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Where does consciousness come from? | rms: Consciousness isn't special. And neurology can't satisfactorily explain what it means to exist because English itself can't describe how a bunch of chemical reactions add up to cogito ergo sum.http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/zombies.html seems a little relevant. |
Where does consciousness come from? | randomwalker: "do you wonder how do we feel a sense of "personality" and consciousness based on nothing more than electrical signals firing off?"This is one of the central questions of cognitive neuroscience today, and scientists aren't even close to a convincing answer. It is exactly the wrong question for an ask HN p... |
Where does consciousness come from? | pg: The word "consciousness" doesn't mean one single thing. To the extent it means anything definite, it seems to refer to a collection of self-referential thoughts.I'm sure everyone who studies the brain wonders very much how neuron firings correlate with these thoughts or any others. I'm equally sure everyone who s... |
Where does consciousness come from? | skynomad: I think this might be the wrong place to be looking for such answers. Anyway, you might like to do some research on Emergence and Chaos theory. The fundamental aspect of emergence is that individual agents (ie neurons) follow simple rules, and through interaction with other agents also following these simple ... |
Does programming make you happy? | mct: Looking over the responses thus far, I'm surprised no one has posted an
unequivocal "yes".Yes, the act of programming itself makes me happy.
I've always loved building things, and programming is yet another outlet
for that energy. Additionally, I love the thrill of bending a computer
to my will, teaching it to do... |
Where does consciousness come from? | paraschopra: Four to five years ago, I would have asked the same question and would have been superemly excited about being able to ponder over such questions.Now, I simply don't bother. |
Where does consciousness come from? | tlrobinson: This is one of those questions that bothers me. Not the question itself, just the fact that we don't know, and likely can't know.Is there some test to prove if something has "consciousness"? Without such a test I don't think we can know what it really is. You might propose having the thing explain the feeli... |
What are your goals for 2009? | pavelludiq: I hope to survive my time in prison(high school) with out dying of boredom. I hate this crap! |
Where does consciousness come from? | jbert: As far as I know, you'll get no answers here (or anywhere).My view of things was shaped a lot by some sections of Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. If you allow that symbols (think of a bunch of object properties + some methods) can be represented in the brain and operate on each other. (There's a good descripti... |
What are your goals for 2009? | mikeyur: 1. Finish high school (got about 3 more months of online-schooling)2. Move out3. ???4. Profit (and/or get laid, either one) |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | antiform: There are a slew of fascinating recent advances in CS and I discover more with every passing semester, but for brevity I will pick three things that have been occupying my mindspace as of late.1. It seems that lazy functional programming languages (like Haskell) may provide a basis for a serious improvement i... |
Where does consciousness come from? | mpk: I doubt you're going to get any answers here. I've seen GEB mentioned already and if you're a reader I highly recommend Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Fascinating theory, but the consensus seems to be that it's probably not correct. I picked it up after encountering ... |
Where does consciousness come from? | chengmi: This question is better suited for a philosopher rather than a biologist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind |
Where does consciousness come from? | sgrove: I major in cognitive neuroscience, which is exactly what you're asking: how does conscious thought arise from unconscious parts?I think one book you may benefit from reading is http://www.amazon.com/Vehicles-Experiments-Psychology-Valent.... It's a wonderful and short book with some subtle humor and amazing pow... |
Where does consciousness come from? | Tichy: Consciousness doesn't really exists, it is just an illusion.It is both scary and amusing to me that there are entire (expensive) conferences dedicated to something the participants can't even give a definition for. |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | brk: The Atlassion products (Confluence and Jira) were awesome at my last startup. I'm using TikiWiki right now for something similar because it fits my budget ($0). |
Where does consciousness come from? | renno: http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000901.html |
Where does consciousness come from? | cool-RR: I can try to answer this according to my theory. So one big "IMHO" on all the following text.Saying that chemical activity "causes" us to feel certain emotions is not correct. A little thinking could show you how absurd this is. "Causing" would mean that there is some sort of cause and effect here, some event ... |
Does programming make you happy? | trapper: If I couldn't work on things that I love every day I would hate it. I don't know how there are so many todo lists, chat apps, crm and accounting packages out there, I couldn't stand it! |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | galonso: To brk, thanks for the link, TikiWiki looks promissing. I think I'll give it a try. |
Where does consciousness come from? | seejay: I think Buddhism has very good explanation for such questions. I suggest you read some good Buddhist books or find someone who has a good knowledge about Lord Buddha's teachings (probably a Buddhist monk)
Good Luck finding answers! |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | oscardelben: I use a text based wiki synced via git. The advantage for me to use a text based system is that I can access it from different text editors, without the pain of custom vendors formats. For example I'm currently using textmate with this plugin: http://interconnected.org/home/more/2007/05/textmate-wiki/ but ... |
Where does consciousness come from? | ahoyhere: I'll give you $8k and two months this summer. If you come up with an answer, we'll both get rich. |
Where does consciousness come from? | Eliezer: I recommend either Gary Drescher's "Good and Real", or the relevant parts of Overcoming Bias (which aren't exactly collected into one place yet). |
Where does consciousness come from? | ram1024: consciousness is simply the state of being responsive to one's environment.it can boil down as far as gauging the responses of one neuron, but the "environment" of that neuron is its connectivity to others, so it's far more comprehensive to total consciousness up as the whole collective.ideally, you'd be able ... |
Where does consciousness come from? | yan: Check out "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter, he tackles that question and argues from the point of view that hard ai is possible. Check out "Emperor's new mind" by roger penrose for a conflicting viewpoint. Both books will teach you much, much more than it's central thesis and is a tour through other imp... |
Where does consciousness come from? | gregorylent: western science is barbaric, primitive, stubborn, and totally ignorant about this ... and so arrogant about their model, which says consciousness comes from meat ... yogis have nailed this so well over a few thousand years of investigation of the nature of the self and its relationship to consciousness ...... |
Where does consciousness come from? | Retric: At birth, when does the first neuron fire, and how does it sustain itself?The brain starts well before birth. Humans don't have a single on switch so much as a long bootstrap process that starts when the first few neurons start to link up and ends at death. Although most positive changes happen by ~25 years o... |
Where does consciousness come from? | time_management: I'm philosophically a Buddhist, so I put consciousness ("mind") first and wonder more about where the physical world comes from. Experientially, the world is not much different from a dream (except the sex is more awkward) but it has certain properties of persistence, regularity, and sharedness among ~... |
Where does consciousness come from? | kirse: This is a great question, and one that will never be answered by scientific naturalism. The current worldview assumed by scientists is that the "natural" and "material" is all we have and all that can be used to explain everything.Unfortunately, while this does form a powerful basis for truth in the empirically... |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | jaydub: I'm a part of the XMT project @ UMD http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~vishkin/XMT/index.shtmlAdmittedly, the concepts involved are dated since PRAM theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Random_Access_Machine) dates to the 70's. However, this project marks the first successful commitment of PRAM theory to sil... |
Where does consciousness come from? | markessien: Consciousness is just the firing of pleasure centers when external actions fit into pre-defined purposes. It's like the very highest abstraction of a functional event-triggered programming language. |
Where does consciousness come from? | yan: At birth, when does the first neuron fire, and how does it sustain itself?Body activity doesn't start from birth, even the zygote has already processes inside it that are life processes. |
Where does consciousness come from? | tricky: Maybe a little off-topic, but something I've been thinking of for a while. Has anyone ever tried to build a mesh network of nodes that react to signals and fire outputs? I'd to build a few million of these and evolve them to see if they'd ever do anything interesting.Does anyone know if anyone is working on s... |
Where does consciousness come from? | mrtron: Id recommend reading Godel Escher Bach.It talks about how complex things can be built from simple building blocks.There really are no answers other than it is impossible to exclude such complexity from a system. |
you're rich, now what? | teehee: Aside from the usual self enrichment activities. I would set up a foundation that does many small unique services to a community.
Examples:
Go around to different communities to offer free construction to link up sidewalks to make it more pedestrian friendly.
Consulting and financing to small shoppes so they ca... |
Where does consciousness come from? | speek: It depends on who you ask, but there are two general camps: the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach (neuroscience and psychology, respectfully).I believe it to be a side product of response to stimulus (neurons firing off). If I'm right, we're going to have a lot of fun with interfaces in the next 20 or... |
What are your goals for 2009? | safetytrick: Profit from the next two weeks of intense polishing and releasing my product week 1 of January 09! |
Where does consciousness come from? | joubert: Study some ethology. |
Where does consciousness come from? | jackchristopher: There are two methods for investigating consciousness; One subjective, the other objective. The first is philosophical, the second is a physical. And they should lead to the same answer.Both sides will claim their method to be the right one. And from time to time one will seem better than the other. Bu... |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | generalk: We use a MediaWiki install for a lot of general knowledge, and for project-specific stuff we throw it in our Basecamp. |
Where does consciousness come from? | fawxtin: Conciousness is somewhat a prevalence over instincts, you got "magically" a way to "choose". You really should read S. Freud, and M. Minsky if you want to know more about. |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | brent: Well, if you're interested in machine learning NIPS was last week.http://books.nips.cc/nips21.htmlThere were several papers near applied areas like text classification, breaking audio captchas, and even brain machine interfacing. However, even the theoretical papers usually come with examples (e.g. image classi... |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | tsally: You should certainly look into research related to Google's Map Reduce and Big Table. |
Where does consciousness come from? | tsally: Woah, woah, woah. What's this business of talking about consciousness like it exists? The only thing you know for sure is conscious is yourself. You simply make assumptions that other people are conscious based off of their responses to various challenges (questions, interaction, etc). But you don't know wh... |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | ken: I'm more interested in using interesting concepts in academic computer science from 50 years ago. I'm not against new good ideas, but it's not as if we've run out of old good ideas already. |
Where does consciousness come from? | pygy: First one has to define consciousness as subjective experience, not as being awake.The only consciousness one is able to experience is his own. But solipsism is a point of view that is both depressing and not really explanatory of anything.Let's assume that people around, who are similar to us, are conscious too.... |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | ScottWhigham: I've tried lots of ways (Excel, text docs, google docs) but I settled on using OneNote for it today. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | thomasswift: I struggled with this too and I still don't have a proper solution. Text Docs for very early stage idea, Wordpress Drafts/Private Posts (in older version it would put them at the top of the page). |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | noodle: in what context? personal blogs or professional/company?i stopped personally blogging since i didn't have enough consistent ideas or drive to write instead of other stuff. with a company blog, i'd use something shared, maybe something in dropbox. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | tstegart: I write them as email drafts, since I know its the only thing I'll usually always have access to. |
Writing DSL in Python | apgwoz: Study up on context managers, decorators, and meta-classes, which will assist in creating DSLs. However, you don't really need to use these features to build DSLs.The use of method chaining (think jQuery) can lead to interesting languages.Or, take Django's chaining for making queries. User.objects.filter(first_... |
Writing DSL in Python | jlc: I ran into this a while back:http://blog.brianbeck.com/post/53538107/python-dsl-i |
Writing DSL in Python | ivank: You could look at SQLAlchemy, Storm, Schevo, or Nevow Stan. Or even BeautifulSoup's element-finding. |
Writing DSL in Python | nuclear_eclipse: I still haven't quite grasped the concept behind what a DSL really is, and what makes your code a DSL versus any other program or API. Any insight that can be offered, especially in the context of something other than Ruby and Lisp? I just want to know what all the hubbub is about, and why it matters... |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | mlLK: Keeping track of something that hasn't yet happened (at least in terms of blogging) sounds a little frivolous. Maybe you just don't have anything to say? Try approaching it as PG does, post an extrapolated anecdote. (aka an essay, see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369141) Otherwise start from square one, ... |
Writing DSL in Python | tocomment: I think it just means writing a programming language but a little one. So use pyparsing as your parser. The May 2008 Python magazine has a good article on making an interpreter/compiler for brainf*ck using PyParsing. |
What are your goals for 2009? | brentr: I plan to learn Galois Theory and Quantum Field Theory. |
Where does Trulia get its listings? | conorh: This page explains most of it:
http://www.trulia.com/submit_listings/Listings are either: individually entered by agents, fed to Trulia in an XML format by real estate firms (or other aggregators) or screen scraped by Trulia. They also I think have deals with some MLSs to bulk send them listings for member firm... |
Writing DSL in Python | cabalamat: I have implemented two languages in Python, one a DSL, the other a general-purpose language. Both times I used the SPARK parsing framework http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/spark/ which I recommend. |
Where does consciousness come from? | jsyedidia: You should read "The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach," by Caltech professor Christof Koch, which is a book about this subject. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | smountcastle: I use MarsEdit (http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/), though I'm probably not a good reference as I haven't updated my blog in awhile and I have over 20 draft blog posts (some have been sitting around for more than 10 months). |
Where does consciousness come from? | jogaun: The unknown is vast in all disciplines, especially neuroscience. |
Writing DSL in Python | bayareaguy: I would recommend taking a quick look at how SCons and Conary use python. You may also want to consider implementing your DSL using a python parser generator such as Ply.SCons - http://www.scons.org/doc/HTML/scons-man.html#lbBBConary - http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:Recipe_StructurePly - http://www.dalk... |
Writing DSL in Python | nostrademons: I used yapps2 for the DSL parts of GameClay. It's probably not the best Python parser generator out there, but it was installable via apt, simple to use, and familiar to people who have used Antlr. Had a simple DSL written in 2 days.Also, if it's just a quick-n-dirty hack, don't underestimate the power ... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | pavelludiq: Vim for the win!I'm not a vim expert, I actually know the minimum you need to do work, and I've found it very good, but I hove almost no experience with other editors or IDEs. I do mostly python and I don't really need an IDE for that. Despite its learning curve, I've found vim to be really easy to use, onc... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | donw: I'll put in another vote for Vim, but I'm biased, as I'm a systems guy by trade. Losing my skills with vim would be death, because it's often the only working editor on a truly hosed machine. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | urlwolf: I use vim and do R, ruby, and python mostly.
Still, recently I've spent more time with IDEs and now I can appreciate them. Netbeans is a very good RoR IDE. I'd prefer it over Vim. for Python, the IDE that I like (and current favorite) is IDEA. Basically it's a matter of how big your project is; with 10s of tho... |
What are your goals for 2009? | donw: To get back on the horse.To be unusually frank on the Internet: 2008 and 2007 have been incredibly bad years for me, in a way that I'm just not willing to detail on a public forum. The goal for 2009 is to keep plugging away at my startup, hopefully for our January launch, and to try and enjoy life -- something t... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | mechanical_fish: First: If you think you want to write your own editor, you've answered your own question. You need to learn emacs, vi, or TextMate immediately, because these are editors that make it very easy to change their behavior by writing your own custom extensions.I wouldn't write my own editor until I had lear... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | travisjeffery: I always bounce around between Emacs, Vim and TextMate I've tried IDEs but their typically not native code, have shitty keybindings, are slow as dog crap and need to be custmized with entire plugins rather a few lines of elisp, python or whatever.If I had to choose between the 3 I'd go with Emacs and I d... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | mdasen: It depends on the language. With Java, I get a huge return because the IDE can take care of so many mundane things like getters and setters. Java also sometimes has odd names used in its standard library (for example, you use queue.offer() and queue.poll() to add and remove things rather than something like '... |
Where do you go for hacking help? | KevBurnsJr: http://letmegooglethatforyou.com |
IDE versus Text Editor? | tsally: The bottom line is that you need to work with something that you can extend. To suggest that the IDE/Editor designer is going to be able to anticipate all of your needs is silly. Instead, learn something like Emacs which you can extend with Emacs Lisp. Heck, Eclipse is fine if you take the time to learn how ... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | jason: I use IDE's that have vi keyboard mappings so I get the best of both worlds. Visual Studio and Eclipse both have vi plugins. |
Where does consciousness come from? | jhp: I believe that consciousness is the ability for a computing system to continually maintain and update several simultaneous contexts. These contexts may run highly detailed simulations (including the core "where I am") or more abstract thinking (including the current conversational or semantic context). For a human... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | hs: to increase productivity, you may need to 'do without'do without mouse and hard-to-reach keys (F1-12, arrows, numpads)i found ide is about using mouse and using those keys (like F5? to run) etc ... but i didn't use much ide shrugin vim, you can take those keys plus backspace, alt and even esc (i map it to ^C becaus... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | gcv: If you are interested in text editors, you should read The Craft of Text Editing (available at http://www.finseth.com/craft/). In spite of its Emacs-centric seeming subtitle, it discusses a lot of the basics of representing text and implementing an editor. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | keefe: I used to develop in emacs/jbuilder now I am fully in eclipse. I miss multiple copy buffers and good keyboard shortcuts. To me, the value added by the IDE - autocomplete, extra method, generate getters and setters, find references completely, utterly and totally blow text editors out of the water. I wouldn't was... |
Where does consciousness come from? | KevBurnsJr: The first thing a psychedelic experience will teach you is the absurdity of such a question.Edit: Genuinely surprised to see that nobody else has mentioned the psychedelic experience in their search for a solution to satisfy this line of questioning. |
Writing DSL in Python | intellectronica: You can customize the behaviour of Python objects in ways which may allow you to implement DSLs (for example, by responding to arbitrary messages, or by constructing callables).A good example to look at might be https://storm.canonical.com/ which utilizes every trick in the book to allows you to write ... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | st3fan: I am 10x more productive developing Java using IntelliJ IDEA versus anything else :-) |
IDE versus Text Editor? | lallysingh: Two main issues come to mind:1. Project size. It's usually easier to get an IDE to build your project, parse any errors, and show the right lines of code in a debugger, than it is to get a good compile/fix/debug cycle setup in Emacs.2. Language complexity. There's a lot of variance between languages on wh... |
IDE versus Text Editor? | mdakin: emacs's "keyboard macros" feature is something I've not seen in any IDE and when you master it and start getting creative with it you can save insane amounts of time. Basically any time you need to make a bunch of changes of the same pattern to a file you can teach emacs how to make the change and then tell em... |
Places to see in Netherlands ? | Flemlord: I've been there a few times and can comment on Amsterdamn from a tourist perspective.Counterculture: This is the best part of Amsterdam. The red light district and the coffee shops are both a must see. Go at night.Museums: The Van Gogh Museum was good. But the Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank House were disappointi... |
Writing DSL in Python | gruseom: Although I got excited about it at first, I've come to the conclusion that this DSL stuff is seriously overrated. I've seen few successful examples and many silly ones.There are certainly good little specialized languages -- Common Lisp's LOOP is an example, as are regular expressions -- but these are for prog... |
How do you invoice - especially you freelancers out there? | brianlash: Try http://getharvest.com for time-tracking + invoicing. Plans are cheap (the $12/mo starter plan should suit you) and you can easily interface with services such as Basecamp and QuickBooks should your business grow into the need for it. |
How do you invoice - especially you freelancers out there? | bstadil: We use Blinksale http://www.blinksale.com/home for invoices and TikTrac http://tiktrac.com/ for time sheets. Very cheap and easy to work with.
You can try both for free. |
How do you invoice - especially you freelancers out there? | woodsier: In the quest of self-research I've come across http://www.curdbee.com and http://www.invoicejournal.com/ and http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/index.htm - has anyone had any experience with these services? |
Places to see in Netherlands ? | czcar: Amsterdam is amazing and it is possible to spend days just wandering around and exploring all the markets, fresh meats, cheeses etc, it is a short trip on the ferry (behind the train station) to some of the inter-connected islands with large parks etc. And I recommend visiting Rotterdam which is only a train rid... |
Does programming make you happy? | draco: I had a number of other jobs before I got to programming in my thirties. The big difference is, you keep coming up against totally novel problems for which there are no ready-made solutions. It's very challenging, and it places programming as a job in a league of its own in terms of creative problem-solving. It ... |
Writing DSL in Python | thorax: No joke: take a look at the LOLpython source for an example of creating a variant language that can compile to Python bytecode. It's one of many methods to create a DSL, though you often don't need access to all of Python in the DSL itself. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | parenthesis: Take some naps. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | st3fan: I don't. I think it is extremely unhealthy and unproductive to stay awake and work for such long periods of time. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | gtani: goog polyphasic sleep instead: 2-4 hours/day |
Saving time in sysadmin | davidw: Try and automate the repetitive bits. Python is a great language for that kind of thing. |
Saving time in sysadmin | Harkins: Check out puppet: http://reductivelabs.com/projects/puppet/I sort of want to build a startup around making a distro that maintains itself. |
What are your goals for 2009? | lionheart: Grow my company. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | cmos: fear tends to work well. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | viggity: booze, lots of it |
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