use it, so we send all our data through it in ways where we can detect and correct any changes made in transit" ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reed's Law is arguing that the number of cliques I can participate in on a social network is more important than the number of "friends". The number of cliques tends to grow exponentially in the number of users except:

(i) Social networks are extremely sparse.. the most well connected nodes have 5000 out of hundreds of millions of users. This greatly reduces then number of available cliques (although does still leave it exponential).

(ii) Many of the connections are quite weak.. my interest in a random clique of a social graph in which I'm a member is almost always zero.

(iii) Most cliques that provide value can be extended into other cliques by inviting members, so I may only be interested in maximal cliques, a further significant winnowing.

(iv) Cliques aren't even the greatest representation of this because most groups I participate in on a social network don't have all-to-all friending.

On the whole though I expect the effect of disinterest in most cliques, and improving the interested one's to optimality by extension reduces the cliques I'm actually interested to something far slower than exponential.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can we rename "the trough of disillusionment" to "the pit of despair"? That's how I've felt when I had products trapped there and it's also a great movie reference.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      'Any sufficiently advanced technology
       is indistinguishable from magic'
       Arthur C. Clarke

You could add more. I particularly like this Clarke observation. cf <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws>

</comment><comment><USER9> When I read about geeky law, the first thing come to my mind is "Moore's Law".

<comment><USER10> Moore's law as commonly understood (single-threaded computing power doubles every X amount of time) is already false.

Moore's law as originally stated (number of transistors per chip doubles every X amount of time) is probably only true for a short while longer.

<comment><USER11> A reference to Moore's law in the lead paragraphs of an article in popular media is a useful diagnostic.

If the law is mentioned at all, usually in ~200 words, I expect the writer to handwave with low signal/noise about some supposedly latest-and-greatest tech and I can decide whether to read the rest of the article.

If the writer butchers an explanation of Moore's law, I can simply skip the rest of the article, confident that there will be enough other errors to drown out any surviving signal.

<comment><USER12> I'd guess, if they know (and mention) Moore's second law, you are almost guaranteed a good article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Loved the youtube clip

</comment><comment><USER14> That first graph could be a lot clearer.</comment>


Using Xmonad on OS X - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_on_Apple_OSX <comment><USER2> The reasonable solution is to use one of the many native tiling applications for OSX. I personally use Spectacle[0], but there are many others[1]. They aren't xmonad, but then again OSX isn't Linux.

[0]: [https://www.spectacleapp.com/](https://www.spectacleapp.com/) [1]: [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9659/what- window-m...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9659/what-window- management-options-exist-for-os-x)

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I run OS X at work and Linux on all of my personal machines.

> The reasonable solution is to use one of the many native tiling applications > for OSX.

As an i3 user (and former wmii user, and former xmonad user), I find it really frustrating to use tiling window management that doesn't support focus- follows-mouse. This rules out things like Spectacle, Divvy, etc. At a second level, I find that all of OS X's tiling applications have inferior support for workspaces on dual-monitor setups compared to i3/wmii[0] and xmonad.

Unfortunately, on Aqua (OS X), there's basically no way to do proper focus- follows-mouse support. There is one app that fakes it (I think Amethyst), but the latency is annoyingly high.

[0] heck, wmii has better support for workspaces on dual-monitor setups, which is saying something, because it literally doesn't _have_ support for dual monitors at all - you can only run dual-head X11, which is a terrible hack.

<comment><USER4> Sadly all the tiling window managers i've tried suck on multi monitors though. When i switched to 3 monitors i gave up on tiling wm (for once with 3 monitors i had A LOT more space).

<comment><USER5> XMonad has the feature that you can freely swap workspaces between screens. For example, you can show workspace 1 on screen 1, 2 on screen 2, and then switch them around to 3->1, 1->2, or any other combination you prefer.

This is a killer feature for me, and I've never found any other WM capable of doing that.

<comment><USER6> That's amazing, I would love if OS X did that natively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Native Aqua windows do not support any kind of window manager mechanism; > Apple scattered the functionality around within Core Graphics, WindowServer, > and the application frameworks and didn't make any part of it replaceable. > Neither XMonad nor any other X11 window manager will ever be able to manage > native windows.

Nuf said.

</comment><comment><USER8> Note that XMonad, as the name implies; will only work with Mac windows that are being managed by X. Standard mac windows will not be affected.

</comment><comment><USER9> In case anyone missed it - here's another tiling window manager for OS X that popped up a few weeks back on HN:

[https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm](https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm)

It's quite pretty: [http://imgur.com/a/tWBSg](http://imgur.com/a/tWBSg)

<comment><USER10> Does anyone know what that borderless terminal is?

<comment><USER11> The iTerm2 beta features the borderless windows. You can grab a nightly build from [https://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html](https://www.iterm2.com/downloads.html).

The settings is Preferences -> Profiles -> Window and then select "No Title Bar" in the drop-down for style.

<comment><USER12> I really wish we could disable all the title bars.

<comment><USER10> same...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Check out amethyst

[https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst)

<comment><USER14> It's the closest thing I've seen to XMonad for Mac OS X but it could benefit from some performance tuning (unless Mac OS X is the bottleneck).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was an avid Xmonad user on my Linux desktop but never was able to get it working quite right on OS X. I would love if that would change. Unfortunately I don't see anything new on the link posted here.

<comment><USER16> Among all of those, I would write the very same things. Thanks @LukeHoersten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the big drivers for me to switch back to Linux 7 years ago was Xmonad. It's a fantastic and extremely elegant piece of software from many points of view.

The only little glitch is that you need ghc to use it and that's a rather big dependency.

<comment><USER18> Doesn't have to be an issue with the appropriate PPA.

[https://launchpad.net/~hvr/+archive/ubuntu/ghc](https://launchpad.net/~hvr/+archive/ubuntu/ghc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are things I miss about Xmonad on OS X, but for the most part, this setup is not for the faint of heart. Largely, relying on [u]xterm (which I thought would be a snap) has pitfalls. Overall, the small annoyances simply sum up to be quite the downer & time-suck. In action, Xmonad is quite the zippy experience; certainly Xmonad on Linux must be a joy. I use tmux now, which I guess is OK.

<comment><USER17> Why? I found even the basic configuration is good for me. All I need is dmenu, which is already pre-setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think many mac users here would find Phoenix[1] to be a decent solution. I've shared my config as a gist[2], which is somewhat inspired by (a subset of) the features of Optimal Layout[3], which I used for years before recently switching to Phoenix. My config code is not particularly DRY and almost certainly has memory leaks. Mainly, I wanted to get something working, the way I wanted. I'll clean it up... at some point.

[1] [https://github.com/kasper/phoenix](https://github.com/kasper/phoenix)

[&] [https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/wiki#examples](https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/wiki#examples)

[2] [https://gist.github.com/michaelsbradleyjr/e641907e3b1576fe34...](https://gist.github.com/michaelsbradleyjr/e641907e3b1576fe3481)

[3] [http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/](http://most- advantageous.com/optimal-layout/)

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmonad](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmonad). <\-- good xmonad info here

</comment><comment><USER22> I blogged about my collection of tools here - [http://ashishb.net/tech/mac-os- x-primer-part-3-window-manage...](http://ashishb.net/tech/mac-os-x-primer- part-3-window-management/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I use Divvy, it works great :<</comment>


Apple Honors Mandela on Home Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the "Think different" campaign when they tried to peddle off electronics by coopting public domain images of famous people --- making it look like that they would be consumers of overpriced shiny gadgets.

Ghandi totally would have had an iPad air.

<comment><USER3> Google: "Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela: 1918-2013" on homepage. Reaction: Little fanfare.

Apple: "Nelson Mandela: 1918-2013" on homepage with b/w photo. Reaction: OH MY GOD. APPLE IS NOW HONORING A HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST TO SELL THEIR PRODUCTS. LET'S ALL ORGANIZE A LYNCH MOB AND CONDEMN THIS INHUMAN BEHAVIOR!!!1

<comment><USER4> Google has a pretty large news presence, and a history of both remarking on notable anniversaries via doodles, and posting relevant news in small text on its home page. It's much more in line with Google's history.

<comment><USER5> Apple was honoring people like Mandela since before Google was a company.

<comment><USER6> Okay I'll bite since I don't know this. Like who?

<comment><USER7>
      In 2001, when George Harrison died
      In 2002, when Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize
      In 2003, when Gregory Hines died
      In 2005, when Rosa Parks died
      In 2007, when Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize
      In 2011, when Steve Jobs died

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different)

<comment><USER6> Google was founded in 1998?

<comment><USER7> Oops.

      "Think different" was an advertising slogan
      for Apple Inc (formerly Apple Computer Inc)
      in 1997 created by the Los Angeles office
      of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More like "Apple markets on website by appealing to public figure".

I don't see how this is relevant? Can we link to the public figure rather than apple? :/

<comment><USER9> >>More like "Apple markets on website by appealing to public figure".

Apple doesn't _need_ to appeal to any public figures to do their marketing.

<comment><USER10> Cough, cough

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwXdGm89Tk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwXdGm89Tk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes you just have to take things at face value. Maybe, just maybe Apple and Google are trying to honor a great man.

<comment><USER12> They're not "honoring" him, and they're not trying either.

Mandela stood against inequality and injustice, which these corporate giants are massive facilitators of. Apple in particular exploit the very people who produce their products in China, while sitting on vast wealth. As global inequality is on the rise, record profits are announced, and despite their position to make a real positive effect on humanity, increasing shareholders profits comes first.

While they stick up a nice picture or some text of a great man on their webpages, they stand for completely the opposite. They've completely failed to _honor_ anything about the man, or his ideals.

If they wanted to honor him, they could for example, boycott Israel, or doing at least make an effort to actually put an end apartheid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While Apple is a great company and I do appreciate their taste and positive influence on quality of everyday gadgets.

A multinational corporation who has a very dark history of underpaid and to a point almost slave workers, abuse of patent and legal system, participation with illegal government projects at the cost of their customers privacy and freedom around the world stands in direct contrast to what Mr. Mandela had dedicated his life for: Equality and Freedom.

I can ignore the fact that Apple like any other _for profit corporation_ will not do jack shit that does not inline with their main interest [profit] directly or indirectly. I would still find this a little disturbing and ironic like seeing Snowden 'Honoured' with a full page image on GCHQ or NSA homepage.

</comment><comment><USER14> personally, i was quite offended by the campaign for the new d.v.d. coming out for "the fast and furious", which promises to donate "a portion of the proceeds", _if_ you buy it, to the charity founded by paul walker.

that seemed really sleazy to me.

i mean, they could have just went and made a donation, instead of pimping out the just-inflamed memory of fans, and -- considering the money that franchise has made -- it would've been no sweat off their coke-filled noses.

and the fans _still_ would've went out and bought it...

or they could've said "we're gonna lower the price of this d.v.d. by 10 bucks, so you can give 10 dollars to his charity, under your name, so you get the feel-good."

but no, they had to tie their donation to your purchase.

offensive, big-time.

and, compared to _that_ recent example, the act of apple in putting up a simple photograph, in tribute, seems quite innocent, and maybe even downright honest.

-bowerbird

</comment><comment><USER15> So much cynicism. Oh well, this is Apple news so that's to be expected.

Apple has a history of doing this. You might say (and certainly most here have) that they are attempting to promote the brand through use of Mandela's image but it's an image on their homepage. They didn't advertise the fact with newsletter or social media fanfare.

Maybe some people just really admired Nelson Mandela. Some people that have the power to decide what goes on Apple's homepage.

</comment><comment><USER16> Apple honoring someone on their home page?

Google should sue them.</comment>


How Much Does a Professional Musician Make in 2012? - <AUTHOR> http://www.flavorwire.com/353886/how-much-does-a-professional-musician-make-in-2012 <comment><USER2> Being a musician is a scalable profession, similar to being a book author (search for Nassim Taleb's definition of scalability). Most scrape by at the bottom all their life, but once in a while, someone breaks out and their income eclipses everyone else's put together. For example, JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be interesting to see this data broken down by genre. For example, rockers vs. jazz vs. classical. I have no real idea who of those three makes the most / least and whether there is much variation among the genres.

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr: mean is $34,455 per year before taxes

Would be more interesting to see the median. The mean is diluted by a few super successful so the median should look even worse.</comment>


Made a Drag n' Drop Bot-building Platform, but No Time to Manage it - <AUTHOR> Last year I developed a platform to let anyone build a bot by just pure drag n' drop. (Also has coding option for the coders). It's name is Talkbot (https://talkbot.io)
I'm writing this post to try to find a cool human being that would like to help me. What does the platform need? Decent marketing and management knowledge, and Javascript. (NLP/ML/NN knowledge is a plus plus plus)
I believe Talkbot is a powerful platform but I just have no time to manage it and haven't find a person to help me do it. I've been running the project for almost a year and I can tell it works amazing. Right now it has 1400 bots online and has analyzed a couple millions of messages.
I encourage you to go play with the platform, it's free to try: https://talkbot.io
Here's also an article I wrote at Chatbots Magazine about the platform: https://chatbotsmagazine.com/building-a-bot-with-my-own-bot-building-tool-d0ae67ba1bd4
What am I offering? Commission from sales and stock options.
My e-mail is on my profile. <comment><USER2> Looks good, I wish you luck bringing it to market successfully.

You might want to have someone look over the language on the documentation pages as there a lots of subtle (and not so subtle!) mistakes: [https://talkbot.io/docs?/Introduction-0/What-is-a- bot?-1](https://talkbot.io/docs?/Introduction-0/What-is-a-bot?-1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you monetize? What is your CAC?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's free to try, and I charge if the user wants to keep a bot turned on for more than X days. And for the cost, the server pays itself with a few users paying.</comment></comment>


Amazon Book Reviews Deleted in Purge Aimed at Manipulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/technology/amazon-book-reviews-deleted-in-a-purge-aimed-at-manipulation.html <comment><USER2> I don't pay a huge amount of attention to the _number_ of stars, but rather to what the reviewers _say_.

Yes, it takes longer to decide which product is best, but I get more reliable results that way.

<comment><USER3> One of the niftiest features on Amazon is the ability to view the "most helpful" glowing and negative reviews. Frequently, you only need to read 2 reviews. The glowing one will highlight the product's best features, while the negative one will clearly outline its flaws. After that, you have a pretty clear picture.

<comment><USER4> Once I noticed this and start evaluating products via this angle I started feeling a lot more confident in my purchasing decisions.

I think they've been more successful too, not too sure though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get e-mails all the time offering to submit fake rave reviews for my book, for a price. I also get e-mails offering the same "service" for my Android apps. It's a business -- a widespread, unethical business.

Meanwhile, one of the few real reviews of my book says, "This is a really terrific book, and I have read it more than once! By the way, can someone fix my mistake -- I accidentally gave it one star instead of five!"

</comment><comment><USER6> I have what I think is an effective strategy for evaluating product reviews. I ignore the five star and four star reviews. In fact, I go right to the one and two star reviews. If most of the bad reviews are well-reasoned, thought-out and coherent criticisms of the product, then I consider competing products instead.

However, if the bad reviews are predominately written by morons, then I remain interested in the product. The more "bad" reviews I see with dumb complaints, bad grammar, ALL CAPS and irrelevant whining, the more I'm likely to buy. These are the anti-reviews, and so far, I've used them with great success.

EDIT: By the way, this also works well for picking movies on IMDB.

</comment><comment><USER7> I give much more credibility to reviews that are marked "Amazon Verified Purchase". This at least weeds out bought reviews, people who received free review copies from the author, people who are supporters or detractors of the author or his ideology but haven't read the book, etc. And it's likely that someone who actually paid for the book actually read it. It would be nice if Amazon had a way of filtering out all reviews that weren't from a verified purchaser.

<comment><USER8> Same here, I also check to see whether this was the only book review this person did. Too many 5 star reviews for a new book is always suspicious, btw.

Look at this piece of crap book, for example: [http://www.amazon.com/Iterating-Infusion-Clearer-Objects- Cla...](http://www.amazon.com/Iterating-Infusion-Clearer-Objects- Classes/dp/1590595378) It mostly has fake reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hopefully these reviews aren't categorized as "manipulative"

[http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link- Cable/produ...](http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link- Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM)

There is some amazing satire in Amazon reviews. It would be a shame if it was all lost.

</comment><comment><USER10> What took them so long to move on this?

</comment><comment><USER11> With so many people willing to contribute reviews, I see no reason to allow either anonymous reviews or reviews from people who have no direct familiarity with the product. Can there be some value from these two sources? Perhaps. But there's a lot more noise generated than value.</comment>


Bundeswehr will switch completely to Matrix messenger - rv-de https://www.golem.de/news/messenger-bundeswehr-will-komplett-auf-matrix-chat-wechseln-2005-148407.html <comment> rv-de Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version):

The German Armed Forces want to rely completely on the free software matrix as a communication system for chat messages in the future. This was announced by the Bundeswehr IT service provider BWI. The announcement also states that "in future the chat application will also be used for the transmission of information of the protection class 'classified information - for official use only' (VS-NfD)".

This is surprising in that the use of free software for classified information and its approval by the BSI can sometimes be difficult, as the case of OpenGPG from last year shows. The first tests for the use of Matrix in the German Armed Forces have been running since December last year.

Due to the restrictions and protective measures in the wake of the corona pandemic, the Bundeswehr had also expanded the operation of the system to 30,000 smartphones as early as April. This is intended to enable a "simple yet secure means of communication".

Starting this autumn, the Bundeswehr also wants to make it possible for private smartphones to be used for communication via matrix, but not for classified information. To enable private use and communication via chat even during the corona pandemic, the Bundeswehr is currently relying on the proprietary messenger Stashcat, which is available for up to 50,000 potential users. Disagreement in Germany

Stashcat is also used by other authorities. However, the announcement clearly states: "In the course of further expansion, Matrix will replace Stashcat as the German Armed Forces' unified instant messaging platform". Stashcat will therefore only serve as an interim solution.

Unlike in centrally governed France, where the matrix system is to be used for all authorities, there is currently still a great deal of disagreement among German authorities about which messenger systems are to be used in the future. Besides the mentioned Stashcat and Matrix, there are currently also tests with the open XMPP standard or Wire. But at least the German Armed Forces seem to have already definitely decided in favor of Matrix.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, this sounds awesome. Matrix seems to be a no-brainer after all.

Let's hope that the others won't switch to Wire

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm assuming they'll develop their own clients rather than using something like Riot.

This isn't that unheard of IRC and XMMP and other open protocols have been used in the past by governments within their own private networks.

<comment><USER3> As far as I know the French government used a riot fork for their users but the changes are getting upstreamed. I think its not unrealistic that the Bundeswehr will go a similar way

<comment><USER2> This isn't that surprising, the heavy lifting is already done for you adding things that maybe required for government use such as specific encryption scheme or central logging of messages can often be more easily added to the source or via middleware than developing a whole new protocol on your own.

The NSA used XMMP too [https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_us/articl...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/8qxdez/the- nsa-uses-the-same-chat-protocol-as-hackers-and-activists)

I know of a few other non-US government agencies that did that too.

Some countries even run their own MVNO's for government uses no need to reinvent the wheel.</comment></comment></comment>


Renaissance Explores Settlement as IRS Seeks Billions in Taxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/renaissance-explores-settlement-as-irs-seeks-billions-in-taxes <comment><USER2> This has been discussed more than a few times here.

I've written my thoughts on this. its either very cunning or blatantly thumbing your nose at the tax code depending on where you sit.

Long story short, I think when the tell all book for RenTech is written you'll find that they are very smart but tax avoidance accounted for a much larger share of their returns than most people would expect.

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9859620#9859701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9859620#9859701)

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13445232#13445506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13445232#13445506)

<comment><USER3> Isn't RenTech's total return something like 35% annually over decades? Seems like tax savings could account for at most one year of that.

<comment><USER2> No, assuming all their trades are short term, probably not correct, and assuming this basket option allows them to make short term trades look like long term. then they are saving the long term minus the short term rate each year, so 40% - 25% = 15%

So this saves them, or makes then an additional, 15% each year on taxes.

So a 35% gain each year becomes a 20% return each year. That's pretty darn significant and if true makes their returns fall in line with many other of their peers, which also means they no longer look like the superstar fund that some people make them out to be.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the math works that way. Suppose your return is 35% after paying the long term tax rate. This implies your pre-tax return was .35/(1-.25) = 46.66. Now instead pay the short-term rate and get 46.66 * (1-.4) = 28%. So the return drops from 35% to 28%, which is still mind-boggling (even 20% over decades would be extremely impressive).

<comment><USER2> Yes your right, you'll even notice I made up the tax amounts as I was on my phone.

The point I was trying to make is that the tax rate does significantly affect the returns and once accounted for puts them back in line with some of their peers if account for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > A bipartisan Senate panel estimated in 2014 that Medallion investors > underpaid their taxes by some $6.8 billion over more than a decade by > masking short-term gains as long-term returns.

Holy shit.

That 10 year number is the equivalent of the NSF's entire budget. [0]

This is t an accident. It's criminal. And it's not a surprise given that IRS enforcement has been declining over a decade and focusing on small taxpayers rather than wealthy individuals and corporate tax payers.[1]

[0] [https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2018/](https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2018/)

[1] [https://www.propublica.org/article/earned-income-tax- credit-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/earned-income-tax-credit-irs- audit-working-poor)

</comment><comment><USER5> This from a UK perspective weird why is basically a collective investment scheme liable to pay any CGT at all - isn't that the individual investors liability.

And in this case why are not all other funds being targeted.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why hasn't anyone started a Betterment for basket options?

<comment><USER6> Could you elaborate on this? What would it offer?

<comment><AUTHOR> They would offer basket options so that anyone could make short term capital gains looks like long term capital gains.</comment></comment></comment>


Barack Obama: Self-driving, yes, but also safe - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2016/09/19/Barack-Obama-Self-driving-yes-but-also-safe/stories/201609200027 <comment><USER2> Is this real? If so, that's very cool.</comment>


Russia is ready to disconnect from the global Internet - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.mail.ru%2Fpolitics%2F32749813&sandbox=1 <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see how few external services mail.ru relies on. (compared to msn for example) And even those mostly don't live on .com.

</comment><comment><USER3> And all Russia-based criminals, bots and trolls will be off the global Internet too? Really? Promise?</comment>


Uber CEO compares Khashoggi murder to self-driving car "mistake" - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-saudi-assassination-jamal-khashoggi-mistake-like-self-driving-cars.html <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21503786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21503786).

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably best to set the source to the outlet that performed the interview:

[https://www.axios.com/uber-ceo-saudi-arabia-jamal- khashoggi-...](https://www.axios.com/uber-ceo-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi- mistake-92865f2a-d97c-4d6a-b171-5e7c0a69e77a.html)

<comment><USER4> And also means not having to give Slate a click through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh yeah, Saudi's brutally tortured and murdered Khashoggi, Uber's self-driving car ran over a woman, and I forgot to take out the trash this week on trash day. All mistakes, all equal. Are we going to hold this over their heads forever, it was /just a mistake/.... /s "I didn't read the CIA report" well neither did I but from the coverage alone I would never call this a "mistake". Also they own 1/5th of your company, do some fucking research, if anything you should be more informed about this than the average American.

I'm getting rather sick of this bury-your-head-in-the-sand tatic more and more people are taking when it comes to reprehensible things. "I didn't read the CIA report", "I don't read his tweets", "I didn't read the muller report", "I didn't read the whistleblower report" \- IT'S YOUR GOD DAMN JOB, I don't know why we continue to allow ignorance of current events directly related to people's jobs to be a valid excuse.

<comment><USER2> This comment was posted twice. Please read [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21507307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21507307).</comment></comment>


The Best JavaScript Library - <AUTHOR> http://www.emadibrahim.com/2008/08/10/the-best-javascript-library/ <comment><USER2> Summary: "Here are five JavaScript libraries that looked interesting. I kind of putzed around with three of them, then got bored and decided the first one I looked at was the best for 'purely emotional reasons.'"

I'm not really sure this needs to be that far up the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good observation, but I actually didn't end up choosing the one I started off. But you are right about putting it near the top, it kind of discourages the reader even though, I thought I was pretty objective.</comment></comment>


Lush, an object-oriented lisp for large-scale numerical and graphic applications - b-man http://lush.sourceforge.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> One thing to note is that the authors are foremost very well known machine learning researchers. Reading Bottou's PhD thesis (in French unfortunately for most HN readers) was kind of depressing in a way, when you see the kind of things he did 20 years ago in an environment which seemed more powerful than what we have today. This environment was not lush I think, but it certainly was the inspiration for i: some info in Englisg at <http://leon.bottou.org/projects/lush>

</comment><comment><USER2> I've hacked up one or two tiny things in Lush.

To me, the important thing about Lush is not that it's object-oriented, but that it's oriented toward high-performance numerical computation.

It has array types with aggregate operations (like J, K, R, NumPy, PDL, PV- WAVE IDL, etc.) even for interpreted code, plus bindings to all the standard numerical libraries; and it has a decent compiler and supports inline C.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like this language. The core libraries have sensibly named functions, getting it to generate or talk to C is trivial, and it's simple to get a GUI or a small script or something going. It has good bindings to SDL, which makes it easy to do some game programming. The REPL has a great online help facility, and interactive reflection is simple, so there's little head- scratching. I used it years back, when my main exposure to Lisp had been CL, and it was refreshingly convenient.

The only problems I have with it are the minor one of the OO syntax (minor as I never made much use of the OO features) and the somewhat more major issue of the dynamic scoping (no closures). It was a deal-breaker for me but was pretty educational, as I had not quite understood dynamic versus lexical scoping at the time.

Except those issues, it's a great Lisp, especially if you need one that plays nicely with the OS and is easy to learn. (And it is pretty speedy to boot, even respectably speedy interpreted.)

(Edited, removed a bit where I repeated myself.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone compared this with Incanter, another lisp-based (clojure) stats environment?

<http://incanter.org/>

Both look like activity has died out recently... This is a shame, I was thinking recently about this issue. It seems that there is a real need for a stats environment based around a straight-forward general purpose programming language that can be easily parallelized and can easily access GPU functions. Although GPU functionality is still pretty narrow, it's growing, and linear algebra seems to have a place in statistical computing.

I have not yet seen anything that fits this bill, but Incanter is the closest. Clojure has the Calx library for OpenCL. Last I asked around, nobody had put the peanut butter in the chocolate just yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am curious about why you think numpy/scipy does not fit that bill ? Python is a straightforward general purpose programming language, has a lot of stats functionalities, can access GPU functions. While python's story for parallel programming is pretty poor, it is actually quite decent for numerical computation, because parallelizing those is not very difficult in general.

<comment><USER4> I suppose it's that last part. I tried using some of the ipython parallel stuff, but found it to be pretty clumsy (although this was about 2y ago). Is there a better solution for parallelization in python?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have never used the parallel stuff in ipython, but my understanding was that it was more for cluster-kind of stuff. This is getting significantly rewritten, also, so things are changing there.

But the way most people use parallel stuff in numpy is: first use BLAS/LAPACK which is multithreaded, then use multiprocessing, etc... It depends on what you are trying to achieve, but my understanding is that as soon as you use arrays and the liked, clojure is not that helpful compared to a much more primitive runtime as python, because all the parallel goodies of clojure are not available anymore. But I have never seriously used clojure, so I may be dead wrong.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I'll try that approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't hesitate to ask on the ML (while I know numpy fairly well inside out, I am not the best person to talk about parallelism). There is also a lot of talks available in the scipy conferences video. See <http://conference.scipy.org/scipy2010/schedule.html> for 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really wanted to play with Lush, but it seems to have broken with Mac OS 10.6 -- which is why I ended up going with Clojure.

<comment><USER6> They're not really comparable. From the article:

 _no automagic memory management, no garbage collection, no functional programming_

<comment><USER7> You left out an important bit of context. Lush _is_ garbage collected.

      Lush brings the best of both worlds by wrapping three
      languages into one: (1) a weakly-typed, garbage-
      collected, dynamically scoped, interpreted language with
      a simple Lisp-like syntax, (2) a strongly-typed,
      lexically-scoped compiled language that uses the same
      Lisp-like syntax, and (3) the C language, which can be
      freely mixed with Lush code within a single program, even
      within a single function.

The thing is that Lush the interpreted lisp like language is quite different from CLush the compiled lisp (un)like language. This is indeed an unexpected quirk and gets people who are starting at it. The two, share the same syntax but are quite different languages. CLush can almost be described as C with lisp syntax. What you are referring to is CLush. Lush on the other hand is fully garbage collected. In fact it used to have a reference counting based garbage collector but the developers were looking at other garbage collection algorithms, mainly Boehms garbage collector. I have not used it in a while so I am not sure if it has been baked in. Something I was looking forward to in the new version was parallel loops. There is a stub for that, but it defaulted to the sequential loops in the version I played with. I think a reference counting garbage collector makes parallelism hard to implement, Cpython is perhaps an example of that, whereas Sisal is a counterexample.

Its a fun language to use, it is so much more easier to interface with C (compared to MATLAB, well even Python/Numpy/Scipy sans weave). But there are a few surprises if you expect Lisp.

EDIT: Replying to gaius here to save on deep nests.

Only if you want to distribute it as a compiled binary, (may be to protect your source). You can distribute the source code as is, and it will run just fine. As far as distributing something self contained, I agree that Lush is not tailor made for that. Because even the successfully compiled parts are typically loaded dynamically.

<comment><USER6> Right, but in Lisp you can use the bottom-up approach to iteratively and interactively build your program, then save image or whatever to get a binary. If your Lush prototype relies on some feature that can't be compiled, you will need to reimplement that before going into production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _(no automagic memory management, no garbage collection, no functional programming)._

That's a big drawback.

Common Lisp (SBCL) is very fast already, and one can avoid the GC overhead in a number of interesting situations (though not all). Are there benchmarks comparing SBCL and Lush?

Has anyone found a sane way of doing maths (linear algebra, etc.) in Common Lisp? My experience with the GNU scientific library has been disastrous.</comment>


Uber acquires bike-share startup JUMP - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/09/uber-acquires-bike-share-startup-jump/ <comment><USER2> Has Jump been profitable ever?

I cannot possibly see how a dockless bike share company is worth $200M. Another bloated valuation to add to the trend of overvalued SV companies. I barely see anyone in SF use any of the bikeshare bikes. Ford, JUMP, any of them. Once again Uber demonstrates it does not know how to spend money. Well done.

<comment><USER3> If you're interested, give this podcast from Recode a listen: [https://www.recode.net/2017/8/18/16165116/brad-bao- limebike-...](https://www.recode.net/2017/8/18/16165116/brad-bao-limebike- bicycle-sharing-recode-too-embarrassed-to-ask-podcast-kara-swisher-lauren- goode).

According to Brad Bao of Limebike, generally the cost of a bike is covered in 4 months.

In a recent Time magazine piece on bike sharing, the Chinese company Ofo is listed as being able to produce a bike for $50 USD. Assuming you're charging $1 per hour, and even factoring in depreciation and maintenance, I don't think it's hard to see how bikesharing could be financially lucrative.

These bike sharing startups may actually have a business that is capable of generating an operating profit. The trouble comes when they produce 2x or 3x the bikes needed in a city, and end up with junkyards full of bikes.

<comment><USER4> Jump bikes are electric assisted drive, they are gonna cost an order of magnitude more than $50 to build.

<comment><USER3> From the LimeBike podcast interview transcript:

'Right. The unique economics then comes back to the start. There are two parts. To the bike itself is straight up that all bikes are roughly about $300 at a manufacturer cost. You're looking at retail price of this equivalent bike, maybe $900 to $1,000. Manufacturer's bike, the top bike manufacturer in the world.'.

They charge $1 for a 30 minute ride. If we believe that they recoup the cost in 90 days, they're doing $3.33 in revenue per day, or roughly 3.33 half-hour rides per day. The breakeven on the bike itself would be at 300 rides at $1 each.

A quick Google search shows that well-reviewed e-bikes are commercially available from $650 and up. JUMP charges $2 per half-hour ride (per their website). They would need to generate 325 rides to break even. It doesn't seem that the payback period on the bike itself is meaningfully longer than a traditional bike.

Keep in mind, this is assuming that JUMP is paying anything close to retail on e-bikes. Anyone who visits a HKTDC or Canton Fair trade show will have seen that there are some seriously impressive e-bikes (folding, lightweight, 15MPH), available for a fraction of $650 if you're buying in bulk.

EDIT: Changed $6.66 in revenue per day to $3.33. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dammit. I thought JUMP was pretty cool and was planning on slowly shifting my commute to using it when possible (in order to add a small amount of exercise to my day). But I swore off Uber years ago and no amount of "but we've changed!" is going to get me to patronize them again.

</comment><comment><USER6> I been trying to open JUMP inside Uber for the past 2 weeks. Every time I click the "Bike" tab, the app crashes.

Now that it's all the same company, maybe they can figure out how to integrate it properly?</comment>


Top Legal Steps for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://goforlaunch.io/top-legal-steps-for-startups/

<comment><AUTHOR> First legal steps entrepreneurs should take when starting their business, from startup attorney David Lizerbram.</comment>


How to Hire World-Class Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://angel.co/talent-hacks/how-to-hire-world-class-engineers <comment><USER2> The first part, about needing opportunity, challenge and community is spot on for me. But the rest of it doesn't really seem to translate.

In an interview, I find out if there's going to be opportunity and challenge by just asking about their coding practices. Are they using a decent devops pipeline? Do they care about best practices and cleaning up technical debt? Are they working on solving interesting problems, and will I be given autonomy to chip away at them?

All of those things come from upper management trusting their engineers and understanding how important it is to fight technical debt.

It's really simple. If you give me space to solve problems and don't try to fight me when I know something is the right thing to do, I'll want to work at your company.</comment>