Copy What You Like (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/copy.html <comment><USER2> It's kind of funny to see such a profound and important lesson distilled in to such a kitsch cross-stitch type musing. That might sound harsh but look closely - it took Graham 10+ years of following the wrong mental path before finally finding the right one. It's not about "copying what you like" it's about "finding yourself first" \- and, even then, there's no guarantee self- actualization will put food on the table or pay medical bills.

All that in context, this would make a great inscription on a whisky flask:

> _A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one._

<comment><USER3> _> It's not about "copying what you like" it's about "finding yourself first" _

That's not what I got from the essay. PG is actually saying that a lot of works out there are blessed by the authoritative elites as good and worthwhile but _what you actually like and enjoy is also authoritative as well._ Rather than get sidetracked on what others think is important, what you truly like can be a better guide to avoid wasting time.

Therefore, the things you like may not necessarily change over the years (e.g. always liked Harry Potter) but your _self-confidence in holding that opinion_ is now solidified (e.g. I now know that liking JKR "Harry Potter" more than Joyce's "Ulysses" doesn't mean there's something wrong with my brain. If I choose to write my own novel, I won't feel inadequate just because my writing style is closer to JK Rowling rather than James Joyce.)

<comment><AUTHOR> >I now know that liking Harry Potter more than Joyce's "Ulysses" doesn't mean there's something wrong with my brain.

Oh, I do wish people wouldn't bash on Ulysses as much... there's some nonsense in the book to sift through, yes, but there's also some truly wonderful stuff as well. One of my favorite passages:

>"and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

The novel's moments of beauty are worth working for, I think.

But you're still entitled to your opinion. :)

<comment><USER4> Is this for real? The guy didn't grace the world with punctuation?

<comment><AUTHOR> The final chapter is a lengthy stream-of-consciousness with almost no punctuation. Other parts of the novel are structured more traditionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's kind of sad that PG couldn't get anything more than that out of the short stories he read in high school english. Sure, a lot of them are forgettable, but if I think think of the stories I read that stuck with me, they all had a heck of a lot more going on than just being a random slice of mundane unhappiness. A few that really stuck with me: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (James Thurber), The Open Boat (Stephen Crane), The Long Sheet (William Sansom). If PG couldn't find anything funny, gripping, or worthwhile in stories like these, well, his loss.

It wouldn't even be worth making this comment, except that PG seems to consider himself some sort of authority on writing ([http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html)) - and for him, the one and only rule of style seems to be simplicity. I'll agree, simple beats overwrought, but c'mon. Great writers have a style that makes you _want_ to copy it, which is something that PG doesn't seem aware of even as an aspiration.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you. I have been reading Stephen King's "The Body" which is a short story/novella and there he describes the journey of 4 friends to see a dead body somewhere in the middle of the desert out of town. There's a section where the kids are walking on a railway bridge and a train comes up and they have nowhere to go but to jump to a 50 feet drop into a river. That scene is so beautifully written that I could feel myself watching the events right in front of me.

He also talks about how his feelings towards storytelling changed after he started doing it as his primary income source instead of a hobby he had during childhood. Very interesting stuff.

<comment><USER7> A movie was made 1986 based on this called "Stand by Me". It was a favorite when I was young. River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Wil Wheaton are in it. It may seem dated and shallow compared to the story, but it's worth watching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I happen to agree with him on this post. And, although it's excellent advice, you have to understand, its not a popular view point, and that by taking this advice to heart, you'll deviate significantly from social norms. The vast majority of people value "impressive" things as he's defined them and won't put up with your Objective analysis of what's good.

Case in point, They'll sneer and look down upon you for buying the 10$ jeans (that are the same or better quality as 100$ jeans!), or a refurbished 2 year old 150$ android phone, that works perfectly and has everything you could ever need. They'll hate on you for buying 2nd hand excellent products at low prices. I could care less what they think, but nevertheless, it still impacts how they interact with you.

<comment><USER9> Which is funny, because being extremely frugal/minimalist in some circles I know is seen as a status booster. But again, don't worry, there'll always be some group that holds up your values. Just keep making sure that you're still actually into it and not just trying to hold onto the group.

<comment><USER10> I think the values of the groups you're a member of influence your values, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. A well-adjusted adult probably has to have many values that they don't compromise on, but also many where there is some flexibility, and where continuing good standing within the group is more valuable that clinging to a value that conflicts with the group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Assuming intellectual dishonesty across a whole group of people or discipline is a mistake. Most things are bad but this approach actually blinds you to what is good within the bad and it sets your views in stone and prevents development.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fair advice. You see this frequently with art, startups, technology, and business in general.

Reminds me of a quote told to me by a very successful entrepreneur: "The best idea I ever had was someone else's"

</comment><comment><USER13> Bad advice.

At the very best, grosssly incomplete and misleading.

After rejecting what _other_ people like, the best pg can come up with is ... to follow what _you_ like. That's an equally fraught heuristic, though it may be more avaialble for observation and examination.

Realise that what works _does so regardless of appeal_. But that there's a great deal which has (near-term) appeal which doesn't work (long-term). Sometimes it's a false start, sometimes it's a fad, sometimes it's cargo- culting, sometimes it's an establishment of common ground which facilitates communication or understanding but not _effectiveness_.

I'd suggest instead:

Look at what is being practiced, and ask _why_?

In the case of the short story: the history of literacy, amusement, entertainment, postal delivery, publishing and printing technology, advertising, bundling concepts, and the lack of subsequent alternatives (radio, television), increased literacy, and free time, made the short story a popular format. Different dynamics brought forth the radio serial, soap operas (first on radio, then television, now the White House), sit-coms, movie serials, blockbuster movies, space operas, and comic-book franchise preboot requels.

Funding environments can create entire classes of research or application -- surveillance capitalism, AI, national security, moon shots, abstract art COINTELPRO.

I'm the last space alien cat to ask what you should do that leads to _success_ , though my own heuristic has been to look for fundamental questions, ask a lot of _why_ , and question premises. Going back to roots and history can make a lot of foundations look far less firm. There may or may not be opportunity there.

I'd also focus very hard on being lucky.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. PG provides a thought provoking opinion, and he's a fine writer. However, I think this idea is a bit naive.

Sure, maybe he came to realize depressing, moody short stories weren't his thing, but I damn near guarantee his imitation of said stories was crucial to his learning how to write half-way decently. The vast majority of philosophers are not good writers. A few stand out as fine men of letters, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Cioran, and some others, but the vast majority of them are more concerned with the clear step-wise elucidation of an argument which, while important, rarely leads to an enjoyable or noteworthy result in the domain of literary style and is frequently bland and dry. There is some special enjoyment one derives out of the works of the like of Russell and Frege, but it relates to the crystalline nature of their ideas, not the genius of their literary style.

Take for instance the rhetorical technique Paul utilizes in the first graph-- the repetitions of Mistake n. x. Mistake n. x. Mistake n. x...etc. That sort of structure, and indeed the casual tone, is pretty rare in academic philosophy, and in academic computer science. Where is it more common? In the efforts of short story writers, informal essayists and other such literary folk.

I do agree that its natural to imitate what you like, and beneficial, but there's something to be said for imitating things you are averse to as well-- they present more of a challenge because you have to _overcome_ your natural dislike for the thing and _really_ evaluate it--you have to question your own opinion of it, have to see if you can uncover any diamonds in the muck, have to see if, even if you dislike it, you have the chops to pull it off. In short, you _grow_ as a person. Sure, the same thing happens when you make an easy picnic of your studies and imitations, but its silly to discount the value of forcing yourself to engage with views opposite your own, or things you are naturally disinclined toward.

I think Paul makes the mistake of assuming his conclusion in this essay before reaching it. He seems to have decided that none of his history copying these things he didn't like was valuable from the start, when, if he reflected a bit more, I'm sure he'd be able to find that, in fact, those were important links in the chain in some sense, and not total wastes of time.

That being said, he is correct that we need to determine value for ourselves and to come up with our own metrics and schemes of judgement. However, there is still value in the old pantheon--in the recommendations of all the men who walked before us, in all those stuffy critics and analysts babblings. After all, giants are giant for a _reason_. While it's important, as Paul says, to get over blindly accepting as good or special what everyone else considers good or special, it's just as important to be able to understand _why_ these things are considered special in a particular domain. You have to learn your own predilections--but you also have to learn the rules, the history, the techniques, and the value scales coupled with a field of art--the master is he who can bridge the two, he who engages in tradition while changing it, he who plays by the rules while making his own.

<comment><AUTHOR> >The vast majority of philosophers are not good writers.

I never understood this claim. I have to assume that people are letting their judgement of the content affect the judgement of the writing style. Plenty of canonical philosophers were absolutely beautiful writers - Plato, Hume, Nietzsche. Modern analytic philosophers are almost fanatical in their adherence to simple, straightforward language. The result might not be beautiful, but I certainly don't think you can call it "bad" either. Some philosophers may be bad writers (Hegel is a pain), but on the whole they seem to be mostly good writers. It's all that they do, after all.

>After all, giants are giant for a reason.

Well... are they? All of them? I think you can make this claim with a good deal of confidence about math and science, because we have a pretty strict set of rules for evaluating good and bad work. But do you really think that everyone in the artistic canon has a good reason to be there? What about all the still-living artists who have only recently been "canonized" via a flurry of academic attention (writers like DeLillo and Pynchon would be good examples). Are we confident that we'll still be talking about those guys 200 years from now? If not, how far back in time do we have to go before we can confidently say, "these giants have a reason to be giants?"

I'm not endorsing pure aesthetic relativism, nor am I saying that _none_ of the canonical artists deserve to be there. I'm just saying that I've never heard a convincing explanation of why the canon is a good judge of, well, anything.

<comment><USER14> The three philosophers you cite are among those commonly cited as good writers! I cited Nietzsche myself above. I suppose it depends on how you define 'good' writing. In the case of literary style I think for most people it boils down to there being some amount of creativity and play on the level of language itself (i.e. see Nietzsche) which is disconnected from the content. e.g. I'm sure Bertrand Russell was capable of comprehending Nietzsche's ideas(though the actual Russell never would have) and could just as easily have written a treatise on eternal recurrence or the history of morality as Nietzsche conceived of it. Point is, Russell's rendering of these ideas would have been _entirely_ different, even though they are employing the same medium of communication. Another person could very well have formulated the same ideas as Nietzsche, but probably wouldn't have conveyed them with as much creativity and grace. There's writing that shines as writing and there's writing that is in service to some goal, i.e. the clear work of modern analytic philosophers--they'd hardly gain any attention for literary ingenuity or clever turns of phrase, but you are correct that if our judgement is based solely on the effectiveness of the communication of the idea, they are in fact quite fine writers. And actually, in this sense Nietzsche would be pretty poor, because as Analemma mentioned his loose play with metaphor, while incredibly delicious on the level of style, does not communicate very well, if the idea is that a 'good' piece of communication delivers a single idea all the consumers of that communication can agree upon.

So perhaps I'd revise the claim to something like, most philosophers are not good _stylists_ (that is, they don't frequently engage in play at the level of language, as a skilled poet or essayist might)

As to your second point yes. There is always a reason. You can question that reason--i.e. you may think the reason is simply that academics were bored and decided to laud the first sap whose writing they came across that day--but this is a pretty absurd claim. You'd essentially be stating that a whole domain of tradition, practice, and procedure which organically grows and evolves, and I might add, in almost logical progressions at times, was ousted by the whims of one foppish professor who gamed everyone into liking something he liked simply because he liked it and was impassioned enough about it. When you plunge into a field of art, technique is often the criterion and leveling factor. For instance, you say you have never heard a convincing argument as to why Pynchon would be considered worthy of canon status--well, I'm not going to be so absurd as to claim he'll still be there in 200 years, but if you have knowledge of literary craft the reasons why he's there now are pretty clear-- his maximalism is both well crafted and unique and his style is a turn away from the still dominant style of american literature (Hemmingway based minimalism) which is positively refreshing (the same could be said for DFW, who was consciously, I believe, rejecting the minimalistc style--I recall he wanted to move away from his maximalism too around the time of his unfortunate death). It's because he utilizes traditional structures and devices in a unique way--but in a way that is importantly _still comprehensible_ under the lens of this tradition. Take for example the dawn of the unreliable narrator-- it utilized a familiar technique in the field of literature, namely the narrator, and modified it in such a way as to generate interest--as to who gets the credit for such developments--well, it probably comes down to luck and knowing the right people. Yes, all these aesthetic considerations are ultimately conventional and wispy--as all human values tend to be--but they nonetheless obtain, and traditions develop, evolve, die, or persist. There are indeed plenty of 'rules' when it comes to art forms--that is how, at the most basic level, for instance, I know that something is a painting and not a piece of music--the medium and form follow particular restrictions (and then we have great fun blending and challenging these notions).

That's why any critic worth his salt often delves into art history, the artists personal development over a series of works, and analysis of form and technique over simple and baseless value judgement. I may wretch at every Jackson Pollock piece I come across, but if I am educated in the discipline of painting, its history, and its techniques, I can understand where his pieces _fit_ into the narrative of painting history, what they challenge, what they change, and ultimately how unique his forms are and what they communicate within this context. If I dislike it, if I find it shouldn't be considered art --well I have to argue it from _this_ perspective, from within the _game_ of homo sapiens art history. This is why anyone who makes a snap judgement against such artistic efforts and says things like "anyone could do that, it's not art" always comes off sounding dumb and uncultured--they are treating the work entirely out of context and clearly lack an appreciation for the _medium_ as a whole--unless of course they provide _reasons_ which leverage knowledge of this medium.

At root our aesthetic explanations and investigations ultimately boil down to our base value judgements of simply "I like this thing or don't"\--but artistic forms exist because there are elements of these traditions a large number of people can generally agree they appreciate, can describe with a common language, and can critique in comparative ways.

Thus the cannon isn't a good judge of anything other than what your precursors believed should be appreciated. It's essentially the historical development of a shared value judgement, or a shared human prejudice. So of course you can repudiate the whole thing. But at that point you are no longer even _engaging_ in that art form--or at best you are engaging with blinders on, and any aesthetic mastery you manage to pull off is largely lucky and unconscious. You are starting from a different base. you are playing your own game. Thus you shouldn't be too upset when other people don't appreciate what you do, or your work isn't considered interesting. You're not even speaking their language.

It's funny to compare different advice on reading material in this context. Faulkner suggested you ought to read everything. Schopenhauer suggested bad books ought to be avoided like poison--the old garbage in garbage out principle. Both work, but if you _forget_ your contexts and say, suggest to a film critic that the marvel movies rival Citzen Kane, they won't even begin to agree unless you layout a sophisticated argument that appeals to the criterion generally recognized by adherents to the art form, elements of cinematography, the quality of the script, etc. etc...

Wittgenstein's notion of language games, I think, is very informative when applied to the realm of aesthetics.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. You got me on a role. Good stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> >You'd essentially be stating that a whole domain of tradition, practice, and procedure which organically grows and evolves, and I might add, in almost logical progressions at times, was ousted by the whims of one foppish professor who gamed everyone into liking something he liked simply because he liked it and was impassioned enough about it.

I mean, take this argument and apply it to something like theology. "Are you _really_ going to say that an entire tradition, one which has produced innumerable great thinkers and has proceeded on a logical progression towards truth, is entirely mistaken in its most fundamental assumptions?" It turns out that, yeah, I would say that. Sometimes people make mistake. Sometimes lots of people make lots of mistakes and the mistakes go on for thousands of years.

>For instance, you say you have never heard a convincing argument as to why Pynchon would be considered worthy of canon status--well, I'm not going to be so absurd as to claim he'll still be there in 200 years, but if you have knowledge of literary craft the reasons why he's there now are pretty clear-- his maximalism is both well crafted and unique and his style is a turn away from the still dominant style of american literature (Hemmingway based minimalism) which is positively refreshing

But this is exactly the issue. _What_ does it mean for writing to be "well crafted", what does it mean for writing to be "positively refreshing"? If we can't give rigorous, verifiable definitions for these concepts, then we're just saying "he's good because he's good".

>It's because he utilizes traditional structures and devices in a unique way

Originality has at least the hope of being a more objective metric, although originality is clearly a very slippery concept. If I take a famous novel and change one word, the result may be a work that has never existed before, but that's not originality. If I use a computer to generate a completely random image, then again, that image may have never existed before, but that's not originality. So it's very hard to define. But I at least see the hope of a project there.

>I can understand where his pieces fit into the narrative of painting history, what they challenge, what they change, and ultimately how unique his forms are and what they communicate within this context. If I dislike it, if I find it shouldn't be considered art--well I have to argue it from this perspective, from within the game of homo sapiens art history.

I can certainly appreciate and enjoy playing games, since some games are very beautiful. But this "game", the game of "make an original contribution to art history and get academics to talk about it", seems to have no rules! What good is a game if no one can tell you the rules? The judges of the game can gesture towards criteria like "originality" that might conceivably give you some guidelines on how to play, but no one can definitively prove that one person deserved to win and another didn't.

>artistic forms exist because there are elements of these traditions a large number of people can generally agree they appreciate

Yes, I agree. But if we tried to submit the works of the canon to an analysis of this kind, to see how many of them contain "artistic forms that people agree they can appreciate", how many of them would survive? Some would, I'm sure. I think Shakespeare and Homer, for example, are still legitimately appealing to people today, if they can work past the archaic language. But exactly how many works of the canon would survive this analysis? Does Schoenburg's music have "forms that people agree they can appreciate"? If not, then what does that say about the validity of Schoenburg's status as a great canonical composer? (I happen to enjoy a lot of Schoenburg's music, but I don't think someone is stupid if they don't).

>Thus the cannon isn't a good judge of anything other than what your precursors believed should be appreciated.

All that effort, and this is the conclusion we're left with!

>It's essentially the historical development of a shared value judgement, or a shared human prejudice. So of course you can repudiate the whole thing. But at that point you are no longer even engaging in that art form--or at best you are engaging with blinders on, and any aesthetic mastery you manage to pull off is largely lucky and unconscious. You are starting from a different base. you are playing your own game. Thus you shouldn't be too upset when other people don't appreciate what you do, or your work isn't considered interesting. You're not even speaking their language.

Ok, this is a really interesting paragraph. You say it's the development of a "shared value judgement", but who, exactly, shares this value judgement? We have, on the one hand, a comparatively small community of academics who share the value judgement that Proust and Melville are wonderfully nourishing authors who deserve to be read again and again by new generations, and on the other hand, we have hundreds of millions of people who would just as soon throw Proust and Melville in the trash so they could go watch the latest Marvel movie or listen to the newest Justin Bieber song. Taking your comment about the "historical development of value judgement" seriously, what can we say by looking at this concrete historical moment? What can we say about what that value judgement has become? What authority can the university canon possibly have in the face of this sheer numerical onslaught? You say that "you shouldn't be too upset when other people don't appreciate what you do, or your work isn't considered interesting. You're not even speaking their language," but who exactly are the artists who are being appreciated these days? Who is speaking the language that most people find congenial? It's certainly not the academics or the purveyors of "high culture", the defenders of the "artistic tradition". MoMA exhibits of great theoretical sophistication are laughed at while Jay-Z packs stadiums. Your warning applies much more to all those who would play that slippery, ephemeral game known as "art history", rather than those who would simply "copy what they like".

All that being said, I do think the notion of a "canon" could be saved, but it has to be grounded in genuine, verifiable scholarship. With Shakespeare, for example, we could do research on his influence on the English language, his influence on other artists, his continuing popular appeal, etc, and come to the conclusion that his plays constitute a major accomplishment. But this game of "aesthetic criticism", or declaring this or that work to be beautiful or enlightening or whatever, that doesn't need to be done in universities. People can do that on their own time. Like I said above, a game where you can't even know the rules can't hold your attention for very long. You're better off playing Go or doing math. At least there you can know that you're winning.

<comment><USER14> Great stuff Jimmy. I appreciate your response, and your willingness to address the lengthy post--most would give up! You've clearly got an intellect.

I know before you said you weren't totally advocating aesthetic relativism, but I think you should go ahead and take the plunge! I think you're most of the way there, and why not commit to the position? Why not elucidate it? Examine it, explore it? I think you'd be a fine proponent.

Anyway, I'd love to continue this discussion, but I don't want to clog the thread here since we are getting a bit far away from PGs essay at this point-- my email is in my profile. Shoot me one if you're interested. Otherwise, you can be certain I'll be mulling over your reply for the next few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Part of me agrees with this, but another part says "this is the best way to avoid discovering anything new and profound".

I've often read things I haven't enjoyed (or even understood) until much later.

</comment><comment><USER16> > It was so clearly a choice of doing good work xor being an insider that I > was forced to see the distinction.

Not sure I get this. Doing good work would seem to go along with being an outsider in a corrupt economy.

<comment><USER17> XOR meaning exclusively one or the other. He's saying it was apparent that if you're an insider, you won't do good work. And if you're doing good work, you're not an insider.

<comment><USER18> I didn't get this either even though I understand XOR. I get it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't trust the authorities on HN for what's a good comment.

I am going to type something amazing that might get me downvoted.

Vive la difference!</comment>


Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time? - <AUTHOR> http://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-economist-too-far/238050 <comment><USER2> _The book's premise is that in about a century, it will be possible to scan human brains at "fine enough spatial and chemical resolution," and to combine that with good-enough models of signal-processing functions of brain cells, "to create a cell-by-cell dynamically executable model of the full brain in artificial hardware, a model whose signal input-output behavior is usefully close to that of the original brain."_

Like Bostrom and Kurzweil I think this guy is seriously underestimating the difficulty of biology. I don't believe in souls or non-computable woo going on in our brains. I do believe that biology is _insanely_ complicated compared to computing or physics; physicists, engineers, and people from a computing background who've never worked in biology tend to handwave incredibly difficult problems. See also: the long and mostly-unsuccessful history of people who thought that they could replace animal/cell culture drug testing with models in silico.

On top of the sheer audacious difficulty of creating whole brain emulations, there's the problem of competing with boring old "narrow" AI. Surely an economist of all people should recognize the feedback loop that makes narrow AI profitable first, which attracts more investment, which unlocks more capabilities without biological emulation... how many of today's jobs are going to be left un-done by narrow AI a century from now, even if whole brain emulations are finally practical then?

<comment><USER3> I attended a primer lecture on tbe immune system. Holy hell. At least 200 different types of T cells. At least 200 other types of immune cells. Then there are all their interactions, signaling, locating, memory functions. I honestly dont know if one can ever get a handle on the complexity.

<comment><USER4> It is not complexity, but diversity. The functions those cells perform are mostly understood as are most mechanisms by which they work. There are many variants of a similar function and mechanism.

That said, immunology is still quite young too, but compared to it neuroscience is not even born.

<comment><USER3> For a large part we understand how two particles can interact. Simple rules.

Put together 200 of those particles, predictions become very difficult and complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone that hasn't yet, check out Black Mirror on Netflix. It has a lot of ideas in it that I am surprised to see in a show in 2016.

I love Elon Musk but I think he is solving the wrong problem when it comes to making human beings a space faring species. The fragility of human flesh is the barrier to colonizing space. You can try to solve this problem by wrapping it in a contained atmosphere or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. One made of metal and silicon that can recharge its batteries so long as it has a line of sight on a distant star.. maybe as the article says: "a robotic body [standing] roughly two millimeters tall"

The greatest challenge we face is keeping this incubator called Earth alive long enough for us to develop the technology to abandon our flesh. But I imagine if that day ever comes what it means to be human will have been destroyed in the end anyways.

<comment><USER6> I recently discovered Black Mirror.

It's a great and fascinating series. Finally something other then the mind numbing pabulum that is most TV.

I especially loved season 1 / episode 2.

\---

The way our brain works, all experience, self consciousness and awareness is intricately linked to physical perception. If we were to go the 'brain in a petri dish' route, we would have to fake all those signals a body would send to the brain. If we just start emulating the brain physiology digitally, that is easier of course.

But I would not call the result of either method a 'human being', but something inherently different.

<comment><USER7> Watch Utopia.

[http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia)

I judge it better than Black Mirror. Don't google any information about it because it will sound stupid, just watch it outright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Living in VR, and the implications thereof, have been written about in SF for decades. The earliest work is "Simulacron 3", from 1964. It's been done to death in anime. "Sword Art Online" is probably the best known stuck-in-VR anime, but "Log Horizon" deals with the philosophical aspects in more depth. Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics.

Read Hanson's list of "wild ideas".[1] "By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers running brain simulations." (And the rest will be keeping the server farms going?) "If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers as smart as people." (After 30 years of Cyc trying that, that's probably a no.) "If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to our common benefit." (He's at George Mason University, which is a right-wing think tank, and has to say stuff like that to get tenure.)

[1] [http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html](http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html)

<comment><USER9> > Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics.

World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with successful prediction. Hanson has made this point in a few places, eg, [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is- fan...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is- fantasy.html). I'm not sure if you've read Age of Em but it didn't feel like reading scifi, so much as reading an encyclopedia.

RE: the list of "wild ideas." He estimates that maybe a third of them are true. Quoting a few and acting shocked that that's the case is not a very epistemically hygienic criticism.

BTW if anyone wants to read a summary that carries some of the tone and emphasis of the book itself, [https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age- of-em-summar...](https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age-of-em- summary-of-policy-relevant-information/) is pretty good.

<comment><USER10> > World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with > successful prediction

Do you have any evidence that that's true? A decent number of ideas portrayed in science fiction have come true, so clearly successful prediction is going on.

Ultimately, economist or author are both using imagination and extrapolation. I don't see any particular reason to expect better results from the economist.

<comment><USER11> > clearly successful prediction is going on.

Throwing out all possible wild ideas, some of which happen to come true, isn't what "prediction" means.

<comment><USER10> Given the poor prediction reputation of Economists, their attempts probably match your description as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favorite writer wrote a great book review of Robin Hanson's seminal work 'Age of Em" here

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of- em/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I once wrote a book in 2005 about the inevitable fusion of central banking theory, economic psychology, and "good-enough" artificial intelligence. Whole brain emulations weren't required. Instead, mass expansion of mobile devices and the consolidation of civil behavior into those devices (purchasing, voting, socialization, documentation, research, institution interactions, welfare benefits, etc) allows a sufficiently powerful enough AI to read an NSA trunk and be able to create a model of the "animal spirits" of the individual constituents of markets. It couldn't model human behavior accurately, but that wasn't required. Instead, it could create a chaotic chain of events between all actor demands and capabilities via small actions that would result in massive economic policy enforcement.

Instead of invading Iraq, the machine predicts a convoluted path of investment schemes that ultimately bankrupt the dinar, the ruling party, and the entire nation. No bullets fired. No soldiers deployed. To economists, it would look like normal macroeconomic activity.

I never released the book because I realized I was writing a business proposal.

<comment><USER14> That sounds really interesting. I have also thought about how "good-enough" AI could get a lot more done than many predict. I also like the idea of a Rube Goldberg equivalent of investment schemes and options to achieve certain objectives. Write a fun versions of it first, then do the business proposal. Good luck :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > You are beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic, as are your friends, co- > workers, lovers.

Aren't all of these qualities measured relative to our neighbors? I.e., each of us is a genius compared to our ape forebearers, but if everyone around you is beautiful, intelligent, and charming, then no one is.

> You feel no hunger, no cold, no heat, no pain.

Again, isn't discomfort relative to what one is prepared for? Under such circumstances, wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis?

"Connoisseur" is relevant [https://xkcd.com/915/](https://xkcd.com/915/)

Am I missing something, or is this just another economist who understands nothing about human desire?

<comment><USER16> You can make a case that charisma only matters in contrast to its lack, and perhaps beauty is the same although I'm not as certain, but intelligence has an intrinsic value that ought to be evident by the fact that we built a technological civilization with it.

<comment><USER15> That's a good point, I'll just say that no one will _perceive_ themselves or their friends as intelligent, except relative to their competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hanson's thoughts on the profile: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> The Age of Em can be read in two ways. One is to treat it like an RPG setting book. An imaginative world with highly detailed descriptions, complete with cool potential plots for your campaign. The second way to read it is as a book trying to predict the future in much the same way as The Flintstones is recording history. Everything is strange yet it's all mimicking the current world with superficial differences.

The chapter about computational reversibility was really annoying - good luck with it if you're not a CS academic. I'm a software engineer and I only have a vague idea what it is and unless you know already you're out of luck as the author will not explain anything.

The rest is ridiculously specific descriptions of a future world - a bit like trying to forecast weather 20 years in advance by trying to get the exact temperature, rainfall, etc. on a particular Thursday in March, in your back garden. This is why I'm going with the former way of reading this book. Maybe someone will write a fiction book based on this setting - could be interesting.

One last thing: the author mentions that economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational^H^H^H^H^H^H^H uncoordinated populace fails to realise the correct prediction (a comment I've read before made by other economists), implying that the only way he can be wrong about his predictions in this book is if we all somehow conspire against him, at which point it's all our fault. AI research must be a traumatising field.

<comment><USER19> "...economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational..."

This is the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong community worldview basically, and I find your RPG setting reading works well for understanding them as well. From now on I'll think of them as writers who are predicting the future of an alternate universe where humans think fundamentally differently than in our reality.

It's a hell of a lot of fun, if you model homo economicus instead of homo sapiens it actually is possible to reason about large societies and at least attempt to predict far future outcomes to some degree. Plenty of ways to hand wave away the reasons that you can't "predict" historical events or the present with these models, that's boring anyway, the future has cooler toys.

If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way.

The aversion to history makes a lot of sense, my own interest in history and sociology is what showed me the holes in this worldview and now I can't play this fun game with the same immersion they do.

<comment><USER20> >If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way.

I think it's pretty silly to accept _homo economicus_ as an actual definition of rational behavior, since nobody really wants to live like such a creature.

<comment><USER19> Really? I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that.

Also, I'm not sure how the quoted part relates, that was my facetious description of how Homo Sapiens act, in contrast with Homo Economicus.

<comment><USER20> >I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that.

Quite the opposite, actually. Homo Economicus has two things homo sapiens does not, and _cannot_ :

* A fixed-a-priori "utility function". Things it wants before it has experienced life at all, with those "things" being linearly convertible into money.

* Model certainty about the transactions it enters: risk is accounted for using probability, but the model structure is, again, known a priori.

When you weaken these two restrictions in econometric and psychological experiments, you recover useful descriptions of actual human behavior. But those restrictions were ridiculous and unrealistic in the first place, _unless_ you pull an economist's typical move and assume that a person operates like an investment bank with a fixed charter (ie: the fixed goal of accumulating capital) and a fixed set of actions (ie: available equity investments).

<comment><USER19> Yup, although that seems to be a very specific version of the general Homo Economicus term.

Do you think I find the idea of Homo Economicus convincing or valid? I was arguing the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is anyone else having a hard time disambiguation which of his models and predictions he holds genuinely, and which are merely exercises in _reductio ad absurdum_ attacks on the dysfunction he sees in the establishment? I'm all for free thinking, but this seems all too convenient to hedge his bets.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the main point he is trying to make (which I see summed up by the cliche "think outside the box") but most of the ideas in this article are such stereotypical notions of turning everything on it's head: Aliens? AI taking over? Robots taking over? Us living in a simulation? Challenging the concept of rape? Can we stop pretending these are cutting edge and out there? Can we stop pretending these ideas don't have very old precedents? He has come up with unique ideas on these themes, but no he is not "ahead of his time" I would argue in many ways he is stuck in the past.

</comment><comment><USER22> Let all of these people 'transcend' their minds into computers, I will go the other way, and go immanently into my body.

"Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body." \-- Nietzsche

[http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake- zarathu...](http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake- zarathurstra/iv.php)

Or Deleuze summarizing him: As Nietzsche would say, we stand amazed before consciousness but the truly suprising thing is the body.

To feel a raindrop on the skin, to look out on a surprising sunrise, to lie on one's back in the grass at dusk while bats fly overhead. I would not want to live 1000 years without this. I'd rather the lights go out and have it all end and gone forever than live only in a simulation, to no longer feel the randomness, the intricacy, the depth, the richness of what is happening now.

You're welcome to all the virtual you want. But no thanks.

<comment><USER23> Your preference is irrelevant. Many people will choose to be uploaded, and those people will inherit the Earth. As the uploads will be able to think, work, and multiply much faster than normal humans (among other possible advantages.)

Hanson imagines that fleshy humans will be left behind by the future, perhaps continuing to exist by investing in the em economy and living off the interest, but otherwise not participating in the system at all.

I don't know why you think an upload's experience would be worse than a fleshy human's experience. With such advanced technology in the far future, virtual reality and simulations will probably be indistinguishable from the real world. They will feel rain drops and see sunrises. But also they will probably be able to experience so much more. As virtual worlds do not have all the limitations the physical one does. They won't have to age or experience pain or discomfort, sickness, etc. They can walk on distant planets or swim in deep oceans, or fly through the air effortlessly, and without mechanical aid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cosplay (role-playing) of intelligence (acute hipsterism) at its best.

</comment><comment><USER25> He's not an economist, he's a futurist, and not a particularly interesting one.

For an actual economist ahead of his time, I recommend Steve Keen.

<comment><USER26> Hanson is a professor of economics at GMU [http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson](http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson)

<comment><USER27> For folks who may not be familiar with future studies. It's a genuine academic discipline, when we say that Hanson is a futurist, it's not an insult.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You can't hope to "scan" a human brain and make a virtual clone of a human being or any being, because life and conscience is much more than a brain. So that future he describes , at last functioning the way he thinks is impossible. Until we understand 100% of what we're made of, no one can even think of anything like this.

</comment><comment><USER29> JETSON, Bay Area, the future (H Minus) — Scientists, or self-taught philosophers who've heard of science anyway, predict a dazzling future for humanity — in which our computer-augmented future selves, in a world of endless plenty, keep being shits to each other.

An advanced computer-managed economy will do all the jobs, building our homes, 3D-printing our iPhones and nano-assembling our food. Wanting for nothing, people will at last be free to assert their essential humanity and complain bitterly about everything.

Genetic engineering will give us new bodies and an indefinite lifespan. Whole- brain emulation will let those who would have died go on as personalities living in computers. In the future, fuckwits will be with you forever.

We will live in fabulously diverse harmony and break the cycle of every new technology first being used to murder each other. This will include those thoroughly deserving of murder, particularly the endless identical instances of irritating hippie emulations blathering about cosmic oneness.

Cryogenically-preserved humans from the twenty-first century will have their frozen brains read by nanobots so their personalities can be run as programs. To avoid future shock, they will be put to work in a computer-simulated office job, and be reset each morning. For comfort and familiarity, each person- emulation will be given a helpful companion program, called "Clippy."

A benevolent artificial superintelligence will run the world, for the good of all humanity. To maximise utilitarian value across the quantum wave function of the universe, "Roko's femilisk" will regrettably have to punish emulations of those who complained that they found Tumblr social justice warriors' intolerance of intolerance "triggering." Please donate to help achieve this.

Given the opportunity for a world of unlimited creative freedom and enjoyment, we can be certain that humanity will not rest until it has turned this infinitely bountiful paradise into something even pissier than modern-day capitalism.

The Singularity will elevate the human condition to nasty, brutish and long. An emulation of Thomas Hobbes will, however, buy that for a bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER30> No.

</comment><comment><USER31> His book is not available on Kindle, so no

<comment><USER17> It used to be (see [https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth- ebook/dp/B01...](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth- ebook/dp/B01FHNFAVS?ref_=mt_kindle) and [http://ageofem.com/](http://ageofem.com/)). I don't know why it was pulled or who was responsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If people can be convinced that their simulated virtual self is actually them, overpopulation will be solved by mass suicide. Sorry if that's too dark for you guys, it just has to be said. All these "live inside a computer people" are just a modern Jim Jones cult.

<comment><USER23> A copy of you is you. Literally the atoms that make up 'you' are replaced all the time, by biology. And the atoms themselves aren't real. Like some models of physics suggest that physical things are constantly being copied and deleted already, like how objects in a cellular automaton universe are "destroyed" every time they move.

But how the universe actually works is irrelevant even. Other people can have a different definition of 'death'. If the information in my brain is preserved then that's all that matters to me. If I had to get my neurons replaced, one at a time, with 'artificial neurons' that would contain all the same information, then i would do it. Surely you would to. And you wouldn't even notice any change I bet. It wouldn't change anything observable at all. So how can it possibly matter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Far ahead of his time? No. This overwhelming optimism for technology is a very mainstream attitude you see among millennials and a lot of HN commenters.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yet another person who has read too many of the Culture Series books by Iain M. Banks and thinks we are close to achieving a lot described within those books.

I do think it is achievable, but even the books acknowledge it takes thousands of years to get there.

<comment><USER35> I don't think the books do "acknowledge" that? I mean in particular there's that nice short story where the Culture visits Earth. So the books are set in our present and not the future.

<comment><USER36> "Consider Phlebas" takes place in 1331CE whereas "Surface Detail" takes place between 2700 and 3000CE, with the other books in the "series" taking place at different points within that range.</comment></comment></comment>


Source: Facebook To Launch Read, Listened, Watched, And Want Buttons - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/19/facebooks-new-buttons/

<comment><USER2> Nevermind the buttons: that Facebook is launching new graph verbs makes their graph exponentially more interesting

</comment><comment><USER3> "Want" button is interesting. If you are an advertiser, you can target users on Facebook who has an intent to purchase a specific product.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is the big announcement on the Developer conference?

A little disappointing. This will be moderately successful, because all the People will put it next to their like button.

The Like button is used because people like to give active statements about something. I don't have any data about this, but i assume the usage is declining because there is no real benefit for liking something.

Where is the benefit for clicking Read, or Watched? They will probably argue "Sharing", but there are already too much Kitten videos on Facebook.

What happened to the Social Graph from the last f8? There were some big buzzwords like "everything is connected" , but i still don't see what changed since then.

They have so many brilliant Developers.

The best thing i can remember is HipHop for PHP and the Open Compute project.

They don't really try anything out of their comfort zone. The whole Deals thing got almost no promotion, was introduced silently and disappeared silently. There were some rumors about a Facebook Phone, that would have been interesting but no...

</comment><comment><USER5> Most importantly: will I be able to adblock these as easily as the like button?

</comment><comment><USER6> I added Facebook like to a website that gets about 5,000 views per day.

After a month no one clicked one, and it slowed down the website even though it was loaded asynchronously after the page was done loading. It took on average 500 ms to load according to Firebug, and sometimes it even timed out, leaving an ugly error message where the iframe was.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unclear how this will play out. The decision to 'like' is more complex. What if you read text and watch a video? Which button do you click? I understand this generates more data - and that's the real power, but the LIKE has already become so ubiquitous.

<comment><USER8> Probably, the developer will add whichever button of Like, Read, Watched, Listened makes the most sense for the content.

As for the ubiquity of Like, the new buttons will probably look like a Like button, and probably use an icon from the Facebook interface. That should help people make the connection to Facebook.

<comment><USER9> Yeah i see how this will play out. Now we have 2-3 Buttons per item just for facebook. Because you can read something and like it aswell as want/watch it.

More buttons higher pageloads because not many sites use the 2-click versions yet.

Maybe someone should rethink the overall share model and find a new way to do it. Over time there will be more and more buttons all over the place.

<comment><USER10> Do you mean there's a two-click version of the Facebook Like button? Do you have a link to more information about it?

<comment><USER9> It`s actually only a technique where you replace the like button with a static img and on an mouseover event or first click you replace it with the original like button.

Its good for improving page loads because you dont have to wait for 3rd party servers and also its an improvment for user privacy because your site is not automatically sending content informations into the graphs of all these sites just because someone opens a webpage.

I can only link to one project i know of, but its in german only atm <http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/> another example would be techcrunch but as far as i can tell they only use it to improve the overall pageload experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [More cowbell] jerrya [wants] this button. jerrya [read] this comment. jerrya [liked] this comment.

</comment><comment><USER12> and i'll have a "yeah, right" button in my browser

</comment><comment><USER13> This is just stupid, there's no value to the users whatsoever It's just a hoop they'll try to push down the users throat to make more ad money

People are not stupid, this won't catch

Also, facebook is getting all bloated</comment>


API Security for Modern Web Apps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/aws-activate-startup-blog/api-security-for-modern-web-apps-a6a7f226a6d <comment><USER2> Wow. Native advertising posted without attribution as being an ad. Pretty sure that violates some FTC rules on advertising.</comment>


How Wesleyan's Counter Culture Came To Rule New York's Tech Scene - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/12/how-wesleyans-counter-culture-came-to-rule-new-yorks-tech-scene/?show=all

<comment><USER2> As a Wesleyan graduate of CS, I have to say that this piece amuses me. None of the people mentioned in the article actually are CS majors (there were only 5 of us the year I graduated), but are "McKinsey consultants" and "[guys] where Hollywood didn't really work out for us, but now are trying our luck in Hollywood." And the picture of the urban rooftop party featured in the article vaguely reminds me of the NYC rooftop party at the hedge fund office where I worked for previously staffed with attractive hipster receptionists, HR people and managers who dressed the part and were quite clueless about the technology or the domain area we were involved in - but were very good at making mixed drinks and dj-ing. These guys in essense, are very much part of the "party people" that look and play the part, complete down to the prep school pedigree and the sensibly choosen retro flannel mix-and-match - that a lot of programmers both in the Valley/Alley are looking up to.

There was a phase in my life when I drank the kool-aid, partook in the festivities and read James Joyce and attempted to think deeply about the Hegelian dialectic but then I realized that these "lofty" concerns belied a more pressing issue, how Joyce or that indie band might have impressed that hipster chick that I ran into at the MGMT show last Saturday and had the hots for - because she was French (and therefore social-consensenually hot).

Fast forward to present-times, I work in IT and my co-workers consist of one guy from Belarus and another guy from India both on H1B but both of them could write amazing code and we are three months ahead the schedule in shipping out a informatics platform with about 100+ users. It's not the sexiest work a la "changing the way one shops on the Internet" but we ship, get paid and have free time to pursue our other interests - because impressing programmers/tech bloggers isn't really my concern as you can't get laid anyways by doing it. It took me awhile to love and embrace the atom bomb but I have to be grateful for my alma matter for teaching me unexpectedly to distinguish between what's crap and what's substance. So while I am unfortunately no longer part of the "Wesleyan mafia," I try to keep my head up and am confident that I'll be around when the IT/startup market crashes in the next cycle.

</comment><comment><USER3> As with the other Wesleyan students in this thread, I find this article pretty bizarre. I'm one of 6 current CS seniors and our "department" (actually part of the Math department) consists of only five professors. Furthermore, there is almost no emphasis on programming in the major; all of the core classes (and most of the electives, which are few and far between) are focused strictly on computer science. While I personally appreciate this rigorous focus on theory as it complements my own practical experience, for most students it means never seeing a real, large programming project or the tools to manage it.

As a result of all this, many Wesleyan CS graduates go to grad school instead of start ups. This isn't helped by the single-minded focus of the career center on careers in finance and consulting, which leads to a complete absence of technical recruiting on campus. I and several other students including @samdk and @rubergly have tried to change this to some degree by offering more outlets for students on campus to program, but it's definitely an uphill battle.

That said, if NY/Boston startups feel like making the commute up to central Connecticut, they'll find many smart students with a strong grounding in computing theory and math. I just wish the school was more interested in making that happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi folks - director of the Wes Career Center here. Happy to see this article is getting some notice.

On campus recruiting is a game of yield - the companies that come back to campus year after year have multiple positions to fill and consistently get a good turn out from Wes students. Google returns every year because we get a great response from students. Other, less well-known tech firms that have tried haven't gotten a big enough response to keep coming back for on campus recruiting.

BUT - most people will not get a job through on-campus recruiting in the first place. We have lots of resources for folks interested in tech fields, and, as the article underlines, we have a great network of alumni out there that we can help you connect to. Indeed, the whole point to Digital Wesleyan is to create awareness and real networking opportunities for alumni and for students that turn into business opportunities and job opportunities. That's why the career center jumped at the change to work with Jake to get it launched.

Come on down to Butterfield A - happy to work with you!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is neat. But it also leads me to a tangential question:

 _Where are the publicly-educated tech moguls?_

We continually hear about Stanford, Harvard, and places like Wesleyan. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who came from state universities or other public institutions, as well as those from less wealthy backgrounds. It's time for you guys to speak up and inspire the next generation, for the good of our economy, and for the health of our entrepreneurial ecosystem.

<comment><USER6> Sergey Brin: BS, University of Maryland

Mark Cuban: University of Pittsburgh/Indiana University

Just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more.

<comment><USER7> Larry Page went to the University of Michigan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm currently a student at Wesleyan, and seeing this article was awfully surprising to me. If we really do rule the tech scene in one of the largest cities in the US, I certainly wouldn't know it from being here. Our CS department is tiny (but excellent) and is focused almost entirely on the science of computing rather than applications of the craft. I've heard of some Wesleyan grads going on to high positions in the tech world but I assumed these were exceptions to the rule.

I came to Wesleyan not because I thought it would have the best programs for what I wanted to study, but because of the student community. I have never seen such a high volume of creative output from any group of people, and it inspires me daily. If there are programmers somewhere on campus that exhibit this level of excellence and inspiration in their work, they've been quiet about it.

Jake, what advice would you have for a current Wesleyan student who wishes to be active in the tech world?

And if you're reading this, other Wesleyan students, can we hang out? I like web development a lot but I'm not smart enough to do it all by myself. Let's build stuff!

<comment><USER9> Recent Wes grad, here.

I think a lot of the lack-of-visibility is because of the Career Center's complete-and-utter-mindless-focus on placing folks into consulting, finance, or legal jobs.

The Hollywood Mafia we've got operates almost entirely independently of the Career Center; the Film Studies department is practically their own placement agency.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the reasons are. I'm around on campus, working, if you want to build something. Lemme know.

cmhamill at wes...

<comment><USER10> Sorry you feel that way...I'm part of the career advisory board and hosted about 15 students every year to speak with execs at Bloomberg (on the tech side). I can assure you that if you want to get a job at google, etc, the career center is just as happy to help you and can make inroads there.

Would love to talk to you more about this...pcortes at wes....

<comment><USER3> If you look at the list of companies doing on-campus recruiting this year, there was only one (WH Trading) that was even vaguely related to tech/programming. Why is that? Is it because our compsci department is less well known (and smaller) than at other schools? Is it because the CRC doesn't do outreach to tech companies?

I've found the CRC really unhelpful in finding tech internships, and I assume it's the same for finding tech jobs. However, I understand it's probably not a priority given that the Econ department, for example, is about 20 times our size.

<comment><AUTHOR> Startups don't have the resources of large companies to invest in on-campus recruiting efforts, and the CRC doesn't have the time/money to bring together a bunch of small companies. It's just easier to bring in the big players and try to employ as many students as you can.

That means it's up to you to speak up, use the tools at your disposal (linkedin, wescan) to find the people who are more than willing to help, and to make the opportunity for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [Disclosure: I went to wes and didn't major in CS (though wish I had taken more classes in it)]

I think the main point from this article is that the type of thought wesleyan teaches has proven itself well-suited to the creative, innovative thinking valued in the tech and startups especially. While this isn't necessarily programming focused, there are other roles in the industry Wesleyan is showing it has done really well in.

Also, while more grads move to NYC than anywhere else, I will say there's plenty of wesleyan tech talent out here in the bay area (CEO of rdio, a bunch of folks at google, and startups).

The school would definitely be well served by beefing up it's CS department and trying to attract more talent. With a solid programming community on campus, I bet we'd see some awesome projects emerge especially as tech mixes more with the strong arts and music scenes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks as mentioned in the article. <http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf></comment>


No, there is no epidemic of loneliness - <AUTHOR> http://andrewgelman.com/2018/05/16/no-no-epidemic-loneliness-dog-bites-man-david-brooks-runs-another-column-based-fake-stats/ <comment><USER4> 1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't quite what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative term - "less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that might skew longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to (almost every day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably being ostracized to boot.

2) To a significant extent, it's possible to translate "I'm lonely" into "I'm too disgusted with the ethics, crudity, vile political opinions, manners, dress, accents, musical tastes, spiritual nonsense, etc of the people I meet these days to go out of my way to meet them again, thanks." This may be a downside to diversity (for those too-easily put off), or a reflection of the fact that we're all social climbers, who are too optimistic about our "social value" in the eyes of all the other social climbers, I don't know.

After all, almost all of us have solutions to loneliness handy if we aren't at all picky about our company. And back in the day, you couldn't be - <USER2> village was your world.

A hidden factor, IMHO, is the rapidity of cultural change. Last long enough (age 28 in my case) and you are necessarily a time-traveller, in a foreign culture to a large extent, and it hurts mightily to know that your tribe has moved on; but it has (unless you joined an uber-traditional church or cult as a youth.) If you opt to deny this, as many do, your world is gonna shrink and keep shrinking from that point on. You're gonna miss a lot of fun, too.

PS - volunteer.

PPS - I'm not 28, that's just how old I was when I realized I wasn't part of "the younger generation" anymore, and had to decide fast whether my generations' taste in everything was going to be forever supreme in my head, or to start making an effort to see what the real kids were up to, and whether I might like any of that, too. I chose the latter and bless that day.

<comment><USER5> > 1) I'm going to guess that what my grandparents meant by "lonely" isn't > quite what my generation or yours, means. I think we use this as a relative > term - "less connected than other people" to at least some extent. So that > might skew longitudinal statistics. If you only had two friends to talk to > (almost every day) in the village back then, you were lonely, and probably > being ostracized to boot.

As I understand it, "loneliness" in the article is understood as the feeling of loneliness, not a measure of how sociable you are. You can be lonely while continually being around people which you have relationships with which look warm on the surface, but don't give you much of a satisfaction. I think it is the case with a lot of people suffering from depression.

<comment><USER6> This is just speculation-- but to jump on your point, I suspect one of the reasons the rate of depression and loneliness is highest in males is because male friendships are often more guarded (less warm or emotionally close).

<comment><USER7> Could it have more to do with near past, namely 1950 nuclear familly ideal? Middle class women were housewifes - which can be very lonely if you don't put effort into keeping relationships. People have to make effort to meet you and if you alienate them, they simply cease to make effort.

Meanwhile men went to work where people have no choice but to communicate with you. You don't have to put effort into relationship, you are guaranteed not to be really lonely. In fact, too much relationship can be detrimental as you all compete for position and salary etc. Being a bit of jerk can pay of and you don't have to care whether people like you - if they don't it is up to them to deal with it. Plus there was influence of past war on expectations on males (be like veterans are).

That leads to two different kind of socializations for boys and girls - <USER3> boy socialization leads to loneliness in long term, when you are too old to pick up new habits.

<comment><USER4> True, nuclear families are a huge change. The ease of transportation created them as much as anything, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's pretty safe to ignore anything David Brooks is writing. He has a long track record of describing bogus societal trends.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Not only is his writing just a bunch of loose thoughts imagined into very Brooks-centric concept, this is also the guy who left his wife of 20 years for a woman 25 years his junior. How do they spend their time? He pimps work like "The Road to Character" and she leads an institute that studies and teaches "character". Just...what?

<comment><USER10> If his writing is that bad, maybe criticise that instead of his private life?

<comment><USER9> It only works that way up to a point. That point is when the private stuff is either illegal or is directly relevant to the work, as in this case. #metoo anyone?

<comment><USER10> Please elaborate how his divorce is either illegal or directly relevant to his writing

<comment><USER9> Character is a theme (and title!) of many of his writings. Ending an avowed life-time commitment in the circumstances around the way he did it brings that into question. We should all be questioning it, even if we're free to come to different conclusions.

<comment><USER11> > an avowed life-time commitment

That's everything what modern marriage today isn't. That's basically a religious view of marriage, which can freely exist, but has no legal binding at all, and whether divorce is ethical or not for one or some religions/"philosophies" is not necessarily universal.

<comment><USER9> If that were the case, no one would bother with marriage. It would be completely meaningless. This is an incredibly naive view.

The relevant question is not whether it's legal nor what one's religion has to say on the matter. The question is whether he showed character, and we can evaluate that by whether he lived up to his word and--especially--by how his wife took it.

<comment><USER11> Sorry but BS. Marriage is an economical (oiko- in oikonomia---the Greek word that is the etymological origin of economy---means family/home), legal and religious phenomenon. In modern societies the accent is on the first two, and we separate the legal meaning of it from its religious one; the former being an official bond regarding two person and their children, which governs how responsibilities, goods and resources belonging to a family core are parted and used among those individuals. That's the big part of why people bother with marriage (or things like civil unions) even if they are not religious.

Regardless, "living up to one's words" means nothing regarding the validity of a statement. I can say 1 + 1 = 1, but then in my private life behave as if it was 2; that does not affect the truth of the former statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The day I realized that just because people are talking about it, doesn't mean anything's meaningfully changed, is the day I learned how to discern signal from noise in society's whingings.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's an extreme bit of ranting about Brooks here (not a fan at all but it's a bit much.) A better source is the blogpost he quotes[0]. Unless the topic is Brooks specifically.

[0] [http://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2018/04/all-lonely- pe...](http://justthesocialfacts.blogspot.com/2018/04/all-lonely-people.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> How can he say, as the title of his blog goes, "there is no epidemic of loneliness"?

I can see how he has a case for questioning the statistical basis of someone who is arguing there _is_ an epidemic.

But how does that _disprove_ any such epidemic exists?

<comment><USER13> The claim "loneliness is increasing" is false according to the stats. That loneliness is prevalent in society (20% is a hell lot of people) is possibly a true statement. Moreover, that it's stable throughout the last couple of decades doesn't mean we should accept it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like this warrants a longer, better supported post, but it seems like the meaning of "lonely" is extremely (overly) relative. Since a lot of studies hinge on self-reporting loneliness this has a huge impact on the data available to diagnose long term trends.

Two important things that get conflated into "loneliness" is social isolation (the quality/depth of social relationships) and "loneliness" (the quantity of social relationships).

</comment><comment><USER16> The blog post was crappy and seems the bulk of the context was shitting on the shitty journalist, rather than debunking thoroughly and straight-forwardly the claim at hand. I find the claim on loniness as more aparent on a global scale and demogralhically varying than in one single nation and a single demograph, so the post seems not only obnoxious but narrow too.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know if it's an epidemic but I don't need an article to tell me the obvious -- that there are a lot of lonely people and loneliness causes problems of the mind which at times translates to problems of the body.

I wonder how many more people would hit the gym or outdoors if they had a companion?

</comment><comment><USER18> I couldn't even get to the main content, there was too much vitriol to wade through first. I'd never even heard of David Brooks and don't have an opinion on him, but I can't take seriously the opinion of anybody who's this wrapped up in his own bitterness.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can recommend Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Loneliness, in which he examines loneliness and its positive companion, solitude, in detail.

Not a self-help book, but a view on loneliness from both an empirical and philosophical perspective.

</comment><comment><USER20> Be careful about that Brooks guy, he might qualify for the White House, the way things are going these days.

<comment><USER21> The Presidency is a labor supply problem. No sane person would want that job.

<comment><USER20> I wasn't suggesting the presidency for the guy. You know how the people around him keep getting replaced for being out of touch with reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mandela, though he was in solitary confinement for much of the 27 years he spent in jail, came out of it spiritually and mentally unscathed. And we have a suicide epidemic, if you'll believe the press, of people who were never in jail, and were surrounded by people whom probably could have helped the person.... provided he or she asked for help rather than deciding they were lonely or alone.

I'm not saying loneliness isn't real... all I'm saying is, it is a choice that needs to be recognized as such, even if we keep choosing it over and over and can do no other sometimes.

So if you feel lonely, unless you're in solitary, please at least TELL SOMEONE how you feel... if nothing else. Tell me, I'll listen.

<comment><USER23> The sort of loneliness that impacts life negatively is probably more of a mental space than a physical one. While Mandela was isolated, he was not without cause or without allies even if he was physically separated from them.

If you're on a purposeful mission you can endure a lot of destitution. The loneliness that is making the news is more of a secular malaise. People without purpose, task, meaningful communities to be part of, and so on. They might not even be literally lonely in a physical sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Fischer summarizes:_

 _A layperson might ask, What difference—besides diss'ing social scientists—does it make if these interesting articles about loneliness growing are off a bit? First, they are off a lot. But more important, they are a critical distraction. Chatter about feelings (of mainly affluent folks) distracts us from the many real crises of our time—say, widened inequality, children growing up in criminally and chemically dangerous neighborhoods, the dissolution of job security for middle Americans, drug addiction, housing shortages (where the jobs are), a medical system mess, hyper-partisanship, and so on. That's what makes the loneliness scare not just annoying but also another drag on serious problem-solving._

Ahh the cruelty of science. I would agree that the claim Brooks, an op-ed writer, made is overblown and sensationalized a bit in order to get readers interested, but that doesn't make those who are indeed lonely, and those who the NY Times article focuses on, any less lonely or visible.

It seems like the post's author is dismissing that there are lonely people out there because Brooks wrote something that overstates their numbers. As any social scientist would tell you, even the best numbers we have on these phenomena are problematic and incomplete.

<comment><USER25> It's a slightly higher-flown version of "We can't talk about your problems because other people have worse problems!"

The problem with that idea, in addition to it being morally repugnant and utterly disdainful of human life, is that there's _always_ a worse problem. Oh, you want to talk about polio? Malaria is a worse problem! Oh, you want to talk about income inequality? Access to abortion is a worse problem by far!

It's a perfect way to shut down any discussion, simply by shouting "HEY, LOOK OVER THERE! WORSE PROBLEMS!" and claiming the moral high ground.

<comment><USER26> People have limited attention and time. It's perfectly valid to point out how the media is withholding information and distracting from more serious things on purpose. Otherwise it is just bike shedding.

<comment><USER24> We need a good catchy term for the fallacy that "the media is reporting on X but not reporting at all about Y!".

This is mostly confirmation bias since no one individual has the bandwidth or resources to look at every single story produced on every single topic on a single day. I tend to see people complain "this tragedy happened today and I don't see it being reported by the news!", implying that the media has something to hide or they value certain groups of people over others, but this is not a claim worth its salt.

There are many reason, both from the organization's standpoint and from the individual's standpoint, why this claim isn't true. It's a weak argument that only serves the purpose of distracting from topics at hand.

<comment><USER26> It's relatively easy to analyze media outlets, quantify and classify what kind of stories they publish, what kind of topics they focus on, what views they are pushing, etc. Definitely doesn't take much time. Few hours per day for a few days can get you very far. But you probably need some background on propaganda first, manufacturing consent, things like that.

It doesn't change anything though. Media is still not going to focus on important problems. It exists to influence people, not to report on all the right things. And it's worth pointing this out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WiFi – Why Channels 1, 6 and 11? - <AUTHOR> https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/why-channels-1-6-11.html <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm missing something but given the final diagram, why wouldn't they choose channel 5?</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't word processors automatically add close quotes? - <AUTHOR> One of the things I like about my IDE - as opposed to working in a word processor - is that whenever you type an open quote, a close quote automatically appears. The same goes for parenthesis, brackets, etc. It was annoying to go  back to Word after I got used to the convenience of this feature.
Perhaps there is a setting buried somewhere that allows you to turn this on, but I am curious as to why this wouldn't be enabled by default.
Is this simply because of precedence or is there a design decision behind this? <comment><USER2> Good idea, for one word quoted, just use it. For two words, scratch you right ear, three words scratch your left ear and so on up to - say 8 word passages. Ur keyboad would need to have the scratch etc sensors...</comment>


How We Sold 37,000+ Copies of Our Self-Published Book (and How Much We Made) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yegg/37-617-copies-of-traction-by-the-numbers-what-we-made-and-how-much-it-cost-41ff675c5965 <comment><USER2> I have perhaps an ignorant question: Aside from marketing which they mostly regret, the next biggest expense by far is editing. Why is editing the book costing them $7.5K? In particular as formatting is a different fee (3.5K).

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically because we were 1st-time authors. We hired a professional editor and paid him to edit our first draft. Then, we shared that draft with readers and it just wasn't good enough. So, we had to go back, re-edit the entire thing, and then pay for the editor to go over it all again.

Pretty frustrating, and the reason why editing was likely 2-3x more than it should have been. However, it also resulted in a much better book.</comment></comment>


Introducing Witnet: smart contracts with real power - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/witnet/witnet-smart-contracts-with-real-power-f79e326da3a4 <comment><AUTHOR> The Wit token plays a really important role in the network, so we want its initial distribution to be as fair as possible. We want it to end up in the hands of its end users (developers), not speculators.

That's we we're conducting a highly compliant token offering open to the general public through the Republic crowdfunding platform:

[https://republic.co/witnet](https://republic.co/witnet)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Witnet is designed to be compatible with existing smart contract platforms like Ethereum thanks to bridge nodes.

Here's another article explaining Witnet<>Ethereum bridges in detail: [https://medium.com/witnet/ethereum-loves- witnet-9a3fd21e6f5c](https://medium.com/witnet/ethereum-loves- witnet-9a3fd21e6f5c)</comment>


Judgments of Henry David Thoreau (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum <comment><USER2> A couple of years after this essay appeared Jedediah Purdy published something of a response in The Nation:

[https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/thoreau-radical- se...](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/thoreau-radical-seasons/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks - that was an excellent read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you can disapprove of the man and it sounds like it is correct that he was disingenuous with backing his message with action, but isn't it conceivable that the message was still worth something and that the message still speaks to us?

<comment><USER5> Long time ago I have read Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson. They are almost all shown as misguided hypocrytes but still some of them did caught spirit of the time and inspired people.

> A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world. In an > intriguing series of case studies, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, > Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, > Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth > Tynan, and Noam Chomsky, among others, are revealed as intellectuals both > brilliant and contradictory, magnetic and dangerous.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55302.Intellectuals](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55302.Intellectuals)

<comment><USER6> Do newer editions have an addendum covering Paul Johnson's own scandal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel this article is more of a critique of character than it is that of Thoreau's writing. I stumbled into Walden in my 30s and figured I'd continue my classic exploration. After a month of trying to get through the first few chapters, all I could tell myself was that I hated this book, and couldn't figure out why in hell people were praising it. I wanted to make sense out of it, get a grand picture: I wanted to extract the wisdom Thoreau was surely pouring through the pages! I was miserable, my experience was horrible. Reading felt forced, the text itself dense and unenjoyable. After some thought, I resolved to just get through the pages, and not try to make sense out of it, just cruising through. From then on, the pages and the words took on a different meaning - it wasn't about an idea to be extracted, but about simply enjoying the words on the pages. The moment I stopped trying to make sense out of the book, I started enjoying the words on their own, and they turned out to be the most beautiful friends through my reading.

"Walden" is my favorite book to this day. If you try to analyze it, you might get lost in the weeds - I feel this is what happened with the author of that article here - there's a story in it: Don't focus on it, just let your mind wander and enjoy the pure, humble beauty laid bare throughout.

<comment><USER8> Thoreau's philosophy is an existential one. It is rooted in his ethos. As such, an ad hominem attack is a valid rebut to his system. The man extolled the virtues of living on one's own. On reducing to the essences life by means of a certain self-reliant stoicism. The man did not practice what he preached. Therefore his entire view is bollocks. It's not humble, it's narcissistic meanderings.

<comment><USER9> >The man did not practice what he preached

Maybe the point is that he would have liked to be able to put what he preached into practice, but wasn't. Maybe he couldn't even admit that to himself. Still, this longing might make his preachings resonate with others sharing that same desire. Just speculating here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author has the merit of having actually read Thoreau rather than taking him for granted because of his reputation. However, am I going to get rid of _Two Weeks on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_ because I know that he has limitations? No.

There are only flawed authors. The question is what the author provides that one can't as readily find elsewhere. For Thoreau, the answer I think is, A fair bit.

</comment><comment><USER10> The submitted title was the HTML doc title ("Why Do We Love Henry David Thoreau?"), which is a perfectly legit choice for an HN submission. But it seems to be having a baity effect, so I've changed it to the least baity substring of any of the titles options above. Please let's react to the actual article now.

</comment><comment><USER11> What would Thoreau be doing in his cabin today? Back then he did a little surveying as gig work (in between support from family and Emerson). In the late 1990's I pictured him as a freelance web designer. Would the Thoreau of 2020 be dispensing wisdom from a hut on Bali, doing a little drop shipping on the side?

</comment><comment><USER12> That read as if the author went through everything they knew about Thoreau and took the least generous interpretation they could for each case.

</comment><comment><USER13> blows my mind no one ever brings up the walden storylines from doonesbury. it touches on everything we are still debating to this very day.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's silly to judge a man died 153 years ago using contemporary values. Walden is one of the few books I read so many times that I lost count.

</comment><comment><USER8> Essentially we like him because he was like us: hypocrites? As the article says he was full of him self. He was a liar. He didn't live on his own. People cared for him out of their own pocket. Those who love home do so because they want to be like him: a lying moralist that hypocritically says that we are better than you so listen to us. I hated him at 14. I hate him now.

<comment><USER15> I read Walden when I was 16 without knowing anything about him. I've never felt so enlightened as that time. I don't care about the literary critiques and background information. That book lit a fire in my young mind</comment></comment>


How to express my thoughts at 'technical' presentations - <AUTHOR>

Hi developers,<p>I have been requested for a technical presentation to startup team. I love this startup and am very very excited and eager to join this startup. I have done technical presentations at school but they are very verbose. Is that okay for presenting for at startup ? Can anyone please guide me <comment><USER2> What do you think they care about? Tell them that. Verbose is almost definitely the wrong direction. You've given us almost no detail so I can't offer any more advice.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of progress? - <AUTHOR>

I have a couple of products in the works, multiple pilots with customers, and 2 or 3 research projects happening at the same time all with about 6 people. I am wondering how you keep track of progress of your efforts and where they are? <comment><USER2> \-->Maybe using a good project management tool might help? [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/13/15-useful- project...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/13/15-useful-project- management-tools)

\-->Another way is make sure you are away from distractions. Here is PG's essay on: Disconnecting Distraction <http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html>

Hope this helps a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use our own product called Timmy at <http://www.timmyontime.com> . To keep tracks of things, we write notes and tag them with whatever we need to. We use the search box or simply browse through note pages to get what we want. Example, you can create a todo note for your teammate like this : "#todo @franky please update the pricing on the homepage". It uses IM as an interface (though you could do it on the web).

</comment><comment><USER4> I have used both of these and have liked the simplicity in ui and functionality:

<http://www.toggl.com/> (work/personal)

<http://www.todoist.com> (for personal)

</comment><comment><USER5> org-mode</comment>