The logic of Buddhist philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/logic-of-buddhist-philosophy/ <comment><USER4> In case anyone is turned off by the expectation of wishy-washy flim-flam, it's worth noting that Graham Priest may be a professor of philosophy, but is most well known for his work in logic, particularly in non-standard logics (i.e. not propositional or predicate logic) that allow non-boolean truth values, or weaken or remove some of the axioms of classical logic.

I assume that what's relevant here will be his work on paraconsistent logics (which allow contradictions) but I think an equally interesting line of work is linear logics. It's of interest to computer scientists because of its relationship to linear type theory (in the same way that the Curry-Howard correspondence links type theory and classical logic) and because it has close relationships with quantum computing.

In particular, you are not allowed to delete or duplicate elements/propositions/types (corresponding to physical processes that cannot arbitrarily create or destroy particles, the "no deletion theorem" and "no cloning theorem" of quantum information theory), so functions of the type

      duplicate :: a -> (a, a)

and

      delete :: a -> ()

are not allowed in a linear type system. Practically, this means that many operations can be optimized by the compiler to in-place mutations, because it is guaranteed that there is only ever one reference to a particular object.

<comment><USER5> Fuzzy logic is a vary useful non boolean logic system. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic) In practice it's somewhat like neural net's but in a far more human readable format and vary useful for things like washing machines that have lot's of flakey sensors and little processing power. But the basic idea is statements truth is percentage based. For example "this statement is true" would be 50% true and there is no contradiction.

PS: Yet another 1960's discovery that keeps being renamed and rediscovered.

<comment> dj-wonk Do you have personal, real-world examples of fuzzy logic being useful to you? I find Bayesian statistics useful regularly; fuzzy logic not so much. What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> The tradeoff between accuracy and speed. Real world devices ofen have tight feedback loops and flakey sensors so you need something that aproximates Bayesian logic without being bogged down.

The only real world example I have Persionaly used was a controller for a hacked together hot tub, the basic problem was generally adapting a simple program concept to both limited processing power and flakey data. You want to write if temperature is > value instead you go if 70% sensors in area x say temperature > value. You could try to find a better aproximation but the more you calculate the longer it is until you can process more data. We also had ~380 bytes of RAM and 2000 bytes for sorce code so things needed to be simple.

Sure, you could try and find the actual energy in the hot tub water but that's not needed, you really just want to know if the heater is on for to long with the pump off then shutdown for safety otherwise shutdown if temperature is probably to hot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Central to his teachings is the view that things are 'empty' (sunya). This does not mean that they are non-existent; only that they are what they are because of how they relate to other things._

Immediately I thought of Category Theory as this statement is a not terrible expression of what CT tries to teach. I'll immediately recommend the paper Numbers Can Be Just What They Have To ([http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/phil/NumbersCanBeJustWhattheyHave...](http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/phil/NumbersCanBeJustWhattheyHaveTo.pdf)) for more exploration.

Briefly, while CT is usually "bootstrapped" off having a notion of objects _and_ their relations, it becomes quickly obvious that focusing on the objects themselves is useless—they are given no emphasis in CT and thus wither away to being nothing at all. Instead, absolutely every interesting property of the objects must be expressed in _the relations they take with other objects_.

This is formalized in the Yoneda Lemma which, in a not terrifically generalized form, can be written

        forall a . (forall r . (a -> r) -> r) <-> a

which is to say "the collection of all ways to relate an object to other objects is isomorphic to the object itself".

So what's the point? Well, as the paper linked above suggests, sometimes the "intrinsic nature" of things makes them very difficult. We'd often like to equate two things which "ought to be the same" but aren't because their intrinsic nature differs. If you work in standard mathematics (set theory) you run into this problem because everything is described as having an intrinsic nature derived from sets. If you work in CT-based math you have no such issue because objects fail to have intrinsic natures altogether. They only have their "extrinsic" natures, their relations to other things.

<comment><USER7> Haskellers may recognize (a -> r) -> r as a way to represent "a"... you'll see that type signature in more than a few libraries.

<comment><USER8> For what purpose? Surely the type checker doesn't recognize the equivalence.

        a1 :: a
        r1 :: r

        f :: a -> r
        f a1 = r1

        b :: (a -> r) -> r
        b f = f a1 -- == r1

but `a f` is ill-typed.

        m :: a -> (a -> r) -> r
        m a1 f = f a1  -- m === (flip ($)) === (flip id)

So it appears that `(a -> r) -> r` is a "co-value" that can be applied to a function (resulting in the application of the function to the underlying vale of type `a`, dual to the usual situation where functions are applied to values.

<comment><USER6> This is pretty much exactly correct. The common terminology is that `forall r . (a -> r) -> r` is the Continuation Passing Style transformed version of `a`. At the end of the day, `CPS a` is useful whenever CPS is, but also more often.

sometimes you see CPS (a.k.a. Church-encoded) forms of values in Haskell in really tight inner loops as the compiler can optimize them better.

You also see a variant of it occurring in Free monad structures because it allows you to re-associate the binds to make them much more efficient.

You also see it sometimes when making monads over categories other than Hask—it lets you pretend you're working with a Hask monad (and thus use do notation) for a while and only "pass through" the real category at fixed points in time. This lets you, for instance, write a monad for Set even though normally you couldn't due to the need for the Ord constraint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paradox is not really so alien to Western philosophy, as this article initially suggests. It does end up referencing a number of modern Western philosophers, but the idea is older than that. It's ironic he refers to "Western orthodoxy" as being strictly anti-paradox, as traditional Christian theology is full of official paradoxes; a major example would be the doctrine that Jesus is simultaneously fully human and fully divine. Many were declared anathema for refusing this and other paradoxical doctrines. So rather than Western orthodoxy being unaware of paradox, it has insisted on it. The concept of the dialectic also touches on this idea of reconciling apparent contradictions, rather than defeating your opponent as one does in a debate, and this idea originates not truly with Hegel but spans all the way back to Socrates, and probably before.

I agree with the sentiment, however, that understanding paradox is extremely important to a person's capability for nuance and understanding. If you insist on a simplified internal consistency, you will end up sacrificing (and demonizing) whole parts of your thought process rather than trying to reconcile them as having some truth. It can be a process of self- indoctrination purely to avoid the pain of confusion. Another way to think of paradox is simply rejecting false dichotomies in favor of a more complex and uncertain reality. I don't think the lesson here is to "break the chains of Aristotelian logic" (God forbid) but rather, well, reconcile it with the idea of paradox.

<comment><USER10> I would clarify that the "paradox" of being fully human and fully divine is an apparent paradox, not an actual paradox. Most theologians I've come into contact with hold to Jesus' nature being the intersection of all divine traits and all human traits, allowing him to be both God and Man without contradiction.

The confusion I think lies in the ambiguity of the word "fully". Its a paradox if we take it to mean "100% of Jesus is human and 100% of Jesus if divine, resulting in a total of 200% Jesus." But if it is clarified as "Jesus possesses 100% of the qualifications required to be considered human and Jesus possesses 100% of the qualifications required to be considered divine," then the contradiction is gone.

<comment><USER11> Is there any statement/belief in Christian philosophy that

Human cannot be divine

or

Divine cannot be human?

If there is then the paradox does exist.

<comment><USER12> "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would have enjoyed this article if it dropped the Buddhism and kept the math.

Alternate logics are interesting, but you tend to be able to reduce them into each other in the same way that universal turing machines can simulate each other. They don't add new functionality, they add succinctness. So it's really strange to me to frame them as _totally different philosophies_.

For example, it is the case that self-referential statements don't always have well-defined truth values and that allowing them to have values like {} and {false,true} is a fruitful way to think about it. But this approach can be grounded in two-valued logic (and vice versa), and it doesn't solve the problem of self-reference (consider "This statement is not {}, is not {false}, is not {true}, is not {false,true}").

<comment><USER14> > I would have enjoyed this article if it dropped the Buddhism and kept the > math.

May I ask you why? Personally I enjoy reading about the origin of some particular idea/philosophy, even when it's purely anecdotal.

<comment> alex-g It's interesting, but the problem _I_ have with the presentation is that the modern manifestation of this idea has nothing to do with Buddhism. While we can maybe say that Buddhism came up with some similar-looking stuff, there's no causal link, and the philosophical systems are not working within the same paradigm. Like seeing a human face on the surface of Mars, this is an example of coincidence more than any deep connection.

Well, OK, that's unfair, because Buddhism and formal logic are both human endeavours, and have to deal with the same facts. But this disconnect is even true with parts of Greek philosophy. "Atoms" as we understand them are very different from "atoms" as Aristotle thought of them, even though there is a historical connection. Today's chemists would do badly if they relied on Aristotle for anything other than historical curiosity.

<comment><USER15> >It's interesting, but the problem I have with the presentation is that the modern manifestation of this idea has nothing to do with Buddhism. While we can maybe say that Buddhism came up with some similar-looking stuff, there's no causal link, and the philosophical systems are not working within the same paradigm. Like seeing a human face on the surface of Mars, this is an example of coincidence more than any deep connection.

Philosophies have been swapping ideas for thousands of years and it shows. Take a look at thinkers like Plotinus for example. He lived in Alexandria back when it was a multicultural metropolis hosting people from across the known world. His philosophy uses ideas and language you would expect to find in eastern traditions. Thanks to his extensive influence you will also find this jargon in western philosophy, christianity, islam, etc... This might not seem relevant to you. But if you know the historical connections between neo- platonism and philosophy of math it might.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you only want to go partway to catuskoti, consider the intuitionistic logic of Heyting and Brouwer. This is the actual form of logic which has the Curry- Howard isomorphism with lambda calculus. In particular, it rejects PEM but not PNC.

What does this world feel like? Well, let's assume we've formulated a proposition. In type theory syntax we'd write the body of the proposition `B` and give it a name `p` like so

        p : B

Here p is just a symbolic name and B is some formal language expression which describes the proposition p.

It's important to note that while we've immediately written this proposition but we've not established whether it is true or false. PEM would imply that the state we are in currently is unstable—p must be either true or false already!

Intuititionistic Logic, however, admits that the state of almost all propositions is far closer to what p is now—neither proven nor refuted. This neither-true-nor-false state is natural and only through a process of communication and work can we move forward. For instance, we could construct a proof of p

        p : B
        p = proof1   -- note how this looks like a typed program now

or we could construct a proof of its refutation

        notp : not B
        notp = proof2

But we might be incapable of either. It is unclear whether a program searching through the space of possible proofs would ever terminate, one might note.

What's immediately nice about this system is that it can model internally the notion of an independent statement—all statements are assumed independent until proven otherwise even!

It also reflects the nature of (functional) programming (of a certain style) where we define the type we're hoping to achieve and then work to create a program satisfying that type.

Note finally that Intutionistic Logic still holds that PNC is true. In particular, we can trivially prove the following proposition

        notPNC : forall prop . not (prop AND not prop)
        notPNC = /\_ -> \(p, np) -> np p    -- this is a legitimate proof term written in (System F) lambda calculus

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting.

It reminds me that I think an early start on programming made some Buddhist concepts easier for me to get. In particular for me there's a strong connection between using software to model the world and the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, the notion that nothing exists in its own right: [https://suite.io/matthew-bingley/1z8s2kx](https://suite.io/matthew- bingley/1z8s2kx)

I started coding young, and over time I gradually came to see that any computational representation of the world was always false. The act of writing software was always an editing of the real world, a discarding of everything that wasn't apparently material to my particular purpose. Changing software was sometimes a recognition of ignorance or fallibility, but often showed me how changing purpose changed what the maximally useful model was.

Years of that experience, combined with things like Douglas Hofstadter's work, made the apparent contradictions of Zen much easier for me to follow.

I think that also primed me to be ready for the Agile movement. Early on, I had strong BDUF tendencies. But once I gave up believing that there was _one_ right model, _one_ right design, I lost my taste for BDUF. So when people claimed we could keep our software as flexible as our understanding, that was very exciting for me.

<comment> dj-wonk In my experience, I have found that in some key Buddhist works that the apparent contradiction is a literary device for learning. I don't think that contradictions are intended to persist and represent a "finished" philosophy.

<comment><USER16> Hm. I've seen some of that, for sure. But for me the contradictions also point out the long-term weakness of taking conceptual frameworks too seriously. Our conceptual models of the world, like our software models, are temporary structures that we use for particular purposes. Eventually, we throw them all away. The map is not the territory, and there is no perfect map, just the right one for the moment.

Thus it is reasonable for Buddhists to advocate the end of Buddhism. E.g.: [http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=vi...](http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2903Itemid=247)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For the benefit of non-Hindi/Sanskrit speakers: the pronunciation of "catuskoti" starts with "ch" (as in "chat") and not as in "cat". "chaet" is the prefix signifying "four".

</comment><comment><USER18> Much of the mysticism and misunderstandings about indian philosophy comes from a very bad habit in the translation of indian works where some words are left untranslated as to give them a magical-religious cool sounding sanskrit aura.

If koti means corner, there is no reason that 'koti' should appear in a translation instead of corner otherwise you are giving it a special importance that distracts from the text's true meaning. Almost every translation of indian philosophy suffers from this fetish for the sanskrit language and as beautiful as sanskrit is, it shouldn't contaminate the purpose of a translation.

<comment><USER19> I was under the impression this was done because the english translation loses some meaning or context.

The idea that every concept can be translated is probably a false one. Ideas are built on cultures, cultures are described by language you can't change one without changing another. So when describing an idea generated by a culture, using a secondary idea and secondary culture, you will lose things.

That is why (for example) nirvana, has a bunch of translations: awakening, calmness, relief, void/voidless, the light, nothingness, or (my favourite) phew. Because we don't have the context to properly describe that in the west (latin-germanic based languages), so we need a bunch of other concepts that kind of point at it.

<comment><USER20> If a concept cannot be translated between languages, it seems likely that it cannot be translated properly between people either. Or do you mean directly translated? The concept of nirvana is ill defined if you cannot directly describe it, and can only point at it.

<comment><USER19> ill defined in one language, doesn't mean ill defined in another.

I'm saying language and culture are inextricably linked. And not 100% compatible with all other languages and cultures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Henk Barendregt (known for his work in lambda calculus and type theory) has good explanation of the apparent contradictions in tetra lemma.

Buddhist Phenomenology - 1.7 Explaining apparent contradictions:

[http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html#SECTION000270000000000...](http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/BP/bp1.html#SECTION00027000000000000000)

In other words: And Now for Something Completely Different...

</comment><comment><USER22> The logic of Buddhist philosophy: emotional attachment to and/or desire of impermanent things has the potential to result in dissatisfaction, as impermanent things are impermanent. It's hardly rocket science. Desire nothing, and you'll never never feel the dissatisfaction of not getting what you want. Be attached to nothing, and you'll never feel the pain of losing something.

Some quotes by emperor Marcus Aurelius, of the Stoics, expressing a similar idea:

"You have power over your mind - not over outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

<comment><USER23> This is a rather gross oversimplification. What you state is true, and is in fact the essence of the first 2 noble truths, but that's hardly the meat of "the logic of buddhism". The hardest attachment is that to the self, and the hardest realization is that the self itself is impermanent. To have the "right view" of the self, one has to understand the illusory nature of phenomena and the paradoxial nature of awareness itself. Awareness, is one of those things about which none of the following can be said: 1) that is exists, 2) that is doesn't exist, 3) that is both exists and doesn't exist, and 4) that is neither exists nor doesn't exist.

Buddhism is very simple, but at the same time it can take "many lifetimes" to achieve true understanding of it.

<comment><USER22> The illusory nature of the self can also be explained relatively simply to anyone who's familiar with the justification problem[1]. What 'is' the self and what 'is not' the self? That requires a metric for deciding. But that metric in turn requires another metric to determine its validity, and so on ad infinitum. The concept of self is thus arbitrary, and hence logically meaningless. Wittgenstein expresses this idea far better than I do here, in his Tractatus[2].

This equally applies to all phenomena; any attempt to divide anything up into 'things' is ultimately arbitrary, as it relies on ultimately unsubstantiated metrics, and hence is without meaning.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument) 2\. [http://philosurfical.open.ac.uk/tractatus/tabs.html](http://philosurfical.open.ac.uk/tractatus/tabs.html)

<comment><USER24> Explaining the illusory nature of the self isn't important. _seeing_ , in real time, the illusory nature of the self is what brings liberation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This made me think of an interesting way I have heard some people answer the question "if God is omnipotent, then can he create a rock so heavy he wouldn't be able to lift it and then lift it? If yes, he is not omnipotent, if no, he is not omnipotent!" with a logical leap also hard to comprehend to western minds - he can do both, and that's why he is considered omnipotent. He doesn't need to follow human logic, hence the third option - creating a rock too heavy to lift and lifting it.

I am completely non-religious,but as a logical riddle it always fascinated me that there could be a "third" option.

<comment><USER26> A rock too heavy to lift would be a rock inside the event horizon of a black hole, if one can stipulate that the rock still "exists".

My own attitude toward paradoxes concerning God is that understanding is a gift - awesome in its comprehension of the universe from big bang to Planck length scale interactions. Nonetheless, the understanding given to us as finite beings will be incomplete and approximate. If we avoid every other end, dementia will eventually remove what little understanding we have. I hold that rejection of the gift of understanding - e.g., the six day materialist biblical interpretation - is a grave error. Nonetheless, I hold that entities (or sets of relations) exist for which I will never have a consistent or correct rational model - and that one of those is God. Other instances are my fellow humans, and even myself. It should go without saying, ignorance does not preclude fascination with, delight in, nor love for those beings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "An abhorrence of contradiction has been high orthodoxy in the West for more than 2,000 years."

Not necessarily so, just a particular branch of western thinking and tradition now widely called the analytic tradition. GWF Hegel and Karl Marx had philosophies that deeply and profoundly embraced contradictions. Neither tried to abolish them, but instead to embrace them. To quote Marx in "Capital Volume 1":

"This is, in general, the way in which real contradictions are resolved. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another and at the same time flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion within which this contradiction is both realized and resolved"

In other words, contradictions are not resolved but given room to move within forms. This was a move deeply influenced by Hegel, whose Logic embraced contradictions and sought to sublate them in higher forms.

<comment><USER28> In Marx case - at least in your example - he is not using "contradiction" in a formal logic sense. He is using it in the sense of the contradicting forces of _dialectical contradictions_.

Marx specifically used different terms when referring to contradictions of formal logic.

<comment><USER29> Exactly. (just posted same point.) Even those 'dialectical contradictions' are perhaps better described as opposing forces that set in train a dialectical resolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> nagarjuna's point is not that contradiction or many-valued logic can be tolerated. nagarjuna, who is addressing a specific set of buddhist logicians, is finding paradoxes in logic in an attempt to break those logicians clinging to logic, and (somewhat presciently in the history of buddhism) suddenly enlighten them. he, like most buddhists, is not making any ontological or metaphysical claims whatsoever.

it's similar to kant's antimonies. he is not trying to assert contradiction exists, he is trying to point out why we need to countenance ideas like a distinction between noumina and phenomena. or like zeno's paradoxes, which have a rhetorical purpose: to confirm zeno's teacher parmenides's claim that the universe is one undifferentiated whole. see also plotinus, who does roughly the same thing (any real ontological difficulty posed by the paradox of plurality is uninteresting to them; they have a thesis and their statement of the paradox is for a purpose).

incidentally, i don't mean to slag graham priest too much. after all, j.c. beall was my logic professor, and i'll always fondly remember how he introduces every new step in a proof by saying, slowly, "now holllld on, what about (etc)." the dialetheists will always hold a place in my heart. that said, i think godel did about all that need be done with the liar's paradox, and we ought to be wittgensteinians regarding language in the first place (words mean what they do in virtue of their being used by agents for a purpose; you cannot fully enumerate representational content of an utterance solely in virtue of its shape. all utterances are context sensitive. for more, see the almost unreadable but spot on work of charles travis, e.g. unshadowed thought).

[http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Nagarjuna/Nagarjuna_and_...](http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Nagarjuna/Nagarjuna_and_Skillful_Means.htm)

[http://homepages.uconn.edu/~jcb02005/](http://homepages.uconn.edu/~jcb02005/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Unshadowed-Thought-Representation- Lang...](http://www.amazon.com/Unshadowed-Thought-Representation- Language/dp/067400339X)

</comment><comment><USER31> An "abhorrence of contradiction" is necessary for him to even begin to express his having eschewed his former "parochialism". To have said, "abhorrence of contradiction" he has demonstrated an abhorrence of contradiction -- in the very act of making his declaration.

The Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) means that every word in the sentence "The line is straight" has a specific meaning. 'The' does not mean 'any', 'all', or 'no'. 'Line' does not mean 'dandelion' or 'doughnut'. 'Is' does not mean 'is not'. 'Straight' does not mean 'white', or anything else. Each word has a definite meaning. In order to have a definite meaning, a word must not only mean something, it must also not mean something. 'Line' means 'line', but it also does not mean 'not-line' — or 'dog', 'sunrise', or 'monkey'.

If 'line' were to mean everything, it would mean nothing; and no one, including him, would have the foggiest idea what he means when he says the word 'line'. PNC means that each word, to have a meaning, must also not mean something. And so; anyone who argues against an "abhorrence of contradiction" must use PNC for that statement to even mean anything, thus undercutting his own argument.

\----

"There exist, indeed, certain general principles founded in the very nature of language, by which the use of symbols, which are but the elements of scientific language, is determined. To a certain extent these elements are arbitrary. Their interpretation is purely conventional: we are permitted to employ them in whatever sense we please. But this permission is limited by two indispensable conditions, first, that from the sense once conventionally established we never, in the same process of reasoning, depart; secondly, that the laws by which the process is conducted be founded exclusively upon the above fixed sense or meaning of the symbols employed."

—George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought

<comment><USER32> I don't see that _every_ violation of the principle of noncontradiction trivially leaves _definitions_ meaningless. Suggesting that a principle shouldn't be taken to hold in general doesn't mean that you have to violate the principle at every opportunity, just that there is some place it is (in whatever sense) correct to violate the principle. Of course, under traditional logics, accepting a contradiction leaves everything provable - but we're dealing with nontraditional logics that _may_ have other ways of dealing with that.

<comment><USER31> by ' _every_ violation' do you mean ' _any_ violation', ' _no_ violation', ' _blue_ violation'...

by 'every _violation_ ' do you mean 'every _observance_ ', 'every _miss-fire_ ', 'every _monkey_ '...

you see, apart from the law of non-contradiction language is impossible.

<comment><USER33> That's just being difficult. The real world does work that way. Take poltical labels for example, liberal, conservative, et al have totally different meanings for different people. Contradictions do exist, just externalizing them in a formal system is lazy.

<comment><USER32> I don't think linguistic ambiguity - while clearly something that exists - <USER2> the same thing as what is under discussion in this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> (Just a quick note, don't have time for more now.)

 _" The great lodestar of the German Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant, said that there are things one cannot experience (noumena), and that we cannot talk about such things. He also explained why this is so: our concepts apply only to things we can experience. Clearly, he is in the same fix as Nagarjuna. So are two of the greatest 20th-century Western philosophers. Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that many things can be shown but not said, and wrote a whole book (the Tractatus), explaining what and why."_

The jump from Kant to Wittgenstein elides the step that was Schopenhauer, who did look East and said some cogent things.

<comment><USER35> Wittgenstein would say that the Buddha and Schopenhauer were playing a quite similar language-game.

<comment><USER34> He might say that, but I think "language-game" is not quite the right take.

Anyways, to shore up my impression I looked up "Schopenhauer eastern philosophy" and hit a few things. The "Schopenhauer and Buddhism" piece by Peter Abelson ( at [http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR- PHIL/peter2.htm](http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/peter2.htm) ) seems good:

 _" When the tenets of Buddhism became known in Europe during the third and fourth decade of the nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer was delighted with the affinity they showed to his own philosophy. Having completed his main work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung as early as 1818, he considered it an entirely new (and thus pure) expression of the wisdom once taught by the Buddha."_

I would have been gladder if the original article, by a professional philosopher, which I am not, had said something about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk I can appreciate the depth of research behind the article. The many-valued notions of logic are quite helpful. Here's are two ways that I would distill the message for different audiences.

1\. A computer science audience: Not all sentences have a computable boolean truth value. Here's why. To find the truth value of the sentence "This sentence is false.", you have to figure out the truth value of the following statement (call it X1): "Whether or not this sentence is false depends on if X1 is true or false." Put that way, you can immediately see the circularity in computation. From a computer science perspective, there is no terminating condition. The function will never complete, so there is no computable boolean truth value.

2\. To an educated, but non-technical, audience: Just because a sentence asserts something doesn't mean there is any guarantee of the result being "truth" or "falsehood". The truth value of this "This sentence is false." is simply "undecidable" or "ineffable" \-- pick a word. So, just live with the fact that not everything is true or false. Note: I'm _not_ saying that the statement is really one or the other but we just can't figure out which (as in Schrödinger's cat); I'm saying that neither "true" or "false" makes any sense for that kind of self-referential sentence.

This really isn't mind-blowing. Many articles write up these "paradoxes" as if they are insurmountable. They aren't.

All of this said, I think many philosophical writings, especially Buddhist writings, use contradiction as way of promoting thinking and careful decomposition of the essence of things. In short, complex things consist of parts that vary over time. So their components or transient values can seem to change or stand in contradiction.

There is no contradiction in Dickens writing "It was the best of times and it was the worst of times." in my opinion. This is just a literary device to show contrast eloquently, because saying "In some regards, it was the best of times. In other regards, it was the worst of times." is not as memorable or striking.

<comment><USER36> > In short, complex things consist of parts that vary over time. So their > components or transient values can seem to change or stand in contradiction.

Forgot something, one's self is also transient. Given that the observer itself is constantly changing, mind blowing is possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sankara (8th century CE) talks about two types of truth - 1) Kevala Satya (Absolute Truth) and 2) Vyavaharika Satya (Relative Truth) - He also says that people who are not one with the Absolute truth (One with God - liberated) can only discern the Relative Truth. He called this state - Maya (illusion). Looks like he was talking similar to Gorampa. To be noted is Sankara was extremely knowledgeable about Budhist thought - and is often called Abhinava Budha (Neo Budha) and was instrumental in propagating Neo Hinduism based on Adwaita (Non Duality) defeating the Budhist schools of the day using their own arguments.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's interesting that the west would write off eastern philosophy, as though the eastern philosophers were unaware of the seeming contradictions and that there may be a deeper reason for that.

<comment><USER39> I think by extension of the Platonic school of thought Western culture has become deeply ingrained in dichotomous thinking applying such constraints to all areas of life (beyond simple science and logic), whereas Eastern non- dualism supposes all things (existentially) being equal. Neither West or Eastern philosophies do a very good job of describing each others domain space and yet they share many similar concepts. Karma (Theoretical) vs Causality (Empirical) is a basic example - they're exactly the same but few Westerners and particularly those in academic circles would admit to such a thing as it undermines Western status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm going to go meta here and say the hn discussion here is just fantastic. This is the reason I frequent hn and I wish more submissions would spur discussions of this quality.

<comment><USER41> Yes, guys, where have you all come from? There is just tech and politics talk for months, and then suddenly, religion and philosophy pops out - and everyone is talking at a very high level. How come?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Silly Buddhists. Everyone knows that there are nine possible logic values: false, true, unknown, uninitialized, irrelevant, indeterminate, weak false, weak true, and high impedance. Didn't Siddharta read the IEEE 1164 standard?

</comment><comment><USER43> Could someone explain why Priest, in discussing the 'four corners', presents the Hasse diagram with {F} at the bottom? Why would it not be {}? I'm not too familiar with posets, but it seems the order matters, right?

<comment><USER4> Intuitively, it is to indicate degree of 'truthiness'. Certainly false {F} is less truthy than either both true and false {T,F} and neither true nor false {}, which are in turn less truthy than certainly true {T}. The Hasse diagram indicates that there is no relationship between {} and {T,F} in terms of level of truthiness.

More mathematically, you can think of the Hasse diagram as a lattice, with the meet and join operations being AND and OR. For example, we are used to thinking of the expression

      p AND q

as being true if p is true and q is true. But what if we have four values: {}, {T}, {F} and {T,F}? The Hasse diagram tells us how to interpret expression like this - p AND q is the meet (greatest lower bound) of p and q, and p OR q is the join (least upper bound) of p and q. So for example,

      {F} AND {T}   = {F}
      {F} OR  {T}   = {T}

      {F} AND {}    = {F}
      {F} AND {T,F} = {F}
      {F} OR  {}    = { }
      {F} OR  {T,F} = {T,F}

      {T} OR  {T,F} = {T}
      {T} OR  {}    = {T}

      { } OR  {T,F} = {T} // I think..!
      { } AND {T,F} = {F}
      { } OR  { }   = { }
      { } AND { }   = { }

The Hasse diagram in the article makes sure that expressions like this agree with our intuition in the cases where we have intuition for what the result should be, and give us a way to interpret expressions consistently when our intuitions fail us.

We're used to seeing Hasse diagrams for subsets of a set S used to indicate inclusion, in which case you would have {} < {F}, but you can have a valid poset structure that's not based on inclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Nature is to have no nature, taken literally that is a contradiction, but isn't it possible that is not meant to be taken literally, but to illustrate for instance that everything we hold dear is really just a construct. What we call "nature" isn't true essence but our interpretation of what we think essence is?

Jesus for instance freely admitted he taught in parables, and so everything was not to be taken word for word literally. Doesn't make it any less true, but when interpreted literally you can come to some incorrect conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER45> Seems like statements can have both verity (truthiness) and falsity in varying quantities. They might sum to 0, 1, or anything at all. Whether a statement has _meaning_ seems important, too. '2020 will be a rainy year.' does not have meaning (yet). Pretty soon, though, the universe will reach a certain point where that statement starts to accumulate verity & falsity. Maybe 2020 will be a peak monsoon season in the Eastern Hemisphere; verity++. Maybe it'll be a record drought in North America, too; falsity++. This is not a 1-dimensional spectrum.

Seems like meaning is some sort of vector norm over || < verity, falsity > ||. It should be easy to imagine scenarios all across this unit square for '2020 will be rainy': (0,0) is now, (1,0) means lots of agreed-to raining everywhere, ( .9, .9) is crazy weather, and ( .2, 1) means it was mostly dry that year.

This seems heavily reliant on _human interpretation_ , but trying to extract "intrinsic truthiness" will always rely upon some global context telling you what the rules are. '2 = 3' is absolutely true, depending on what you think the rules are.

'Correctness' seems to correspond to (verity - falsity), which is why ( .9, .9) is certainly _meaningful_ but doesn't improve on the correctness of saying 2020 is rainy.

I have a haunting feeling GEB talks about this, though I never finished reading yet.

</comment><comment><USER46> > If something is ineffable, i, it is certainly neither true nor false.

Wouldn't it instead be the case that it's simply not expressible inside a given formalism (or other form of expression)?

<comment><USER47> That is absolutely the case. If something is "ineffable", it's probably logically ill-defined, and we should treat anyone who tries to use something "ineffable" in formal argument as a mystic spouting hogwash.

<comment><USER48> This seems like a valid argument to me. Could one of the downvoters perhaps care to point out the errors in it. Or is it just because of the word 'hogwash'?

<comment><USER47> I'm very concerned at the number of people on HN who seem to have bought into this religious mysticism disguised as math. That's one of the oldest tricks in the book.

<comment><USER48> But logic is subjective and reason is impotent. What is the purpose of philosophy other than to protect us from acquiring knowledge about reality? We'd be defenseless without faith and mysticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "The only correct view is the absence of all views." \- Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay)

<comment><USER50> That statement is false :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you want to learn more about this catuskoti, meaning 'four corners' theories there are another one threekoti, meaning 'three corners' you need to check Prof. Nalin de silva's works. [http://kalaya.org/](http://kalaya.org/)

Unfortunately foreigners most of his work is in sinhala. And only foreigners learn that language is germans,russians,chines and japanes diplomats.

</comment><comment><USER52> Could the 'easterners' point be the avoidance of reification and the limitation and mental trapping that involves? For example, we say we see a tornado. But there is no essence of the tornado, no 'thing' there.. it is a perceptual grouping of a set and series of events. Nevertheless, functionally there very much is a tornado. 'It' has its conditions, states, and results. (But there is only the wind...) (And in some visions of physics, this goes all the way down to the vacuum.) Renaming for clarity of action is useful, but no new substances are generated by the act. (One doesn't have to think in terms of the objects in someone else's code nor in terms of the lumped matter discipline.) So if one can think outside of the perceptually given externally, how much more so might it be useful to do so in relation to internals, i.e. 'my anger'.

</comment><comment><USER53> I can't remember the last time I read an an article and it's discussion on HN that I enjoyed this much.

</comment><comment><USER47> How the hell are there this many people here who buy this hogwash?

>Nagarjuna often runs through the four cases of the catuskoti. In some places, moreover, he clearly states that there are situations in which none of the four applies. They don't cover the status of an enlightened person after death, for example.

Are you kidding me? This article isn't even about formalizing non-boolean logic. It's thinly veiled religious propaganda, artificially ascribing mathematical formality to a mystical religion.

And yes, statements are either true or false. If you can't say a statement will be either true or false (you don't have to know which one), the statement is ill-defined. Non-binary logical systems are useful only insofar as they allow us to model uncertainty, not because they reflect the nature of reality.

<comment><USER48> "The truth or falsehood of all of man's conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions." \- Ayn Rand

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Its strange that he brings Nagarjuna in when discussion sunnyata as this was already clearly spelled out in the sutta's themselves. Two books that discuss this very well are [http://www.amazon.com/Concept-Reality-Early-Buddhist- Thought...](http://www.amazon.com/Concept-Reality-Early-Buddhist- Thought/dp/9552401364) and [http://www.amazon.com/The-Magic-Mind-Exposition- Kalakarama/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Magic-Mind-Exposition- Kalakarama/dp/9552401356)

</comment><comment><USER50> Interesting thread, though I could not understand all of it (tongue in cheek). I'm going to lighten up the mood a bit by posting this link to a blog post I wrote a while ago - Bhaskaracharya and the man who found zero:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/06/bhaskaracharya-and-man- who...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/06/bhaskaracharya-and-man-who-found- zero.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> The bizarre states uncovered by quantum mechanics resulted in a million popular works trying to distill quantum reality into a world in which multiple states could coincide even at the macro level. We know that this is true at quantum scale, it has been a little harder to swallow at the level of everyday reality.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is an awesome article.

So much of our daily life in the west rests directly on fundamental assumptions we make about reality. I believe it's mind expanding to have those base assumptions challenged from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER56> It is amazing how tangled men can get in their own thoughts and words. The concept of ineffable is nonsense from the outset. By the definition given, if something were truly ineffable, not a word has been spoken about it. What is being contorted here is the difference between the limitations of words to describe an experience, which is the Buddhist ineffable, and the idea of the unassailable noumena, which is the Reality that might be outside of any experience we can have. There is also nothing mysterious or limiting about Western logic. A statement is either true or false; or it is a contradiction (which generally means a premise was false), or indeterminate (which simply means that no one knows which it is).

</comment><comment><USER57> This is nice. I'm wondering how much our restricted thought environment (x can only be true or false) has hindered our development in the last thousands of years?

<comment><USER58> I'm wondering how much Aristotle's metaphysics of essence may have hindered certain paths of thought. :) You must admit, his base system is powerful and ever-penetrating (Descartes is probably a very good example, but it's only one of the more obvious ones...)

Of course it's easy to say things like that, and harder to come up with a consistent (pun intended) metaphysical system on your own self. :)

<comment><USER50> Speaking of Descartes, I've always thought that the famous quote supposed to be by him, i.e. "I think, therefore I am":

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

is (vaguely? :) wrong. Shouldn't it be: "I am, therefore I (can) think"?

<comment><USER58> Hmm. I don't think so, but, feel free to expand your opinion (why do you think it should be "I am, therefore I (can) think"? Maybe you have an interesting point to make?)

Re: etymology, it's pretty much "think => exist."

Re: conceptual level: well, one of the texts where this whole concept/causal- chain is introduced is in his "Meditations on First Philosophy"[1], in particular, in Meditation 2.

Very (very) roughly (and from bad memory), the idea is that one can first start casting into doubt everything that there is (skepticism as a method) (this is Meditation 1.) When you abstract enough times, you can start doubting even the certainty of things which may seem true in themselves (this latter notion is an endless field of debate in itself; see e.g. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"[2]) - cliche example is "2+2=4."

Say there's a deceitful daemon: each time the thought "2+2" is produced, the daemon "intercepts" the answer and produces a "5". (Yes, I'm saying that Descartes may be one of the originators of the concept of a MitM, ha!) (Also, this doesn't work so well with mathematics, since again, one could say that mathematical statements are "analytically true", and it's simply not true that one may mistake a "5" for a "4". But imagine something more mundane: each time you think if there is a god, the daemon deceives you into thinking there isn't one; whatnot.)

So now you generalize the doubt process enough to start doubting whether _anything_ exists, what-so-ever. The point is not so much in thinking that there isn't anything, but in removing _certainty_ from usual ontological assumptions (what (kinds of) things exist.)

So now you're not certain if there is an "I": you are able to doubt it.

But then Descartes says that this very process of certainty-removal requires an operation (he doesn't use these words, did I say this is extremely rough): namely, the "doubt" itself. "Doubts are to be had."

Or, if you will (and closer to D. (I think)): if an evil daemon can cast into doubt even the existence of your own self - it it can deceive everything, etc. - there needs to be a something to be deceived. Or at the very least, _the process of deception (or: of doubt) does happen_ (if you want to cast everything into doubt.)

So if you doubt that anything exists and hence can not be certain of anything, then it so happens that this requires doubt "to happen." Hence "doubt exists." (He also says (I think) that, basically, "clearly since I am doubting right now, _doubt does happen_ ". A kind of phenomenological argument, which doesn't really stick with me, fwiw. He then starts using the notion of "clear and distinct perception", and that's where things go downhill imho (Meditation 3, a (kind of circular) proof of God, etc.) But I have few qualms about Meditation 2, and this includes cogito ergo sum.)

(You could say that the only thing one can be certain of is that "there are thoughts" (not an "I"). I would agree with this. "Thinking exists." And since "thinking" would be, well, thinking this thought, it is certain that "thinking exists.")

 _edited to include two paragraphs (this+next one):_ So now we (hopefully) have something that exists for certain; thoughts exist (or somesuch.) Descartes claims a bit more: this entity that does the thinking (there does need to be an agent which thinks those thoughts (is what he assumes, I guess)) - let us just say it is "I", who does the thinking/doubting - when we trace back the process by which we concluded that we are certain that it exists - involves us discovering that thinking/doubting definitely does take place. Hence "I think; I exist."

(I suppose you could have a concept of an "I" that is simply instrumental (doesn't have independent substance (oof, this is dangerous/slippery territory)): thoughts can have relations, and related thoughts can be seen as "bundles", and this process producing continuing interrelated bundles is "the I doing the thinking." But, I'm not sure of this at all. Maybe D. would say that the deceiving daemon needs to deceive something, if it does actually do any deceiving; and if this does happen, then this "something" which is being deceived is (let us call it an) "I".)

Now, to go from cogito ergo sum to proof of God and subsequent re- establishment of certainty about the whole world - that is something else. And I don't think that he does a very good job at it. (And this is "usually", "generally" agreed upon.)

[1]: [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosop...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy) \- which btw is an easier read than you might think, if you're curious enough!

[2]: [http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html](http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html)

<comment><USER50> >Hmm. I don't think so, but, feel free to expand your opinion (why do you think it should be "I am, therefore I (can) think"? Maybe you have an interesting point to make?)

I did say "vaguely". Let me think about it a bit and then reply later tonight.

<comment><USER50> Ok, here's my attempt at an answer:

Take his statement: "I think, therefore I am."

My guess is that the way people interpret it is like this: Descartes is saying that he (notices that he) thinks, wbich (to him) implies that he must exist.

The statement can be broken down like this:

A, therefore B where A = "I think" and B = "I am".

But if you look at it like this: the "I am" part is asserting that he exists, which according to him is a logical implication of "I think". But his asserting "_I_ think" itself implies that his "I" exists (whether it thinks or not). So the "I think" is like saying "I exist" (and am also thinking - <USER3> emphasis is on the "I"). So it seems like he is already assuming something is true ("I" exist/am), on the left side of the sentence, what he is trying to prove ("I am"), on the right side of the sentence. Note the difference in the two uses of quotes in the last sentence. Hope I've made my thinking :) clear.

<comment><USER58> Thanks for this. :)

Indeed, I think I actually mostly agree with you. See my longer comment / explication of Descartes' argument (if it's an argument) above: I personally (also) think that "I think" already presupposes too much. What one _might_ be able to argue is a lesser version of the thing, though:

thinking, therefore, existing. ("thought exists" (whatever that actually means!))

> So it seems like he is already assuming something is true ("I" exist/am), on > the left side of the sentence, what he is trying to prove ("I am"), on the > right side of the sentence.

..so yeah, I think that the only safe thing for him to say at that point would have been "thoughts exist." Maybe this does sound lame, but in the context of Descartes' _Meditations_ , it's about discovering that even though you can doubt everything, this does require (the process of ) doubting as such.

Or: I can be deceived about everything there is in the world (so e.g. in actuality, there is no world as such); but _who_ is being deceived? At the very least, there is (some kind of) thought happening. One _might_ say that doubting requires an agent, etc., but really, this is already debatable.

But in short: you're right, if one were to establish "I exist" (with an "I" having certain desirable properties), one could then say "I think", and _that_ would have been less murky, indeed!

Problem is, poor Descartes is not sure that he "exists":

indeed, for him (and this is partly to do with the whole mentality present in Rationalism, and with the start of Modern philosophy (many people hold him to be the father of it)) _thinking comes before existing_. You will find many parallels of the latter around, scattered in various places; cf. "god thinks itself into being", etc.

He kind of articulates one of the foundations of Rationalism as in the epistemology: thought shall be the ultimate and _primary_ criterion for truth.

But again, I agree, however, I would say that he _could_ have stated a lesser version of his point (while not reversing the logical implication arrow): "thoughts exist."

However, to go from _that_ to re-establishment of certainty about the whole wide world would have been _even more tough_ (and he was already having a hard time!) In summary, I think I understand where he's coming from, but one could say that his project (a kind foundationalist epistemology) had been doomed from the very beginning!

> Hope I've made my thinking :) clear.

Yeah, I think that was clear! Forgive me for my verbosity, and thanks for the explanation. I think it makes sense, and fwiw, I agree with the general gist of it.

<comment><USER50> No problem, and you're welcome. I agree that he could have asserted a lesser version, such as "thoughts exist", as you say. Interesting points, and good discussion, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> That's quite fascinating - reading the Pali canon as a teenager I got so used to the catuskoti.

</comment><comment><USER59> His argument is self-defeating. Ultimately, it amounts to: "There is no such thing as truth." But that is a statement about the truth.

The law of noncontradiction is one of several axioms that are presupposed by any proposition. Such axioms can't be "proven," because any proof would presume their correctness, but it is proper to accept them.

</comment><comment><USER60> Very interesting article -- I'm only surprised Gödel didn't make an appearance.

</comment><comment><USER61> Do you think the Buddha borrowed some of his philosophy from the Stoics?

<comment><USER24> Its very important to understand, that unlike most Western philosophers, the Buddha's philosophy came as a side effect of his meditation and realization.

When you realize the non-dual nature of reality, that the split between subject and object is an illusion, your entire conception of reality changes radically. This realization, which is beyond concepts, allows the generation of ideas that are completely outside "normal" frames of thinking.

This present moment is not conceptual, it is real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Can some enlightened soul give me a TL;DR version of this text?? :D

<comment><USER63> It is possible to give a rigorous mathematical definition of a logic that deals with contradictions and propositions that cannot be assigned a truth value. This has parallels with traditions in Buddhism and helps resolve paradoxes which are problematic for traditional Western logic (e.g., "this sentence is false").

<comment><USER62> Thanks a lot!! It looked like interesting but I am way too busy for such a long text.

<comment><USER64> But not too busy to read HN and post questions, it would seem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Does anyone know any good books with similar stuff in it?

</comment><comment><USER58> jaxytee: fyi, you are shadowbanned; there's no contact info on your profile, and your previous comments suggest no reason for the shadowbanning.

</comment><comment><USER66> Well that was amazingly well-written and informative...

</comment><comment><USER67> Fascinating essay. I enjoy and appreciate the references to Buddhist ("Eastern") philosophies given that the paradoxical thinking is what most of us attribute to it.

What is the catch with Aeon? There don't seem to be ads, paywalls, subscriptions, or other monetizing strategies, but the content seems fantastic. Is it charitable intellectualism?

<comment><USER29> I LOVE the fact that you can download to read later!

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> But the Law of Non-Contradiction does hold.

And it's very easy to save the PEM if you distinguish the value of a proposition (true or false) and the cognitive status of the proposition (certain, probable, possible, or arbitrary).

Moreover, to exist is to have a particular identity, to have a nature, to be something.

Thus, all of this work is utter hogwash. The professor who wrote this IS practicing mysticism and irrationality. He ought to be shunned by all actual philosophers.

If this kind of thinking were to get "popular," Western civilization and science would collapse into skepticism and religion would take over again. Just as happened in the Middle Ages and at the end of the Islamic Golden Age (in the latter case, there never was a recovery).

<comment><USER68> " _Moreover, to exist is to have a particular identity, to have a nature, to be something._ "

Tweet! Assuming the conclusion! 10 yard penalty, return the sliotar to first base.

<comment><USER48> Can something exist without identity?

Can something exist yet have no nature?

Can something exist without being (anything)?

<comment><USER68> Let me start by pointing to to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7715277).

How do you know something exists?

Because you can see it.

So you don't know that something exists, you only know that your sense impressions have been triggered. How do you know its nature?

Because of what you see.

So you don't know anything about its nature, only about its relationship with your sensory apparatus. (Hey, I may have just invented category theory!)

How can something exist...?

Don't look at me, man. It's all probability waves as far as I can tell.

Note: I don't really, actually, myself, buy into this form of epistemology and metaphysics, so I may have the arguments badly. On the other hand, those are major topics that have a lot of diverse implications. They cannot simply be dismissed by assertion.

<comment><USER48> By your logic, that you didn't own but used nevertheless:

You don't know I asked those questions, you only know that your sense impressions have been triggered.

Similarly my eyes sent some signals to my brain and after processing them I have concluded that you have replied to my comment. But wait! I don't really know you replied me, do I?

Since my senses are unreliable and I don't have any other means to interact with reality but my senses, my mind is impotent to deal with reality. What else can I do but go through my life hallucinating and doubting myself or inventing fantasies to keep my sanity.

\-----

When you look at the moon (at the right time) you see circle. Then you can decide the moon is circular. Your senses are working just fine, so is your brain. It's your limited knowledge that leads you to wrong conclusions. As you observe and learn more, you integrate more and more concepts and you can eventually arrive to the point that moon is indeed a somewhat spherical object.

Or you can conclude that your senses are lying to you and reality cannot be known. Then you'd never go further than "looks circular, but know knows, right?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> This article is kinda missing the point. The "empty" is the undefined. That which has yet to exist, or never will. There is that which is uncountable, for example the number of corners in a circle. Just because it is a contradiction doesn't mean it is wrong -- maybe your models are wrong. The usefulness of eastern philosophy is to free yourself of preconceived ideas. I think it is obviously clear to everyone today that there are modes of thought that are far inferior to logic. I think it would be supremely arrogant to presume that logic is the best mode of thought that humanity will ever come up with. To try to shoehorn everything to fit into a logical framework feels akin to epicycles to me.

<comment><USER63> Maybe it is missing your pet theory, but the article has a definite point and Priest argues it at length. You seem not to have grasped the article because you refer to logic as something singular that should not be deemed superior to other modes of thought, while the article demonstrates there are many different, mathematically rigorous conceptions of logic. Epicycles are a non- sequitur here, because there is not a particular proposition that you set out to prove with whatever explanation you can find. Rather the goal is to find a logic that does not break down when presented with paradoxes.

<comment><USER69> There can be an infinite number of different rigorous conceptions of logic, while at the same time there are also an infinite number of modes of thought outside of logic .. we know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion that are considered inferior to logic. Is it possible for there to exist a mode of thought yet to be found or invented that is better?

<comment><USER63> I wouldn't say we "know the ones like instinct, superstition, and religion [...] are considered inferior to logic". They are not comparable, unless you formulate criteria for what is better, and then you can easily bias the comparison towards one or the other.

If there exist an infinite number of modes of thought as you posit, then yes it is possible that the best one is not among the ones we know of now.

I don't really think of it this way though, because logic is not supposed to give us something new, not supposed to give surprising conclusions. Logic formalizes the steps you can take to arrive at valid conclusions. However, what constitutes valid conclusions is ultimately based on our intuitions, it is what the logic is founded on (comparable to how mathematics is ultimately based on accepting axioms).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best email service? - <AUTHOR> I'm ready to leave gmail even though I've had the same address for the last 12 years. What's the next best option, Can I Import my contacts and indexed emails? Privacy is a plus. <comment><USER2> I use both Runbox and Fastmail. Of the two, I use Runbox more, because I use it to consolidate mail from different accounts, and I have been using it for over 10 years.

However, if I were to start over now, I would probably prefer Fastmail. The interface is more responsive, and they seem to be more actively developing the product.

Personally not sure about importing contacts, because I haven't tried it, but in terms of privacy, Runbox is hosted in Norway, and I believe Fastmail is based in Australia. Not sure what the exact implications are, but I think Norway may have stronger privacy protections.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tutanota is, last I checked, good for privacy. I'd also recommend Fastmail if you're willing to pay a very little bit, and Protonmail.</comment>


Set of responsibility - <AUTHOR> https://javapeanuts.blogspot.com/2018/10/set-of-responsibility.html <comment><AUTHOR> A variation of GOF design pattern Chain of Responsibility, useful for example for handling a class hierarchy hiding type-conditional in a open-closed compliant fashion</comment>


Howto: Multi-domain SSL, Nginx, 1 IP address - <AUTHOR> http://playnice.ly/blog/2011/01/03/multi-domain-ucc-ssl-certificates-on-nginx-with-1-ip-address/

<comment><USER2> "In the past it has not been possible to serve SSL requests for multiple domains from the same IP address."

This is a plain lie. This article just describes a technology that has been available for years: using _Subject Alternative Names_ to declare all the host names in a single X.509 certificate. As far as I can tell, real CAs have been signing these types of certs for years (one random example: <https://www.rapid7.com> is valid for "www.rapid7.com" and "rapid7.com" without using a wildcard cert). The article call these certs "UCC SSL certs" but it is nothing more than a marketing name to sell Subject Alternative Names.

<comment><USER3> I have a bit of a problem with people, like you, who will call someone a liar.

lie, noun, an intentionally false statement.

To insinuate that someone is a liar used to be a considerable personal slight and writing it here makes it libelous. Have you proven intention? Would it not be more polite to say that the OP was simply mistaken. I would kindly ask the OP to rewrite the offending sentence, perhaps like so "In the past it has been difficult to serve SSL requests for multiple domains from the same IP address."

That this comment has received a number of up votes is disconcerting. Where is the decorum oft afforded the HN community?

<comment><USER2> I agree. My apologies to adamcharnock. I should have said "inexactitude" instead of "lie". I did not choose the right word when typing my reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A note about GoDaddy: their prices fluctuate. If you enter the site via a Google Ad, the price drops from ~$60 to ~$13 (I'm in Canada so I'd be interested to know what the prices are like from other places).

1\. <http://www.google.com/search?q=ssl+cert>

2\. Click on one of the GoDaddy ads.

3\. ???

4\. Save

<comment><USER5> I'm in Russia. They seem to classify me as a European and issue prices in Euros. I see "Only €10.91" in the ad text, and €9.71/year when I click on the yellow offer and put "Standard (Turbo) SSL (1 Year) (annual)" to cart. That might be excluded VAT, because Russia is outside European Union.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> May be worth mentioning a tip I learned on an earlier HN thread: <https://www.startssl.com/> provide single-domain standard SSL certs for free, and look considerably cheaper than GoDaddy for the UCC certificates discussed here.

<comment><USER7> Do StartSSL issued free 1-domain certificates valid for all major desktop and mobile browsers? Can anyone confirm this? Most cert providers claim almost always 99% and above comptability but they dont claim any percent value on their website.

<comment><USER8> 99 percent of what? Browsers ever made? Visitors to your site?

I read that Microsoft added the StartCom CA to Windows in 2009. So I would assume that people browsing the web with ancient, unpatched versions of IE will have problems. How big a deal that is probably depends on your site.

<comment><USER7> i'm assuming you're not joking. it's "browser recognition" and this value is generally 99.9% for paid providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Care should be taken to test across multiple platforms (especially mobile!) when using SSL configurations other than the classic 1-domain, 1-ip, 1-server setup.

The problems with SNI have already been discussed here, but we've also found issues with older Android browsers getting certificate warnings when using UC certificates. Specifically, there are issues when using a wildcard UC certificate (so one can have both <https://root.tld> _and_ <https://anyvar.root.tld>) on Android OS's prior to 2.0.

Also, if you use StartSSL, be sure to configure the intermediate CA (in addition to a root CA) in your server's config. Again, this was an issue where most desktop browsers worked fine, but a handful of mobile browsers failed or had extended load times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the information on the Android browsers. I have added your points to the post and linked back to your comment.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell FYI, one major website which relies on subjectAltName which many of you will be aware of is github. The CommonName is " __ _.github.com" which means it wouldn't be valid for<https://github.com/>, but they also have "github.com" in the subjectAltName field.

<https://www.cacert.org/> also lets you generate certificates for multiple domains using subjectAltName. My website at <https://secure.grepular.com/> has a CN of "_ __.cardwellit.com", but then has three values in subjectAltName, "cardwellit.com", "grepular.com" and " __*.grepular.com"

<comment><USER10> I wonder if this is why wget'ing from github always returns me the --no-check- certificate error:

ERROR: certificate common name `*.github.com' doesn't match requested host name `github.com'.

<comment> mike-cardwell Yes, that is the reason. wget doesn't seem to have been updated to support subjectAltName yet. If you do a search for "wget subjectAltName" you'll see that patches have been submitted for such support. I guess support will be rolled out eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool. Any idea if there are more browsers supporting UCC certs than those supporting SNI?

If your domain list is quite static/stable, this is great.

Otherwise, as I believe it still suffers from the problem that you must create a new UCC cert ($$++) each time you want to add to the domain list, I'd be happier with SNI and one cert per domain. ($$--).

</comment><comment><USER12> An article like this isn't complete without a browser compatibility list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I have just added a new section to the blog post which includes the browser compatibility points which have been made here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> is this related to SNI which doesn't work in IE under Windows XP? That would still be a considerable amount of users for whom SSL wouldn't work (right).

<comment><USER14> No, this uses one certificate, but with multiple domains listed in subjectAltName. Like SNI, it may not be supported by all clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone seen a similarly authoritative guide for those of us stuck on apache?

<comment><AUTHOR> I used this article as a reference for the post:

<http://www.crsr.net/Notes/Apache-HTTPS-virtual-host.html>

It does cover the Apache config towards the end, and it doesn't look too involved. You can still follow the OP up until just before the "Chained certificates" section.

If you do need to use a chained certificate in Apache, you should see:

[http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcertifi...](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcertificatechainfile)

I hope that helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [original comment removed]

<comment><USER14> The article doesn't describe SNI at all. With SNI, you can deploy multiple certificates on the same IP address. The method described here uses a single certificate that includes multiple domains in the subjectAltName.

Obviously, SNI is the superior solution for a shared hosting environment. The approach described in the article is fine for consolidating some related domains into one certificate, but would be an expensive management headache for many unrelated domains.

<comment><USER16> You are right, I was sure that the title was "Multiple-certificates...", not "Multiple-domain UCC certificate".

That's what I get for not reading the whole thing, sorry.</comment></comment></comment>


Dressing for the polar vortex. A basic guide to dressing warm. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/b5c2b0df846f

<comment><USER2> Strange specific brand and model namedropping.

As a Wisconsin guy with a couple outdoor winter hobbies I'm not particularly bothered by the -20 so much as the -20 with high winds. Zero in the sun with calm winds is fairly comfy. Windy and 40F sucks.

Cotton kills. If you stay dry, the warm usually takes care of itself, if you get wet you'll die doesn't matter how thick your clothes are (which is the long format explanation of cotton kills). Overwork until sweaty = dead. No source of fire in an emergency equals dead. Small roll of duct tape so a wardrobe malfunction doesn't equal frostbite or dead. Spare gloves when you accidentally soak your main gloves. Ditto socks. No emergency kit in the car (blankie, that kind of thing) equals dead. Being outside in pair with a partner saves more lives WRT first aid etc than buying any specific type of warm undies or boots. I donno if you're better off walking around naked rather than walking around wet like the old timers say, but its a coin toss. I'd never wear anything if its gotten wet.

What I consider reasonable for long distance snow shoeing in the middle of nowhere or visiting my ice fishing relatives in the middle of a mostly frozen lake might not correlate with the requirements of someone walking to and from their car in the parking lot.

If it hurts its probably not frostbitten, so if you haven't even started crying yet, you're fine, not even hurt yet. If you were crying but now it doesn't hurt anymore, that's because its frozen so may as well start driving to the ER right now.

Slowing down and paying attention will save more lives than a specific model of shirt.

If your core is warm, you can get away with some stupid clothes on your extremities and they'll still be warm. If your core is cold, nothing you put on your extremities will warm them up. If your hands are cold the solution is zip up your coat or put on a sweater, not play games with multiple layers of gloves (unless its really cold)

For you southerners who never seen snow before, my advice is don't eat the yellow snow. Even if some Yankee tells you its lemonade flavored or whatever.

Also northerners with northerner reflexes, even old people, can dance around normally on black ice that would result in a southerner, even a teenager, falling and breaking a bone, even if they try to be careful. Something about internalizing reflexes about balance and center of gravity or something. When I was in the Army the relative performance of northerners and southerners on ice even just plain snow was always fairly comedic. Their driving is like that too, the southerners would cry and wet themselves over what the experienced northerners considered pretty good travel conditions. I had a lot of good southerner friends but they always drove me bonkers in the winter. No, you can't get frostbite when its 40 out, by definition, although you can die pretty well of hypothermia at 40, and if you think early October is terrifying wait till January...

<comment><AUTHOR> I was very specific with brand/model/linking because I've had at least a dozen friends over the past two weeks texting me to find out exactly what I wear. I'm with you about staying dry and having an emergency kit.

Here in Wyoming you never know what could happen or when you may see someone!

I was just offering a basic idea of some things that worked well for me.

Thanks for adding to the conversation!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need help reading this graph please - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_vaccine#/media/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png
I'm in a 'discussion' with an anti-vaxxer who is insisting that Measles was under control before the Measles vaccine was introduced, this patently isn't true but they're citing 1940s stats, and from this graph I can see that it was a zig zag.
My question is what's going on in the graph? Why were there crazy lows, then crazy highs? Thank you in advance for any help. <comment><USER2> Why the throwaway?

<Mostly guessing> After a year with an outbreak, the survivors are naturally immunized. So the next year it's more difficult for the virus to propagate and you get a smaller than usual amount of cases. After a few years there are enough new people that is not immunized to get another big outbreak. I'm not sure why it was a two year cicle.

After the vaccine the amount of not immunized people grow slowly, and the outbreaks are more apart (5 - 10 years). So they added a booster / second dose to kill the small outbreaks. (Now there are some additional doses from time to time for risk groups.) </Mostly guessing></comment>


Mint.com complaints? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to hear what people like and don't like about Mint.com.  I'm am building a service which may act somewhat similarly and am curious what y'all think. <comment><USER2> I was not expecting a site about finances I was expecting something about Linux Mint, or maybe herbal mint Password Rules are Draconian and out of Date [https://www.ftc.gov/news- events/blogs/techftc/2016/03/time-r...](https://www.ftc.gov/news- events/blogs/techftc/2016/03/time-rethink-mandatory-password-changes)

[http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/password- rules/](http://fortune.com/2017/05/11/password-rules/)

Your rules would force me to write the password down somewhere because of the requirements of using symbols The pass phrase i chose would take 10 million years according to [https://howsecureismypassword.net/](https://howsecureismypassword.net/) So I just punted, and went about my business. I NEVER GIVE OUT MY PHONE NUMBER TO ANY SITE, not gmail, not facebook, not any site anywhere

This is my opinion, as a 62 year old Software Engineer that has learned to keep safe since the internet was started. Only my ex Wife ever stole my identity.</comment>


Show HN: HackSource – 18,510 Curated Programming Tutorials - <AUTHOR> https://hacksource.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I made this.

For those that are curious, courses are sourced from the big guys like– Edx, Udemy, Lynda.com, Pluralsight, CodeSchool, Codecademy, Treehouse, YouTube Conference talks but I also aggregate resources from some smaller niche providers that go deep on a specific topic like– GoRails, RubyTapas, Frontend Masters, EmberMap and I'm looking to add more.

Resources are categorized using _basic_ natural language processing on tutorial titles and descriptions. For example, since the words "deployment" and "blocks" come up frequently in the 772 Ruby tutorials they are made available as topic filters. The categorization system is definitely a work in progress but I think it is helpful for those new to a specific technology.

I'm actively working on adding new resources and providers so if you have any content suggestions let me know in the comments. Of course, any general feedback is welcome too!

<comment><USER2> Good job and a great tool! Thank you for sharing! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it! The dev part is fun. Sharing on the other hand.. always the hard part!

<comment><USER2> I just released mine last week.... always nerve-wracking, but probably gets better with each new product release! :)

Just have to get it out there and keep mentioning it!

Part 2: getting people to understand it and see how it can be of value to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Broke the back button on MobileSafari. Makes for a bad first impression.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Definitely see how that would be a bad first impression. I haven't been able to reproduce the issue yet. Can you elaborate on what happened when you attempted to press the back button? Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any successful stories of Android development entrepreneurship? - <AUTHOR>

There are a lot of iPhone development success stories. Do you know any for Android? Do you believe in Android market? <comment><USER2> [http://gizmodo.com/5483539/car-locator-android-app- makes-130...](http://gizmodo.com/5483539/car-locator-android-app- makes-13000-a-month)</comment>


Starbucks cups to come with a political message - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Starbucks-cups-to-come-with-a-political-message-4146232.php?cmpid=gplus <comment><USER2> Looks another witty self-promotion to me. It's not just the matter of coming together. Macro-economics is hard and has much far reaching impact than gimmicks of a coffee shop.

Paul Krugman has already ranted on this from a different angle: [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/a-double-shot- of...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/a-double-shot-of- misunderstanding/)

</comment><comment><USER3> They should be able to write "ask us to start using recyclable / compostable cups" too.

P.S. Most Starbucks, even if they have recycling bins just throw them out (reason being if there seems to be any pieces that aren't supposed to be in there, they won't sort it out).</comment>


Querying Data in Amazon S3 Directly with User-Space Page Fault Handling - <AUTHOR> http://tech.adroll.com/blog/data/2016/11/29/traildb-mmap-s3.html <comment><USER2> This is a cool use case for userfaultfd(). Will be checking out TrailDB as well!</comment>


Apple removes thousands of games from the Chinese App Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/18/21374246/apple-china-chinese-operations-restrictions <comment><AUTHOR> > Apple pulled more than 47,000 apps from the Chinese App Store earlier this > month, as first reported by AppInChina. That move wasn't unexpected, as > Apple recently enacted a policy change to eliminate a loophole that > previously allowed paid games and games with in-app purchases to be sold > even though they were still awaiting approval from Chinese regulators.

> But Apple's entire App Store operation in China also depends on a loophole > of its own, the report claims. Foreign app stores in China are usually > required to be joint ventures with a Chinese partner that's a majority owner > and operator, according to the report, but Apple operates the App Store on > its own. Apple has also apparently avoided sharing the source code for iOS > with China so far, having negotiated an exemption with the Chinese > government to not have to do so.</comment>


How to be a Successful Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.darkhax.com/2010/11/16/how-to-be-a-successful-software-engineer

<comment><USER2> A post on how to be a successful software engineer from someone who left school two years ago... Isn't a bit preposterous to write such patronizing articles so early? :)

(Of course this criticism comes from someone still in school, so you should take it with a grain of salt. Or appreciate the irony.)

<comment><USER3> When I was 13, I thought I was an excellent programmer because I could use inline assembly in Pascal to put my graphics card into VESA mode and draw circles. I gave everybody advice, with absolute confidence. My geocities web page was full of tips and tutorials.

Now, at 27 I think there are many things I should improve upon and many things I have to learn. Isn't it sad how much worse I've gotten in those 14 years?

(For the sarcasm impaired: < <http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1343> >)

<comment><USER4> At 64 I'm finally learning Lisp. Ah the wasted years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started reading and my first thoughts were, 'yeah, yeah, seen this all before, newb software engineer thinks he's the first person to realize all this stuff...'

Then I hit 'Be Asynchronous', and thought it was brilliant. This is the solution to the multitasking craze, a systems-term with business buzzword potential I can actually get on board with. This is what Harvard Business Review and MBA lemmings should have been advocating all those years ago - don't multitask, be asynchronous. Prioritize, and renice the lower priority stuff and push it into background processes where it gets CPU cycles only if the high priority stuff isn't busy. Get the same stuff done without running yourself ragged while maintaining the capacity to achieve flow and think thoroughly and deeply about the higher priority stuff.

Nice work. You should write an article on just Multitasking vs. Asynchronous, then send it off to Harvard Business Review. They've published a few articles lately critiquing multitasking, but without clear next steps. Show them the way forward.

 _"Be asynchronous

This one is weird, but I wanted to talk about it anyway.

Actually use todo lists and RSS feeds. Like email, these are asynchronous systems. You send an email, subscribe to a feed, or write down a todo item, and you don't worry about it too much anymore. Sure, you check your email the next day or read your feeds before bed, but you don't have to keep checking a website for new content or be sitting staring at the "John is typing…" text on Skype. You can dedicate time to dealing with things, write them down when you think of them, and deal with them in the time you've set aside. The more you can get out of your brain into some other system the better. This allows you to focus on the task at hand. Later, when the time comes to deal with email, or read feeds, you can focus on that.

These are some things that apply more to computer related fields , but I list them because they've really helped me out."_

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There's always more to learn, and I'm definitely not the first to realize these things.

Glad you found some of it insightful. I'll take you up on your suggestion, and I've added the "Multitask vs Async" post idea to my list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> hahah he left out "write blog posts about NoSql and Node.js" and "talk about how awsome your macbook pro is"

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew I forgot something... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really liked this article.

I've been using dropbox in much the same way you use Google docs. I like that added feature that the files are available on my computer and I can easily get them through the drop box site if I need to.

I've also been using my ipad in much the same way as you use your kindle. I've read so many books since I got it.

I could probably increase my online participation. I think this is my 6th comment on HN. I should really fix up my blog too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Dropbox is another tool I use, mainly for quick file transfers. I used it a lot in school, where I would print out finished assignments (have to hand something in I guess), but then put it on Dropbox as well in case something happened to the hard copy (like I stupidly forgot it at home...).

The iPad is good for reading too, though I imagine my eyes would like the Kindle better. It's really easy to stare at for hours. I want to get an iPad for reading Instapaper stuff and RSS feeds.

What's your blog?

<comment><USER8> What's your experience with the Kindle's screen? I'm pretty much sold on it, but have a lot of image-based PDFs that wouldn't convert to the native format.

<comment><AUTHOR> The screen is really nice. Easy to read, changes pages pretty quick. Most of my experience with it has been kindle purchased books or simple converted PDFs. If you've image based PDFs (I'm assuming ones where each page is basically an image of a page, instead of text), I don't know it would work too well. I tried looking at things where it wouldn't convert them but you either had to look at small text or zoom in weird (or maybe there was no zoom...can't remember exactly).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Freelancing – from nothing to 5 solid leads a week - <AUTHOR> http://reactrocket.com/post/from-nothing-to-5-leads-a-week/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Split test a niche website, slam it with paid traffic, network like a mofo, make it easy to get in touch with you.

Good advice, in the abstract, but it feels like this post is hyping up the golden path, and totally ignoring the realities of the freelancing slog. I did it for years. Pipeline management SUCKS, at least for a not-so-social guy like me.

So these 5 leads...

Why just 5? Paid traffic and landing pages should be pretty scaleable. Are the 5 leads actually new people from web traffic, or is this the long tail of an in-network recruiting burst?

Are they actually quality leads? I could hit the craigslist gigs section and get you 5 leads in 30 seconds, but they're trash. What kinds of projects, on what timeline, and at what price, were these leads? If they're not sane organizations with 5k+ contracts, a disclaimer is needed. If they're 10k+ contracts, start a business selling them, I'll buy.

How long do they take to close? What's the closing like? The post mentions a chatbox on a website. Do people use it? What do they ask? I find those very corporate. if you're looking for JS-focused customers, do they also find those grating, like most tech people do?

The post says the rate was up and too high, and so he got a lot of requests. How many is a lot? What was the rate? What did it change to? How was that decision made? What was the customer response?

Basically, this post really light on unique content. It talks like it's selling the "secret sauce" but in reality, it's a painfully high level overview of some very boilerplate advice.

I want to hear about a real human experience, not a maybe-scaleable super high level overview of babbys first marketing engine.</comment>


Open for discussion: PDF as HTML-replacement - <AUTHOR>

While browsing with Chrome and displaying a few random PDFs with its very fast and nice built-in PDF-viewer, I had these thoughts:<p>* It looks so much cleaner and better than many HTML pages.<p>* It looks consistent and everywhere the same.<p>* It loads faster than a similar sized HTML.<p>* What about having PDF as a replacement for HTML?<p>* It also has support for hyperlinks.<p>* It lacks some dynamic elements.<p>* Not sure if something like HTTP POST is possible.<p>* Those things could be added though.<p>* Chromes built-in PDF-viewer may be a good starting point to implement this.<p>* If Google itself would do this and add such support in Chrome, chances are good that this spreads fast. <comment><USER2> Why constrain ourselves to the proportions of physical paper if we're not using physical paper as our medium? The current suite of technologies is much more suited towards all viewing devices. Just in general, web technology has come a very, very long way in the past 5 years in terms of CSS, JS, and even Flash. We've nearly reached a point where web developers have agreed a standard method of development. PDF was not developed for interactive web development and all of their form features are noticeably afterthoughts. The list goes on and on, switching from HTML to PDF just doesn't make sense.</comment>


Cryptocurrency Act 2020 Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> The Cryptocurrency Act 2020 The Cryptocurrency Act 2020 begins with the categorisation of cryptocurrencies into three main groups. These groups are then used to determine which agencies are responsible for the creation of regulation and legislation. The first class described in the new bill is cryptocurrencies.
The crypto class includes Bitcoin, Litecoin, and any other cryptocurrencies that don't fall under the current securities regulations. The bill classifies these tokens as any digital asset that "includes representations of United States currency or synthetic derivatives resting on a blockchain or decentralised cryptographic ledger".
Smart contracts and oracles fall under the cryptocurrency category as well.
The next class described in the bill is crypto-commodities. A key aspect of these tokens is the fact that they contain some form of substantial fungibility.
Fungible assets are interchangeable, such as the USD. These assets must reside on a blockchain or decentralised cryptographic ledger to fall under this classification.
The final type of coin described in the bill is crypto-securities. These tokens are simply any coin that fails the Howey Test.
The three regulatory bodies mentioned in the bill that will oversee the cryptocurrency space include the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
These groups will gain sole authority over their respective digital asset types. <comment><USER2> The text seems copy&paste from this news article [https://coinrivet.com/what- to-expect-from-cryptocurrency-leg...](https://coinrivet.com/what-to-expect- from-cryptocurrency-legislation-in-2020/)

Darrencrypto1: the submission form can be confusing. For articles you'd fill out URL and title and then you can leave a comment later. Though 'what are your thoughts?' is implied because people submit articles to start a discussion.</comment>


HP is trying to patent Continuous Delivery - <AUTHOR> http://blog.matthewskelton.net/2015/03/06/hp-is-trying-to-patent-continuous-delivery-here-is-how-you-can-help-block-this-madness/

<comment><USER2> How can this in any way succeed in the first place? Does anyone here have legal knowledge of how HP might win this?</comment>


Noisli Covid-19 response: 2 months free of the Business plan - <AUTHOR> https://support.noisli.com/coronavirus-response/ <comment><AUTHOR> Due to the COVID-19 outbreak lots of companies need to work remotely and we want to help! We're offering 2 months free of our Business plan to companies impacted by the COVID-19 situation, so employees can have a digital place for calm and focus also when working from home.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it fair to expect 40hr work weeks and be available for on-call work? - <AUTHOR> I see so many salaried employees expected to work a regular 40hr work weeks + be available for on-call work, restricting their off-hours plans in the event of an emergency.
This is expected even more in startups where manpower is limited and self-sacrifice is the expected norm.
Is this fair? Is this acceptable? Is it legal? <comment><USER2> Fair? I don't think so. part of the job and quite common? yes. Legal? yes. Last time I had to put up with it was in California, which has some peculiar work laws to begin with.

And this wasn't while working in a startup either, it was a very well established and large technology company. Pretty much every IT job I've had came with this issue. One particular job required me to be in by 7-730am because we had _one_ user that still had Outlook and she adamantly refused to use anything else, saying that without Outlook she couldn't do her job. (the rest of the company was already on a standard IMAP setup.) So i was expected to be there at the crack of dawn just in case this one user had yet another Outlook problem (she had _frequent_ problems) and I was expected to be available on nights/weekends in case there were server issues too. I ran into this at other jobs as well. on-call was common, expected, and I was not compensated above my regular pay rate for it. There was no on-call pay. You were just expected to do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only factors which determines whether it's "fair" or not is whether it's worth the compensation -- and whether such requirements are stated in your contract, or not.</comment>


Crazy Aussie Hackers create real Star Wars-like 3D Hologram - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjIXJ6OGsLQ

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the TedX link explaining how they developed it: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdta2YhEwZA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdta2YhEwZA)</comment>


Luxury Bomb Shelters - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-is-building-doomsday-shelters-for-billionaires-111 <comment><USER2> Once you've given these entrepreneurs their money, what incentive do they have to actually let you in? If the shit hits the fan, you have nothing additional you can offer them and the rule of law has already broken down. Seems like the best course for them would be to shut the door behind them and lock you out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't blame people with means for planning for everything, but you have to admit this reeks a bit of art imitating life, what with the Bioshock vibe of these residences.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is the location secret? Would the world's nuclear powers really waste an extra warhead on destroying a bunch of spoiled psychopathic morons?

<comment><USER5> assumingly so thay dont have to fend of other people that also want to live when it comes down to it.</comment></comment>


Uber switches out surge for price transparency - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/23/surgepurge/ <comment><USER2> It's sad it took that long to figure out that good customer service actually pays for itself. I think it would be cool to have ticker app for on demand services.</comment>


Lines of code that changed the world - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/consequential-computer-code-software-history.html <comment><USER2> What a clickbait headline... Entertaining article actually, with nice code snippets.

Actual subtitle:

"Apollo 11, the JPEG, the first pop-up ad, and 33 other bits of software that have transformed our world."

<comment><USER3> Ok, we'll change everything to merely the world in the title above.</comment></comment>