--- Day changed Sat Apr 26 2008 00:22 < fenn> http://everything2.com/e2node/Santa%2520Machine 00:23 < kanzure> note the ref to Damien Broderick 00:23 < kanzure> Damien and I have been talking recently. 00:24 < fenn> yes, have you read that book> 00:24 < kanzure> actually, no 00:24 < kanzure> but I probably should :) 00:24 < kanzure> I also see a Hamilton ref and Stephenson ref 00:24 < kanzure> I've read Hamilton's Mindstar story, it started off with some good hard scifi, though not quite hard enough for my tastes (it could have been harder, more edge and cut sort of thing) 00:25 < kanzure> should I bother writing something on that everything2 node? 00:25 < kanzure> or just get back to reading up on git 00:25 < fenn> e2 has an even more strict and irrational editorial policy than wikipedia 00:26 < fenn> they seem to be proud of their literary consistence above all else 00:26 < fenn> consistency 00:26 < fenn> so you can't just add a line here or there 00:27 < kanzure> it looks like you can add a few paragraphs that are 'self-referential' or of the same theme/style and be good 00:27 < kanzure> but I haven't recursed through e2 explicitly before. 00:29 < fenn> dont try, it will take a couple lifetimes 00:35 < kanzure> http://www.ugrad.physics.mcgill.ca/wiki/index.php/Other_Courses weird amount of content 00:38 < fenn> hyperphysics is good for just about anything physics 00:38 < fenn> if you want to know formulas and their derivation 00:38 < kanzure> yep 00:45 < kanzure> 'You may notice that the output here looks very much like the first portion of the output from "git pull". This is no coincidence. The new changes have been "fetched" into the current repository and are stored into "origin/master" and have not been into the current "master" branch. Remember that "master" is our current branch. So now, "origin/master" is the state of the master branch that exists in the "origin" repository, (the on 00:46 < kanzure> ugh? 00:46 < kanzure> @ http://cworth.org/hgbook-git/tour/ 00:48 < kanzure> I think that's just saying "this is the same repo we originally cloned, not the one with the updates" 00:48 < kanzure> hm, perhaps not 00:49 < fenn> duh.. pardon me but why is mercurial documentation in a git repo? 00:49 < kanzure> as an example, perhaps 00:49 < fenn> did it change names? 00:50 < fenn> ok, so mercurial is definitely not git :) 00:50 < fenn> i had to look that up 00:52 < fenn> i guess he just used the mercurial tutorial as a template 00:56 < kanzure> even after reading the tutorial some things are still hazy 00:56 < kanzure> for example, suppose I git-clone a repo 00:56 < kanzure> then I do some changes, and then spawn my own local branch, 00:56 < kanzure> and then want to commit my spawned branch in the main repo that I originally got the first from. 00:56 < kanzure> how ? 01:11 < fenn> git push origin branchname ? 01:11 < fenn> assuming you want the branch to show up as a branch in the main repo 01:14 < fenn> but usually it seems people use pull more than push 01:14 < fenn> i.e. there's no "main repo" 01:16 < fenn> i dont understand why they use the extended ref-spec here: "git push origin devel-something:refs/heads/devel-something" 01:22 < kanzure> what is the use of a 'extended ref-spec' or what is it supposed to be? 01:23 < fenn> if you want to push your changes to a different branch 01:33 < fenn> works when i do it my way; seems to work their way but i dont see it in git branch -r 01:46 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/2008-04-25#News <-- me did a news dump 01:57 < kanzure> re: supermemo http://heybryan.org/shots/March14th02007.PNG - screenshot of my use of it 01:57 < kanzure> http://supermemo.com/ 01:58 < kanzure> http://supermemo.com/articles/genius.htm - gets most things right, but is missing a few key points that I've learned since I last read it, 2006? 01:59 < kanzure> it's in the news under the heading "Never forget anything again" ehhh 02:01 < kanzure> woo 02:01 < kanzure> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_of_manufacturing_processes 02:02 < fenn> i was pretty surprised when i saw these graphs (which i had arrived at independently): http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleepchart.htm 02:03 < kanzure> wish I would have read that before trying out polyphasic sleep in 2005 02:03 < kanzure> it was during spring break, so I lost some good, useful time 02:04 < fenn> eh? it doesnt say anything about polyphasic sleep 02:04 < kanzure> oh 02:04 < kanzure> wrong article, hold on 02:04 < kanzure> http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm 02:06 < kanzure> hm, from that page - 'One minute of insight can be worth a century of shoveling!' 02:06 < fenn> i'd like to see some scientific studies with more than one person's experience 02:06 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/thinking.html re: insight 02:06 < kanzure> sure, he has references in there 02:08 < fenn> "Anything against the free running rhythm is bound to result in mental torture and cognitive deficit" <- that's for damn sure 02:08 < kanzure> sounds like school 02:08 < fenn> my thoughts exactly 02:11 < fenn> you'd think there would be all sorts of weird sleep-pattern-inducing drugs out there 02:11 < fenn> beyond just stimulants and sleeping pills 02:14 < kanzure> I don't know if we know enough about sleep to understand that 02:14 < kanzure> however, I can definitely tell when I am "out of it" 02:15 < kanzure> hm, speaking of which, now might be some good time for me to fetch some sleep 02:15 < fenn> hah 02:33 < kanzure> 3D real-time spatiotemporal dendritic voltages could be used to recreate dendritic objects a.k.a. perceptions in other ways - 53:50 in the video; hm, I guess he didn't really talk about what I was thinking about 02:33 < kanzure> but it's definitely unspoken re: aggregation, spill-over, and top-down rule-based management or organization of the aggregating layers of the brain towards strategies and approaches to living/thinking/etc., 02:34 < kanzure> 1999 group, IIRC, was able to hack into a cat visual cortex to retrieve visual data that was going through the eye (a television, actually) 02:35 < kanzure> but I think they were doing spikes 02:35 < kanzure> which doesn't make too much sense 02:35 < kanzure> maybe they were doing patch-clamp, but that's destructive, no? 02:38 < kanzure> oh 02:38 < kanzure> distance between synapses - spillover from one input is almost impossible to avoid, to another one. Within 200 nm there's another synapse that is related to a different neuron. What the brain is trying to do is control the voltage within a certain voxel compartment - not so much a particular neuron. This would be an attempt to control pain/energy/action. Electromagnetic dendritic objects. We do not see the world. What we do is we 02:39 < kanzure> so the brain is overall trying to control the voltage within a minicolumn 02:39 < kanzure> there we go 02:39 < kanzure> so what would voltage controlling theoretics say about that 02:40 < kanzure> in electronics 02:42 < kanzure> would this imply that the top-down management of the brain procs are there to do voltage minimization/maximization to get the systems to 'equilibriate' ? would that make sense, from an electronics point of view? 02:44 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-10-191.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit ["Ex-Chat"] 02:46 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has quit ["Leaving."] 04:10 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-10-191.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 05:51 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h17n1c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 06:07 -!- Splicer [n=p@h100n2c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 07:04 -!- Splicer [n=p@h44n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 07:19 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h17n1c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 07:19 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h44n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 07:20 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-10-191.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit ["Ex-Chat"] 07:26 -!- Splicer [n=p@h44n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 07:49 -!- Splicer [n=p@h70n1c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 07:59 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h44n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 08:00 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h70n1c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 08:12 -!- Splicer [n=p@h70n1c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 08:15 -!- Splicer [n=p@h90n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 08:17 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h70n1c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)] 11:07 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h86n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 11:19 -!- Splicer [n=p@h90n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)] 11:42 -!- Splicer2 [n=p@h86n3c1o261.bredband.skanova.com] has quit [] 14:10 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 15:46 -!- krebs [n=krebs@208.106.116.196] has joined #hplusroadmap 15:46 -!- krebs_ [n=krebs@208.106.116.196] has quit [Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)] 15:50 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 16:41 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/shots/img_8028.jpg - my other shelf, mostly scifi and programming, but this scifi is old stuff - it doesn't include my 'new' (since 2005?) stacks 16:45 < marainein> books, books 16:46 < marainein> "* for dummies"...:P 16:51 < kanzure> hehe 16:53 < marainein> they're not bad...I have an ebook of bioinformatics for dummies 16:54 < kanzure> awesome :-) 16:54 < kanzure> Most of my texts are in 16:54 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/shots/img_8032.jpg 16:54 < kanzure> and then a lot that are digital ... 17:03 < marainein> I think that's my first year biology book 17:07 < kanzure> What's that firefox plugin that lets you analyze flash? To see if it's loading anything from the site? 17:08 < kanzure> flashtracer? 17:08 < marainein> I didn't know there was one 17:49 < kanzure> http://www.refactoring.com/ 18:20 < kanzure> I think this is everything for agx-get.py - http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/2008-04-26 18:20 < kanzure> except that I wasn't writing in python, oops 18:24 < kanzure> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Copyright <- This is the best thing I ever read. Too bad it was Canada and not the US. 18:29 < kanzure> Heh, Paul is good - 18:29 < kanzure> Or (paraphrased: :-) 18:29 < kanzure> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/quotes 18:29 < kanzure> """ 18:29 < kanzure> Gold Leader: Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are semantic wikis and 18:29 < kanzure> desktops going to be against Virgle? 18:29 < kanzure> General Dodonna: Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small cgi script on a 18:29 < kanzure> shared server or desktop to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. 18:29 < kanzure> ,,, 18:29 < kanzure> Commander #1: We've analyzed their attack on Knol, sir, and there is a 18:29 < kanzure> danger. Should I have your Golden Parachute standing by? 18:29 < kanzure> Governor Schmidt: Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you 18:29 < kanzure> overestimate their chances. 18:29 < kanzure> """ 18:34 * fenn paddles ferociously in the torrent. trying to keep up 18:35 < fenn> "the configuration 18:35 < fenn> script" 18:35 < fenn> does what exactly? 18:41 < kanzure> it's bad to call it a configuration script 18:41 < kanzure> call it a 'runtime script' 18:41 < kanzure> agx-get lets you use parameters, 18:42 < kanzure> the default behavior is to download the metadata file 18:42 < kanzure> anything else would mean downloading a portion of the skdb git repo 18:42 < kanzure> (for that particular project) 18:42 < kanzure> different 'runtime scripts' for different 'objects' or whatever will let you specify different things 18:42 < kanzure> like comfiness ;-) 18:42 < kanzure> but I recall that being a bad example 19:10 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit ["Ex-Chat"] 20:12 < fenn> just had an idea for a "rapid prototyping" process: get a package of barbecue skewers, feed them into your cnc chop-saw which cuts them to length based on a simple 3d mesh representing the object you want 20:13 < fenn> then you drill holes into 'gumdrops' some roughly spherical shape that's cheap and commonly available 20:13 < fenn> and the computer gives you instructions to put them together to reconstruct the 3d mesh 20:13 < kanzure> hm? barbeque skewers are what? 20:14 < kanzure> while I might live in Texas, I try to avoid barbeques 20:14 < fenn> a readily available cheap package of pointy bamboo rods 20:14 < fenn> about 14 inches long 1/8" wide 20:15 < fenn> the gumdrops kinda mess the process up, maybe using straws and bolting/riveting them together would work better (like an an electrical conduit dome) 20:16 < fenn> you could make straws from a continuous roll of tape, somehow 20:17 < fenn> it would be like those lawn ornament wire deer people put up with christmas lights 20:18 < kanzure> #git is confusing me ... if you clone a git repo, do some updates, commit, then push, but within the time that it took you to do all of that, somebody *else* cloned a git repo, you can't push your changes to the main repo since it's "checked out" 20:18 < kanzure> but wtf is this useful for if you can't put your code changes back into the main repo 20:19 < fenn> checked out? what does that mean? (sounds like some ancient lock-based rcs) 20:19 < kanzure> that's what #git is saying 20:19 < kanzure> "checked out" 20:19 < kanzure> I certainly didn't use that term with 'em. 20:20 < fenn> i think that phrase only applies to using a specific branch 20:20 < fenn> or messing with cvs 20:23 < fenn> aha - you mentioned 'checked out' first 20:24 < kanzure> did i? 20:24 < fenn> http://colabti.org/irclogger/irclogger_log/git?date=2008-04-27 20:24 < kanzure> 00:15 20:25 < kanzure> that's not me 20:25 < fenn> oh oops. do you understand the difference between a branch and a cloned repo? 20:26 < kanzure> not yet 20:26 < kanzure> please help :-( 20:26 < fenn> ok, a branch is like, say you undo a bunch of changes and then start editing an old copy 20:26 < fenn> now you're moving along a different timeline 20:27 < kanzure> but isn't that a repo 20:27 < kanzure> you just cloned the "old version" 20:27 < fenn> that's a branch 20:27 < fenn> both timelines are recorded in a repo 20:27 < fenn> timeline == branch 20:27 < kanzure> okay, so if you have version 4 at the moment, and I clone from version 2, does my version 2 repo have version 4 in it somewhere ? 20:28 < kanzure> hm 20:28 < fenn> um.. forget about cloning 'version 2' 20:28 < kanzure> but you just said 20:28 < kanzure> 'undoing a bunch of changes'w 20:28 < kanzure> so if your timeline has A, B, C, D (current) 20:28 < kanzure> and you clone B 20:28 < kanzure> eh 20:28 < fenn> yeah, so your working directory is showing an old version 20:28 < fenn> you can't clone B 20:28 < kanzure> oh? 20:28 < fenn> (not without making thing harder to understand) 20:29 < fenn> i can hit you with a ruler if you like :) 20:29 < kanzure> okay, so you can *branch* from an old version, but you can't clone an old version 20:29 < fenn> clone means get the whole repo, which includes all the branches 20:31 < fenn> the closest thing to a 'main repo' is some branch that you intend to be distributed widely 20:32 < kanzure> but then why were they talking about 'checking out' ? 20:32 < kanzure> hrme.fjkdlfjaldkfjal 20:32 < fenn> the neat thing is that all the changes on development branches that get included in the distribution branch will show up there as if they were just edited on the distribution branch 20:32 < fenn> 'check out' means, 'show me this branch (at this version) in the working directory' 20:33 < fenn> its a bad analogy i think 20:33 < kanzure> but they said locks 20:33 < kanzure> wait 20:33 < kanzure> aha 20:33 < kanzure> they didn't 20:33 < kanzure> that's the difference 20:33 < kanzure> I thought they were saying something was locked 20:33 < kanzure> but in this model you don't "lock a branch down" 20:34 < fenn> its not locks exactly 20:34 < kanzure> (2008-04-26 19:29:30) jdq: I would suggest only to push to bare repostories and update those with working copies only by pulling 20:34 < kanzure> that strategy sounds like a good idea 20:34 < fenn> see, you dont normally push to someone else's repository, they will pull from you if they want to, and then if there's problems with the merge they get fixed when the person is pulling 20:35 < kanzure> right 20:35 < fenn> otherwise you're throwing monkeywrenches on their workbench 20:36 < fenn> you could rebase your changes on the current version of the repo you're trying to push to (if you dont want to obligate the recipient to fix merge errors) 20:36 < kanzure> but the recipient might have other changes of his own of course 20:36 < kanzure> oh 20:36 < kanzure> nevermind 20:36 < kanzure> he could then pull those changes (or you can push to him) 20:36 < kanzure> but that's no guarantee that his modifications don't conflict with yours 20:36 < kanzure> so rebasing doesn't sound possible, unless the developer hasn't done anything to the files 20:36 < kanzure> hm 20:36 < kanzure> but that's not much of an issue 20:36 < kanzure> I can live with that 20:37 < fenn> you'd still test your changes after rebasing of course 20:37 < fenn> in a large percentage of changes it will work 20:37 < fenn> it's not magic 20:38 < fenn> i.e. it wont re-base semantic changes 20:41 < kanzure> http://neuralensemble.org/ 20:41 < kanzure> "Increasingly, the real limit on what computational scientists can accomplish is how quickly and reliably they can translate their ideas into working code." 20:41 < kanzure> Gregory V. Wilson 20:43 < fenn> i wonder when that was written 20:43 < kanzure> http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/48548?&print=yes 20:43 < kanzure> 2006 20:44 < kanzure> 'I therefore started asking scientists how they wrote their programs. The answers were sobering. Whereas a few knew more than most of the commercial software developers I'd worked with, the overwhelming majority were still using ancient text editors like Vi and Notepad, sharing files with colleagues by emailing them around and testing by, well, actually, not testing their programs systematically at all.' 20:44 < kanzure> 'I finally asked a friend who was pursuing a doctorate in particle physics why he insisted on doing everything the hard way. Why not use an integrated development environment with a symbolic debugger? Why not write unit tests? Why not use a version-control system? His answer was, "What's a version-control system?"' 20:44 < kanzure> hahah 20:45 < fenn> hm i think i've read the 'computational literacy' project that guy started 20:45 < fenn> its like, programming for scientists 20:45 < kanzure> ' 20:45 < kanzure> My friend was intelligent and intimately familiar with the problems of writing large programs—he had inherited more than 100,000 lines of computer code and had already added 20,000 more. Discovering that he didn't even know what version control meant was like finding a chemist who didn't realize she needed to clean her test tubes between experiments. It wasn't a happy conversation for him either. Halfway through my explanation, 20:45 < kanzure> ah, good 20:45 < kanzure> because that's retarded 20:45 < kanzure> somebody writing 100k lines of code and not knowing about rcs? 20:47 < kanzure> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_V._Wilson 20:48 < kanzure> Oram, Andy & Wilson, Gregory V. (2007), Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think, O'Reilly Media, Inc., ISBN 978-0596510046 20:48 < fenn> oh look, a reference to some dead tree 20:48 < fenn> how quaint 20:49 < fenn> the whole 'comutational scientist' thing just screams 'anachronism' 20:49 < kanzure> I think the problem is this: 20:50 < fenn> ah right, software carpentry 20:50 < kanzure> rapid advancements on the edge, versus the tendency to 'preserve integrity' of the already established Scientific Institutions and The Way 20:50 < fenn> My Way or the High Way 20:51 < kanzure> unfortunately, 'My Way' is usually also some highway like road infrastructure 20:51 < kanzure> with predetermined destination 20:52 < fenn> software carpentry is actually pretty good 20:52 < kanzure> hm? 20:52 < kanzure> explain what you're on about ? 20:52 < fenn> http://swc.scipy.org/ 20:53 < fenn> the result of g. wilson's "shocking revelation" 20:53 < fenn> kinda makes you wonder just what they're teaching in schools 20:54 < kanzure> how to bend over. 20:55 < fenn> LOL "Knowing how to read code is as useful as knowing how to read a proof" 20:55 < kanzure> why is that funny 20:55 < fenn> sorry, it's only funny if you dont believe in proofs 20:56 < fenn> see, the difference between code and proofs is that code actually does something 20:56 < kanzure> eh, 20:56 < kanzure> sort of 20:56 < fenn> oh come on, math theorems that cite proofs are just doing a glorified include statement 20:56 < kanzure> it's s/proof/ with ... koan, theorem, poem, something that is itself not solvable, but somehow allows you to work over it so that you can figure out some new context 20:57 < kanzure> or whatever 20:57 < kanzure> sure 20:57 < kanzure> the real difference, I think 20:57 < kanzure> is that the 'advanced' mathematics theorems are more like code that hasn't been written yet 20:57 < kanzure> it's formalized pseudocode or something 20:57 < kanzure> some of the ancient recursion examples with series for example 20:57 < kanzure> they didn't have code to write 20:57 < kanzure> so instead they had that formalized system 20:57 < kanzure> and locked it in via education, 20:57 < fenn> yes 20:57 < kanzure> but now that we can do it in code, I suggest we stop doing it 20:58 < kanzure> teaching it, I mean 20:58 < fenn> and the syntax is horrible, unfortunately 20:58 < kanzure> tell them about it, sure,but show the equivalency 20:58 < kanzure> and show how the machine is able to do this 20:58 < kanzure> it's quite formalized. 20:58 < kanzure> and *grounded* 20:58 < kanzure> re: symbol grounding 20:58 < kanzure> this is a recent insight that I've been toying with 20:58 < kanzure> the symbol grounding problem in ai isn't ai-specific 20:58 < fenn> math is grounded? 20:58 < kanzure> it's completely relevant to all humans - we're a walking, talking example of symbol grounding 20:59 < kanzure> math is grounded in *us* 20:59 < kanzure> in mathematicians 20:59 * fenn looks around for a number 20:59 < kanzure> or people becoming mathematicians 20:59 < fenn> i dont see any numbers 20:59 < kanzure> math has a social context 20:59 < kanzure> I don't mean to say that math is ideological 20:59 < kanzure> but that math is a formalization and is grounded in society 20:59 < kanzure> this formalization isn't Of The Divine Void 21:00 < fenn> it's very hard to convince some people of that 21:00 < kanzure> do you agree with it, though? 21:00 < fenn> yes of course 21:01 < kanzure> blah 21:01 < kanzure> this is just the basic strand of thought re: the need for skdb and so on 21:02 < fenn> i think the whole symbol grounding thing has to do with perception and procedural learning 21:02 < fenn> if you can take a basket of apples and count them, there's a number. if your culture just says 'many' then there is no number 21:03 < kanzure> right, because counting and numbering are mental processes, physically grounded in your brain circuits that you develop to solve problems 21:03 < kanzure> usually problems that teachers present to you in, in the case of school; or on your own when you sit down to focus on a problem 21:04 < fenn> counting is an application of generalization 21:04 < fenn> you dont learn generalization in school 21:05 < fenn> generalization is taking all the lumpy green and red things in front of you and realizing they are all the same abstract class 21:06 < kanzure> OOPism is the dark side, it leads to stuff like string theory 21:06 < kanzure> and then my Holy Ai Church that I was developing ... erm. 21:06 < fenn> is an apple not an apple? 21:06 < kanzure> no, truly it is not 21:06 < fenn> then you refute number theory too? 21:06 < kanzure> an apple is *physically there* 21:07 < kanzure> you can go touch it, eat it, and I can't possibly elaborate all of the possible interactions with the apple 21:07 < fenn> you can do that with any other apple 21:07 < fenn> (unless it's an apple that looks like jesus) 21:07 < kanzure> so if the apple has jesus mapped on it 21:07 < kanzure> it is therefore not an apple now? 21:08 < kanzure> what the hell type of reasoning is that? :-) 21:08 < fenn> it's a special case apple 21:08 < fenn> you can do extra things with it, like sell it on ebay 21:10 < kanzure> I am more a programmer; more interested in processes, not 'object orientation'. I can't link you to how I jumped out of OOPism in my development, so I can't cite the full philosophical arguments, but I'll think about it so that I can describe the inherent problems in OOPism to you. 21:11 < fenn> yeah it's limiting but it's easy 21:11 < fenn> c++ made a lot of stupid mistakes that make things hard 21:11 < kanzure> no, I don't even mean C++ 21:11 < fenn> well, a lot of what goes in the definition of "oop" is from languages like C++ and java 21:12 < kanzure> Ah, well, that's not what I am talking about 21:12 < fenn> ok 21:12 < fenn> maybe it's better to define what you mean then 21:12 < kanzure> OOPism, to me, is the philosophy of objects out there in the world, that all have these 'classes' inherent to them, they are of Some Type, and they are all intricately related to, aha. I just remembered a diagram I made back in 2004 to describe my Holy Ai system. 21:13 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/diagrams/arrow_of_time_system3.JPG 21:13 < kanzure> hm 21:13 < fenn> did you watch the geoff hinton video? 21:13 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/projects/aot_system/arrow_of_time_system3.JPG 21:13 < kanzure> no, not yet 21:13 < fenn> heh so your ai will be done in a couple billion years by that timeline :) 21:15 < kanzure> 'Objects' just aren't true. Don't see it as an apple, but rather the seed of a tree, as the Salthe-ecological gravitational thermo complex that is aggregating materials into that redness/greenness, an attempt in mutation history towards evolvability in whatever environment that tree was competing in etc. 21:15 < kanzure> erm, that uses way too many loosely used terms; 21:15 < fenn> well the reason i brought up geoff hinton is his self-programmed algorithms cluster raw data into regions automatically 21:15 < kanzure> matter/energy signals, processes, not objects 21:16 < fenn> they arent equivalent, but they are in discrete clumps 21:16 < kanzure> think of the galaxies as a matter/energy processing system 21:16 < kanzure> an 'ecology' 21:16 < fenn> ok, so an apple is a process 21:16 < kanzure> right, so we have our biologists go out there and attempt to classify them or whatever 21:16 < fenn> i'm sure you'll get uppity about my use of the term "is" 21:16 < kanzure> good luck with that whole 'tree of life' thing 21:17 < kanzure> but I really like those trees of course, they are interesting 21:18 < fenn> i think it's just english language bias (sapir-whorf) 21:18 < kanzure> the point isn't to find a 'true tree of life' - that sort of information is very, very hard to find from evolutionary history, without self-documenting organisms of course 21:18 < kanzure> sapir-whorf was even cited in my intro to speech class, the state mandated class in high school 21:19 < fenn> the point isnt to recover the version history? 21:19 < fenn> oh, well.. taxonomy is different from phylogeny 21:19 < fenn> (i think taxonomy is bullshit) 21:19 < kanzure> 'version history' would be great -- too bad the biosphere didn't spawn with 'git' installed by default 21:20 < kanzure> but anyway, we're getting off track here 21:20 < kanzure> while you might be a process that is defined by who your ancestors are, your environment also influences you to some extent, no? Are we to track all contexts that have ever existed? 21:20 < kanzure> sometimes I find myself imagining going on this very big quest 21:20 < kanzure> to try to recover all of the data 21:20 < kanzure> that could help me figure out the 'original state' 21:20 < kanzure> the seed data that spawned the universe 21:21 < kanzure> the idea is that the universe is stochastic, thus why we have entropy and so on 21:21 < kanzure> (entropy is just "energy not used" and unnecessary noise etc.) 21:21 < kanzure> so if I could go sample enough data and figure out the original state, then maybe we could simulate specific aspects or something 21:21 < kanzure> but I don't really place much on this idea any more 21:22 < fenn> doesnt stochastic mean non-predictable? 21:22 < kanzure> no? 21:22 < kanzure> stochastic != random 21:22 < fenn> somewhere between random and deterministic 21:22 < kanzure> deterministic rules with random seed 21:22 < fenn> random seed is a computer thing 21:22 < fenn> because they didnt have hardware RN generators 21:23 < fenn> its a way to make a deterministic system appear random 21:23 < fenn> s/random/stochastic/ 21:24 < fenn> i think its just another way of saying 'probabilistic' 21:24 < kanzure> hm, I have an idea 21:25 < kanzure> NG: Would it be accurate to say that a good deal of the thematic burden of the Neverness novels, especially The Wild and War in Heaven, is the necessity that we prefer our actual, physical environment over virtual realities, no matter how beguiling? 21:25 < kanzure> DZ: I would say that is exactly true. And more, I would say that the so-called virtual realities are misnamed: they should be called something like 21:25 < kanzure> "simulated experiences." Because they aren't real, and can never be so, any more than a map can be the territory. And more, for the same reason that a map is necessarily less detailed 21:25 < kanzure> than the territory that it describes, a virtual reality can only ever be a pale shadow of the real thing. 21:25 < kanzure> Such constructs might prove amusing, or even useful and illuminating, but how could they ever take the place of the essential reality that they represent? 21:26 < fenn> eh, i guess 21:26 < kanzure> oh, btw, 21:26 < kanzure> the guys in #git recommend *against* partial downloading of git repos 21:27 < fenn> yeah i know 21:27 < kanzure> so then. the whole idea of agx-get only getting parts of an skdb file is a bad idea, it seems 21:27 < kanzure> unless skdb files != their own git repos. 21:27 < fenn> that might work, but it neglects relationships between package 21:27 < fenn> packages* 21:27 < kanzure> how so? 21:28 < fenn> say package A v1.0 only works with package B version 1.2 21:28 < kanzure> so? the metadata for A would say that 21:28 < fenn> right 21:28 < kanzure> we're talking about whether or not the dot skdb file is secretly a dot git 21:28 < kanzure> and now we're just saying it's secretly a dir or secretly a dot tar 21:28 < kanzure> I guess this is okay 21:28 < kanzure> doesn't change much. 21:28 < kanzure> makes it easier actually 21:28 < fenn> do users really need to get the whole devel history? 21:29 < kanzure> nope, they just want the current skdb package 21:29 < kanzure> and if they want to make modifications or something, go right ahead 21:29 < kanzure> but you might have to merge with an old branch or something 21:29 < fenn> i think it makes sense to have the whole SKDB in one big git repo 21:29 < fenn> then you can track where someone copied code from your module and modified it 21:29 < kanzure> but you can't have gits within git 21:30 < fenn> then you update your module, you can say 'hey better fix those other modules too' 21:30 < kanzure> and you can't easily partially git a part of that 'global git SKDB' 21:30 < kanzure> so everybody everywhere has to download the full thing 21:30 < kanzure> nah, I think it's okay to make this an aggregation layer 21:30 < kanzure> we're fine, nothing is different 21:31 < kanzure> I'm just stalling 21:31 < kanzure> so that I don't have to ALT+TAB over to the window with the python code 21:31 < fenn> you can download single files from a git repo easy enough 21:31 < fenn> heh 21:31 < fenn> procrastination is my favorite pastime 21:31 < kanzure> I think I'm quoted on wikiquotes re: procrastination 21:31 < kanzure> you can procrastinate later or something 21:39 < fenn> so you associate OOP with neurotypical "windowpane" mentality 21:39 < kanzure> well, yes, but I didn't think of it like that before 21:40 < kanzure> but I'm confident that yes lots of 'neurotypical' dopamine addicts like OOPism 21:41 < fenn> makes sense 21:41 < kanzure> but the thing is that even I loved OOPism 21:41 < kanzure> for years ... so. 21:41 < fenn> oh, that was the original point of reciprocality.org 21:41 < kanzure> mappers v. packers 21:41 < kanzure> or something 21:41 < fenn> he was a program-management consultant 21:43 < kanzure> "This project began as a bit of practical industrial psychology, and ended up unfolding into an understanding of how most people in most human societies have a consistently distorted view of everything. Not everyone is caught in the confusion, and as the picture emerged, 21:43 < kanzure> an alternative model of relationships between observable phenomena that seems to be experienced by creative programmers in software engineering, star diagnosticians in medicine, great physicists and mathematicians, so-called ADHD children, people who "Know Quality" in industry, 21:43 < kanzure> poets, painters, sculptors and mystics became describable - but only in its own terms. The alternative picture is wholly rational, but not reductionistic. Best of all, it is scientifically grounded and experimentally testable. If the experiments fail we can junk it. If they work, we've learned something important. " - Alan G Carter 21:44 < fenn> see, the problem is that not 'blackboxing' stuff by putting it into categories, means you have to _think_ which is actually _hard_ 21:45 < kanzure> blackboxing doesn't require categories per-se, 21:45 < kanzure> blackboxing is about blackboxing functionality 21:45 < kanzure> not about blackboxing objects (layering etc.) 21:45 < kanzure> http://web.archive.org/web/20060427111402/www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/add.html 21:46 < fenn> i wonder whats up with the website.. why dont they just redirect to one of the many mirrors 21:46 < kanzure> ' This was at variance with usual thinking in the field, which holds that most people are simply useless by nature. ' haha :-) And for good reason too :-) 21:47 < kanzure> ' It seemed to me more likely that everyone was born a mapper, but somehow most people got "flipped" into the weaker packer mindset through social pressure. It seemed that packers were distressed by any reference - even implicit - to the mapper worldview. Yet this was a denied, neurotic kind of distress rather than an explicit disagreement about ideology.' 21:49 < fenn> its funny that he falls into the trap of categorizing people as one thing or another (maybe ignoring some aspects of reality on purpose) 21:50 < fenn> presumably he's thinking about a few specific people he knows 21:51 < kanzure> right 21:51 < kanzure> the categorization though is linked to neuroscience in terms of the dopamine inhibitors and cybernetic feedback theories 21:51 < kanzure> but 21:51 < fenn> this sorta reminds me of how its better for you to eat fresh vegetables, but it's actually _easier_ to get/store/trade dried beans and preserved food 21:52 < kanzure> how so? 21:52 < fenn> and so agriculturalists have taken over the world 21:52 < kanzure> hm 21:52 < fenn> because they grow food that can be preserved 21:53 < fenn> obviously some preservation methods are better than others 21:53 < kanzure> I'm trying to think of a way to address your issue with him classifying the people 21:53 < kanzure> I think that in this case, he can classify people in that OOPist sense 21:53 < kanzure> especially since he is proposing a method of converting people from one type to another 21:53 < kanzure> he's talking with actually dealing with them 21:53 < kanzure> hm 21:53 < kanzure> something's wrong here 21:54 < fenn> it's not just 'convert from one type to another' - thats whiteboard mentality 21:54 < fenn> its about getting a person to see what's in front of them, to kick the self-boredom habit, and to figure out what they're doing 21:54 < kanzure> right 21:54 < kanzure> but "its funny that he falls into the trap of categorizing people as one thing or another" 21:54 < fenn> but its easier to say 'we had a packer, made him a mapper' because there's less information being transmitted 21:55 < kanzure> ah, I guess we can attribute that to the problems with writing 21:55 < kanzure> that 'trap' is because he has to fall into that trap in order to write, methinks 21:55 < kanzure> problems with writing -> self-expression stuff. "read what I meant, not what I said" 21:55 < fenn> but see, the same data compression is going on in your head all the time. it's how you can remember 90 bazillion things in the first place 21:55 < kanzure> re: perl monk motto "do what I mean, not what I say" 21:56 < kanzure> sure, but it's a compression *process* 21:56 < kanzure> it's feedback, systems, cybernetics. 21:56 < kanzure> we're both meta like that, IMHO 21:56 < fenn> i can run a simulation of your mental state and try to reconstruct what you meant, but i can never truly get what you actually meant (without a brain-pod connection) 21:57 < fenn> interestingly enough, this problem is why i got into genetic engineering 21:57 < kanzure> wait, brain-pod connection? 21:57 < kanzure> pod? 21:57 < kanzure> what? 21:58 < fenn> bypass the difficulties of language by using a direct neural connection from one brain to another 21:58 < kanzure> funny thing is that the brains will still have to learn to communicate or something 21:58 < fenn> i'm not sure it would actually work, now that i know more about how brains work 21:59 < fenn> you'd have to have nanites crawlin all over your neurons, able to transmit impulses (and connections diagrams?) from anywhere inside the brain 21:59 < kanzure> maybe - possibly fMRI and rTMS could do it 21:59 < kanzure> I've thought about those possibilities before, yeah 21:59 < kanzure> also DNIs 21:59 < fenn> nah those are too coarse 21:59 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/docs/neuro/ 21:59 < kanzure> sure 21:59 < fenn> get down to the sub-axon level maybe 22:00 < kanzure> I'm not so interested in a DNI per se with another brain even 22:00 < fenn> why not? 22:00 < kanzure> but rather, there's a *ton* of information in the brain 22:00 < kanzure> hehe, hold on a sec 22:00 < kanzure> Markram in the vid was saying that he generates 1 TB of debug data per sec 22:00 < fenn> big whoop 22:00 < kanzure> don't you think we could do some interesting things when aggregating that? 22:00 < kanzure> if we could tap into the information within our brain? 22:00 < kanzure> not information like perceptions 22:00 < fenn> sure, you could store your dreams, say what you actually meant 22:00 < kanzure> (but maybe perceptions, if you can do that trick, heh) 22:01 < kanzure> no, I mean like all of the 'entropy' 22:01 < fenn> someone would have to do some "strange days" mind zap to really understand though 22:01 < fenn> and they wouldnt have connections for all your concepts (without replicating your brain) 22:01 < fenn> like, you might see something and start laughing (in the reconstructed simulation) but not know why it was funny because you didnt have the memory and associations 22:01 < kanzure> perhaps we could find a way to insert new microcolumns, or have them interfaced to your more meta cognitive processes 22:02 < kanzure> but this is far out there 22:02 < fenn> you cant physically insert new microcolumns because they're so tightly interwoven 22:02 < kanzure> mostly because I am not sure to what extent microcolumns are organized within the head, i.e., they do have some long-range connections, but do they need them? can they manage with just up-propagating connections and so on? aren't they supposed to be layered? 22:02 < kanzure> etc. 22:02 < kanzure> keep the new ones somewhere else 22:02 < kanzure> brain in a jar 22:03 < fenn> but you could 'logically' insert new connections with nanites sending packets 22:03 < kanzure> nanites are a blackswan 22:03 < kanzure> avoid 22:03 < fenn> whatever 22:03 < fenn> use TMS 22:03 < kanzure> nanites are more of a blackswan than macroscale self-replicating machines ;-) 22:03 < kanzure> yeah, TMS would be interesting to work with 22:03 < kanzure> Ed does laser-guiding neuro growth too 22:03 < kanzure> so in combination the two could be very interesting 22:03 < kanzure> http://edboyden.org/ 22:03 < fenn> use electrodes that you've poked into the brain tissue, disrupting a certain acceptable number of connections 22:03 < kanzure> the idea is that you can use lasers to help specifically target axon/dendritic growth 22:04 < fenn> i say nanites because i'd rather not have needles ripping up my brain 22:04 < kanzure> have you seen my 3D mesh idea for brain engineering 22:04 < fenn> no 22:04 < fenn> btw nanites dont have to be self-repliating 22:05 < fenn> think of it as a really small rfid tag 22:05 < kanzure> giant MEA, except 3D; have brain grow *into* this area, thus when it's completely done you have this huge infrastructure for stimulation with electricity or neurochemicals (if you have some sort of fancy MEMS mechanical distribution network built into it) 22:06 < fenn> i have no idea what you just said 22:06 < fenn> what's an MEA? 22:06 < kanzure> microelectrode array 22:06 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/mediawiki/index.php/Brain_implants 22:06 < fenn> ok, how do you get this into the brain without shredding all the connections? 22:06 < kanzure> possibly without the last character 22:06 < kanzure> fenn: "have brain grow into this area" 22:06 < kanzure> tissue engineering - grow a new brain 22:06 < kanzure> brain in a jar 22:06 < fenn> brains dont generally grow except in infants 22:06 < fenn> s/infant/embryo/ 22:07 < kanzure> correct 22:07 < kanzure> have you considered that we might be screwed? that our brains are ultimately intractable? we can try to prolong their lives, even interface with other systems, even try to scan in the physical connections, but the vascularization issues + nanotech blackswan stuff is a negatory 22:08 < kanzure> I do not mean to say I am not optimistic and that I am not working towards solutions 22:08 < fenn> um, yah i've considered it 22:08 < kanzure> I mean that maybe our second generations can do something better 22:08 < kanzure> so that maybe our 'copies' that we physically build, engineer from what we know, so that they might have a chance in a digital age or something blah blah blah 22:08 < fenn> my solution was to make an 'improved human' though i didnt think of it as human at the time 22:09 < kanzure> but really, beyond surface brain implants 22:09 < kanzure> and trying to do nanotech, eh 22:09 < fenn> it was a sort of living space station 22:09 < fenn> but biological 22:09 < kanzure> Zindell's moonbrain 22:09 < fenn> but more than just a brain 22:09 < kanzure> made out of 'neurologics' 22:09 < fenn> thinking only gets you so far 22:10 < fenn> you need craploads of sensors, manipulators, communication.. 22:10 < fenn> what good is an eyeball in earth orbit? 22:10 < fenn> or in the asteroid belt 22:10 < kanzure> uhh 22:10 < fenn> can hardly see anything without a telescope 22:10 < kanzure> hm 22:10 < kanzure> take a look at this 22:10 < kanzure>   http://www.mel.nist.gov/psl/ 22:10 < kanzure> "For many years, the Manufacturing Systems Integration Division (MSID) has 22:10 < kanzure> been involved in the definition of a neutral representation of product data, 22:10 < kanzure> most recently realized through the STEP standard. With that effort well 22:10 < kanzure> underway, another candidate area for a division focus is the representation 22:10 < kanzure> of manufacturing process. Like product data, process data is also used 22:10 < kanzure> throughout the life cycle of a product, from early indications of 22:10 < kanzure> manufacturing process flagged during design, through process planning, 22:11 < kanzure> validation, production scheduling and control. In addition, the notion of 22:11 < kanzure> process also underlies the entire manufacturing cycle, coordinating the 22:11 < kanzure> workflow within engineering and shop floor manufacturing. The Process 22:11 < fenn> then *bam* you just got pulverized by a meteor going mach 200 22:11 < kanzure> Specification Language (PSL) defines a neutral representation for 22:11 < kanzure> manufacturing processes that supports automated reasoning. Process data is 22:11 < kanzure> used throughout the life cycle of a product, from early indications of 22:11 < kanzure> manufacturing process flagged during design, through process planning, 22:11 < kanzure> validation, production scheduling and control. In addition, the notion of 22:11 < kanzure> process also underlies the entire manufacturing cycle, coordinating the 22:11 < kanzure> workflow within engineering and shop floor manufacturing." 22:11 < kanzure> And: 22:11 < kanzure>   http://www.mel.nist.gov/psl/ontology.html 22:11 < kanzure>   http://www.mel.nist.gov/psl/ontology.html 22:11 < kanzure> "The purpose of PSL-Core is to axiomatise a set of intuitive semantic 22:11 < kanzure> primitives that is adequate for describing the fundamental concepts of 22:11 < kanzure> manufacturing processes. Consequently, this characterization of basic 22:11 < kanzure> processes makes few assumptions about their nature beyond what is needed for 22:11 < kanzure> describing those processes, and the Core is therefore rather weak in terms 22:11 < kanzure> of logical expressiveness. In particular, PSL-Core is not strong enough to 22:11 < kanzure> provide definitions of the many auxiliary notions that become necessary to 22:11 < kanzure> describe all intuitions about manufacturing processes." 22:11 < fenn> yeah yeah it sounds great until you have to actually deal with it 22:12 < fenn> i'm glad they're working on it, but based on my experience with STEP i dont have high hopes 22:12 < kanzure> if they're working on it, then we can eventually approach them 22:12 < kanzure> Also, even more serious: 22:12 < kanzure>   http://www.mfgquote.com/ 22:12 < kanzure> "MFG.com is an online marketplace that saves you time and money by instantly 22:12 < kanzure> matching a buyer's drawings and specifications to qualified suppliers. No 22:12 < kanzure> more searching or worrying." 22:12 < kanzure> huh 22:12 < kanzure> interesting 22:12 < fenn> yeah very cool 22:13 < fenn> i wonder how they do quality control 22:13 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 22:14 < kanzure> I wonder how they do it at all ... 22:14 * kanzure goes to find dinner 22:14 < fenn> people look at it, bid on the job 22:15 < fenn> its like ebay (or rentacoder.com really) 22:48 < kanzure> oh, it sounded like it could match specs to supplies 22:48 < kanzure> utomatically 22:48 < kanzure> because they say 'instantly' 22:48 < kanzure> I guess they mean something else ;-) 22:53 < fenn> instantly is relative.. usually this process takes weeks or months 22:58 < kanzure> I was hoping they may have had our agx-make GA jig-puzzle piece 22:58 < kanzure> guess not :-) - they are more social in nature, although a social equivalent wouldn't be a bad idea actually 22:58 < kanzure> hmm 22:59 < kanzure> (momentary) 'experience' is a signal 22:59 < kanzure> to the brain. 22:59 < kanzure> a very massive, parallel signal of course 22:59 < kanzure> but nevertheless, to the brain it is still a signal; it seems to be a matter of letting certain experiences manage how the brain is to cope with 'experience' but what's the selection process for this? 23:08 < fenn> because experience is intertwingled with your current brain state 23:10 < kanzure> hm, scenemusic is playing "Cyborg Jeff - HTML Quest" 23:12 < fenn> i'm re-thinking my possession by multiple spirits in high school as a breakdown in communication between different areas of my brain 23:13 < fenn> i thought my soul had left my body and then started attracting various visiting spirits 23:14 < fenn> there was a dog, a fox-woman, a snake-lizard-futuresoldier, and an arab mathematician 23:14 < kanzure> breakdown? 23:15 < kanzure> how serious was this? 23:15 < fenn> it wasn't very apparent at all, actually 23:15 < kanzure> brb 23:19 < fenn> actually it must have been in middle school, because the arab taught me spanish 23:20 < fenn> there should be a name-origin wiki