qbit

I’ve always been somewhat dissatisfied with image viewing/browsing software. Gqview and Sequential came close to being what I wanted, but there were things about both that I didn’t like. I finally just wrote my own custom viewer using pyqt. For me, it is perfect software!

A chicken once beat a friend of mine at tic-tac-toe at a state fair.

I just wanted to mention how I cope with occasional restless leg syndrome. I find that a wall sit for two minutes right before trying to fall asleep works every time. I have to do it long enough and push hard enough to make my legs really burn from the exertion. The more unpleasant it is, the better it works. Afterwards, I immediately get in bed and try to go to sleep (it doesn’t work unless I do it right before attempting to fall asleep). Usually by the time my heart rate returns to normal, I’m asleep.

I disable js in safari (which is my main browser) on ios. If there is something that I really want to see that requires js, I switch to brave which has js enabled. But most of the time if a site requires js, I just leave the site. I now find browsing the web with js enabled to be intolerable.

Great story. But the end bothered me. Particularly this part:

“Some of you will succumb and some of you won't, and my sending this warning won't alter those proportions.”

Of course sending the warning will have an effect because it becomes part of the conditioning of the people who read it! They don’t get to choose how they will be affected by it, but it will certainly have an effect. To say that a person has no free will is not to say that they are not affected by their environment.

Also relevant and mind-expanding essay:

Simulation, Consciousness, Existence

Hans Moravec, 1998.

https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles...

I would make an even stronger assertion that this is almost certainly the case. ;-)

If you can find a copy, the first edition of ‘Introduction to Functional Programming’ by Richard Bird covers the concepts of functional programming in a language-agnostic way.

Another perhaps more esoteric approach is pointed to by Ramana Maharshi (and others) who encouraged people seeking happiness to inquire into "the one who is unhappy". In other words, to ask oneself, "Who is it that is unhappy?" The idea being that the independent entity that most of us take ourselves to be is just a fictional story (an I-thought) with no real existence, and that it comes about from an erroneous identification with thoughts. Once that is fully realized, the problem of happiness is permanently solved because the "I-thought", as he calls it, is the real root of the problem. In fact, according to him, it's the root of all of our problems. ;-)

"You need to..." is one of my favorites. I'm often guilty of it myself when offering advice to others, but recently I've realized how off-putting it can be and have made an attempt to stop phrasing things in that way.

"The Ants" by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson.

The reality is, everything comes down to luck. We are all ultimately a product of our genes plus our conditioning, neither of which we control. And any decisions we make are a function of those two things, so they are also out of our control.

It seems to me the standard argument for legalizing cannabis is tax revenue. It reminds me of when Kansas was considering abolishing capital pinishment. It wasn't due to any ethical or moral reasoning, but because of the economics of housing death row inmates.

It's interesting that whenever the subject of legalizing drugs comes up, people rarely argue for legalization from the perspective of cognitive liberty. Why we allow certain people to decide what states of consciousness are allowed for other people never ceases to amaze me.

I'm curious and I think others might be as well. How does one possibly go about finding a therapist who is a good fit? It seems like searching for a needle in a haystack -- akin to finding a good life partner which requires lots of trial and error.

> And as long as we live in a democracy, they're entitled to structure their society as they see fit.

I strongly disagree. There are certain human rights that should not be able to be voted away in a democracy. I believe that the right to modulate our own minds as we see fit belongs in this category.

I'm really curious about this. Was stopping your inner monologue as a teen a conscious decision or did it just happen? If it was a conscious decision, how did you do it?

I'm curious how long you did the three minutes per day before doubling to six, and likewise for the time before doubling to twelve.

I am one of those people who finds this question fascinating. I am neither a philosopher nor a physicist, but it seems to me that one of two cases must be true: Either the universe has existed for an infinite time in the past or the universe came into existence from nothing. Either of those cases seems extraordinary to me. But am I missing a third option? I realize that some (like Lawrence Krauss) have shown that you can get a universe from nothing plus the laws of physics, however, that seems like a rather unsatisfactory answer. For one thing, it leaves me with the question of where the laws of physics came from? And do the laws of physics exist independently the universe or are they merely convenient models that humans use to describe the universe?

I think the author may have been referring to time dilation due to relative motion of the clocks as opposed to gravity. In that case, to an observer on the ground, the clock on the plane goes slower than a clock on the ground.

If you don't mind answering, which Haskell frontend are you planning to use?

I don't mean to speak for RMS, but his stance seems pretty clear. He values freedom over convenience. When given a choice between the two, I think he will always choose freedom. I agree with his principles and I admire the fact that he seems to actually live by them. I think his stance only seems extreme because most of us aren't willing to give up our conveniences for our principles.

That's exactly right. You don't need a conspiracy when interests align. Especially when the interested parties have a lot of power.

"And you will have experience that proves to you that the urge is only a suggestion. You are in control."

This is the most interesting part to me. Don't we always act on the urge that is strongest at the moment? If I decide to continue to meditate even though I have an urge to stop, doesn't that just mean that the urge to continue happened to be stronger than the urge to stop? Did I really get to choose which of those urges was strongest at that moment? Of course, this gets into questions of free will, which has been discussed on HN before. But when I meditate, it becomes very clear that I am definitely not in control of my thoughts, feelings, and urges. I see that I have multiple, competing urges at any given moment and that I don't control which urge emerges as the victor and compels me to act.

This might be inspirational for you:

http://shelterpub.com/_lloyd/skateboard.html

The counter example that comes to mind is a detective who gathers physical evidence in order to convict a criminal. Where is the deception there?

Haikus on HN?

What has the world come to now?

Still, I can't resist.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "demolishing your self" and how you did that? Are you talking about the buddhist concept of emptiness?

Interesting. Would you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, in general? I am an introvert and when I did 10 days of silence and meditation, the lack of social interaction was the easiest part for me. In fact, I think it made the whole experience easier for me because it alleviated the pressure to interact with people. I had none of the experiences you mentioned. And I was by no means an experienced meditator.

One thing I've always been really curious about is how an experienced meditator like a Buddhist monk would deal with forced solitary confinement. I think they would probably do much better than the average, untrained person. Now that would be a really interesting experiment.