Martin Luther King Jr. has had a profound impact on my thinking, and is the historical figure who captivates me above all others. I am glad to see his writing appear on HN.
One concept which has pervaded my thinking recently due to personal circumstance is of forgiveness. I tend towards 'forgive but not forget'; I don't feel particularly attached to the past, but neither am I willing to let go of it. In one of his speeches [0] he addresses this directly.
He says that forgiving but not forgetting is not true forgiveness; but neither should you ignore one's past transgressions. Forgiveness is being willing to forge a new relationship. Not one built on history, but independent of it. The willingness to give a fresh start to those who seek it.
Another, more well-known idea he spoke of (that folks here are likely familiar with) is that of hate only adding to hate. I'll just leave his words here directly:
> The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
It seems like the lesson we keep learning, no matter the proxy we use for intelligence, is that there is nothing that fundamentally sets humans apart from other animals (or even, in some ways, AI) other than the degree and scope of our intelligence.
While I'll never begrudge science that points out the obvious -- that's often where the most value comes from -- this particular avenue is always a little funny to me, as it often belies an expectation that other animals are unable to do these things by default.
Not long ago there was the story of an orangutan in the wild using a paste it made from plants to heal itself, like some sort of anti-bacterial/anti-inflammatory.
In some areas, we are still like the geocentricly minded from long ago.
I feel that language models are revealing things about our cognition that some people are as unwilling to accept, similarly to how some people had trouble with accepting heliocentrism.
Incorrect. Humans have free will (= information complexity). Various aspects of intelligence are just metrics of that, but the metric isn't the thing itself.
> It seems like the lesson we keep learning, no matter the proxy we use for intelligence, is that there is nothing that fundamentally sets humans apart from other animals
Except it doesn't show that.
The reason people make this judgement is because they don't have a coherent or clear definition of "intelligence". Nothing has been undermined, except in those who took the view that animals are dumb automatons. That's more of a legacy of modernism and the desire to gain "mastery over nature" more than anything else.
The essential feature of human beings - from which the rest of human nature and its consequences follow, including our social nature - is rationality. This entails an intellect, which is the abstracting faculty. It is the intellect that makes language possible, because without the capacity to abstract from particulars, we could not have universal concepts and thus no predicates. Language would be reduced to the kind we see in other animals.
For clarity, the functions of language are:
1. expressive: expressing an internal state or emotion (e.g., a cry of pain)
2. signaling: use of expressive to cause a reaction in others (e.g., danger signals)
3. descriptive: beyond immediate sensation; describes states of affairs, allowing for true or false statements
4. argumentative: allows critical analysis, inference, and rational justification
Without abstraction, (3) and (4) are impossible. But all animal activity we have observed requires no appeal to (3) and (4). Non-human animals perceive objects and can manipulate them, even in very clever ways, but they do not have concepts (which are expressed as general names).
Could there be other rational animals in the universe? Sure. But we haven't met any. And from an ontological POV (as opposed to a phylogenetic taxonomic classification), they would be human, as the ontological definition of "human being" - "rational animal" - would apply them.
Feels like a lot of animals just lack ability to articulate. Which might evolve if they had a need but feels like an chicken-and-egg problem more than anything?
Perhaps ironically, I am having trouble distilling your abstractions into concrete concepts.
A dog or chimpanzee can easily understand conceptual ideas such as 'walk', 'play', 'food', and so on, even through language. Not to say humans don't process these in different ways, and are able to manipulate them as abstract concepts as other species generally cannot, but in isolation it seems the fundamental principles can be widely accessed. What sort of test might you propose that demonstrates the difference you describe?
I fear a motorcycle blasting down my street at 10pm. What's the difference.
Once my cats realized the robo vac won't hurt them they don't even move for it anymore... Seems intelligent to initially be terrified of something and update your perception of it.
> I'll never begrudge science that points out the obvious
People have many beliefs, inaccurate to varying degrees - many to a large degree. Science is a solution to our pretty bad intuitions. Sometimes it discovers they are wrong; sometimes science shows they are correct - it's hindsight to say it was 'obvious'.
Also, I don't think it's obvious to 99.x% that cows use tools.
This is cool... But I feel like having different color/brightness for each symbol kinda defeats the purpose of it being ASCII when the symbols only correspond to different intensities anyway.
Author here, I understand where you are coming from. However I did choose to keep it this way as it generally looks better. I toyed with other methods and I may introduce them in as a setting.
I've certainly noticed the same. I have two accounts here, a main one, and one that I use as a throwaway for occasional personal/emotional, off-topic, or snarky comments. The latter has roughly 4x the comment-per-karma ratio at the moment.
Though interestingly that's largely due to a few specific comments 'blowing up' -- it's typically either 0 upvotes or 100+. I believe the median is actually lower despite a significantly higher average.
I relate very closely, having had the same thoughts over the past few years. Social clubs sound good in theory, but in my experience it's difficult to connect with people without a central activity or subject to act as a touchstone. It's a frustrating sort of paradox where the best social groups diverge greatly from their core theme, and yet the core theme is necessary to reach and maintain critical mass.
I think it's possible to get around the problem, but it would take just the right structure; there should be activities, but enough of a variety to have something for people from all walks of life. But also not too much of a variety so as not to appeal only to those interested in constantly trying new things. Perhaps a set of some baseline, fairly universal activities, with space for individual members to share their own hobbies and interests from time to time in a group setting? I don't know exactly, but it's something I've been considering for a while, and it feels like there must be an answer somewhere in there.
I think the problem comes when certain topical groups interpret their mission narrowly. Based on your other nearby comment, you mention your experience with a rock climbing group that doesn't so narrowly focus on rock climbing. I think that's the right way to do it.
There was one group I used to attend where I was definitely not as interested in the topic as others. I recall someone at the meetup said to me something along the lines of "If you don't agree with X then why are you here?" Well, I attended because I found a lot of interesting people there, and I know I wasn't the only one. Some organizers made the meetups unstructured conversation, which was great for me. Honestly, I'd just like to meet other people interested in a particular topic. Other organizers preferred meetups with more specific assigned discussion topics. I rarely cared much about the assigned topics and they made the unstructured conversation I wanted to have much more difficult or even impossible (particularly for the online meetups). I don't attend those meetups any longer in part because of the assigned topics.
If you don't mind, could you share a bit about those meetups with unstructured conversation? I would like to attend something like that, some keywords to look for would be helpful.
If the website/Facebook event/email/etc. mentions an assigned topic, then it's not likely going to have much unstructured conversation. Other than that, I can't think of any reliable ahead of time signs to look for. One thing I think I've learned from reading tons of comments today at HN is that I should try more meetups just to see what they're like because you can't really know ahead of time.
Anyhow, the specific group I was referring to was LessWrong meetups in 3 different cities over a period of about a decade. As I said, I'm not quite aligned with their philosophy, but I did find a bunch of interesting people at those meetups.
I can't speak for anyone else, but in trying to pursue groups with relevant interests, I've run into one of three issues:
1. The club/etc follows its core conceit closely, and discussions and such naturally don't branch off far
2. Connected to 1, the folks who actively engage in a club are typically very invested in the subject; when my interest is more casual, it can be difficult to connect with those more passionate
And 3., most critically, the things I am passionate about are too niche to sustain dedicated clubs anywhere but the most dense of population centers, which for a variety of reasons I have no interest in relocating to.
I would appreciate a group where a variety of unique interests is encouraged. I enjoy interacting with people who are passionate in their own ways, even when they don't necessarily line up with my own passions; I realize there are clubs and such out there which likely fit my preferences, but I have yet to find one reasonably nearby.
Lua's nature as a primarily embedded language means backwards compatibility is not guaranteed between any version. If 5.2 was a language fork then so was 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, etc. (5.2 did have some more significant changes though)
For that reason luajit staying at ~5.1 actually works in its favor. Rather than trying to follow the moving target of the newest version, it gives a robust focal point for the lua ecosystem, while modern versions can be developed and continue to serve their purpose in embedded systems and whatnot where appropriate.
I don't see a reason not to update LuaJIT still. Changes in Lua aren't just version numbers, it should be improving something, meaning that would be missing in LuaJIT.
Isn't it a bit naive to declare that, just because Lua created a new minor version, it should be somehow better? The author of LuaJIT has often written his arguments, including why he disagrees with the changes to the language, why they should have been implemented as libraries instead, that in his view LuaJIT is still more performant and more widely used than PUC Lua, and more.
As for forking, you can try, but I would warn you that one does not simply fork LuaJIT. Required is deep expertise in tracing JIT compilers, in assembly and in many different computer architectures. Nobody was really up to the task when Mike Pall announced that he was searching for a maintainer, before his eventual return.
LuaJIT does have some backported features from newer versions. But Mike Pall -- the mad genius behind LuaJIT -- has made it clear he doesn't agree with many of the changes made in newer versions, hence why it's staying where it's at.
One concept which has pervaded my thinking recently due to personal circumstance is of forgiveness. I tend towards 'forgive but not forget'; I don't feel particularly attached to the past, but neither am I willing to let go of it. In one of his speeches [0] he addresses this directly.
He says that forgiving but not forgetting is not true forgiveness; but neither should you ignore one's past transgressions. Forgiveness is being willing to forge a new relationship. Not one built on history, but independent of it. The willingness to give a fresh start to those who seek it.
Another, more well-known idea he spoke of (that folks here are likely familiar with) is that of hate only adding to hate. I'll just leave his words here directly:
> The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
[0] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/lov...
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