I think you meant "free will".

I think there are two kinds of things that you talk about here: 1. Given freedom that is given to somebody 2. Attribute evaluation The "given freedom" boils down to ignorance. I've read in a book that freedom comes from ignorance. The more the society/leadership is ignorant towards your actions, the more freedom you have. And then you can do your own research and choose something based on attributes that you prefer. If you're given only partial freedom (partial ignorance from "top") then you're forced into some kind of attributes when you choose. If "all things being equal" then it probably means that you're blind when making a choice. I think this is kind of a "choice nihilism" that we go into with all of these "all things equal" debates. Some things are more/less productive this way, but then productivity is also a choice. Why would we care about productivity? What are the values that we care about? How far can it go?

Yeah, I think that's closer to what we mean when we say "free will"

a measure of range of choices over time, relative to perceived options

I don't think free will is a thing, I think the system that drives our choices is just too complex to understand that it gives the illusion of free will. I think given a sufficiently powerful computer, and the ability to enter all inputs (and actually enumerate them, which is likely never possible) that drive the decisions, then this stuff is probably determinable.

I think it has some interesting consequences when it comes to punishing people for crimes, or even judging people for their actions. When there actions aren't "their actions"

or not, since the punishment doesn't come from anybody's will either

If you get punished for a crime this is the willingness of the people in charge to act according to procedures. And these procedures were put in place by the people who thought that there needs to be that procedure. And somebody either elected these people or put them in their place. So the punishment is completely based on somebody's will and nothing else.

Although none of those wills, voting etc, were there own. They couldn't have done anything else.

I remember that I heard somewhere that Spanish language doesn't have a word for "I spilled the cup" or "I dropped the orange". So instead they use "the cup spilled itself" as if they didn't do anything or didn't even exist in reality but the cup somehow appeared and did it to itself. But anyway - if you think that you're controlled up to that level then why not try to take over the control? It's still a choice... At least something you can try to do. Because well... all other choices are futile. And this one... you may've just been manipulated by the system into its destruction. It's probably the only choice you can do at all. But even then you won't know if you really destroyed it because who knows what other system there will be -- maybe it all was just a facade?

hehe I'm native spanish (from Uruguay) and we have words for "I dropped the orange" which I would say "yo tiré la naranja", but is true that we don't use it like that, we say more like "se me cayó la naranja" which express the fact that "I had the orange, now it is on the floor, but it wasn't my intention"

I'm reminded of Bret Victor saying "we don't even know what a computer is" at the end of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4. Guess we're just doubling down on the von Neumann architecture and punch card model for another several decades. 😕

if only there were http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ where "everything is an object" instead of "everything is a file"

https://twitter.com/rsnous/status/1071156104191651840 "everyone thinks programs are just jobs and you want to make your job finish faster"

It doesn't have to necessarily be "everything is an object", just not " everything is a technical holdover from 50 years ago which no one needs anymore. "Unix and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race"

It can be "everything is data and rules for rewriting it", same model in the end

Just not those damned files

the reason I'm thinking about punch cards in this context is because it occurs to me that files are basically the persistent representation of the sequential von Neumann computing model: you either process it line-by-line or load the whole thing into memory to make global changes; there's nothing in between, really

def agree about the potential of "everything is data" too; just pointing to Smalltalk as an example of another 50 year old idea that seems much more matched to the Optane paradigm than Unix systems (in particular, the idea of the environment as persistent image)

Any image based system, yes

Rewatching that Bret Victor talk (great way to get geared up for another fun day of writing programs by manipulating text with a cursor in a file), it occurs to me that my reflections on files are basically a paraphrase of an idea from that talk because I've watched it so many times

thinking also of this essay: https://omar.website/posts/skew/

How would computers look like if you reinvented them from scratch?

https://tashian.com/articles/dynamicland/

Is there a tldr until I set aside some time to read it?

Code as a physical artifact situated in a real (not simulated or modeled) environment, observable and changeable by a group of people and responsive to that environment. The OS this code runs on is fully self-hosted, so you can go in a room and look at it. No opaque code running somewhere on a server you can't see. https://dynamicland.org/ <- lots of useful demonstrations and explanations of the guiding ethos If Bret Victor was diagnosing the problems in that talk The Future of Programming, then Dynamicland is an arrow pointing towards a distant horizon where he believes a solution might be found.

https://vimeo.com/115154289 If you want the vision for a Dynamicland-like space before it was built, he gives it here. Well worth watching not just to explain Dynamicland itself but for how clearly he articulates how impoverished our ideas of computing (and knowledge itself) have become.

this man made me almost want to get over my distaste for coffee

James Hoffmann can be a very expensive channel to be a fan of. 😉

That's the most charming review and commercial I've ever seen! 😄

I have to give him credit; he got me to watch the full ad and I liked it.

Don't hassle the Hoffman! 🤓

This was a good example of: just because you can do it it does not mean you have to do it.