A programmer's view of the Universe, part 2: Mario Kart

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/12/programmers-view-of-universe-part-2.html

by pavelludiq • 18 years ago

61 22 18 years ago

steve-yegge.blogspot.com

glymor• 18 years ago

The first part was a funny story about a little fish that tried real real hard then failed and died without hope.

The second part is a boring series of reaches that doesn't go anywhere (literally).

I was aware coming in that Yegge's style is to make tenuous metaphors that obfuscate the point more than they elucidate (remember the story about the Kingdom of Nouns) but I was so enamoured by part 1 that I inadvisedly read it nonetheless.

(As a side note it is possible to write in the style Yegge is trying to: Neal Stephenson achieves it in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" with the story about the different drills.)

tomjen• 18 years ago

I constantly remember the story of that damn drill, precisely because it is such a good metaphor. It might be worth learning that style of writing.

timcederman• 18 years ago

Prolixity much?

breck• 18 years ago

Metaphors are like business plans. When they take too long to explain, it's time to get a new one.

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

I think the parent post was referring to choosing certain leaky abstractions on purpose in order to frame the phenomena you are describing in such a way as to elicit the desired reaction from an audience. For example, you can change emotional response to a stimulus by using words with hot or cold connotations to describe it.

jd3• 18 years ago

> But one way or another, all systems are embedded systems. [...] host systems often overlap and even cooperate. A city is composed of many interleaved subsystems. So is your body. It's not always a simple containment relationship. Systems are made of, and communicate with, other systems.

So now the definition of "embedded system" is essentially a "thingy". Thingies overlap and cooperate, thingies are made of and communicate with other thingies.

That's not very enlightening.

I have no idea what the purpose was of the 3000 (?) word analogy between Mario Cart, a fish tank and embedded systems. And also it's unclear how the "holes" (data channels) are related to reflection and metaprogramming.

And finally, I don't see how he can be so certain the state of the Universe was "undefined" before the big bang. Maybe the Universe had a definite and sensible but (to us) unknowable state before the Big Bang.

incomethax2• 18 years ago

To our vantage point, the universe was "undefined" before the big bang. It's also "undefined" from our vantage point to every space that exists (or rather doesn't exist) outside of our universe.

If you buy certain flavors of string theory, you could say that we can only tell what's going on beyond our own 'brane, as our 'brane happens to be an embedded system that we would need to step outside to understand what exists outside of it.

Essentially it seems to me that Yegge is saying that we don't know what's going on outside of our 3-space 1-time universe, and that even posing the questions from within the universe is an exercise in futility.

jd3• 18 years ago

What you're saying makes perfect sense, but that isn't what Yegge is saying at all. You're saying the state of the universe may or may not be sensible before the Big Bang, but it's unknowable so speculation is pointless. What Yegge is saying is that it's like an undefined variable: the state is totally arbitrary. But we don't even know if the universe could be anything before the Big Bang.

gnaritas2• 18 years ago

Not nearly as good as part one, he's back to rambling again.

rglullis• 18 years ago

Wait until the end of the series. He says in the comments that these posts are supposed to bring a larger point.

Kind of off-topic, but it is funny how these posts remind me of History class in high-school. I had an amazing teacher: she would say that most of the topics would individually seem dull (things like Middle Ages, Renaissance, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, World War I and II), the whole thing would be a whole more interesting in the end, where we could make sense of the why of the succession of historical events. And she was absolutely right. When we got a chance to look at all of the pieces, I was able to think of History as a running system.

Getting back to the point: I'd say that individually both posts seem pretty inane. Even the first one was imho too silly. I do expect, however, that in the end Yegge will manage to make sense of it all.

gnaritas2• 18 years ago

I'm talking about the writing, not the subject matter. The first post was well written, not overly verbose, and well paced. The second was his usual verbal diarrhea.

ensignavenger• 18 years ago

I think for many students, history would be much more interesting if taught backwards, starting with a current event and working your way through history answering the "whys".

pmorici• 18 years ago

Whats the point of this article?

rymngh• 18 years ago

part one was really great article. it made me watch bettas in youtube and appreciate them.

JBiserkov• 18 years ago

To be honest, I did not understand part 2. There was a nice idea lurking out there somewhere around the subtitle "Reflections", but then he started generalizing and the post just ended.

I guess this is the point from which we should stop reading and start thinking.

I should probably learn more about meta-programming in order to understand what he meant.

edu• 18 years ago

A game is not an embedded system, a video game console (or a router, or any special purpose computer) is!

I see what he means, but it shouldn't be call embedded system. What about "embedded world", "contained world", "digital ecosystem"? I don't really like those names, though, sound too much from a 90s 'hacker' movies. What names would you use?

ii• 18 years ago

Steve's story has reminded me of the other HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=399967

This "other side" is exactly what makes low-level languages so powerful.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

Part 1 was an excellent read. Part two was a less excellent read, but deeper. I think the analogy of our universe being like an "embedded system" is a good one. I don't doubt that there's much more to it than we can understand, much like the betta can't understand why he's stuck in a fishbowl, or the hypothetical Mario who can't understand the invisible wall.

On another note, does anyone else find the "big bang" theory incredibly unsatisfying? I have no reason to believe it's not true, but as Yegge points out it seems to bring about more questions than it answers.

rw• 18 years ago

Steve, I'm sorry, but the universe may not be a Von Neumann architecture!

A programmer's view of the Universe, part 2: Mario Kart

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