Hacker News with Generative AI: Philosophy

A brief meditation on formal systems and lying goblins (ghost.io)
The other day I came across some people on The Internet talking about a certain scene from Labyrinth, which is a movie from the 80s (if you haven't seen it you should - lavish musical numbers, very unsettling Jim Henson puppetry, David Bowie doing contact juggling in spandex, it's really got it all!)

Movies, Philosophy, Humor

26 points by mprast 5 hours ago | 5 comments

Questions for William J. Rapaport (docs.google.com)
On March 27 I'll have a discussion with William J. Rapaport.

Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Discussion

23 points by baziotis 8 hours ago | 3 comments

Thought-Tinkering – The Korean German Philosopher Byung-Chul Han (aeon.co)
Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives

Philosophy, Digital Capitalism, Korea

9 points by rbanffy 4 days ago | 0 comments

Gödel's theorem debunks the most important AI myth – Roger Penrose [video] (youtube.com)

Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, Philosophy

195 points by Lockal 4 days ago | 429 comments

Magic isn't real (pthorpe92.dev)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Technology, Science, Philosophy

29 points by SchwKatze 6 days ago | 8 comments

Bayes Is Not A Phase (dynomight.net)
People make fun of techie/rationalist/effective-altruist types for many weird obsessions, like stimulants or meditation or polyamory or psychedelics or seed oils or air quality or re-deriving all of philosophy from scratch. Some of these seem fair to me, or at least understandable.

Philosophy, Rationalism, Tech Culture

11 points by crescit_eundo 7 days ago | 0 comments

Jan Łukasiewicz (wikipedia.org)
Jan Łukasiewicz (Polish: [ˈjan wukaˈɕɛvit͡ʂ] ⓘ; 21 December 1878 – 13 February 1956) was a Polish logician and philosopher who is best known for Polish notation and Łukasiewicz logic.[1] His work centred on philosophical logic, mathematical logic and history of logic.[2] He thought innovatively about traditional propositional logic, the principle of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle, offering one of the earliest systems of many-valued logic.

Logic, Philosophy, Poland, Biography, History

4 points by fuzztester 8 days ago | 1 comments

Philosophy Tube: Elon Musk (2018) [video] (youtube.com)

Philosophy, YouTube, Elon Musk, Video Essays

6 points by agnishom 9 days ago | 0 comments

A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter (noemamag.com)
If we could stop bickering about which creatures do or don’t deserve to be called smart, an emerging movement of scientists and philosophers argue that we might discover fundamental elements of intelligence that are common to all life.

Philosophy, Consciousness, Biology, Artificial Intelligence

209 points by Hooke 9 days ago | 226 comments

Clean Code vs. A Philosophy Of Software Design (github.com/johnousterhout)

Software Design, Programming, Philosophy

486 points by recursivedoubts 10 days ago | 542 comments

The False Promise of Digital Public Squares Was Always a Scam (joanwestenberg.com)
The Ancient Greek agora was a place where students and citizens could freely gather, give speeches, engage in debate, and challenge each other.

Social Media, Scams, Philosophy, Ancient Greece

16 points by cratermoon 11 days ago | 11 comments

Gregory Bateson changed the way we think about changing ourselves (2019) (aeon.co)
There are times when a dilemma that seems like agony in adolescence can not only provide the basis for a prestigious career, but also lead to a profound shift in the world of ideas.

Philosophy, Psychology, Change, Ideas

7 points by yamrzou 12 days ago | 0 comments

The Gods of Straight Lines (lesswrong.com)
“He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” - Adam Smith

Economics, Philosophy, Invisible Hand

3 points by aghilmort 13 days ago | 0 comments

Are you conscious? A conversation between Richard Dawkins and ChatGPT (richarddawkins.substack.com)
Is AI truly conscious, or just an advanced illusion of thought? Richard Dawkins shares his conversation between ChatGPT displaying the depths of machine intelligence and its success passing the Turing Test for consciousness.

Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Philosophy, Language Models

6 points by herbertl 14 days ago | 1 comments

The Complexity of Agency (thetransmitter.org)
As we attempt to build autonomous artificial-intelligence systems, we’re discovering that a capability we take for granted in animals may be much more complex than we imagined.

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Agency

5 points by wjb3 15 days ago | 0 comments

Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs of God's Existence (astralcodexten.com)
It feels like 2010 again - the bloggers are debating the proofs for the existence of God. I found these much less interesting after learning about Max Tegmark’s mathematical universe hypothesis, and this doesn’t seem to have reached the Substack debate yet, so I’ll put it out there.

Philosophy, Mathematics, Religion

5 points by feross 16 days ago | 1 comments

Western Civilization in the Intelligence Age (praxisnation.com)
We are fighting a war for the soul of the West.

Western Civilization, Philosophy, Politics

4 points by gscott 16 days ago | 0 comments

All Is Unfinished: Henri Bergson's philosophy for our times (thenation.com)
Fama is a fickle deity. at the turn of the 20th century, Henri Bergson was one of the most famous people in the world, and certainly the most famous philosopher.

Philosophy, History, Culture

41 points by lermontov 17 days ago | 6 comments

Beautiful, boring, and without soul (doc.cc)
What could be more important in life than how you make people feel?

Design, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Human Connection

57 points by alfirous 18 days ago | 13 comments

Why Artificial General Intelligence Is and Remains a Fiction (osf.io)

Philosophy, Science

11 points by ketlag 18 days ago | 6 comments

So Many Unmarried Men (aeon.co)
In the 1950s, the philosopher Mary Midgley did something that, according to philosophical orthodoxy, she wasn’t supposed to do. In a BBC radio script for the Third Programme (the precursor of BBC Radio 3), she dared to point out that almost all the canonical figures in philosophy’s history had been unmarried men.

Philosophy, Gender Studies, History

64 points by makerdiety 19 days ago | 131 comments

Nature loves patterns (fayziev.com)
As I drift through my winter vacation, detoxing from work, tech and world matters, I notice my little brother crawling toward a heat stove. With a week of rest behind me, my mind wanders into philosophical territory, and I can't help but map this moment to machine learning.

Machine Learning, Philosophy, Nature

12 points by Nurbek-F 20 days ago | 1 comments

Ask HN: What is the best method for turning a scanned book as a PDF into text? (ycombinator.com)
I like reading philosophy, particularly from the authors rather than a secondhand account.

Text Extraction, OCR, Philosophy, Digital Books

206 points by resource_waste 21 days ago | 108 comments

The Tao of Go (bitfieldconsulting.com)
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf

Programming, Go, Software Development, Philosophy

21 points by mu0n 23 days ago | 11 comments

Worthwhile Lives for Sensitive Young Men (librarianofcelaeno.substack.com)
I was very grateful for the opportunity to speak with Johann Kurtz and Dave Greene the other day and for the chance to hear their views expounded more directly, as well as to elaborate on my own. Johann Kurtz has offered an afterword and I thought I might do so as well.

Philosophy, Identity, Masculinity, Substack

13 points by janandonly 23 days ago | 4 comments

How A Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian [Larry Sanger] (larrysanger.org)
It is finally time for me to confess and explain, fully and publicly, that I am a Christian.

Philosophy, Religion, Christianity, Personal Experiences

17 points by Boogie_Man 23 days ago | 9 comments

The Mythology of Work (2018) (crimethinc.com)
What if nobody worked? Sweatshops would empty out and assembly lines would grind to a halt, at least the ones producing things no one would make voluntarily. Telemarketing would cease. Despicable individuals who only hold sway over others because of wealth and title would have to learn better social skills. Traffic jams would come to an end; so would oil spills. Paper money and job applications would be used as fire starter as people reverted to barter and sharing.

Philosophy, Economics, Social Commentary

68 points by robtherobber 24 days ago | 96 comments

Relational Quantum Mechanics (plato.stanford.edu)
Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) is the most recent among the interpretations of quantum mechanics that are widely discussed today.

Quantum Mechanics, Physics, Philosophy

103 points by hackandthink 24 days ago | 27 comments

A Conversation with Ilya Sutskever on AI as Synthetic Life (accelerateordie.com)
Like the god of Genesis, we have created AI in our own image.

Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Philosophy

3 points by MediaSquirrel 24 days ago | 0 comments

Google DeepMind: Agency Is Frame-Dependent (arxiv.org)
Agency is a system's capacity to steer outcomes toward a goal, and is a central topic of study across biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence, Google, Philosophy, Science

4 points by Jimmc414 24 days ago | 2 comments