by theletterf on 5/11/25, 6:56 AM with 54 comments
by dr_dshiv on 5/11/25, 9:15 AM
This cybernetic alchemist also invented functional air conditioning, a perpetual motion machine (wound a clock powered by daily changes in barometric pressure), solar powered fountains and the first functional submarine (along with torpedos).
I have a full sized replica of his wooden submarine in Amsterdam. He also invented a mechanism for generating oxygen — necessary for the rowers, of course.
His thermostat was used to incubate eggs. It appeared in Chinese literature, with illustrations, within 50 years.
https://drebbel.net/2013%20Drebbels%20Athanor.pdf
This is pre steampunk — alchemy-punk?
Both Shakespeare and Ben Johnson wrote plays with characters based on Drebbel.
He also invented magic lanterns (projection devices) and camera obscures for painters.
He was widely discussed by members of the Royal Society, but had been generally forgotten. Largely because a few early Dutch scientists thought he was a charlatan.
by kubb on 5/11/25, 7:57 AM
I don’t like it because it’s so fundamentally unproductive, trying to fit formal logic onto the fuzziness of the language.
by throw0101d on 5/11/25, 10:53 AM
> Nagel challenges the possibility of explaining "the most important and characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomena" by reductive materialism (the philosophical position that all statements about the mind and mental states can be translated, without any loss or change in meaning, into statements about the physical). For example, a reductive physicalist's solution to the mind–body problem holds that whatever "consciousness" is, it can be fully described via physical processes in the brain and body.[5]
[…]
> The paper argues that the subjective nature of consciousness undermines any attempt to explain consciousness via objective, reductionist means. The subjective character of experience cannot be explained by a system of functional or intentional states. Consciousness cannot be fully explained if the subjective character of experience is ignored, and the subjective character of experience cannot be explained by a reductionist; it is a mental phenomenon that cannot be reduced to materialism.[6] Thus, for consciousness to be explained from a reductionist stance, the idea of the subjective character of experience would have to be discarded, which is absurd. Neither can a physicalist view, because in such a world, each phenomenal experience had by a conscious being would have to have a physical property attributed to it, which is impossible to prove due to the subjectivity of conscious experience. Nagel argues that each and every subjective experience is connected with a "single point of view", making it infeasible to consider any conscious experience as "objective".
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F
by sobiolite on 5/11/25, 10:40 AM
by turtleyacht on 5/11/25, 11:25 AM
But the hunters still eat us.
The hunters have a faction who agitate for equal rights on our behalf, since we feel pain and suffer, and create engines (but not interstellar ones).
None of us want to tell them they are a little bit wrong in the essays, having picked up rudiments of their language and writings, even though both we and they understand calculus.
Or we could tell them, and propose we are just as important to the idea of an intergalactic organization, although we do just want to borrow some of their schematics around movement and weapons. (For our protection, of course.)
Therefore, the only beings a conscious folk consider likewise are those who may emerge in a fashion to make war to preserve themselves.
Does that mean we should expand consciousness otherwise to species that cannot?
by OgsyedIE on 5/11/25, 8:18 AM
But this article ain't it.
by balamatom on 5/11/25, 10:06 AM
by dang on 5/11/25, 11:08 PM
What is it like to be a thermostat? (1996) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42548641 - Dec 2024 (80 comments)
by KevinMS on 5/11/25, 9:23 AM
by kragen on 5/11/25, 8:17 AM
I walked to the electronics store yesterday morning and bought some opamps. I find it amusing to think of opamps as bringing intentionality to circuits: they invert causality in precisely the same way as you do when you are making tea. The non-inverting input voltage is the op-amp's intention, the inverting input voltage is its observation which it interprets as a model of the world, and its output current is the behavior it controls according to that model to bring the world into accordance with its intentions.
The op-amp's behavior is only effective if there is a "structural similarity" between the world as the op-amp imagines it and the world as it really is, namely, if spewing out more current on its output will raise its inverting input relative to its non-inverting input, and sucking in more or spewing out less will lower it; we normally call this the negative-feedback condition. An op-amp hooked up backwards so the feedback instead is positive and drives it into overload is, in this analogy, like an insane or otherwise irrational person who keeps taking actions that predictably achieve the opposite of their intention, like posting comments on HN in order to enjoy thoughtful conversation.
When we design analog circuits with op-amps, we do routinely use the same kind of inverted-causality reasoning we use with the tea. Suppose it succeeds at making its inputs equal; what then is the situation that must prevail in the circuit? Oh, Vo = V1 + V2 - V3 - V4. Or Vo = -5Vi. And so it is, at least if the op-amp's feedback is not frustrated, or so effective that it sends the circuit into oscillation.
Op-amps (and thermostats) are clearly doing something that shares important features with human goal-directed activity, to the point that it seems practically useful to ascribe intentions to it, saying "this op-amp wants these currents to be equal" in a way that it isn't useful to say "this weight wants to move downward".
So I wonder what it is like to be an LM324N op-amp. I imagine it to be a very simple sort of existence, if not always a happy one. I prefer to be a human, but, failing that, I'd rather be a bacterium than an op-amp.
So it's amusing to see that Chalmers had the same thought. I wonder if I got it from him through indirect memetic contagion. (Though as far as I can tell he doesn't discuss oscillation, positive feedback runaway, or this peculiar inversion of causality. But I really doubt those are original to me, either.)
by notpushkin on 5/11/25, 8:31 AM
by gitroom on 5/11/25, 11:00 AM