The DEA failure that prevented a potentially major medical breakthrough - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/the_colossal_dea_failure_that_prevented_a_potentially_major_medical_breakthrough/ <comment><USER2> If you haven't tried MDMA, I strongly recommend it.[1] I've used it twice in the past six years, and it has completely changed how I interact with others. Rolling on MDMA drastically curbed my social phobias. All of my negative social emotions: my neuroticism, my self-consciousness, even bitter emotions such as envy; all of them disappeared on MDMA. Afterwards, I felt as if I'd been cured of a mental illness. While I'm certainly not as outgoing and selfless as I would be on MDMA, I've moved my typical behavior closer toward that. It has made me a healthier, happier human being. More importantly, my interactions help others much more than they used to.

It is a tragedy that some parts of the US government try so hard to restrict this drug. I fully agree that it is a powerful, dangerous drug. Still, for most purposes, the benefits almost certainly outweigh the harms. I think future generations will look back on this as a moral failing of our time.

1\. In moderation, of course, and mega-caveats for anyone who has a family history of schizophrenia. MDMA is not good for your brain. However, I think for many people it may be necessary to use the drug to open a figurative door. I wish better drugs existed, but research in the field has been stifled.

<comment><USER3> There is no reason to assume that there are no substances that can either temporarily alter you and inspire you to pursue a certain state of mind more often (without the drug) or that can alter you for a longer time.

That said, the birth of my son altered me for a long time (made more emotional, better able to enjoy emotion). Finishing the reconstruction of my house with my own hands altered me (showed me I can do major things when I just start doing them). Getting my PhD showed me that even though I reached the maximum level of education I can still have insecurities about my intelligence and they are thus irrational. Reading Atlas Shrugged changed me from someone who automatically though from a group perspective to someone who kept his own needs at a higher priority by showing me the moral rational for this type of thinking.

I never tried LSD or the like but aren't they just shortcuts to states of mind I can attain by learning myself to be more grateful for what I have? To be more social and nice? Can I attain the long term effects of psychedelic drugs by reading? By learning how to meditate? That is what I always believed.

Perhaps at some point I will experiment, now I feel I can't take any risks, I need my brain the way it is to provide for my family.

<comment><USER4> Sure drugs are a short-cut, but you say that like it's a bad thing. What rational person wouldn't want to use a short-cut to get to a desired destination?

Did you do that work on your house with trees you'd taken down with your teeth? Or did you use a bunch of short-cuts, developed over hundreds of thousands of years, from saws to cut wood to hammers that pound nails to an exchange economy that allows you to work at one thing and pay someone else to do another for you (like build hammers etc). How big a short-cut is that!

Civilization is nothing but a huge collection of short-cuts.

Every tech company is in the business of developing and selling short-cuts.

So don't be running down short-cuts: they are what make our lives communal, rich, pleasant, civilized and long.

The issues with drugs are not that they get us to places we'd like to go without the otherwise-arduous work required, it's that they don't necessarily get us there, and they can get us to places that are very difficult to get out of. But the very fact that they can mess you up in ways you can't achieve by reading or meditation suggests they can give us positive effects that can't be achieved in other ways. It's not something I'd likely do myself, but if people are bad places already, suffering from PTSD and the like, it's not unreasonable for them to take the damned short-cut if it has a plausible chance of working.

That said, I'm in favour of legalization, or at least decriminalization, in part to reduce the risks: MDMA in particular involves a synthesis that I'd really like to see done in a quality-controlled environment (there are mercury compounds involved and if the chemist screws up their clients can die, which unfortunately happens, and would not happen if the drug was legal, so I lay those deaths at the feet of prohibitionists.)

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of easy ways to experience altered states. Don't sleep for three days, Hyperventilate, Extreme Sauna, etc. The problem is it's generally a random experience, and random in no way imply's beneficial. So, it's a shortcut to some random place which might be useful, but some people get rich playing the lotto does not mean it's a good idea on average.

<comment><USER6> > Don't sleep for three days, Hyperventilate, Extreme Sauna, etc.

People are really underestimating altered states when they've never experienced them. Psychedelic drugs are not as subtle as what you are describing and MDMA in particular is not random at all.

Also don't confuse the immediate effect of the drug with what you learn from the experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I often wonder if our civilization is in some sort of false vacuum.

While it's true our lives are better than in the Middle Ages, stories like this and the myriad of misconceptions and outright lies that follow cannabis really demonstrate, superstition still rules law. We've clothed ourselves in technology, but not wisdom.

<comment><USER8> Of course. We exist in a world that has benefited greatly from and been transformed by a more "enlightened" world view (one that is accepting and embraces scientific principles), but at the same time it largely rejects that world view, with abundant evidence everywhere.

We think we are sophisticated and advanced but there's only a skim of sophostication on top of our primitivism. Look at our criminal justice system, which makes a mockery of justice, perverts society, and embraces medieval ideas about punishment, retribution, and suffering. You see similar things everywhere you look. The idea of rule of law, then the subversion of law with favoritism for the powerful. And so on. We don't notice much of this because we see the good, which to be fair is important and nevertheless real, and ignore the bad because it has become familiar (or worse, it is familiar but we dismiss it as being exceptional, like sexual violence or police corruption).

<comment><USER7> Extremely well put!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That last line is just astounding:

 _The drug that had been "mislabeled" as MDMA and proven so horribly toxic that it had stopped Michael's study cold; the drug that was far more toxic than actual MDMA, methamphetamine, already was a prescription medicine._

</comment><comment><USER10> Before young people here start harlem shaking their brain, remember that if you're here, there's a high chance that your brain is your work tool. It's what you make your living with. So take good care of it, and be cautious.

I don't know a drug smart enough to recognize bad memories from good ones. Most of those Dr Frankenstein's pills effects have been found by random, and as this article shows research on effects is very much a work in progress.

<comment><USER11> I think you misunderstand the point of MDMA in therapy, it doesn't need to distinguish between "bad" or "good" memories, you do that. The substance simply serves to ensure that you can begin to introspect on those experiences that you might otherwise recoil from, or that might otherwise cause you to sink deeper. Think of it as a person or maybe a place of total benevolence and safety in all respects, within which nothing can hurt you and everything nurtures you. From that place you can begin to heal yourself.

Let me re-iterate that, you do the healing. The substance just provides the ideal setting.

<comment><USER12> Additionally, they're not used in the same way recreationally at all. There's no therapy sessions delving deep into old suppressed memories; it's not a comparable environment at all.

<comment><USER6> Why do you think talking with friends can not provide a similar environment?

<comment><USER11> Imagine something you're deeply ashamed of, it's quite irrelevant whether that shame is justified or not -- we're discussing psychosis here. So we're not discussing "wow I really feel bad I didn't fix that bug I promised to", we're talking a context analagous to "my <insert relative here> raped me and I believe I'm to blame for the disolution of the only family I knew".

Now imagine discussing that with your hypothetical friends or peer group. Hypothetical? Why is that? It's hypothetical because a frequent consequence of damaging experiences is the inability to form meaningful connections with others that engender that kind of trust or dynamic. Even if you were, would you really want people you're presumably planning to know for the rest of your life to have that as your reference point? And what happens when your peer groups or friends are a entwined or part of the problem? Who do you turn to then?

Now humour me just a little more and substitute the word "ashamed" in the first sentence for every extant and applicable negative adjective. _That_ is why you need a setting that insulates you in order to enable you to begin to address and introspect in a therapeutic session, without "prop" like MDMA that sort of setting takes time, qualifications and skill to build - and in some case is impossible to build.

Edit: re-reading your comment I'm fairly sure I misunderstood your question, regardless I leave my response

<comment><USER6> > Imagine something you're deeply ashamed of, it's quite irrelevant whether > that shame is justified or not -- we're discussing psychosis here.

And we are discussing MDMA here so that very feeling is numbed, it can't hurt you in that very moment, you feel save by any means. (Provided you generally feel comfortable among the people you are with).

Now for the sake of the argument let's assume the person here does have real friends, friends they do care for them and aren't just random acquaintances. Let's also not discuss some extreme cases where this might not be enough. But that rape case you've mentioned might still work.

I find it kind of sad that you disregard the possibility that talking with friends and getting their support, helping you to continue your life, something humanity has done for millennia. Instead you say only a professional can magically 'fix' it. I think you are making it a bit too easy here to disregard all personal responsibility for your peers, saying that only an expert can provide help.

> Even if you were, would you really want people you're presumably planning to > know for the rest of your life to have that as your reference point?

I think that if you know them well enough and share more experiences with them then just that, it will not be their 'reference point' but instead an important fact to know you better and support you when necessary.

Of course there are situations where this is not applicable, but that goes for everything. There are no magic bullets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I highly recommend watching Peter Jenning's informative and entertaining documentary "Ecstasy Rising" which outlines much of what this article describes but with a bit more investigatory goodness.

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

<comment><USER14> I also recommend this video... about recent studies about using mdma to treat ptsd.

[http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/29/5664700/ecstatic-states- md...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/29/5664700/ecstatic-states-mdma-ptsd- treatment-video)

I donated money to this mdma study. You get a copy of the book this article was excerpted from for some donations.

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/legalizing-psychedelic- th...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/legalizing-psychedelic-therapy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FWIW I just got home from a professional meeting at which a topic was the pros and cons of cannabis legalization (as in WA or CO).

The relevant part of that presentation was the potential _real_ therapeutic value of some of the 400 or so component compounds resident in the natural botanical plant material. The problem was that studying the possible effects is impeded by the requirement for special permission to use cannabis (or fraction thereof), since its a Schedule 1 drug.

Furthermore, the only legal source of cannabis is that which the federal government supplies (grown in Mississippi), which is very limited. That's a shame since preliminary studies suggest certain compounds in the plant may indeed have therapeutic applications.

Other countries have gone further in studying cannabis (Israel was mentioned by the presenter), but until the DEA policy changes, study will remain minimal in the US.

Unfortunately, removing restrictions in individual states is not very helpful since cannabis preparations produced in one state can't legally be shipped to other states, a severely inhibiting factor for medical research.

Similarly, risks and benefits of MDMA have had minimal _systematic_ evaluation. Anecdotal reports are not considered "evidence" in the world of science, as everyone reading here should know. The only way certain drugs will be studied is to work toward changing DEA policy, there's no getting around it.

<comment><USER16> Could it be an opportunity for my country (Uruguay) to host large-scale studies on marijuana? (100% legal here, though it's likely the next government will backtrack at least a little)

What would we need to make it happen?

<comment><USER15> Usually a researcher takes an interest in a topic and champions the cause. Often the biggest problem is funding. Government or pharmaceutical industry are common funding sources, sometimes private foundations are also sponsors of studies. In any case, political savvy is the defining characteristic of successful leaders in science as it is anywhere else.

I think what eventually allows new ideas to take hold is having the rigorous studies producing "air-tight" results. I always say it's hard to argue with facts. Once it's clear that "this stuff really works", others jump on board spurring all kinds of related offshoots and new studies.

That's why it takes a tenacious and courageous leader to advocate for the "cause" of basic or foundational clinical research. "Spontaneously acceleration" happens if it turns out there's money to be made, but that may be way, way down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They did the same thing to research in to Ibogaine.

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929313.900-mindalter...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929313.900-mindaltering- drug-could-offer-life-free-of-heroin.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> So administering meth instead of MDMA was a colossal fuckup, but why is that a "colossal DEA failure"? The fault seems to lie squarely with the researcher in question and/or their supplier, unless you buy into the conspiracy theory that the DEA was behind switching the drugs.

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

<comment><USER19> I'm guessing this is the first DEA failure:

      "in 1985 ... the Drug Enforcement Administration declared MDMA a
       Schedule I drug — a drug with a high potential for abuse and no
       medical use. A Schedule I designation made MDMA use criminal and
       research into its therapeutic potential virtually impossible."

That, and:

      "As Mithoefer told Doblin in an email, 'When I asked him if he
       could tell me anything about what the concerns were, he would
       say only that they had to do with 'safety.''

       Which was odd, and disturbing. It was the job of the FDA and
       the IRB to determine if the study was safe, not the DEA. The
       role of the DEA in approving a Schedule I license was solely
       to ascertain that the drug could be secured from theft and
       distributed in accordance with the research protocol."

The DEA overstepped their mandate in interfering with the approval process for use of the Schedule I drug when they questioned its safety, which is the role of the FDA and the review board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you kidding me? LSD/Acid lodges itself in fatty tissue and can cause people to re-experience acid trips at random when those acid crystals dislodge themselves years later...

If you want to really fuck up your life then go ahead and take LSD. Can you imagine years after taking a drug and driving down the interstate and having a flashback and getting into an accident? What about holding your 3-month old and dropping them because you just had an acid flashback?!

This is total BS. People who are stressed out need better nutrition, sleep, and to get people who are stressing them out off their backs. What they DON'T need is an acid trip.

<comment><USER21> Your comment is entirely misinformed. There's about 0.01% chance that this comment will change your mind, but hey, I like hopeless causes!

Have a look through [http://erowid.org](http://erowid.org) and make up your own mind about drugs instead of swallowing what other people have told you, hook, line and sinker. Please consider the possibility that you've been severely misled by the people who provided you with this understanding of drugs. If you are still young, perhaps it is just because your understanding is just your parents' prejudices untainted by actual experience. If you are old enough to have lived your whole life, perhaps you've just not met the right kind of people, only people who were misled like yourself, or who were actively engaged in anti-drug propaganda.

Either way, you owe it to yourself and to your sense of intellectual curiosity (the same that drives you to this site) to actually research this for yourself, perhaps even find some people who take drugs in moderation, get to know them better, and figure out whether there is truth in what you've been told about drugs. Chances are you already know those people, they're just not telling you because they know how you'd react and they care about you, so don't want to get you riled up about a topic on which you're unwilling to entertain other points of view.

Either way, the onus is now on you to find out more about the world rather than perpetuating the incorrect dogmas which you've been fed.

Note: I used to be just as intolerant as you. Then I looked things up and I experienced them for myself.

<comment><USER22> Reading back on previous comments it appears that Scientology may be one of the deciding factors in the line of reasoning....

<comment><USER23> Yeah, "acid flashbacks" is a rumor originally started by L. Ron Hubbard.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Features of Solr vs. ElasticSearch - <AUTHOR> http://solr-vs-elasticsearch.com/ <comment><USER2> Hi! I'm the author of <http://solr-vs-elasticsearch.com>

It's something I threw together in a couple hours, and figured I'd iterate and improve over the next couple days, so please bear with the mistakes.

I fixed the more glaring errors (copy field, dynamic fields , Django etc), and will continue to do so as comments come in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been playing with ElasticSearch + Tire[0] over the span of the last week. It's a joy to use. Sunspot + Solr isn't a bad alternative, though.

Tire's docs are a bit lacking but it maps more-or-less 1:1 with ElasticSearch, so it's not too bad.

Very pleased with the performance ElasticSearch provides. The installation was a bit foreign for me personally (a java service container? openjdk 6 or 7?) but it's lightning quick and very flexible.

I chose to go the ElasticSearch route mainly due to my need for Geospatial indexing. Solr does it too, but Foursquare[1] uses ElasticSearch and so that got me interested in learning more. Geo queries are really fast. My last experience with Geo involved GeoDjango and all kinds of obnoxious hacks to PostgreSQL to make it work. With ElasticSearch you tell it to index a point and boom you're off to the races.

[0]: <https://github.com/karmi/tire>

[1]: <https://foursquare.com/about/>

<comment><USER4> I used Solr for the previous generation of FreshBSD[0], and migrated to ElasticSearch and Tire over a year ago and haven't looked back. The docs for both ElasticSearch and Tire leave something to be desired, but it's still so much nicer to use and a lot faster out of the box, at least for my modest needs.

[0]: <http://freshbsd.org/>

<comment><USER5> Solr's docs also leave a lot to be desired. The wikis are a mess and knowing what is still relevant (e.g. not deprecated) is frequently a crap shoot.

It'd be great if their docs had versioning (like the Apache HTTP Server Project), but I suspect that isn't on anyone's roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love both Solr and ElasticSearch but the big missing comparison for me is: are there any books available? Or even comprehensive tutorials beyond the basics? I love ElasticSearch but it was a huge pain getting up-to-speed on everything. Figuring out things like EdgeNGrams (something I already knew how to do in Solr and Lucene) meant digging into the source code. I'm not shy about doing that myself, but giving that advice to a consulting client would be a non-starter. With the explosive growth of ES just in the last year or two, it's really time for someone to start working on a book. Packt, Manning, O'Reilly, any news?

</comment><comment><USER7> Add geospatial to your comparison chart please. The way in which these implement support varies widely in performance and accuracy. I've yet to find one that actually uses R-Trees. Geohashes seem to be all the rage these days.

<comment><USER8> _"I've yet to find one that actually uses R-Trees."_

That's because R-Trees don't scale well with random write loads.

R-tree insertion performance is extremely dependent on insertion order (search for "sort tile recursive"). They're best used for problems where the data can be bulk-loaded and left alone. If random writes are an important part of the problem (as they are for most web-based tools), R-Trees are a bad idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not an ElasticSearch expert but it seems that the scenario for "Field copying" would be supported with the multi_field indexing ( [http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/mapping/multi-f...](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/mapping/multi- field-type.html) )

<comment><USER10> That is correct. It appears that this comparison is a bit inconsistent. Also, there are client libs for javascript as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good overview - shows you just how powerful these engines are.

I can't speak for ElasticSearch but there are a couple things in the Solr list that I'm not sure about.

 _"Multiple document types per schema"_ \- You can use dynamic fields so that you don't even need to define your document schema

 _"Schema change requires restart"_ \- I think in MultiCore it happens when you swap cores (which is a good way of running solr) [0]

[0] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10417422/solr-schema- chan...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10417422/solr-schema-changes- arent-picked-up-unless-solr-is-stopped-for-3-seconds)

<comment><USER12> Furthermore, with respect to schema changes, ElasticSearch will refuse to make backwards-incompatible changes. So for either search engine, you'll need to get comfortable at some point with the procedure for creating a new index with the new schema or mapping, reindexing your data, and hot-swapping the Solr Core or ElasticSearch Alias.

<comment><USER13> Hot-swaps of ElasticSearch aliases are how we do it at my company. It's how we produce a rolling archive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 3rd party integration of ElasticSearch with Django: <http://haystacksearch.org/>. So I'm not sure why the article says N/A.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, especially weird since it's the same project that does 2rd party for Solr, and ElasticSearch is increasingly a favored engine of the author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> After the 3rd thing that was wrong about Solr, I stopped caring to write anything more than this comment.

<comment><USER16> Given that this appears to be a community resource and not sponsored by either SOLR or Elastic Search people, I'm sure your specific critiques would be useful.

<comment><USER12> Looks like a sales/SEO play for a Solr/ElasticSearch consultant. Still seems pretty helpful as a community resource. I emailed the author to see if he's interested in setting up a public GitHub repo to take pull requests.

Personally, I'd like to see similar comparisons for other search engines, like Sphinx and Postgres Full-Text. When I talk to people about search engines, the first questions they ask me are to compare one against some other.

<comment><USER13> Which is especially egregious, since both fall apart in more serious use- cases.

<comment><USER12> Can you expand on what you mean?

<comment><USER17> Not sure about codewright's use cases. However in my own brief experimentation with SOLR I ran into performance issues with garbage collection.

I setup a cluster of about 15 cc2.8xlarge machines (5 Shards with 3 replicas each) containing 240Gb worth of documents (48gb per shard). Each node was given on the order of 40GB heap space. While performing load tests with a relatively small load (~150 QPS) after a few minutes the garbage collector on nodes would kick in and run on the order of 15 to 30s. This had a cascading effect of causing zookeper to think nodes were down, start leader re-election, etc.

Admittedly I am quite inexperienced when it comes to dealing with applications using such large heap sizes. Though I tried a few different JVM options with respect to GC I was unsuccessful in resolving the problem.

If any folks here happen to have some good resources regarding GC and large Solr clusters I would definitely be interested.

<comment><USER18> That huge heap is extremely counterproductive, because large heaps have terrible GC performance, and you're actually stealing memory from the natively memory-mapped files that make up your index.

Try it again with sane GC parameters, e.g.:

        -Xmx<N>G -Xms<N>g -XX:NewSize=<N/2>G -XX:MaxNewSize=<N/2>G -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -verbose:gc -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+CMSIncrementalMode

Where <N> is a value between 2-8.

Edit: I was benchmarking a similarly sized (though very differently configured) Solr cluster for a well-known internet company, and was able to tune it to do 5000qps, with p50 ~2ms and p99 ~20ms.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the tips. I was considering trying testing again with more partitions w/ smaller machines. Perhaps N x m1.xlarge w/ 8 GB heap space.

I was starting to think that since the heap space was so big perhaps I should be worrying about page sizes as well. While I tried various GC settings (UseConcMarkSweepGC, ConcGCThreads, UseG1GC, etc. ) I didn't take a stab at playing with the size of New Genearation. Could you explain the reasoning behind this? Is the idea that most objects die young so try to increase the number of short run minor GCs and avoid bigger Major GCs? I am quite interested.

Edit: Regarding the cluster you were working on. Would you be able to give general dimensions to the number of nodes & partitions in your cluster + memory for each? Just trying to get a general guideline to aim for.

<comment><USER18> In general, I fix the newgen size mostly to avoid the optimizer choosing something braindead in a pathological case. 50/50 is safe, but not optimal.

In general, you should have enough unallocated memory on the box to cover your working dataset (it'll get used by caches and memmaps). If you can, find a way to exploit data locality. I shoot for (number of cores * 1-4)-ish partitions per box depending on workload. Using bigger boxes is usually better, because you can avoid communication latency and variance that arises from having tons of boxes.

If you want to know more, you can email me at email@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> both are nice and will do the job without too much pain. I've been running an es cluster for about a year now. I appreciate how easy it is to setup but the documentation is terrible. es doc should be a cross between rethinkdb and redis. that would make life easier for everybody.

<comment><USER20> Couldn't agree more. I think the problem with ElasticSearch docs is they assume the user already understands the inner workings of the Lucene search engine (after all, ElasticSearch is just a nice restful wrapper on top of that.)

If, as was my case, the most complex search you've ever made before was a fulltext search on a database field then you'll be lost for a good couple days until you understand what's going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surprised ElasticSearch doesn't support dynamic fields. That is one of the most useful featuresin SOLR.

<comment><USER22> This is incorrect. Dynamic templates are pretty much the same thing.

[http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/Apply- dynami...](http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/Apply-dynamic- template-to-all-fields-of-an-object-td4018786.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Having played with both, I personally find <http://www.searchify.com/> _much_ better than bost Solr And ElasticSearch. At least based off the search results.

<comment><USER24> It looks like searchify is a hosted search solution, whereas Solr and ElasticSearch are distributions of search servers that can be deployed on your own hardware.

<comment><USER12> Technically Searchify is based on the open-sourced code from the previously proprietary IndexTank. So in theory you can run your own: <https://github.com/linkedin/indextank-engine>.

I'm skeptical about claims of different quality of relevancy results, since IndexTank/Searchify is also based on Lucene (looks like 3.0.1 in the canonical repo), and should share all the same fundamental relevancy and scoring functionality.

<comment><USER23> Yep, but hosting it is a pain.

It's actually heavily tweaked (this is what the IndexTank team has told me), and apparently contains components of Solr

<comment><USER12> There are hosted services for Solr and ElasticSearch, too. Such as fizx's and my own <http://websolr.com> and <http://bonsai.io>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> With elasticsearch, you are not able to change shard count after initial index creation. You are able to change replicas at any time.

<comment><USER2> Fixed. thanks..

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seems biased in favor of Solr... it tries very hard to keep Solr and ES balanced but in reality it's not that balanced.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yokozuna is Riak + Solr, not ES.

<comment><USER2> Oops. Typo. Fixed.</comment></comment>


The Ugly Values of Beautiful People - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/the-ugly-values-of-beautiful-people-46280/ <comment><USER2> > That's the conclusion of new research from Israel, which confirms the truism > that we idealize attractive people, and suggests that—at least as far as > women are concerned—the pedestal we place them on is largely unearned.

What? Alert the media! This is supposed to be science? What did they use for a control group? Or did they have a control group?

> But this study, published in the journal _Psychological Science_ , ...

Oh, right, never mind. Most of "psychological science" consists of confirming "scientifically" what 95% of people think is true anyway, thus winning an audience for contentless folk wisdom.

Psychological science is to science what military music is to music.</comment>


Ask HN: any light after quitting career at big software companies? - <AUTHOR>

I've been trying many years to be fulfilled at big companies. Had the opportunity of working in cloud computing orgs at Amazon, Google and Microsoft, among other companies, and came to realization that I cannot be happy in such environments for a number of reasons: 1. lack of autonomy, 2. being told what to do and how to do (particularly bad when these people don't know what they are talking about), 3. not being able to be proud of what I accomplished, 4. dealing with politics; among other reasons. I feel just like another cog in the machine and plan to quit my job at one of the big companies listed above next week.
Now I am trying to figure out what to do next. I've realized that the problem is not computer science - I find it extremely beautiful to see good engineering being applied, and love to learn new things and see how my experience over the years can be applied and valuable to the business. But I need an environment that nurtures creativity, where excellence is actually valued and engineers can exercise their creativity, being autonomous. I want to deliver a solution, and be able to decide how to tackle it, not being micromanaged and having my creativity killed as the manager thinks that another solution is more in line with his experience and taste.
Is there life after working for big companies? Is there any place where autonomy is actually possible and the engineer intrinsic motivation is not being killed by the environment? Just so you know, I had a short experience with a start-up and unfortunately that wasn't much different - actually the micro-management was quite worse than experienced at big companies, so that is why I am sort of hopeless at this point.
Is consulting or starting my own company the way to go? I am currently open to change to a completely different area and leaving computer science behind me at this point, if that's the best for me.
Does this resonate with anyone? Any thoughts, suggestions, or similar experiences are very much welcome and appreciated. <comment><USER2> If you can survive for a year or two without a salary then maybe you should quit as a way to figure out what you want to do with your life. Get involved in causes that inspire/move you. There is an old Persian saying: when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

A friend of mine got burnt out from the health insurance industry after 7 years. He moved to India as a volunteer, saw lack of healthcare, and started a micro health insurance fund for the poorest of the poor there. Last I talked to him he told me that his org has made 6000 doctor visits possible (majority for critical issues) for a class of people most of whom have never been to a doctor in their whole life. People in the US are trying to copy his model for the 60 million uninsured here. He says is happier and more fulfilled now than he has ever been. I am trying to take his lead and trying to find causes that I'd be happy to contribute towards (locally) even if it means it has to be without any financial reward.

The beauty of our craft is that it does not discriminate, we can apply it to any bad situation that we want to see improved. Finding the cause worth dying for is the struggle.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will leave some money/shares on the table quitting now, but luckily I can survive without salary for quite a while.

I think you're completely right about trying causes that inspire or move me, otherwise we can live an entire life without having the impact that we once dreamed of. It requires courage and a lot of hard work - especially for those that do while still working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've had similar experiences over the years. I started out at a startup with inexperienced founders, which resulted in micromanagement and eventually my departure after a few years. I was then hired on at a couple traditional server hosting companies that have been repositioning themselves as cloud hosts. At one of the hosting companies, I did have some measure of autonomy but politics and micromanagement were in full swing.

Most recently, I had worked at a BigCo that I left a few months ago. The environment was soul-crushing and toxic. The experiences wore me out mentally and put my health at risk, so I left.

I'm still trying to figure out the next step myself, whether it be leaving the field for something else or starting my own company. For me, it has meant a lot of introspection and lurking on sites like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am glad to hear you left, especially when you have a signal that your health is at risk. Nothing is worth that, in my opinion. I even had a friend that got to suicide because of work. And there are a lot of companies that do not simply care much about the employee, especially when it comes to operational load and on-call rotation.

In order to make the best decision, one must try to understand oneself. I've been reading a book called "Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant To Live", which has been quite helpful in this regard. There are some career coaches that seem to be very effective for some people as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to throw a couple of things out there. If I'm completely off the mark, feel free to ignore.

Fulfilled - This is a tall order for any work environment. Have you ever been professional fulfilled? Personally fulfilled? Both? For some people, me for example, professional fulfillment is tied to my personal life in a way that if I'm not professionally happy, i'm not personally happy. For lots of people, it's the opposite.

The grass is always greener...which isn't to say that it's actually not. A smaller company or startup will be different...that's all you'll know for sure. You may gain autonomy and pride in your contribution, but find that the overall lack of progress and general lack of certainty just as disheartening. 2 months into a project, the directive might be abandoned...it's just the way it goes sometimes.

If you want to test the waters as a consultant or start your own consulting business, take a ~60 hour job and a week of vacation. If it moves you, you'll know.

Culture is important. But, it sounds like you are bumping into the harsh reality that many companies throw culture out the window when it's not convenient. That happens almost everywhere, unfortunately.

It sounds like you might be just about ready for shakeup. It sounds like you have the credentials / experience to make a move and if it doesn't work out, take a mulligan. That being said, if you aren't unhappy enough to quit outright, it might not be that bad (but, clearly isn't that good).

Another approach that has worked in the past is a transfer. Maybe your current project is too big, manager sucks, cross-functional team is composed to biz guys that think all you have to do is toss a code monkey a banana once in a while...maybe you can get on a more entrepreneurial team on, a nascent project, a your current employer.

I hope it you find what you are looking for...it sux when someone beats the life out of something you really love to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a bunch, it is right on. On Monday I actually gave my notice, but there have been lots of conversation with management trying to convince me to stay. Next week I will make a final decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I left a large Silicon Valley company for some of the reasons you mentioned and knew I shouldn't work anywhere like it again. It's just not a fit for me the way it is for others.

Smaller companies have a more diverse range of cultures. Maybe you got unlucky once, but it might not happen again. It's hard to know what the culture will really be like based on interviews, but learn what's most important to you and make a point of researching or asking about that as you interview. You are interviewing them as well.

And there are also small companies out there that aren't startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true. I've seen some people quite happy working at small companies that did not have good experiences at big companies. Perhaps I just had a bad experience.

As you said, I need to interview them and make very clear that I want to work hard and contribute, but I need autonomy and no micro-management. Let's see if I can find any company that works like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Come talk to us at Facebook. We try very hard in our culture to avoid the bad things you mention above. Send me a message (my contact information is on my profile).

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Facebook- EI_IE4...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Facebook- EI_IE40772.11,19.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered that, but after experience at other big companies and each and every one of them saying that these things don't happen there, Facebook would need to be a big exception (and maybe it is, it just seems too good to be true :-). Let me give some thought to that. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't say I understand the feeling as I haven't been yet battered by the corporate machine.

My advice is to try and find something you can do by yourself that you will enjoy. Obviously, it would be better/more profitable to stay within your field, but who knows - lots of successful people change from field to field and remain successful (see James Altucher who has had many career changes). I would suggest you put some serious thought into what this special thing is, though. Do not quit your job before you do.

Some people might tell you to quit immediately for your own health, but I think putting some serious thought into your options will go a long way into keeping you happy. Sure, you're working in some corporate gig, but you've got some consulting business you're planning...something like that. Good luck, whatever you decide.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I've got to a point that I just can't take anymore. Ideally I would find what to do before quitting a job, but at the same I think I will have a better chance of trying out different things if I leave my job.

About consulting, that something that came to mind and it could be a good option. Let's see what I end up doing. Thanks for the advice and bringing this up.</comment></comment>


They built a desktop app for Google Play Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/05/google-play-music-desktop-radiant-player-gpmdp/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes it feels good to know you are not alone. I have never understood this fascination with phone apps and mobile, and hourly prognostications that desktop is dead... I love my desktop(laptop). It provides me with a more comfortable interface. Phone screens are too small, the navigation buttons are more difficult to use. I use my phone to browse the web on occasion, and as a last resort. The desktop is not dead.</comment>


How Chinese Multiply - bra-ket https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=817396358300020

<comment><AUTHOR> Try 67x89 that way and count dots till tonight.</comment>


Meet Moxie Marlinspike, the Anarchist Bringing Encryption to All of Us - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist-bringing-encryption-us/ <comment><USER2> I enjoyed the 10 seconds of the article that I read before the ad-wall came up...

</comment><comment><USER3> If adblocker detection is giving you trouble, full-text with images has been crawled yesterday by Archive.is:

[https://archive.is/ALXJY](https://archive.is/ALXJY)

</comment><comment><USER4> Meet Moxie Marlinspike, the Anarchist Bringing us yet another cryptographic island with a single point of failure.

<comment><USER5> You meant "Meet Moxie Marlinspike, the guy who brought encryption to millions or even billions of people who use a multitude of independent services"?</comment></comment>


Yarn package manager now has its own /search - <AUTHOR> http://yarnpkg.com/search <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, ask me anything on how this is built.

We replicate via pouchdb the npm registry to an Algolia index then we build the frontend on top of it.

The index is kept up to date live via CouchDB changes.

[https://github.com/algolia/npm-search](https://github.com/algolia/npm-search)

[https://community.algolia.com/instantsearch.js/](https://community.algolia.com/instantsearch.js/)</comment>


Inside Industrial Light and Magic's Secret Star Wars VR Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/13/9131805/ilm-ilmxlab-interview-virtual-reality-star-wars-movies

<comment><USER2> LucasArts used to be a very well known game developer studio. Many of the early star wars games were very well received and highly innovative. Star Wars: Tie Fighter is consistently considered one of the best games of all time. They also released one of the earliest games to make use of a dedicated GPU in PCs. Over time, the quality dropped off and left many fans disappointed.

There were still a few gems after 2000, e.g. Knight of the Old Republic and Battlefield. However, the sequel to KotOR was released unfinished. This era seems to be filled with collaborations where other companies performed much of the work. I suspect using external resources caused a drop in in-house talent and ultimately left the studio unable to compete against newer and more ambitious studios.

I hope this marks a return of an innovative and competitive LucasArts. It would be wonderful to have the same level of early innovation back and associated with the star wars brand.

<comment><USER3> After Disney bought LucasFilm they laid off everyone at LucasArts except those responsible for handling licensing [1]. ILM's work here seems focused on more cinematic stuff - the word "game" doesn't appear once in the article.

By the way, a lot of the missing content in KotOR 2 has been restored by a mod called "The Sith Lords Restored Content Modification." There's a standalone version if you still have the original discs rattling around, but the easiest way to get it now is to use the Steam Workshop [2]; the game was recently updated (after 10 years!) to add easier mod support, controller support, etc.

[1] [http://www.ibtimes.com/disney-closes-lucasarts-video-game- ar...](http://www.ibtimes.com/disney-closes-lucasarts-video-game-arm- lucasfilm-cancels-star-wars-games-1169515)

[2] [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=485537...](http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=485537937)

<comment><USER4> They do mention gaming applications in the video, however they will focus on cinematic applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The description is disappointing. It sounds like VR from the 1990s. CAVE systems with flat walls and annoying corner effects have been around since 1992. I'd expect Lucasfilm to at least have a big curved screen, like this one from 2013.[1] People at Lucasfilm seem to think that people will "want to follow the droids before they enter the scene", but other than fanatical fans (the ones who edit Wookiepedia), probably not many will.

Cameron says the Oculus Rift form of VR is a "a yawn".[2] That's surprising from a director who has a track record of using CG, IMAX, and 3D very well, and wants higher frame rates. Cameron even uses a VR device as a working tool in shooting CG movies. But he doesn't see it as an entertainment delivery vehicle.

VR is sometimes interesting if you can go in there and _do_ something, but as a way of watching a show with a static plot, it's not that exciting.

The main game for the Oculus Rift seems to be a roller coaster simulator.[3] VR is apparently able to make this reviewer come close to throwing up. Some roller coaster fans may consider that a feature, not a bug. But it may limit the size of the market.

[1] [http://io9.com/5986569/new-virtual-reality-cave-brings-us- on...](http://io9.com/5986569/new-virtual-reality-cave-brings-us-one-step- closer-to-star-treks-holodeck) [2] [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/james- cameron-on-vr-meh/110...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/james-cameron-on- vr-meh/1100-6423269/) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMrhaLb6UeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMrhaLb6UeQ)

</comment><comment><USER6> There was a larger scale Cave at Communitech in Waterloo, Canada for years. They've only just recently gotten rid of it. It was really impressive technology, but never had a solid demo to show. I imagine having one at ILM would solve that :)</comment>


Permanent home for Les Paul Google Logo - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/logos/2011/lespaul.html

<comment><USER2> It's sort of fun to scroll through historical logos too... <http://www.google.com/logos/>

</comment><comment><USER3> The Met in NYC has an amazing guitar exhibit (until July 4, 2011).

Guitar Heroes: Legendary Craftsmen from Italy to New York

<http://blog.metmuseum.org/guitarheroes/>

</comment><comment><USER4> You can also play all 10 notes at once: hold down keys 1-0. You'll notice a nice 'bug' if you hold.

Here's a common progression. Hold down all the notes then move to the next chord in whatever rhythm you like:

qeti ryi tuo qeti

If you start off using your left hand for 'qe' and your right for 'ti' you'll find you can move through the progression easily.

A messy example (I just started playing around): <http://goo.gl/doodle/e4PVd>

(Oh, and turn off quickfind in Firefox or use another browser, annoying as hell).

</comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing how far the logos have evolved. I used to work with the original doodler of the logos and I always thought his work was great, but the dedicated doodle team lead by Ryan and under Marissa's wing have made them 10x better. Designing logos that engage the audience is brilliant. Kudos to the new doodle team.

</comment><comment><USER6> Weezer - In the Garage

5525567

5525567

5567587652876522765

796780765796755567

7967807657967555

55567

532

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice. I thought this was a fun little distraction. I'm glad they keep their past logo art available.

</comment><comment><USER8> First half of the 'Ripple' (Grateful Dead) riff:

3345809086568868568865

<comment><USER9> Nice job! I love that song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Symphony No. 8 of Beethoven (use keyboard numbers):

908234092830498230948203984023

984092384092834092384098230940

293423129192837917823793128372

891793821973821297897318297831

293178239781292398409238409283

409238409823094012972978312901

782379312837289179382197382129

789731829783129317823978129239

840923840928340923840982309401

297297831290178237931283728917

938219738212978973182978312931

782397812923984092384092834092

384098230940129729783129098230

940129729783129098230940129729

783129098230940129729783129098

23094012972978312555454

<comment><USER11> This got me curious: what does pi sound like? And the answer is that it's actually surprisingly tonal. The opening "31415" firmly establishes the key, and thereafter there's sonorous intervals to keep everything fairly well- behaved; the few out-of-place notes can be dealt with by an appropriate sort of rhythym. If you're gonna try it I recommend it as far as:

31415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751

So that you get a nice 5-1 ending.

<comment><USER12> Really cool concept. :)

Doesn't every sequence of numbers sound fairly tonal on the Les Paul logo though, since it's restricted to diatonic pitches?

<comment><USER13> Exactly.

And if you assigned the numbers to the blues scale degrees, it would sound very bluesy. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It doesn't seem to make any sound on FireFox 4 and IE9.

<comment><USER15> Just a hint, on Chrome it's using Flash to play sound.

<comment><USER16> It's strange but it does not work on Chrome but is fine on Safari for me- I have Flash turned off on both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So google doesn't tell me...but who or what is Les Paul?

<comment><USER18> ? Clicking on the logo takes you to the results page for the query "Les Paul", the 1st result is Wikipedia, which, if you read it, should answer your question..

<comment><USER17> yeah, I didn't expect to get downvoted for that. I wasn't trolling. I was puzzled by this too, since when I searched for les paul,

I only got two results: one for the logo, and one for the list of logos.

<comment><USER19> Then you did it wrong--Les Paul has 66,900,000 results for a Google search. He's world famous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meet 'Milo': Microsoft's creepy virtual human - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/meet_milo_microsofts_virtual_human.html

<comment><USER2> I dunno, Microsoft and Peter Molyneux have a reputation for hyping things up a lot and then not delivering (either outright or by delivering something that simply doesn't live up to the hype). I'll believe it when I can experience it for myself. Until then I call shenanigans.</comment>


The BrainPort Vision Device - <AUTHOR> http://science.howstuffworks.com/brainport.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a bit old (as featured in Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence), but I haven't seen it on HN, and SearchYC only brings up a few comments on this old submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=362657>

I'm thinking about starting a project to put together a homebrew version, but I have zero hardware experience. Any hardware hackers in the NYC/Brooklyn area willing to get together to act as a mentor on a cool project? I'll probably start heading out to Resistor on Thursdays for their craft nights to get started.</comment>


Apple: iPhone 6 Plus Won't Bend Under Normal Use; Only 9 Complaints - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-6-plus-wont-bend-under-normal-use-only-9-1639173696

<comment><USER2> > Apple: iPhone 6 Plus Won't Bend Under Normal Use

"Normal use" is an example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

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

All one needs to do is define "normal" in any convenient way meant to prove a point, not prove that the phone won't bend.</comment>


How to Be a Systems Thinker - <AUTHOR> https://www.edge.org/conversation/mary_catherine_bateson-how-to-be-a-systems-thinker <comment><USER3> A great book for this is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. She has many illustrative examples that really help get the points across. Coming from an electrical engineering background, I found her discussion around the interactions between positive and negative loops to be very interesting.

[https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H- Meadows/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H- Meadows/dp/1603580557)

<comment><USER4> I tried reading this book several years ago and bounced right off. Given the multiple recommendations, I'll give it a second try.

<comment><USER5> You can always start with the summary given at the end of the book (IIRC), and maybe that'll be enough to trigger your interest and motivates your going through at least some of the chapters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "How do you deal with ignorance? I don't mean how do you shut ignorance out. Rather, how do you deal with an awareness of what you don't know, and you don't know how to know, in dealing with a particular problem?"

I don't really like the rambling tone of the article which never really addresses it's central premise-questions.

Look, systems thinking is about thinking. Thinking is about how you were trained to think. To become a systems thinker, learn how to think better, how to think differently, how to think critically, and how to think logically. Now self-examine, correct problems, and repeat loop.

For example, the thing many elite schools teach that most others don't is the trivium and quadrivium approach to thinking.

Another trick is less tangible. Find brilliant people and learn from them. Learn what they do wrong, not just what they do right.

Finally, as a sysadmin, if you learn to think in a flowchart about just about any problem you will be fine... but the trick to that is to be specific about what the problem is.

<comment><USER7> agree there are better authors to learn how to think: D. Kahneman, A. Tversky, D. Hofstaedter, D. Dennet, K Popper, B. Russell, K. Goedel, N. Taelb, ... if you are in this same echo-chamber as me I'd love to hear who I forgot

My experience here is if you start with one of the above names (and are a fan of logic), you most likely end up reading all of them. (But maybe it's just me idk?)

<comment><USER8> Meadows and Forester.

<comment><USER8> That should be "Forrester".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a great last paragraph:

 _" The tragedy of the cybernetic revolution, which had two phases, the computer science side and the systems theory side, has been the neglect of the systems theory side of it. We chose marketable gadgets in preference to a deeper understanding of the world we live in."_

<comment><USER10> Yes! I have been bewildered as to why Cybernetics has been so woefully neglected.

"Introduction to Cybernetics" is available as a free PDF. (Linked from this page: [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html) )

Cybernetics is formally _beyond_ logic. It deals with _circular loops in causality_ in the most general yet concrete sense.

One way I try to describe it (to an audience like HN readers) is that Information Theory is about making the real world behave like symbols, while Cybernetics is about making symbols behave like the real world.

<comment><USER11> This sounds very interesting. I don't think I ever encountered Cybernetics in college nor in all these years as a professional software engineer. Any more resources apart from the linked pdf that you would recommend, perhaps tailored to someone with a CS background? (I'm reading through the pdf, just wanted to see if there were other treatments on this topic)

<comment><USER10> "Introduction to Cybernetics" is technical and very much in the spirit of CS. A lot of what gets called "cybernetics" tends to be kind of "fluffy" and I personally avoid that stuff. I'd recommend Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine".

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Communication_in_the_Animal_and_the_Machine)

And "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow:

[http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/Wiener- teleology.pdf](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/Wiener-teleology.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >... we're all seeing is that a lot of work that has been done to enable international cooperation ... pulled apart. We're seeing the progress we thought had been made in this country in race relations being reversed. We're seeing the partial breakup ... of a united Europe...

> One of the problems when you bring technology into a new area is that it > forces you to oversimplify.

It is fortunate that we have thinkers such as this to simplify the world for us.

Should we pine for the united Europe of Rome? Of the Reich?

Was it evil to tear down those cooperative societies?

<comment><USER13> REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES: Brought peace.

REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!

\-- _Life of Brian_

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I jarred a bit at her use of the word "metaphor" to describe understanding, and upon reflect I think I understand why I reacted that way. Metaphors lack the requisite understanding of an analogy in that they apply at best partially to artifacts of the intended reference. An analogy has to match, or at least rhyme, with the logic of a system in order to apply.

There is a reason that analog computing mattered, and why no one seriously focuses on metaphoric computing (except, you know, as a metaphor for something that isn't computing). I suspect that metaphors are the tools of cargo cults while analogies are the tools used by those that actually understand a system in order to convey it to those that do not.

<comment><USER15> > I suspect that metaphors are the tools of cargo cults

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but are you using some much more restrictive definition of 'metaphor'?

For example, as far as I can see, one can't escape metaphor because they're deeply embedded in the very language you're using right now.

The most basic metaphors are ones that refer to the body or the physical world. Jar [1] originally refers to a 'screeching sound'. Understand probably from the literal sense to 'stand between' [2]. Compute derives from 'com' (together) + 'putare' (reckon, settle an account) [3]; the latter root originally comes from Indo-European 'to prune'. Almost _all_ vocabulary is in fact a form of extended metaphor; in fact, it cannot be any other way, because to describe a new thing requires one to compare and contrast it to existing things.

You yourself are making a metaphor when you say that an analogy has to 'at least rhyme' — a metaphor for poetic sound similarity to stand for a sort of logical similarity.

The distinction between an analogy, where one explicitly calls out the comparison ('like', 'as'), and a metaphor, where the relationship is taken implicitly, is much blurrier than it seems. All our language and thinking is saturated with metaphors at _every single level_ , to the point where they seem to be taken for granted and disappear.

IMO, the problem is not metaphors themselves, which are unavoidable; it's picking _wrong_ metaphors (which is really using the wrong language) that lead us astray.

[1] [https://www.etymonline.com/word/jar](https://www.etymonline.com/word/jar)

[2] [https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand](https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand)

[3] [https://www.etymonline.com/word/compute](https://www.etymonline.com/word/compute)

<comment><USER14> "at least to rhyme" is very specifically a metaphor in that it does not require systemic logical matching... I don't literally require rhyming or a logical system that is comparable. It's also utterly useless for _system thinking_, which is the author's subject matter, precisely because it is at best loosely related.

An analogy, or analog, is a much deeper match in that means to transfer the understanding and knowledge of an existing system to a new target system that closely parallels that understanding and knowledge. Analog computing was literally "creating a model of the problem" that closely matched the real problem.

Agreed that metaphors are not inherently bad, but the dependence on metaphors rather than analogies is symptomatic of a lack of depth in understanding when attempting to convey knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >. It's important to be aware of it, to realize that there are limits to what we can do with AI. It's great for computation and arithmetic, and it saves huge amounts of labor. It seems to me that it lacks humility, lacks imagination, and lacks humor. It doesn't mean you can't bring those things into your interactions with your devices, particularly, in communicating with other human beings. But it does mean that elements of intelligence and wisdom—I like the word wisdom, because it's more multi-dimensional—are going to be lacking.

This I think is a very salient point. What is missing in the field at the moment to truly advance is a theory of 'agency' or how intelligent systems can be trained to venture out into the world and develop their own models, set their own incentives and continuously interact with their environment and develop their own 'games' from unstructured data rather than optimising towards some fixed goal.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are actually a lot of great materials available on Systems Thinking, here are a few of our favourites:

Articles:

\- Introduction to Systems Thinking ([https://thesystemsthinker.com/introduction-to-systems- thinki...](https://thesystemsthinker.com/introduction-to-systems-thinking/))

\- Tools of a Systems Thinker ([https://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools- for-systems-think...](https://medium.com/disruptive-design/tools-for-systems- thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-thinking-379cdac3dc6a))

\- The Mythical Leverage Point ([https://blog.kumu.io/the-mythical-leverage- point-d582ce4b8b4...](https://blog.kumu.io/the-mythical-leverage- point-d582ce4b8b49))

Videos:

\- Peter Senge Introduction to Systems Thinking ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXdzKBWDraM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXdzKBWDraM))

\- I Used To Be A Systems Thinker ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ymt_TbNNwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ymt_TbNNwE))

\- The (Failed) Promised of Systems Thinking ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=614&v=aelqgvFXGi...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=614&v=aelqgvFXGiQ))

\- Systems Practice Mindsets ([https://vimeo.com/212281432](https://vimeo.com/212281432))

Courses:

\- +Acumen Systems Practice Course ([https://www.plusacumen.org/courses/systems- practice](https://www.plusacumen.org/courses/systems-practice))

Books:

\- Thinking In Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows ([https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H- Meadows/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H- Meadows/dp/1603580557/))

\- Fifth Discipline Fieldbook ([https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline- Fieldbook-Strategies...](https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Fieldbook- Strategies-Organization/dp/0385472560))

\- Systems Thinking for Social Change ([https://www.amazon.com/Systems- Thinking-Social-Change-Conseq...](https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Thinking- Social-Change-Consequences/dp/160358580X))

Articles on Leading Systems Change:

\- Dawn of Systems Leadership ([https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadershi...](https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadership))

\- Acting and Thinking Systemically ([https://thesystemsthinker.com/acting- and-thinking-systemical...](https://thesystemsthinker.com/acting-and-thinking- systemically/))

\- Transforming the Systems Movement ([https://thesystemsthinker.com/transforming-the-systems- movem...](https://thesystemsthinker.com/transforming-the-systems-movement/))

Relevant Tools and Websites:

\- Kumu ([https://kumu.io](https://kumu.io)) - Web-based tool for building interactive system maps.

\- The Systems Thinker ([https://thesystemsthinker.com/](https://thesystemsthinker.com/)) - <USER2> library of all "The Systems Thinker" publications over the past 30 years

\- Loopy ([http://ncase.me/loopy/](http://ncase.me/loopy/)) - An playground for building interactive systems maps.

(Disclosure: I'm a Developer at Kumu)

<comment><USER10> \- "General Systemantics" by John Gall ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics) ) It's humorous but I'm being serious.

He has such chestnuts as: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works."

<comment><USER18> Love John Gall's approach to systems. There's actually a section in Kumu's manifesto that quotes Gall's law:

        A complex system designed from scratch never works
        and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have
        to start over with a working simple system.

[https://kumu.io/manifesto#start-with-simple](https://kumu.io/manifesto#start- with-simple)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great post, but lofty.

Here is an example of a relatable situtational system thinking in the very small:

[https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-organize-your- thought...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-organize-your-thoughts-on- the-whiteboard-and-crush-your-technical-interview-b668de4e6941)

I havent read much on the theories, but part of my write was also inspired by two books and hence why I am responding to help others. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt and The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge helped me with this type of thinking.

A few things key concepts. Organization of related systems and their interaction patterns. But a key, that you are also apart of the system as you interact.

For instance, the causal link of bringing sweet smelling dry erase markers. You could shift the whole system of interview rating based on memory of smell on that sweet expo choco mint as you erase your complex mistakes away.

Or they could think that you're just crazy.

</comment><comment><USER20> I want to like the idea but articles like this one are just intellectual drivel to me. People are systems thinker by nature I believe. If there are negative side effects to their actions then it's rather because they don't mind. A company, for instance, cares about environmental side effects only as much as it needs to in order to keep going. But that does not mean they don't see, say, their supply chain as a system.

I'd say thinking in systems is more of an art than a rational thing. You have to do it as often as possible to get better at it but there isn't much you really need to know. Sit down, think really hard for 2 minutes, rest a bit and repeat the process as often as necessary.

<comment><USER21> "Oh, you're a theoretical physicist? I find theoretical physics is just thinking. Think hard, and repeat!"

There's more to both the study of systems and the mindset than "think". Knowledge of a subject is knowledge of differences and distinctions- reductionism doesn't mean you know something, often quite the opposite.

It took many of us a long time to better think about complex systems, especially those systems we grew up as a part of. There are a number of useful mental patterns that have helped me in my limited journey (eg OODA, feedback mechanisms from cybernetics) and it's not clear to me I'd have recognized the concepts were valuable enough to name on my own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Article doesn't define it, but "systems thinking" is an actual thing: [https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory)

<comment><USER23> Oh thank you thank you. At first I thought was justing thinking in the systems engineering area (which it is partly).

And then I grew more mystified as the article didn't touch on that.

So I suspected that it was just waffle which that wikipedia article addresses:

> _[criticised as] ... said to be nothing more than an admonishment to attend > to things in a holistic way._

Which I think is actually right. Too high level to be actionable or definable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Systems Thinking has been a huge buzzword in the Coursera course catalog in recent years (that's where I first heard the term called out as a special thing outside of just "how we learn science"): [https://www.google.com/search?q=coursera+systems+thinking](https://www.google.com/search?q=coursera+systems+thinking) gets many hits.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been seeing a lot of threads/articles about systems thinking come up on HN lately. As a developer, why is it important to learn "systems thinking"? How will it make me a better developer?

<comment><USER26> > How will it make me a better developer?

Well, focusing a component of the system (software development) while neglecting to consider how that component interacts with the whole system (society and ecology), is exactly the sort of myopic thinking that systems thinking proclaims to remedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems to me like category theory for mathematics, but a more generalized one that could be applied to things in life. Sounds cool

</comment><comment><USER28> What are good resources to help start thinking in systems when designing software?

<comment><USER14> It may seem glib, but the best resource to spur one to think systemically is a three year-old child. Their favorite word seems to be "why?" and they will keep asking it until you either reach an abstraction they accept, you get tired and concede you don't know by saying "because I said so," or they get tired and find something else. The third option is rare in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I found this paragraph especially thought-provoking: "Americans are inclined to talk about the "war against drugs," or the "war against poverty," or the "war against cancer," without questioning whether "war" is an appropriate metaphor. It's a way of talking about complexity, but if it doesn't fit, it will cause you to make errors in how you deal with your problems. The war on poverty failed partly because poverty is not something you can defeat, and that makes warfare an inappropriate metaphor. The same is true with the war on drugs, which has gotten us into some ugly situations. "

<comment><USER14> Actually the term "war" in the contexts of drugs and poverty is appropriate since they both depend upon force as the means to achieve their goals as they depend upon government action.

<comment><USER30> It is only appropriate if you cannot conceive government actions that have nothing to do with force :)

<comment><USER14> And what actions would those be that do not, eventually, rely upon force?

<comment><USER29> Whether or not things eventually rely on force seems like more of a metaphysical question than a political one; the resources spent on the perpetuation of the military-industrial complex could have been (could still be) diverted towards raising the living standards of the poorest, ensuring a basic security net for all, providing decommodified healthcare and education. It is interesting to think about why this choice wasn't made, why it doesn't get made.

<comment><USER14> It isn't metaphysical, it is purely a practical observation. How do you propose to "raising living standards" and all the other offerings using government but not using force?

<comment><USER29> By transferring government resources from the perpetuation of force (military industrial complex/prison archipelago) towards the social expenses mentioned above. This would involve a diminution of force, and an increase in cooperative social relations.

<comment><USER31> I think you're not catching what fallous is saying, because s/he's using libertarian vernacular. Libertarians view taxation as force, because if you don't pay the tax the police can forcefully take your property/valuables. IMO this view is shortsighted and doesn't properly assess the advantages to generally granting the government a monopoly on the use of force.

<comment><USER14> You're mistaking my pointing out the means as a critique of the ends. If you do not pay your taxes not only can the police take your property but they can and will imprison your person. That is the reality of the situation and I support the collection of taxes (and the enforcement required) with the full understanding of what my support entails. I don't try and drape fig leaves around it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visualizing the Consequences of Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709 <comment><USER2> Cool, but I'm not sure how effective it is showing people a picture of their house submerged in water. What I'd like to see is a well illustrated example of what desertification and sustained 110 degree temperatures looks like. Flooding is easy to understand; the region you live in becoming uninhabitable because of extended drought is harder to conceptualize.

<comment><USER3> They should show how your neighborhood is going to look when tens/hundreds of millions of people fleeing uninhabitable land in Mexico/Syria/Bangladesh are now living in your hood.

I really don't like the idea of effecting change by making immigrants seem scary, but I think that message is the one most likely to get the attention of those in the US that think climate change is either a hoax or overblown.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I could see tools like this being used to disseminate false information to scare people into supporting certain policies. We are often sufficiently disconnected from the actual physical source of news/media that all it takes to believe something is to see an image (much like deep fakes). The threshold for believing now has to change from reading/seeing to actually being there and touching it. Or some far more reliable system of remote verification has to be established.

<comment><USER4> The main problem is that the consequences of climate change are affecting areas that either aren't developed enough, or far enough away that the average joe won't be bothered. So what if an ice sheet falls? it snowed last week.

It's akin to saying the Titanic isn't sinking because you're on the end of the ship that's 100 feet into the air. Only until they see the water to their ankles, do they start looking for lifeboats. It'll have to take something disastrous and close to home, and by then it's much too late.

<comment><USER5> Even then, it's easy to pass off the increasing severity of storms and lengthening of tornado season as nothing more than your mind playing tricks on you.

I'm betting that nothing can fix climate change. Nothing. We're fucked. We're too stupid as a species to understand long-term, and that is going to be what gets us in the end.

It's just like rabbits. We had too many rabbits on our farm for a couple of years, then suddenly we didn't have any. Too many rabbits breeds disease and death. The same holds true for humans.

And I genuinely feel bad for my child. The planet we will hand him will be garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > By training our CycleGAN model on street-view images of houses before and > after extreme weather events (e.g. floods, forest fires, etc.)

Will it also show my home from the cold north in a longer and warmer summer, full of flowers and hummingbirds?

Or are "consequences" always negative, whatever the direction (cold/hot) of the climate change?

</comment><comment><USER7> This paper shows that you can use computers to produce realistic images that may persuade people to do a course of action that you want. However, there is some prior art to this.

Peter Paul Rubens did this with paintings in the 1600's. See his paintings "Peace and War" and "Consequences of War"

Even earlier, the Assyrians made massive art works that showed rebel leaders being flayed alive. I am sure that was pretty effective in helping people visualize the consequences of resisting Assyria.

</comment><comment><USER8> is this a real paper? Its got to be a joke, right? a parody? Its literally a request to develop images to be used for propaganda purposes.

from the paper:

> , we aim to help the general population progress towards greater and more > visible public support for climate change migitation steps on a national > level, facilitating governmental interventions and helping make the required > rapid changes to a global sustainable economy.

how is this any different than what the Russians did in 2016 with their fake news memes? Its propaganda for a political purpose.

and for those who will say that climate change is going to end the world, yeah, no shit, but that doesn't mean we should develop propaganda technology that could be used for some other political purpose.

like, what if Trump used the tech developed to change people's opinions about muslims?

<comment><USER9> Hey it's anything goes on arXiv, good or bad.</comment></comment>