Search

Ideas that are…

Search Ideas


83 ideas match your query.:

My point is rather that it's not so clean a line between explicit and inexplicit. You're a doctor, so imagine the steps being something like:

  1. Extensive description of patient's symptoms, test results, conclusion, etc, in English.
  2. Same as above but mostly made out of quick notes by attending doctors and nurses.
  3. Only a collection of test names and test results. Test results accompanied by Chinese.
  4. Just a collection of numbers coming out of tests, without saying which test.

Arguably all the information is always there, and can be read off, but with increasing difficulty, requiring you to learn another language, or do a series of deductions.

#2256​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 5 months ago

Not a doctor. But it's not hard for me to imagine untainted memory but a script with an error such that it can't manage to look up the information.

#2241​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 6 months ago​·​Criticized1

Let's fuck with your intuitions a little bit:

Say "stop" when it's no longer an explanation:

  • Didactic chapter in plain English with examples and edge cases, distilled into a concise technical note with formal definitions, invariants, and pseudocode.

  • Literate program interleaving prose and code, or a heavily commented Python implementation with docstrings and tests.

  • The same code stripped of comments/tests and then minified or obfuscated (e.g., Python one‑liner, obfuscated C), up through esolangs and formalisms (Brainfuck, untyped lambda calculus with Church numerals, SKI combinators).

  • Operational specifications with minimal labels (Turing machine tables), then hand‑written assembly without labels and self‑modifying tricks, down to raw machine code bytes/hex and binary blobs with unknown ISA or entry point.

  • The same bits recast as DNA base mapping with unknown block codec, unknown compression, encrypted archives indistinguishable from noise, arbitrary bitstrings for unspecified UTMs, or physical media (flux/RF) without modulation specs.

#2238​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 6 months ago

Dirk approves of your comment.

#2154​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 6 months ago

How could we integrate that vision with Popper's definition (paraphrased): a tension, inconsistency, or unmet explanatory demand that arises when a theory clashes with observations, background assumptions, or rival theories, thereby calling for conjectural solutions and critical tests.

#2152​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 6 months ago

I don't think a gene has problems. It does not have ideas.

#2149​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 6 months ago​·​Criticized1

Do explanations have to be expressible?

#2010​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 6 months ago

Sure, philosophers and pedants do. But typically people use the word "know" in situations well short of being absolutely sure.

#1604​·​Dirk Meulenbelt revised 8 months ago​·​Original #1602​·​CriticismCriticized1

Sure, philosophers and pedants do. But typically people use the word "know" in situations well short of being absolutely sure.

#1602​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 8 months ago

We can't always be wrong, because that implies that correct ideas are not expressible, which makes no sense.

I think there is a sense in which we cannot always be sure that we are right, as there's always some possibility that we are wrong, even if we think we are completely right. And if we are completely right, there is nothing that is "manifest" about that.

Let's say I open my fridge, and there is cheese there, I conclude "I have cheese in my fridge". I may be hallucinating, or wrong about the category of cheese, or it just appears like cheese, or whatever. In that sense I could potentially be wrong. However I find it silly to think that I am infinitely wrong in my assessment of where my food is, all the time. That's like saying that we don't know what happens after we die. We do in every single way in which we use the term "know".

I think this idea that we are always wrong needs a rephrase, such as "we could always consider how we could be wrong", or "there is nothing that justifies our true belief", or "we could and should always criticise", or "nothing exists outside of criticism" (as we picked 1+1 and not 1+2 for some critical reason). The rephrase leaves open the possibility of being right a lot, like about where your food is, because you just found it, while still leaving open the possibility that the cheese you just saw is actually your butter.

#1585​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, 9 months ago

Copyright is stifling to creativity, as now people are not incentivised to write fan-fictions.

#1326​·​Dirk MeulenbeltOP revised 12 months ago​·​Original #1323​·​Criticized2

This is stifling to creativity, as now people are not incentivised to write fan-fictions as much as without copyright.

I fail to see how fan fiction is at all damaging to an original creator.

We have found an example where copyright is bad.

Where is copyright good?

#1323​·​Dirk MeulenbeltOP, 12 months ago​·​Criticized2

I am not allowed to sell my Star Wars fan-fiction. Why not?

#1321​·​Dirk MeulenbeltOP, 12 months ago

Interesting. I recall this felt 'off'. I keep learning grammar details after 20 years of knowing English.

#726​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

agreed

#725​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

There are a bunch of things that start with Zu, such as ZuBerlin, ZuThailand, etc. I suppose that too could've been explained clearer

#724​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

Agreed

#723​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

Agreed

#722​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

I suppose not

#721​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

Indeed

#720​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

Gotcha

#719​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

I suppose that too warrants an explanation.

#718​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

I didn't know that. I figured linking to the tweet that posted it would be fine.

#717​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago​·​Criticized1

How could I explain a term in the headline?

#716​·​Dirk Meulenbelt, over 1 year ago

As I write in the first link, the videos “mostly show bugs and nonsensical behavior, things that wouldn’t happen if animals were sentient.”

P.S. Dirk was here

#429​·​Dirk MeulenbeltOP revised over 1 year ago​·​Original #401