Definitely. I think there's a pressure between outward expansion to secure resources, and the risk of annihilation through the conflict that results.
I guess it's interesting to think of the effect of this "evolution pressure" on successful strategies for small groups. I wonder if looking at small-groups today...they have selected for strategies that worked...over a long time, by this knowledge sort of being passed along somehow. Or if, in a sense, every small group is re-learning the lessons of others from the past...
If a small group survives for a long time, I think it has to either become large, or it has to, as you say, go somewhere to survive. Which could just mean, "going underground", and hiding in plain sight in terms of "secret groups" that are persecuted.
Maybe the same can be considered for small companies. Do we expand to compete with others for new market share and take on the risks that might involve (including, I suppose, taking on VC money...), or do we stay in our niche.
Certainly, probably as Thiel says, the best strategy for a small group at the start is as you say "go someplace there's nobody to fight", and dominate that small area. Interesting to think of Thiel as a survivalist...I suppose that's what he is...
Thinking about what you're saying more, it does seem that small groups have an incentive to co-operate as well. Band together to survive. I guess just the risks for small groups, even in co-operating (such as being double crossed), are probably greater, because a small group is easy to annihilate.
We think things that aren't computable. Probabilistic quantum nature of superposition. But I don't think that means that "Turing machines" can't have AGI.
What I think what the article is talking about, is the idea that AGI must be embodied. That a widely unrecognized aspect of HI is its embodiment (read The Power of not thinking), and that without a body machines cannot be in the world, and therefore cannot have AGI.
I tend to think however that machine AGI will be possible even without putting them in robot bodies. They already have their own world, the internet. Just get them to explore that with a virtual analogy of a body. Worth a try anyway.
> They can be lifelong experts on their problem, yet have no clue about writing a database engine and low-level programming in general.
Why be so superior and judgemental except to compensate some insecurity? People are smart. They can learn and discover.
> The difference is that Antirez studied previous solutions, studied how to do it, and then applied that knowledge right.
Not really. From the man himself
In order to make them scalable we had to invent many new concepts, that were already known in the field most of the times, but we didn’t know, nor we cared to check. Problem? Let’s figure out a solution. We wanted to solve problems but we wanted, even more, to have fun. This was the playful environment where Redis was born.
He reinvented things that already experience that he didn't know about, and he didn't care, and it was fun. This is okay. And it's awesome.
> Instead, that person did the equivalent of building a bridge disregarding everything humans learnt about it since the Roman empire. It will not be a surprise if the bridge ends up collapsing.
It will be a surprise. People are not stupid. The guy is not incapable of solving problems. He's already solved them. If he faces more, why assume he can't solve them, too?
Software is really not like a bridge that's hard to keep patching. It's something you can keep reworking and improving. And along the way, who are you to judge that he won't come up with something even better than before?
If you have that attitude, you might have dismissed Antirez, and his nascent Redis in their very first stages, and poopooed his enthusiasm.
Everyone is learning. If your own child displays enthusiasm building something that from you perspective your can see many problems in, would you poopoo his enthusiasm? I think you'd find it inspiring and I think that's the response that works.
So there's no need to be so sour about people making new things. BTW if you're such a database expert mind linking to a database you've written yourself? Not because I think you having done that will make your criticisms valid, as I say it's not the point, but I'm just wondering if you can talk like an expert about something you haven't done.
You can start from a place of not knowing and end up creating something better than what exists. That's awesome and possible. if you don't believe that it's just your own pessimism, but that's not about anyone else, so don't pretend it applies to them, because this invention is a thing that really happens.
There's no barrier to entry to creating new stuff. Nobody has to prove to you they've passed some test to start working on whatever they want.
Now, even if they don't create something better, who cares? Even if what they create is the same or worse, by some measure, everything has tradeoffs, if they make it and use it, it must be better for some reason for them.
Their effort to build something does not make them bad, and saying you can use it in production is not doing something bad, because it's your responsibility what you choose to use, you're engineering is not controlled by what they say so you can't blame them for your tech choices. So you can't pretend that them creating and promoting their new work is somehow bad.
It's a good thing. Maybe you don't care for it, but that's not about them... it's just about you.
If you don't like it, you can have that view that you don't like it. That's okay. But it doesn't make it bad.
But I think you should be careful to not try to discourage people. Even you have that view... maybe just write it down yourself, or talk to people outside. Because I think poopooing creators and there new stuff is actually harmful.
Just say you were you 10 years ago, and somehow your comment combined with others to hurt Antirez feelings enough that he gave up working on redis and used something else. Then you'd be responsible for preventing redis getting into the world.
Now, maybe that's why you're in this game of poopooing. Because that is a LOT of power, to think your can hurt someone enough to get them to stop working on something, and then you get to change the future. Of course, someone like me, I think it's better if you change the future by creating your own stuff, rather than trying to destroy other people's stuff and hurt them, but I understand if that possibility is what attracts you to this. But do you really want this? And do you really want that karma?
You talk about responsibility as in his recommending is harmful, when you are actually the one responsible. I mean that, his recommending his work isn't harmful, because he's not trying to hurt anyone's feeling by doing that, and it's not his responsibility what others chose to use. But you're expressed discouraging and critical attitude, risks hurting something's feelings, and changing the outcome. So in this situation, you actually bear big responsibility for harm, but you're talking about someone else as responsible. So I think you either don't understand responsibility, or you're trying to distract, or to pretend to justify your own harming, or both. I just think you need to be careful doing this, because it could have unintended affects, and even if the affects are really what you intend because of the power... do you really want that karma?
Now maybe none of this is what you intend. But hopefully this has opened your eyes to why invention is good, and to some context in which your actions exist.
It seems I have a different view to you. I'm okay if you have the view you do, just be careful with other people's feelings and your own karma in where and how you express that.
Being ignorant didn't make you a prima donna tho, as above says.
Also, they have to have some clue about the domain, because the domain is their own problem and they're writing a solution for it. So I don't think we can really just someone as not having any clue about their own engineering challenges.... especially if they're working solutions to them....
Antirez said literally he didn't know about existing solutions when he went to write redis, and he and redis are awesome. nothing bad about that
but I get your point about bad solutions are bad but that's sort of a tautology, doesn't add much value, and who are we to judge someone else's solutions are bad we don't know everything about their use case.
Again... even if we can say that you choosing someone else's technology for your problem is not a good solution we just can't criticize the author because it's your responsibility what you choose. so I just don't think it's valid to criticize the author
I think it's wrong to try to push the responsibility for other people's choices to use something or not to the person who creates that thing. And it's also very contradictory to another aspect of hacker or engineering culture which is like... someone can create a amazing free security service and then that service can be used in deplorable ways by criminals but almost nobody in this scene will admonish the creator because they realize that the creator is not responsible for how people choose to use that creation. not to mention that exact sentiments is basically universally expressed in every license that exists. so I really think it's embarrassing how such supposed criticism passes on these forums without being you know immediately dismissed as ridiculous.
It is also impractical to expect the Creator to anticipate all the use cases and potential benefits and pitfalls that people might find in those different use cases and express them.
Second it's fundamentally a violation of a boundary about choices. The people who make the choice to adopt software or not are the ones who are responsible for the technical debt or credit they allocate by making that choice.
Instead of criticizing creators for not adequately disclaiming their new products because of a hypothetical or real harm that is incurred because people choosing that, you should criticize the people selecting things for being irresponsible with the projects they are responsible for.
If your evaluation of a project is simply based on reading the readme at a superficial level then it's nobody else's fault but yours if you end up with problems with the tech that you choose.
I'm not saying you're being mean here I think this is just a misguided attempt to try to avoid technical debt but it doesn't focus on an effective way to do that. What I feel is disappointing is how this sort of criticism is often leveled at new projects as a way to dismiss or I think unfairly criticize these creations and their authors, maybe as form of "concern trolling." if I understand that term correctly.
Like, "don't use this new project in production" is sort of a tautology of "be careful about any tech that you choose that it's suitable for your use case", which is pretty obvious and I think low value thing to say, but it's often said about new projects in a way that suggests "this project is terrible and the author is bad for suggesting that people even think about using this". which I think is very toxic to a culture of creation, invention and tinkering and it's disrespectful of people who put in the effort to make something. it also encourages something which I think is harmful which is the need to think "I need to make this project perfect and bulletproof before I even think of releasing it" which I think means there's a lot of projects that could have benefited if they were appreciated at the small flame level, but maybe people are discouraged from putting them out there because of this sort of misused criticism.
even though I'm not really a fan of his I think Paul Graham said something about this point regarding startups that's like a startup is like an idea that's just being born and it's very fragile so you have to kind of protect it but it can grow into something really amazing.
That sounds like it comes from some specific experience you had... but it's pretty uncalled for to apply it so confidently to someone you don't know. Don't be mean, right?
Actually, another view is that there's nothing wrong with tinkering and DIY. Perl, JS, Redis all came from people hacking their own solutions (as far as I know).
Also, many big software orgs build extensive internal tools themselves.
Plus, making your own stuff is a lot of fun. You should try it sometime (if you haven't already) :)
I'm making something like this, called stubdb, with indexes and value filters, backed by a file system of JSON files organised into directories of tables.
You'd expect her to be well informed... she's a Colonel with 3400 hours in high performance jets.
I didn't know there were women pilots and colonels flying these craft. The only clear idea about high profile women in the services was them being accepted into marines.
a distributed way to map and collect the data structure on the web crowdsourced from a community of people not only passionate about mapping out the structure of app HTML and how it corresponds to data types, but also people who want to collect and use that data.
the data can be used for anything from competition and pricing analysis, to dashboards, to creating automatic RSS feeds of anything.
it just seems that being able to unlock the late and value of all of the information the structured information on the web which is presented only in a semi-structured form but with the addition of human labor could be so it's machine usable could unlock so much value.
but I've been pitching VCS and y combinator on this idea for the last six or seven years and not so much as a peep of interest so it seems that this idea doesn't possess a way to create a lot of money but I do believe it's very valuable.
good question. but I think the answer is obvious when you consider the different risks enormous groups and small groups face from disputes.
for small groups nearly every dispute could pose existential risk, but for enormous groups very few disputes pose existential risk. then in the conflict side, enormous groups have MAD, where conflict itself carries existential risk. small groups of course can also be wiped out by conflict (even if they don't possess a bureaucratic mechanism to ensure that,) but the risk side of the calculation is heavier for them I think.
and enormous groups still engage in conflict with each other although it happens indirectly via proxy wars.
also paradoxically the larger the group becomes the more its interests, or "meta interests" (such as favoring stability and security), tend to align with its competitors but for small groups it's almost like every group for itself. but I believe that the calculation can tend towards cooperation being more beneficial the larger group gets. but I think this factor only applies when groups become very very large.
also there's some sort of entropy argument as in large groups cultivate more structure, organization and order and therefore it would take more energy to dismantle them so they're more stable. which not only makes them harder to dismantle but also gives them more to lose if they were to decide to tear everything down and build it up again.
Thank you. so you work in this area? what do you think about the software available for your research? Could it be better or does software not play so much of a role?
I don't expect you to agree. In my experience, I expect us to have different views, that's OK. And it's likely we're misinterpreting each other's words...we each see there what we bring to it. It's not your responsibility if I misinterpret you, it's not my responsibility if you misinterpret me. In a way, that's more interesting, because instead of talking about topics and pretending, "I'm right", and pretending, "You're wrong", we get to just share and discuss and respond from each other's views. Stimulus, response.
> First of all, ... no blame for anger
I guess that’s how I feel when people complain about their own choices or the consequences of those.
The rest of your responses to my words misrepresent or misinterpret what I mean....
> Secondly, I find it odd ... because she is female.
I mean when bad things happen, don’t reach for the “this happened because I’m a woman”, because that’s disempowering.
> I don't agree that ... acknowledging your gender (or other minority features) is disempowering.
I mean, adopting a disempowering identity narrative ( that might include things like, “I’m a victim”, or “people are out to get me”, or “I’m inherently weak” ) is disempowering.
I mean don't hide from what happens, what you chose, how you feel. Face that and choose a way to respond that empowers you.
> How odd is it that Lyft and Uber....self love, warrior
I’ll interpret as...you have to find self love through being a warrior against oppression. I don't think so. My view of self love, self worth, self respect is don’t rely on others for that. Be your own source.
I think if you do what I interpret you as saying, your self love might be based on trying to hurt others you decide are wrong and seeking approval from others you decide are right.
Actually, when you misinterpret what I wrote here in a way that seems, "You have to be an idiot or really bad to write that," I feel like hurting me because you've decided I'm wrong is what you're trying to do here...
> Consider ... Tracy
I mean face being a woman and write a powerful identity narrative about that. Dissociate yourself from disempowering fake victim narratives others seek to foist upon you.
> Consider ... men
It sounds like you reduce men or women to a label. Labels are not who you are. And it seems you’re saying, “Men uncritically accept whatever male identity they are given as an unearned entitlement.” Lets me feel like you lack empathy with the life of an individual deliberately creating their own identity through experience and effort, and are also willing to dismiss the identity development and the inner life of men, but...you’re all about combating not perpetrating oppression, right?
> I think, actually, most of us ... doesn't work.
I love this. Let me paraphrase to show some of my view.
I think, actually, most of us have grown up believing in our own power and that the world is fair. Then we experience the ways that its not and struggle with that powerlessness. Some of us then adopt disempowering fake victim narratives, blame others, and feel justified in taking out our anger on them, while others grow their effectiveness by using their choices and taking personal responsibility. In my experience, it is clear to me that this model of fake blame and victimhood doesn’t work.
> What if we empowered our kids by teaching them to love themselves and embrace their identities, rather than pretend they don't exist?
Agree, but let’s not tell them who they are. Encourage to develop empowering not disempowering identities, and not to think that labels are who they are. They get to choose who they are. Labels are just what describes things, doesn’t proscribe things.
> What if we told them early on that the world is unjust and taught them to protect themselves?
In my experience, I needed to keep a balance. Let's let them know how to protect themselves, and also know how beautiful it is, and show them you can create a great life through your own efforts. And more, what if instead of “teaching” them...we showed them. With our own behavior. Shared with them how we faced different situations, and what we tried, and how that went and what we felt. And let them decide? After all, we're not running their lives, who they are is not up to us. We're just there to help them grow, guide them towards the light, but not shape the form they will take. So we shouldn't be too quick to paint the world through the lens of our own suffering and joy, and not to say to them, "this is the real world, the one truth", because there's as many paths through the world as there are individuals in it. Be an individual.
I think one thing that's happening lately in the zeitgeist is the religion of labels. People need to form their own identity, the labels you use for me are not who I am. Just because old models of authority and morality are decaying (such as actual religions), doesn’t mean people can just invent their "religions" and force others to obey. Everyone who has the "black" label has to do "this" and is not allowed to do "that"? Crazy. Racist. Disempowering. Not freedom. Labels are not identity. You are not your labels. You are who you choose to be. Everyone can choose who they want to be. Write your own story.
Also, my feedback is, in disagreeing with my view...it seems you've misinterpreted what I'm saying not in a generous way...isn't it enough to share your view, disagree with mine, but without pretending you're better than someone else? If your world view was really working for you, why'd you have to compensate insecurity like that?
Anyway, thanks for the response and the chance to share my view...and be clear about it. I'm grateful for that and for knowing your view a bit more. I have way more to say about this, but I can't really say that such a response would be about what you've said. It's just a topic I'm really interested in. Wish you luck with what you're doing :)
What if something about the electrical signal attracts growth in certain direction, toward other signals firing at the same time?
Or what if some neuron pairs that are not yet connected share quantum entangled structures, that if activated simultaneously ... but still how does direction occur?
What if neurons emit light, that's why you can stimulate them with light...and what if they can somehow detect the faint light from other neurons and get the direction the light comes from, and grow towards that?
You have a really interesting way of thinking about all this stuff and have synthesized alot of different ideas, that I believe point to a future for the web. very cool to come across your work. Do you have a blog?
I think because it's based on the DevTools protocol which is only partly supported (I think) in Moz.
Although you're right with enough work someone could engineer a way to achieve the same, even without DevTools protocol. I picked the protocol because it made it easy to achieve.
I think in future FF plans to support DevTools, or the standardised version which I think is called WebDriver protocol or something.
I guess it's interesting to think of the effect of this "evolution pressure" on successful strategies for small groups. I wonder if looking at small-groups today...they have selected for strategies that worked...over a long time, by this knowledge sort of being passed along somehow. Or if, in a sense, every small group is re-learning the lessons of others from the past...
If a small group survives for a long time, I think it has to either become large, or it has to, as you say, go somewhere to survive. Which could just mean, "going underground", and hiding in plain sight in terms of "secret groups" that are persecuted.
Maybe the same can be considered for small companies. Do we expand to compete with others for new market share and take on the risks that might involve (including, I suppose, taking on VC money...), or do we stay in our niche.
Certainly, probably as Thiel says, the best strategy for a small group at the start is as you say "go someplace there's nobody to fight", and dominate that small area. Interesting to think of Thiel as a survivalist...I suppose that's what he is...
Thinking about what you're saying more, it does seem that small groups have an incentive to co-operate as well. Band together to survive. I guess just the risks for small groups, even in co-operating (such as being double crossed), are probably greater, because a small group is easy to annihilate.
Conclusion: life is hard for small groups.