Hacker News: cnity

New comment by cnity in "Estimates are difficult for developers and product owners"

cnity — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:48:53 +0000

If you pretend not to use time, everyone will do an implicit time mapping in their head anyway. I've never seen it go any other way.

New comment by cnity in "No Competition? That's Usually a Red Flag for Solopreneurs"

cnity — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:32:14 +0000

I think you sort of have to learn things this way. What else are you going to do? Trust random blogs and comments online so much that you'll ignore your inner compass, which drives you to build a product?

New comment by cnity in "Vibe Code Warning – A personal casestudy"

cnity — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:34:24 +0000

Sometimes I read something on the internet and I think: finally someone has articulated something the way that I think about it. And it is very validating. And it cuts through a bunch of noise about how "oh you should be tuning and tweaking this prompt and that" and really speaks to the human experience. Thanks for this.

New comment by cnity in "How the cochlea computes (2024)"

cnity — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 18:29:22 +0000

Thanks for giving your two bits on the matter.

New comment by cnity in "Pyrex catalog from from 1938 with hand-drawn lab glassware [pdf]"

cnity — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:59:02 +0000

At 250ml it's not far off a half pint.

New comment by cnity in "Pyrex catalog from from 1938 with hand-drawn lab glassware [pdf]"

cnity — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:57:14 +0000

Totally agreed. And as the sibling comment points out, it started before AI slop became a thing. I think it's because technological progress in typesetting means you don't have to "care" as much (it is automatic). Of course as a result, this means modern typesetting is "careless".

Extend this metaphor however you please.

New comment by cnity in "Intercellular communication in the brain through a dendritic nanotubular network"

cnity — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 19:59:34 +0000

> There's no non-physical "ghost in the machine"

But of course there is a physical one, that at some point appears. Or, it is a kind of gradation that at its highest peak is a human, and at its deepest depths is...

New comment by cnity in "Intercellular communication in the brain through a dendritic nanotubular network"

cnity — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 19:57:53 +0000

I didn't say I wasn't a materialist :). It's important for consciousness philosophers to have a sense of humour, I think (and remember the shortcomings of their own arguments).

New comment by cnity in "Intercellular communication in the brain through a dendritic nanotubular network"

cnity — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:38:38 +0000

Materialists always seem to forget that they're kicking the can down the road.

New comment by cnity in "Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move"

cnity — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 20:21:45 +0000

"The perfect should not be the enemy of the good" is the wrong analogy here. It's more like "death by a thousand cuts". Limitations on free computer usage are like a ratcheting mechanism: they mostly go in one direction.

New comment by cnity in "The React Foundation"

cnity — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 15:36:23 +0000

You don't even need to "host" it per se, just include the icon source in the webpage. It's 315B.

New comment by cnity in "Microsoft is about to launch free Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads"

cnity — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:47:38 +0000

Just drink a verification can before the boss fight to freeze ads for 30 minutes.

New comment by cnity in "Credit markets look increasingly dangerous"

cnity — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 20:50:21 +0000

See: Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

New comment by cnity in "The Beer Can (2023)"

cnity — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:42:26 +0000

When I moved to London I used to love listening to ambient electronic music and taking the tube at night, and many of the quieter lines and back routes up emergency staircases and so on evoke what I suspect is a similar feeling (at least I think it's similar because it too reminds me of the HL aesthetic).

I wonder if growing up with particular kinds of video game experiences produces a particular affinity with certain situations in real life.

New comment by cnity in "Aphantasia and Psychedelics"

cnity — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 20:38:06 +0000

Maybe let's loop in other senses for a second. Since, presumably aphantasia doesn't apply to all senses? I can imagine the sensation of my tongue on a cold ice cream, and even the taste. But I don't _taste and feel_ it. I can imagine burning my hand on a hot stove, but I don't recoil. See how they are separate but related? The same is true for how I imagine things visually. I don't actually see them, but I imagine them. I don't know how else to articulate that seeing and visualising are not the same thing.

New comment by cnity in "Aphantasia and Psychedelics"

cnity — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:32:23 +0000

Honestly, your meditation experience sounds more like an altered state induced by the meditation, rather than confirmation of what non-aphantasiacs experience on a daily basis. And I'm jealous you had that experience.

New comment by cnity in "Aphantasia and Psychedelics"

cnity — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:27:50 +0000

> I can draw things I imagine, even though I can't see them.

This is what I mean though. What do you mean by "see" exactly, if not imagine? You can imagine something so clearly that you are able to replicate it on paper, yet that is not the minds eye? I also see while dreaming, in a way that is more like my day to day experience, and not at all how I would describe imagining things.

> I saw images as clearly as if I was looking at a photograph while awake

If anything this is more mind's eye clarity than I have ever experienced. My mind's eye is nothing like looking at an actual photograph.

New comment by cnity in "Aphantasia and Psychedelics"

cnity — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:08:49 +0000

I really wish I could occupy your brain for a few minutes to see just how much of this is language. There's an amazing effect in this conversation where I remain convinced that basically everything I've heard could come down to definitional differences, and yet it really could come down to a radically different subjective experience between us, and I have no real way of knowing.

New comment by cnity in "Aphantasia and Psychedelics"

cnity — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:06:39 +0000

It's hard to describe. I think there's more nuance here. When you ask "What colour was the apple?" then I can "fill in" the colour and imagine a "red" one. But it's more like the details are filled in "on demand" or "lazilly" rather than "ahead of time". And like I said, it's not the same thing as actual visual hallucination.

It is helpful to have someone engage, for sure. I have a question for you: if you look at a 3d object that you can only see one side of, can you make inferences about the other side of the object? Can you rotate it in your head? Could you quickly be able to tell whether an object will fit in a particular hole, without actually trying it?

New comment by cnity in "Aphantasia and Psychedelics"

cnity — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 16:06:33 +0000

My gut feel has always been that it is just a language thing where some people think that when others imagine things that they literally see it right in front of them _the same way_ they see real things.

Like, when I imagine a scene or object in my head, I am not literally seeing it. It's like some vague in-between thing. And that people who claim to have aphantasia just have a higher bar for what it means to "see" something.

Though I'm open to being corrected if there's some concrete experiment that can be performed that shows definitively that some people can not imagine things _at all_.