humanarity

“Unfounded assumption” that’s why they’re called assumptions, so we don’t have to found them. We don’t have to and we also can, so let’s found some of them.

“No reason speed of light would be processing speed.” No reason it isn’t, and actually there are some reasons it is. SOL limits rate of information propagation (ignoring quantum entanglement, which may be like two or more particles being initialized with a shared key to Universe memcache). Planck Constant limits amount of information. These two things provide clear limits on how fast and how much information can propagate, which is a reason which can contribute to a choice to assume that SOL or PC or their product tracks inherent or imposed computation limits of the Universe computer.

“The simulation speed (from POV of observers in simulation) and the simulator speed (from POV of observers outside the simulation) are unrelated, because even if the computer was suspended, we would not notice, because time also would have stopped.” If the effect is global this would be correct. If I pause the Universe computer, then no one notices they’ve stopped, because their noticing has also stopped. If I rewind and refresh from a backup, then no one notices they’ve gone back Groundhog day style, except if observer memories are stored separately to the main Universe state, then someone’s information can persist between refreshes (as happens in Groundhog day and Edge of Tomorrow). So if the Universe computer has one processing loop, one core and that slows down, then everything slows down, and no one notices.

However, what if different regions each do their own processing and then update each other by exchanging photons (and maybe operating on shared memcache if you want to get quantum)? In this case a local slowdown will not be observed globally, meaning that it can be observed in a simple manner the same way that relativistic time dilation is observed. Synchronize two watches, send one observer to the event region with one watch and keep the other watch here. When the other observer returns, measure the time difference (correcting for any effects induced by velocity or gravity) -- is there some left over? Is there some slow down as a result of the observer having been present in a region where computation had to slow to maintain precision (Planck constant) because there was so much going on? Or was precision sacrificed (Planck constant) for speed? What optimizaion choices were made in that part of the simulation? If time slows we can measure, if SOL slows we can measure (with a watch whose movement is bouncing laser between mirrors), if Planck changes we can also measure it. So the result of this is that if there are local optimization choices being made, these can be measured, and the experimental construction proposed remains a workable one. There is evidence that constants have changed over time, (perhaps as the creators made optimizations?), and change over regions (perhaps due to run-time optimization choices as we are proposing to test here). One untestable (because it can’t separate matter interaction from computation) intuitive hypothesis for why the SOL varies per medium is that there’s far less computation to be done as photons go through a vacuum, and interact with nothing, than when they go through a dense material and interact with many things.

“Any measurements of time distortion done inside the system would be unobservable” Actually this seems to not be the case even with past experiments. Time dilation can be measured when it results from local effects (such as SOL travel, gravity), and these experiments have validated the theory of relativistic time dilation. Watches going out of sync because of time dilation is a testable phenomenon. Evaluation the theory of time dilation due to localized resource constraints will be similarly testable.

“External time is not internal time, any slowdown will be unobservable.” Not if the effects are local, with different regions making their own optimization choices. We can send a watch to the region of the high-load event, and when it returns we can see if it slowed down relative to its twin here.

“The real universe may be more than capable of simulating without slow down, the constraints may be artificial to keep the simulation in check.” Exactly, it might. Whether they are inherent or imposed limits of the Universe computer, if the effects occur locally we can test them.

“Benchmarking the universe.” Yes.

“Crash a few galaxies together.” Well, yes. Just observe when this happens and figure out a way to use the data we already have for those event to test theory of Planck constant or SOL being diminished due to these effects.

Taking it Further

What if the gravity effects from which we hypothesised the existence of dark matter were really just local resource constraints on the SOL or processing speed, resulting from optimization choices when large objects like galaxies are doing something load-heavy?

What if gravity itself is an optimization? The more gravity you have the less things you have to calculate because the more you restrict the movement leading to less possible system microstates. Broadly, infinite gravity is a black hole with 0 observable microstates, while 0 gravity is open space, with infinite possible microstates. Gravity could then change from place to place based on optimization choices, explaining the anomalous dark matter by assuming the effects observed resulted from changes in gravitation rather than extra matter.

However all these consequences is just theorizing. What we have is a theory that is testable.

So should we despair that "nothing is real?" Hold your horses. Even if such an effect was validated by experiment, it's possible that Universe computer and simulation is simply an analogy for some physical principle at work. If that's true it's still a neat analogy. After all, all our theories are really just analogies to help us think about and model things about the real world.

What's FB?

continuing

It's like the universe at galactic scale: broadly the same in all directions as far as you look.

And if I'm on this one peak of many peaks, then if I go off searching, it's likely I'll find other peaks comparable to where I was. So the first unintuitive result is that search is likely to produce comparably stable conditions, instead of the "shattering fear and chaos" which may be feared to result from leaving a local peak.

The second result is based on the following observation: the peaks are distributed across a range of heights that's modelled well by a bell curve (based on subjective metrics of personal utility). The very small and the very large peaks are rare. This has a number of relevant consequences. Firstly, it's roughly as hard to fall off the cliff and into chaos as it is to ascend to the heights of huge success, which reinforces our first unintuitive result that search mostly preserves the equilibrium. Because comparable conditions are the most common, you're more likely to keep finding them than anything distressingly (or delightfully) too different.

The second relevant consequence for our discussion of optimization of your lifepeak is because more successful and less successful than you are more rare, it's unlikely where you are starting out in your search is anything close to a global optima. In fact it's overwhelming more likely it's just a normal peak, no matter what narratives you attach to it (like the story I told above, as good as that sounds, it's still overhwlemingly likely that's mostly normal). The great thing about this is there's a whole bunch of peaks out there that are better than where we currently are. And we give can find them if we try. We give ourselves a chance to find them only if we try.

The other great thing about looking for higher peaks is, and this is similar to the argument about why you should only focus on the biggest problems, that great peaks are mostly unoccupied. The higher the peak is, the less life is up there, because it's themodynamically harder to reach it.

And thermodynamics applies everywhere. Well, everywhere that matters for optimizing your life peak. I.e, it's unlikely you'll want to be on the edge of our knowledge inside the event horizon of a black hole. But personal utility is subjective, so...Maybe that works for you.

These two unintuitive results, first, that by searching you are more likely to find comparable conditions than worse or better ones, and second, that where you are is unlikely to be the best and there are other better ones out there that have paths untrod and are unoccupied, (peaks that are waiting just for you), provide a compelling reason for us to search from where we are.

And if you lay breadcrumbs, you might even be able to trek your way back.

This "existence proof" of a better life waiting over the horizon of travel, is not constructive.

It doesn't actually tell us how to produce such a better life.

Tho, strangely, these results do offer some heuristic algorithms for search.

1. Because where you are is unlikely to be the best, you are better off pivoting if you are desiring a higher utility co-ordinate for yourself. And you don't even have to worry about "am I up to this" because you were "up to it" to find your current peak, and given the relevant characteristics of the landscape (uniformity and scale), this means you are up to it to stumble, however hopelessly you may feel you stumble, upon comparable conditions elsewhere! If however, you have your heart set on "better conditions" then the corollary of this is that, while travel may "open your eyes" to lower energy paths through the landscape, the Universal Rules, uniformity and scale, mean that you will need a similar additional quantum of energy to raise your peak abroad as you will at home.

Let that sink in. It's actually not going to be any easier, thermodynamically speaking in the aggregate, to get your life peak better if you travel far away than if you don't. Because this is a law of aggregate statistics it goes hand in hand with all its individuated exceptions, and it still operates: broadly speaking, you've just as much chance of finding a higher peak in your neighbourhood than across the globe.

This unintuitive result has other nice corollaries in that it's not really easier to make it if you're overseas than if you're at home, contrary to the sometimes myth that it is, a result which you can contribute as a reason to variously stay or to go, as you please.

So returning to our second algorithm heuristic for lifepeak search, it works to start by realizing that there will be additional energy requirements to improve your life, wherever you are.

Now, this is where it gets really interesting.

Someone has said that perspective is 80 IQ points. That simply presenting something from a perspective that works has huge utility in itself. Perspective is a super power. You can enhance or limit your inherent abilities with your choice of perspective.

In chemistry, we call this a catalyst. Perspective lowers the barrier of entry to different achievements, making it easier to unlock higher lifepeaks. Perspective flattens the energy landscape, allowing to see further.

And travel, can give you, perspective.

That's probably one of it's most powerful operations.

And it's not some mythical hand-waving argument that travel gives you perspective just so, it's actually because (cue hand-waving mythical argument) the conceptual lag between the apparent nature of things (their difference) in other places, and their unobvious inherent sameness (the Universal Rules), gives you space. You get mental space where even though you feel you are in a different place, you are actually in inherently the same place, aggregately speaking.

And when you have space you are free to move around.

And being free to move around is freedom to change your perspective. That's the definition of perspective, mental space to move around in. And it's the very appearance of things you find in travel (the apparent difference of which hides their inherent sameness), it's the very lag before you catch up to that, before you learn that patterns, which gives you that mental space to gain perspective to flatten the energy landscape to trek your way to that new, higher, peak.

So being in the unknown is not mythically just better for you, it actually works by this mechanism to make it easier for you.

It's still going to take more energy to get to a higher peak, though maybe you're new found perspective has made that energy requirement less than it otherwise would have been, for you, and because you've learned something (by not yet learning how similar things really are) it is easier for you to go to that new higher life peak.

Time here to offer a word of caution. What makes it easier to go up also makes it easier to go down. And many a foreign expat in a faraway land has succumbed to one form of burnout or another. The fresh perspective is not a magical cure all: it's a powerful tool, and it's up to you and your choices what results you produce with that power you chose to give yourself. So if you're thinking travel will solve all your problems, maybe it will, and yet just go cautiously that you have enough resourcefulness and resilience to keep yourself away from the chasms, because even though that landscape flattens now, when it finally straightens out as your learn the inherent sameness, those chasms will seem mighty deep, I imagine, so, buyer beware.

Finally, returning to the search algorithm heurstic suggested by this line of reasoning, we have: keep your eyes open, stay loose and let go, don't try to see the sameness straight away, see the difference, because you're going to catch up anyway and the longer you stay in the unknown the more perspective you have. This is the fourth unintuitive result: spend time in ignorance longer in a new culture, let the difference go to work on you. Learn less language, not more, because being in the dark will keep you on your toes and also keep your perspective fresh, and if you're searching for that higher life peak, and fresher perspective is one of the things which works to have in your toolchain.

Now these two heuristic search algorithms we've presented:

1. Pivot. Just go 2. Stay loose. Stay dumb,

(which conveniently seem to encode rigorously the very hippy traveler aesthetic practised by the most seasoned nomads and incurable wanderers -- likely hooked on the perspective high),

neither of these, guarantee you'll find higher peaks, what you get is up to you. And maybe you'll create your own algorithms to optimize your travel experience, or even to find higher peaks in your neighbourhood. That would be awesome. Heed the general principles above is likely a place to start with that works.

And, finally, something must be said to address this question.

What if you search and you find that you were at the apex already?

Sit up there and have a cup of tea? Gaze down superiously at your surrounding kingdom and minions?

Or maybe you got to ask yourself, if you wanted to leave what was the Everest in that landscape, maybe you're in the wrong space?

So, the remedy for that is ... more travelling to gain clarity for what kind of space might work better for you.

Peace out.

Wow, I got my first "That comment was too long". Okay, I'm breaking this into two replies because it's just too good to not put here.

I ended up getting a better job overseas (paid to research and code what I want). And then I quit that and ended up getting an even better opportunity after travelling again, and after a fun period interning at a magazine, then making investment banker money for building an ecommerce site.

I think the more glibly you express it, ("Quit your job! Travel the world!" would have to be one of the more concise expressions) the more possible meanings that statement can encode, so the more open it is to interpretation.

I think the essence of being successful doing that (by essence I mean one main cause and requirement) is simply the willingness to leave one opportunity to find a better one.

From a thermodynamic viewpoint, the more you raise your energy (unbound state), the more possible energy states you can access. The more "stable" things are, the less energy states (read possibilities) you will access.

From an "multivariate optimization" perspective (how you maximize your utility over a couple of metrics relevant to you with the space of possibilities some kind of undulating surface) you are searching the landscape of possibilities, the willingness to "pivot" off a local maxima and begin searching again is a strategy that makes finding higher peaks possible.

Diving deeper, heuristically the landscape is large (there are many possible configurations of your axes of utility, i.e, many possible situations), and also mostly self-similar (because there are certain rules which operate in the world which cycle and combine to produce familiar patterns, for example, human psychology, means that, broadly, people's reactions to a given situation will mostly be the same across cultures, and their motivations will be similar as well, such as in aggregate people are motivated by their fears (of not having enough, of shame) and by their ego (competing with other egos), and by their culture (social norms, shared history and cultural identity), and by what the narrative they choose for themselves (hero, victim, "normal", "outcast", "individual" roughly corresponding to high school film tropes, thou becoming more multifaceted and specialised with age -- people become niche experts at being who they are, is another way of saying habits become ingrained). So these personal identities and cultural identities drive people, and these identities are shaped by forces uniform across the world, and people drive the world, so the world, in most ways you look, is essentially the same. It is also very very different, yet the difference is obvious. The sameness merits mention because it is one of those "hacks" that is not always inherently obvious, and even when it is, there's a lot of depth to the self-similar characters of different places, and a lot of utility to be gained by learning about what's similar wherever you are.

So back to the "optimization" analogy, if we are walking a landscape that has two characteristics, it's large and mostly uniform, there are some consequences suggested by these observations. If I'm on a local peak in a large landscape (i.e, I have one a many possible jobs in many possible places), and that landscape is mostly uniform, then there's probably a lot of other peaks even a far way away.

When you've decided it's failed.

Many successful people say: "Never give up. Be persistent. That's the key to being successful."

Edison would agree with them.

- Machine superintelligence as a scientific research aid.

- Consciousness transfer to machine substrate research.

- Other life extension research.

Invest enough in some businesses to ensure the pot is renewed yearly.

For some reason this reminded me of female primates using violence to get male interest and sex:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82GUjPConiE

The Bonobo society also exhibits female alphas and uses extensive sexual activities (including hetero/homo and "group") to maintain social bonds.

However, even despite the apparent "similarities" I question our anthropomorphic instinct to assign to or infer too much meaning from the behaviour of our primate genetic relatives.

One reason contributing to that choice is because how humans behave in societies is shaped by centuries of social, cultural and political discourse on the ways in which we behave.

Right and there's about 9 million items, so average is 4 points per item. I don't feel the average is very meaningful in this case. I'd also want to know, range, median and mode and a frequency histogram for the 100 largest, 100 frequent, and 100 rarest item scores.

Also I'm now wondering what's the total karmic wealth of reddit, stackexchange and Facebook each?

Does that include down votes ?

And then there's that.

Now I've learned another thing new today.

I beg to differ. According to the poll there are 4.

The poll was designed to be future proof. Who will be able to research the present in 1000 years if we don't make records today? Doomsday book for HN.

You and 4 others :)

This guy is awesome. I read some articles of his on kalzumeus ages ago and thought, "he really gets it." To see the pic of him and know more about him is really great. Thanks for this post.

To anyone deploying to App Engine or GCE having this issue I found a workaround is to use 'gcloud preview app deploy ./app.yaml' instead of 'appcfg.py update ./app.yaml --no_cookies --oauth2'

YMMV

And now, 5 minutes later, it's back.

Wow that's kind of cool. :)

If it crashes (the notifications get stuck), just go to chrome://extensions and click "Enabled" to disable it. And then click "Enabled" again to re-enable it. That fixes it.

The with rainbows version is just uploaded to the Webstore now. Maybe it's up in a few minutes. Pic here: http://i.imgur.com/Zp5D8na.png

Another way to think of it is this : there's no orange flair so far, because the pressers haven't let it get below 21. Getting orange is dependent on what the collective does, a robot isn't going to help you beat that, only let you be there when it finally goes down without having to neglect your life in the meantime.

JIT sounds interesting. Do you have a good ref?

I don't feel the constant factors are large on Thompson. It's essentially linear to construct IIRC, and matching next char is then proportional to the number of current States which are valid. Which is bounded by the vertexes in the NFA which will mostly be less than DFA.

I don't see how you can get more efficient than that, because you're just keeping track of all the matching states which would seem to be the minimum required. I'm really keen to learn an even better way.

The proposal is a workable heuristic ( use the practically working algorithm rather than the one with a theoretical low bound which is costly in practice ), and people do well to heed it in many places, however I don't believe it applies here because Thompson is great in practice.

You sound like you know a lot about this, what am I missing?

You can add some irregularity to the NFA construction. It's no longer "regular" but you can decorate it with some things like lookbacks, remembering multiple matches and more, and still get the benefit of the NFA. I remember adding a few such features a couple years ago.

And Ken Thompson's original 1968 paper,

http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/cursos/intropln/material/p419-th...

Consider this, if there's 10 human players you're competing against and they take turns occupying 2.4 hour spots, will those players essentially cover the entire space 24/7?

As far as you are concerned the rest of reddit may be either 10million human players, or 1 million robots, can you tell me who you are playing against? I'd say to you, it's the same.

Now, in a two player tournament, yes, using a robot gives you an advantage because the opponent probably has less stamina than your robot.

But in a competition involving thousands of people, there's really no advantage over any one person because the greatest force on any individual player is the sum of all other players against them, not one player with a robot. Do you think that sounds reasonable?

So the way I see it using a robot is really only a way to make things more comfortable for yourself, just like driving coast to coast is probably more comfortable and likely less time consuming than walking. It's not unfair to walkers, you're not stopping them from walking coast to coast. The only thing that might stop walkers is their stamina.

So while it's true that the reddit case does exhibit scarcity and competition for that (there's only so many click spots per reset), whether people are playing with robots or flesh doesn't make any difference to you, because wherever you are, at whatever time, there's always someone else there with you. It's somewhat ludicrous to think that you will have an advantage if it's all people because say at 2:14 am August 29th, 2015, all 2927 other people are all dozing off just at the same moment that the counter gets to 19 seconds and you push it. I mean, does that sound likely?

Not really, right, because there's always going to be people just alert as you. And robots don't really give you any more grief than people.

It's an interesting argument, and there's probably more to it. I'm sure I'm missing something, and thanks for giving me something to bounce off.

Hey, maybe you can try out a Chrome Ext robot yourself :)

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rthebutton-robot/m...

Please let me know if there's any bugs.

The last couple hours I hacked together a chrome ext that notifies you whenever anyone presses the button (oh god) and also can run a robot to press it for you. It works, tho I don't claim there's no bugs.

The github:

https://github.com/humanarity/reddit-thebutton-push-it

And the Webstore:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rthebutton-robot/m...

Check it out! :)

Got it, cool. :)

Got it, cool.

That's a really great point, too! :)

:)

So is that like load-balancing out from reddit.com to all those IPs, is that the purpose of so many?

Does that mean when I make a request to reddit or HN, CF fetches the data and I get it through their proxy? Or am I missing something ...

Right ok.