Hacker News: whaaswijk

New comment by whaaswijk in "Graphics livecoding in Common Lisp"

whaaswijk — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 15:02:01 +0000

What makes it so much harder to publish a CL game on Steam versus a C++ game?

New comment by whaaswijk in "Nearly half of teenagers globally cannot read with comprehension"

whaaswijk — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 14:59:51 +0000

Legalese seems to me a different category more akin to technical writing. I wouldn’t classify difficulty understanding a legal document as a general lack of reading comprehension. It requires specific domain knowledge.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI"

whaaswijk — Tue, 16 May 2023 23:15:45 +0000

I’m not sure I should start a conversation on metaphysics here :-D

Still, I’m struck by your use of words like “should” and “goal”. Those imply ethics and teleology so I’m curious how those fit into your scientistic-sounding worldview. I’m not attacking you, just genuine curiosity.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI"

whaaswijk — Tue, 16 May 2023 21:19:27 +0000

I don’t understand your position. Are you saying it’s okay for computers to kill humans but not okay for humans to kill each other?

New comment by whaaswijk in "Meta rediscovers the cubicle"

whaaswijk — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 10:31:03 +0000

I think it would be “sphericles”.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests"

whaaswijk — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 16:24:26 +0000

I think that’s right. The analogy for straight men would be that they may want to love and sleep with many women but that it’s still wrong unless within a marriage.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests"

whaaswijk — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 16:19:19 +0000

AFAIK original sin does teach that all men are fallen and require salvation. This doesn’t mean that human nature is all bad and it’s indeed not the same as total depravity. However it’s also not true that men are born holy.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?"

whaaswijk — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 17:19:34 +0000

What’s the “something else” you’re currently using?

New comment by whaaswijk in "The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies"

whaaswijk — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 02:16:29 +0000

While I agree that simulation theory pushes the question up a level, that is not the case for the God of classical theism.

New comment by whaaswijk in "A skeptical take on ChatGPT: Ezra Klein interviews Gary Marcus"

whaaswijk — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 12:04:05 +0000

I think a key difference with humans is that ChatGPT doesn’t know that it doesn’t know.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Surviving disillusionment (2020)"

whaaswijk — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 12:11:44 +0000

This is surprising to hear. From my perspective as accomplices scientist being a doctor strikes me as one of the few jobs where you are obviously and directly helping people, thus “making the world a better place” (as we CS folks sometimes like to think we do).

New comment by whaaswijk in "Chess.com Says Hans Niemann’s $100M Lawsuit Is a ‘Public Relations Stunt’"

whaaswijk — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 17:02:51 +0000

So there can be no redemption? I can’t, off the top of my head, think of any endeavors where someone can never participate again once they’ve cheated. Certainly not in sports.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong"

whaaswijk — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 10:39:41 +0000

I hope you’re joking because that actually sounds like a terribly impoverished life for a human consciousness.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Impact of programming on primary mathematics learning"

whaaswijk — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 21:49:21 +0000

I have some anecdotal evidence against this. Learning how to write automated proofs using Isabel and HOL definitely improved my ability to write proofs with pen and paper. Also, I wonder what is meant by “traditional activities”. Unfortunately the article seems to be behind a paywall so I can’t check…

New comment by whaaswijk in "Why are you so busy?"

whaaswijk — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 13:06:00 +0000

Thanks, that sounds like a good strategy. I’ll have a look at the Accelerate book.

> how can you be expected to do better than practices espoused by industry leading research and companies? True, but not everyone has reasonable expectations :-) In those cases perhaps all that remains is to either have a frank discussion or to part ways.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Why are you so busy?"

whaaswijk — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 00:13:54 +0000

I think the “doing your work well” part is often the question. Am I really doing all I can? Could I do better/more? This then leads to working more and being busier. Maybe the problem is that it’s hard (for some of us) to know what “well” really means.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Your doppelgänger is out there and you probably share DNA with them"

whaaswijk — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 22:43:51 +0000

I mostly agree with your post. I’m just curious about which variables people care about most and how accurate your “far and away” statement is. For example, a quick google search suggests that if we take race/ethnicity, the following study shows that 17% of newlywed couples in the US are intermarried.[1] A minority to be sure, but a substantial one. Of course this is just one variable. It could be that such couples would be very similar wrt other factors. And this says nothing about the long-term potential of such relationships.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trend...

New comment by whaaswijk in "Your doppelgänger is out there and you probably share DNA with them"

whaaswijk — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 17:16:30 +0000

That’s actually not clear to me. Anecdotally I have often experienced the saying “opposite attract” to be true. I have had discussions with friends who hold your point of view. Of course it could also depend on how we define similarity (e.g in terms of race, ethnicity, personality type, etc.). I wonder if there’s some percentage of the population that’s wired to look outside of itself.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Ethereum Goerli testnet merge goes live before move to proof-of-stake"

whaaswijk — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 20:10:59 +0000

Is there a mechanism in place to stop people from laundering money with ethereum? This is a serious question, I’m a total noob when it comes to crypto.

New comment by whaaswijk in "Consciousness is not computation"

whaaswijk — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 13:25:25 +0000

I’m not sure the analogy to gravity works. At least in the case of gravity we have a model which (largely) explains the planetary orbits. As far as I know, we are not even close to a model in the case of consciousness. And even if we had a model for the “easy problem” it’s possible that the “hard problem” would still remain.

Edit: to be clear, I’m agnostic on this problem. I just don’t really like the emergence “model”, where we have a bunch of supposedly non-conscious matter and if we put enough of it together in the right way consciousness just pops into existence.