Are you fucking stupid? Names actually are useful, which is why we propers nouns at all.
Jesus fuck the supporters of Trump really are a pack of morally compromised halfwits.
Like for example Bill Atkinson's famous productive -2000 lines: https://www.folklore.org/Negat...
For decades I've been suggesting on-and-off that a big problem is too many commercial programmers writing too much code and making too much work for each other with an endless proliferation adhoc interfaces, each a new "standard".
As an egregious example, years ago I read somewhere that Microsoft Office embeds like six entirely different virtual machines. Maybe it has improved since with the CLR?
Except for proprietary competitive forces, how many spreadsheets, compilers, VMs, email clients, word processors, and databases do we really need? Even in the realm of games, how many game engines do we need? Granted, game content may be a different story, but even there how many low-to-medium-quality games do we need?
The same is true to an extent with the entire internet. How many low-to-medium-quality comments do we need to wade through on various topics?
Imagine if everyone was using, say, (optionally-typed) Scheme with a great set of libraries to write everything (including with "org mode" in a Scheme-powered emacs-like multi-tool with a calendar etc), and there was just no "JSON" or "JavaScript" or "XML" or "Office-compatible adhoc file formats" or even "C" or "Rust". Not saying that an optionally-typed Scheme is the best choice, but what a different computing world to imagine. Guess my Symbolics 3600 Lisp machine experience in the 1980s spoiled me.
I know an obvious objection (as with Linux's endless front-end and distributions) is about choice, but at some point there is a tyranny of excessive choice, like "twisty little passage ways all alike".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less is a book about overchoice written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 by Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyzes the behavior of different types of people (in particular, maximizers and satisficers). This book argues that the dramatic explosion in choice--from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs--has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse."
I have no problem with people writing personal code for fun or learning or personal growth (which I highly recommend) -- the same way a person may play the piano as a hobby without expecting every time they play a tune the result needs to become a packaged commercial musical product.
The main thing I think about these days is how to have a much simpler tech ecosystem. Including for this reason outlined by Rich Hickey (author of Clojure) in "Simple Made Easy":
https://www.infoq.com/presenta...
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Rich Hickey emphasizes simplicity's virtues over easiness', showing that while many choose easiness they may end up with complexity, and the better way is to choose easiness along the simplicity path.
We should aim for simplicity because simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability.
Simple is often erroneously mistaken for easy. "Easy" means "to be at hand", "to be approachable".
"Simple" is the opposite of "complex" which means "being intertwined", "being tied together". Simple != easy.
What matters in software is: does the software do what is supposed to do? Is it of high quality? Can we rely on it? Can problems be fixed along the way? Can requirements change over time? The answers to these questions is what matters in writing software not the look and feel of the experience writing the code or the cultural implications of it.
The benefits of simplicity are: ease of understanding, ease of change, ease of debugging, flexibility.
Complex constructs: State, Object, Methods, Syntax, Inheritance, Switch/matching, Vars, Imperative loops, Actors, ORM, Conditionals.
Simple constructs: Values, Functions, Namespaces, Data, Polymorphism, Managed refs, Set functions, Queues, Declarative data manipulation, Rules, Consistency.
Build simple systems by:
* Abstracting - design by answering questions related to what, who, when, where, why, and how.
* Choosing constructs that generate simple artifacts.
* Simplify by encapsulation.
====
Or, as a joke:
"Weinberg's Law: If builders built buildings the way (current-AI-enhanced-HR-staffer) programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/...
I suspect you were just asked to be nice, and through a combination of spectrum OCD and insufficient cognitive therapy, you decided somehow you were being asked to do something wrong.
So you helped elect an ignorant sociopath. Congrats on that. Maybe you should have attended more of those cognitive therapy sessions.
In case he does, I hope Bill Gates is learning to laugh at the irony my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
Or in other words, as people were saying even in the 1960s:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/...
"To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer."
How can we mitigate that risk? Like President John F. Kennedy quipped (echoed by Joel Goodman of the Humor Project):
https://www.humorproject.com/d...
"There are three things which are real:
God, human folly, and laughter.
The first two are beyond our comprehension.
So we must do what we can with the third." (John F. Kennedy)
Or, as I explain in more detail:
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security [and economic] thinking. Those "security" [and economic] agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
Here is someone involved in AI who gets that our direction out of any AI singularity may have a lot to do with our social direction and level of compassion going into it:
"Ex-Google Officer: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before It Hits! - Mo Gawdat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"AI Expert Mo Gawdat returns to The Diary Of A CEO to reveal why AGI has already arrived, why 30% of jobs will disappear by 2027, and why the most dangerous thing about AI isn't the technology - it's the people in charge of it. Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer at Google X, founder of One Billion Happy, and co-founder of Emma.Love. He is a 4x international bestselling author, and his upcoming book 'Alive: A Human's Guide to Living in the World of AI', will be released in October 2026."
I'm glad to see more AI and technology leaders starting to get that. Another example:
https://www.schmidtsciences.or...
""As AI systems advance, we face the risk that they will act in ways that contradict human values and interests--but this risk is not inevitable," said Eric Schmidt. "With efforts like the AI Safety Science program, we can help build a future in which AI benefits us all while maintaining safeguards that protect us from harm."
The cohort of researchers--including "godfather of AI" Yoshua Bengio at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, OpenAI board member Zico Kolter at Carnegie Mellon University, and "AI Snake Oil" author Arvind Narayanan at Princeton University--will focus their work on research that addresses the critical safety challenges that AI faces."
Ultimately though, guard rails can come off or be jumped -- so we really need AI with a sense of humor -- especially for irony.
--------
And we also need AI developers and funders who root their work more in compassion as a guiding force more than competition.
Something I wrote to Ray Kuzweil on that back in 2000 (put up by someone else I sent a copy to):
https://heybryan.org/fernhout/...
"It will be difficult for you to change your opinion on this because you have been heavily rewarded for riding the digital wave. You were making money building reading machines before I bought my first computer -- a Kim-I. But, I think someday the contradiction may become apparent of thinking the road to spiritual enlightenment can come from material competition (a point in your book which deserves much further elaboration). To the extent material competition drives the development of the digital realm the survival of humanity is in doubt."
And also in 2001:
https://heybryan.org/fernhout/...
"Beware that people (usually not well versed in E&E [Ecology & Evolution]) cite ecology and evolution all the time to support a belief, but that does not make it a scientifically valid thing to do. For example, it is common to cite competition as a given in nature, but Lewis Thomas in "Lives of a Cell" points out that most successful organisms participate in effectively collaborative efforts -- like the symbiosis between mitochondria and eukaryotic cells. Likewise, the fact that something is true in most species does not mean that humans (given intelligence and culture) should behave that way -- because if E&E teaches anything, it is that there is a lot of diversity out there."
And in 2007:
https://heybryan.org/fernhout/...
"Technologies designed to amplify and extend the scope of corporate greed likely just will not have the same positive basis as ones built out of joy and humor and love. If you ever watch the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, greed seems much more likely to design "Queeg" than "Holly". Langdon Winner writes about related issues at length in his classic _Autonomous Technology_.
In short, I feel it likely you are clinging to outdated disprove assumptions about motivation and creativity and economics. And I speculate that the reason is in part ironically from your past success. Those assumptions may be holding you back, and holding on to them may indeed help bring about a very negative side of the singularity you want to avoid."
Also on that theme: https://www.alfiekohn.org/cont...
"No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other -- at work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns all of us into losers.
Contrary to the myths with which we have been raised, Kohn shows that competition is not an inevitable part of "human nature." It does not motivate us to do our best (in fact, the reason our workplaces and schools are in trouble is that they value competitiveness instead of excellence.) Rather than building character, competition sabotages self-esteem and ruins relationships. It even warps recreation by turning the playing field into a battlefield.
No Contest makes a powerful case that "healthy competition" is a contradiction in terms. Because any win/lose arrangement is undesirable, we will have to restructure our institutions for the benefit of ourselves, our children, and our society. For this [1992] revised edition, Kohn adds a comprehensive account of how students can learn more effectively by working cooperatively in the classroom instead of struggling to be Number One. He also offers a pointed and personal afterword, assessing shifts in American thinking on competition and describing reactions to his provocative message."
Finally, recalcitrant peptides are depleted in cytoplasmic and mitochondrial domains and strongly enrichedby up to 16-foldin calcium-dependent phospholipid-binding C2 domains. C2 domains mediate Ca2+-regulated binding of proteins to anionic phospholipids on membrane surfaces, (58) and their enrichment indicates that peptide persistence is disproportionately associated with proteins stabilized at membranes, rather than within freely soluble intracellular compartments. Loss of ionic homeostasis and rising intracellular Ca2+ during post-mortem decay (6) would be expected to further promote sustained membrane association of such proteins. Membrane-adjacent microenvironments are structurally constrained, concentrating redox-active substrates and catalysts (such as lipids and metals) while restricting diffusion and oxygen availability relative to the cytosol. In this context, radical oxidation is less likely to proceed via chain propagation, which requires continuous access to molecular oxygen, (59) and more likely to locally terminate via cross-linking. Such cross-linking would be expected to reduce molecular mobility and solubility, sterically hinder enzymatic and hydrolytic attack, and promote the formation of insoluble aggregates resistant to degradation. (60)
A further factor likely reinforcing this taphonomic trajectory is the brain’s unusually large and heterogeneous reservoir of redox-active iron. (61) Nervous tissue contains high iron concentrations relative to most other soft tissues, distributed across multiple pools such as heme proteins, ferritin-bound stores, and iron-rich compartments associated with mitochondria, myelin, and oligodendrocytes. (62) In life, these pools are tightly regulated to support oxidative metabolism while limiting collateral damage. (63) After death, however, progressive membrane failure and loss of regulatory control are expected to alter iron speciation and availability, increasing the likelihood of local metal-catalyzed radical generation. Importantly, such chemistry need not produce uniform oxidative destruction: when redox reactions involving iron occur within membrane-adjacent or diffusion-limited microenvironments, they may favor the formation of short-lived aromatic radicals that terminate by covalent cross-linking rather than by chain-propagating oxidation (Table S22). The enrichment of peroxidaseswhich often involve heme iron or metal cofactors (64)among recalcitrant peptides is compatible with localized, metal-associated redox chemistry, in which iron-containing cofactors may contribute to peroxide-driven radical formation without sustaining chain-propagating oxidation.
The brain is particularly predisposed to follow this trajectory. In life, it is among the most oxidatively stressed organs: it consumes a disproportionate share of oxygen, is rich in redox-active metals, and relies heavily on antioxidant and repair systems to maintain protein integrity. (65) Additionally, the brain combines extreme membrane density, (66) an abundance of structurally stable, long-lived proteins that accumulate heterogeneous oxidative modifications during life, (67) and anatomical sequestration within the cranial vault. Together, these features establish a post-mortem environment characterized by pre-existing chemical and structural heterogeneity, limited molecular mobility, and restricted oxygen exchange: conditions that favor local, diffusion-limited radical reactions and termination by cross-linking rather than runaway, chain-propagating oxidation. Notably, the molecular features that define this post-mortem pathway closely parallel those that stabilize aggregation-prone protein assemblies in neurodegenerative disease: enrichment of -sheet and structurally ordered fragments, (68) redox-active residue modifications, (69) and oxidative cross-links (70) are hallmarks of pathological protein aggregation in vivo. While the biological contexts differ fundamentally, these parallels indicate that common chemical processes govern protein persistence across clinical and geological time scales.
I know that 28 was wrong.
Great. Progress. Now here's the important thing: If you understood Shor's algorithm you would know that 28 couldn't possibly have been the number. So this should cause you to conclude that you are in general overconfident about how much you know or understand about how quantum computers would function. This doesn't mean you are necessarily wrong, but it should indicate that you are overconfident here or could you use a more detailed introduction or refresher on the topic. My preferred recommendation is Aaronson's "Quantum Computing Since Democritus." The book assumes no technical prereqs beyond basic calculus and a tiny amount of linear algebra.
However, you seem to be totally ignorant with regards to algorithmic complexity. That means you do not even have the very basics needed to be in this exchange.
If you think there's some specific indication that I'm in general ignorant about algorithmic complexity, please feel free to point it out. If there's a specific statement I've made that indicates that, by all means show it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid" -- the artificial person, from _Aliens_
