The first PDF is the record of a remote viewing session from 2 days before the USS Stark incident, and it is eerily similar to the incident. The feelings and "atmosphere" (can't think of a better word for it) sound like what you might expect on a ship being attacked by a random missile.
For example:
1. The drawing on p. 7 looks like the superstructure of a warship.
2. The next few pages might describe what it feels like to wonder if your ship is actually under missile attack.
3. On page 10 it records "aircraft--large, multiengined; distant; orbiting; distraction controlled, directed. 'Under orders.'" This USNI article has a little more detail on the AWACS plane detecting the incoming attack: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2017/j...
There are other similarities, but the CIA report predates the attack, which is especially strange.
Why does it need to be real- time? If rv is possible then it’s naive to assume that time is somehow “special” vs 3D. It’s possible that time is not unfolding linearly, that is only an illusion. “Remote” could involve accessing information from along the time dimension.
Long ago I was told of looking at a timeline so that time "travels" from left to right is the normal view, but now rotate that timeline so that it appears as a dot to you. You now see all events of the timeline, but without reference to "when" they happened. Lots of scifi plots are also described as such
Think about a maze drawn on a piece of paper. Because we’re in 3D you can see all of the maze at once but if you were a 2D entity inside the maze you would only see the walls / entrances / exits directly in front or behind you. Now imagine drawing a line from the entrance to the exit - that’s 2D + a time dimension. Now make it a 3D maze and an entity existing outside of spacetime would be able to see all events happening at once in 3D.
> the CIA report predates the attack, which is especially strange
It's only strange if you believe the CIA released notes from their super-secret psychic program rather than the more plausible explanation that this is disinformation that was backdated for a boost of prestige.
Can you give me some evidence that this document was backdated? I'm not saying the government isn't shady AF, but I just wonder what's behind the immediate jump to "this has to be BS" rather than keeping an open mind.
Extraordinary claims (that RV is a real phenomenon) require extraordinary evidence. The null hypothesis is the default position, it requires no extraordinary evidence; the opposite does.
This is scientific method 101. Let's not pretend we're not familiar with it just because some dodgy CIA document surfaced.
How many of these 'remote viewing' sessions didn't bear any similarities to anything?
If you throw a bunch of stuff at a wall, some of it is going to stick. Especially when it appears to be random words that can be applicable to millions of situations.
> Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is ex-
pected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of a magnitude similar to those found in government sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories around the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.
From Jessica Utts, who was the president of the American Statistical Association and asked to review the Stanford Research Institute psychic programs (including Star Gate).
> Using the standards applied to any other area of science
Assuming this is true, I have to wonder why it would be that the science community apparently places a higher burden of proof on this sort of research, and whether that higher standard has been earned or not.
Ray Hyman, the other member of the review panel with Jessica Utts, disagreed with her conclusions ("the overwhelming amount of data generated by the viewers is vague, general, and way off target. The few apparent hits are just what we would expect if nothing other than reasonable guessing and subjective validation are operating."). Utts also seems to be involved in parapsychology organizations, which is pseudoscience -- I hope you won't dispute this much -- so I'd rule out her opinion as fringe, and not in any way the mainstream scientific opinion on RV.
RV is pseudoscience, you won't find scientific support for it, or anyone able to reproduce its purported results under controlled conditions.
The Amazing Randi probably had a challenge about RV that no con artist was able to win.
Edit: wait, it's even worse. Utts was completely biased and compromised:
> The psychologist David Marks noted that because Utts had published papers with [Edwin] May [a parapsychologist who took over Project Stargate in '85] "she was not independent of the research team. Her appointment to the review panel is puzzling; an evaluation is likely to be less than partial when an evaluator is not independent of the program under investigation."
So she was completely biased and wasn't independent of the leadership of Stargate! She had vested interests in it being "real", she was invested on RV and parapsychology!
> If you throw a bunch of stuff at a wall, some of it is going to stick. Especially when it appears to be random words that can be applicable to millions of situations.
Indeed. I'm amazed so many HN regulars are surprised by this. It's how horoscopes work, we've known this for centuries now.
Have people forgotten the scientific method, the standards of proof, etc?
The first PDF is the results/notes of someone attempting remote viewing. Given the dates, I agree with the above poster that the similarities are impressive.
Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You should just know!"
I have no idea why someone would get mad about getting a vacuum cleaner as a gift. It's boring, sure, but if you keep complaining about your old one, it seems pretty thoughtful.
Everyone’s situation is different. But typically the reason this offends is because for a stay at home mom a vacuum is a work tool. If the current vacuum is broken then you should just get a new one. It shouldn’t take the place of a Christmas present, which is the opportunity to get her something related to her personal interests rather than her job.
Interesting point of view. But it's common for a man to get a work tool as present (e.g. a drill or a set of wrenches), with the obvious implication that the man will usually be the one who will have to use that tool to fix things around the house - and I have never seen anyone find that offensive. So what makes the vacuum cleaner different?
Powerwash simulator is occasionally fun. There's shiny rewards, I don't have to deal with potential bad weather, and there's no random patches that take 20 times to get rid of. If I don't feel like powerwashing simulator, it will wait for me, forever, with no ill consequences or social judgement.
If I never wash my actual driveway, the same is not true. Therefore I will need to wash it at times when it's unpleasant or I don't want to, and it will take longer than powerwashing a driveway in Powerwash simulator.
In this scenario (again, everyone’s situation is different) DIY is more often a hobby for the husband. Repairs are infrequent enough that you could just hire someone as needed, but the husband chooses to do it.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s not his full time job.
The implication is that it implies vacuuming is that persons responsibility to the point of giving them "their" tools instead of it being a shared purchase for the house.
Not everyone will care, but this is a stereotypical type of present likely to trigger anger and resentment in the recipient for a reason.
Without context, the reaction is bizarre. There must be some back story that you omitted; maybe something about the mother previously asking other people in the family to vacuum, and being ignored?
My wife and I, by the way, are giving each other a joint New Year gift of a fancy robot vacuum cleaner: it's the best sort of gift, useful, elegant, and something that one would be reluctant to spend the money on otherwise.
> I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge.
This is also how I grew up (my parents were a little bit more on the conservative side). This together with the fact that I am not deeply knowledgable in the US-American common practices also made it hard for me to understand why the mother was angry about this gift, in particular considering that she did complain about the old one.
I bought a expensive fancy pan for my wife's birthday a few years ago. We both cook, clean and do groceries and chores equally so it never occurred to me that it was inappropriate. We both like cooking. I'm more of a stewpot guy while she's better in general at "pan stuff" and had been complaining about the old pan. She chided me a bit for spending so much on a pan and there was that.
But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.
Your mother is a unique person. Only she can explain her actions, if she wants to. Chatgpt or any other person won't be able to. Your mother may be neurodivergent in ways that make it impossible for someone else else to answer for her, or ways that make it hard to answer for herself.
You are worthy of being loved even if people close to you aren't able to express it to you.
1) (can be visual) you can setup cmd-tab to move between apps and alt-tab to move between one windows within an app (for example with alt-tab app)
2) (non-visual) with your window management prefix key setup two left/right cursor pairs like "JK" and "M," and use one to switch apps and the other to switch windows within an app
(or maybe JL and IK in the inverted T cursor unless you're using up/down for something else)
Period (.) ends the sentence, comma (,) breaks up the sentence. If the next sentence is closely related, end the sentence with a semi-colon (;). For every other type of break--especially those that resemble the natural and chaotic shifts of thought we all have--use an em-dash. (Oh, and put text you want to be optionally skipped in parenthesis.)
Em-dash is probably the most natural punctuation; it best matches the kinds of shifts our brain does when thinking.
It may be due to AI proliferation, or the culturural bias I have, but I increasingly find em-dashes jarring.
As you point out, authors use them for the "natural and chaotic shifts of thought we all have" and when there are lots of these shifts it feels like I have to keep track of multiple conversations at once.
For example, in the article we have:
If your goal is to have other people read—and hopefully enjoy—your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts.
When I read this I instinctively pause the 'main' thought/voice, read the aside, then re-establish my train of thought. In my opinion the sentence reads just as well without the aside:
If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing you should make an effort to edit your thoughts.
[edit - putting comma back in to break up the long sentence]
If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts.
I think this is the only aside formatted like this in the article. The other em-dashes take the place of pauses in sentences, places I would normally use a comma or semicolon, or are used to introduce a list where I would typically use a colon.
Again this is probably a cultural thing, maybe a reaction to AI as well, but I find the em-dash a lot more though-interrupting than the other punctuation choices and I wonder if it's something I'll get used to or not.
I think I took out an extra comma too, which hurts readability.
Personally I write with too many asides, normally done with commas and parentheses. It's a comforting habit to fall into, and makes getting your thoughts out so much easier, at the expense of interrupting the reader's train of thought.
I don't normally notice when I'm writing with asides so the jarring em-dashes were a good reminder to try and edit them out where I can.
There are subjects which naturally lend themselves to “shifts” inter-sentence. Not really technical matters if the technical matter is just a list of specifications: here is how this works by default and if this and that then this happens. More like subjects relating to social issues and philosophy.
A person may have no preconceived notions about what the frobricator does. So you just list it out. But they may have plenty of preconceived notions about some more abstract-but-relatable subject. The writer anticipates that. And they have to navigate this subject at many levels at the same time, either inter-sentence or inter-paragraph; now I am talking about X, but not the X you think [the writer anticipates] but the X in itself. And not the X that group A considers, nor the one that B considers...
These subjects are more common in the “humanities”.
Certainly some authors overdo it and just seem to produce sentences with multiple semicolons and em-dashes because it’s their style/they are showing off. They are not writing clearly.
(Here I am using """""smart quotes""""".[1] Why is no one arresting me for that?)
I think we have seen a rise in the use of more intricate prose among technologists concurrent with the rise of AI penmanship. There’s more “flavor” now. Less of, either, straightforward prose or just boring and stodgy prose. More supposed personality.
Whatever the cause, this could be an emergent property of authors competing for readership by writing on the same subject but in a more supposedly engaging and personal way. And if an author who doesn’t like writing prose but wants to promote something regardless could get help from a program which happens to be literate in English as well? Well. Now it is easier to ramp up the word count.
> > If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing you should make an effort to edit your thoughts.
Now the sentence says something different. The original said: If your goal is to get people to read ... And hopefully also enjoy.
Just getting people to read has the primacy in the original.
> > If your goal is to have other people read and enjoy your writing, you should make an effort to edit your thoughts.
This is certainly how I expect a programmer to write.
> Again this is probably a cultural thing, maybe a reaction to AI as well, but I find the em-dash a lot more though-interrupting than the other punctuation choices and I wonder if it's something I'll get used to or not.
Some groups of people ponder the great questions of life.[2] Programmers ponder if there is really a categorical difference, in principle, between their own consciousness and that of their smart fridge. And whether em-dash users are bots.
It has nothing to do with literacy, the em-dash simply is not on the standard US QWERTY keyboard. This means that people who purposefully use it, either have to copy-paste it from somewhere or (if they-re on Windows), use "Alt + 0 1 5 1". This is very obviously not a natural behaviour that 'literate' people use when they write.
You can type "--" in most writing software and it will turn into an em-dash. On a Mac, this includes TextEdit by default, or literally every text input field if you enable the "smart dashes" setting. I can type — right now in my web browser with two presses on my ordinary laptop keyboard and no memorizing character ID numbers, not exactly rocket science.
If you're using Word or other fancy word processors, you don't even have to type two hyphens. One will do, and it looks at the grammar and changes to the correct type of dash for you automatically.
Have all the people parroting "dash means it was written by ChatGPT" never used a word processor?
> Have all the people parroting "dash means it was written by ChatGPT" never used a word processor?
Probably not, this is "HACKER" News, if I type two n-dashes on a website, I EXPECT two n-dashes, otherwise things like HTML comments would break the page.
<!-- This is a HTML comment for your reference -->
The compose key and Ctrl+K in Vim both assume the use of Linux, or janky 3rd party software. Compose is the same argument I have already covered with Windows, you need to enter a cryptic key-combination into the keyboard, which is not intuitive.
As for the Vim argument, I'm struggling to work out how to use Vim to type on here? Perhaps you could shed some light? I suppose you could yank-put it, but I fail to see how that is less effort than copy-paste, the other argument I already covered.
If you're writing in MS Word, LibreOffice, or most word processors, typing a word and then two dashes and then a word, without any spaces, like--this will generate an em dash automatically. I learned how to do it in Freshman English in high school. Though I was also taught to double space after a period.
To revise GP's comment: it’s just less computer literate people feeling the need to out themselves.
The compose key on Linux makes deliberate use much easier (rather than automatic replacement which often triggers when I don't want it). There's a compose key utility for Windows, but has some minor annoyances like many input (mouse or keyboard) macro extender applications.
People aren't likely to pre-type their HN and reddit comments in a word processor though, so when you see them on such sites, it's a good indication that the comment came from an LLM and not a genuine person.
I’ve typed comments here on this site in Emacs using a Firefox extension. And often I do it manually since I don’t want to lose three paragraphs to the whims of the browser state.
Not that it matters since I type such characters with my keybored directly. There are dozens of us.
Maybe they are using a Mac (where you type alt-hyphen for a emdash)? Or run Windows and have a numeric keypad (ctrl-minus)? Or they run a browser extension like Grammarly that auto-substitutes?
Pandoc has had "smart" typography[0] which generates em-dash and en-dash for a long time. I found a forum post for 2011 where people were discussing em dashes and such. That thread indicates that John Gruber created a Markdown extension in 2004 which was already handling en and em dashes[2].
You have to take a step back. The first part is not about writing prose. It is about consuming it. And all publishers who are mainstream and respectable use proper English symbols. Now they might use ASCII apostrophe instead of the recommended left single quotation mark. But using a single hyphen or two hyphens or three hyphens for an em-dash is out of the question.
Literacy starts with consuming texts and doesn’t stop once you have learned to read comfortably. People who consume a more varied selection of prose than, say, programming mailing lists will have seen plenty of em-dashes in their time and won’t balk at people using normal punctuation.
It's not just less literate, it's also people who feel the need to be amateur prosecutors.
It's the same thing as judging people who wear their hair too long, or wear pajamas on the plane, or who wear pants that are too baggy, or who have children out of wedlock, etc. Some people are deeply convinced that society is on the decline and that they have a mission to ensure everyone else stays in line.
I don't know when the phrase "em dash" got popular. It was probably due to web development, because, unless you were into typesetting, nobody knew what "em" was. We always just called them dashes--two hyphens make a dash.
I would go back to the advent of Desktop Publishing. The early Macintosh + Laserwriter really did a number in bringing esoteric terms like "font" to us commoners.
Some of us found out we were typography nerds and didn't know it until then.
Agreed. I've used the em dash for well over a decade and love it, but am having to train myself to not use it simply to not appear as though my text is written by AI.
At least avoiding the "it's not just that X, it's Y" style that AI loves is easy enough!
Yeah, just writing in Word (and few other) will get your - turned into em dashes. Personally I hate them. Mostly coz of random editors making GNU cmdline options into emdash and so breaking copying but I also think they are ugly, way too long in most fonts
It's okay. Give it a few years and every writing style will be being used by AI. We'll then be able to use whatever style we like as no one will be able to tell our writing from AI anyway.
I think this kind of slop has negative value. It's unclear how much of the information in the comic is hallucinated, and the malformed code "for i = i1+|>" and nonsense text "(starts write hooks!" doesn't bode well.
Definitely still needs a "human in the loop." I don't know if this particular comic was cherry-picked or if it was the first one generated by Nano-Banana Pro, but either way, it's still got plenty of messy typos.
RULES OF HOORS?
Updste #2: setState
Starts wite hooks!
At which point I feel like I would rather the human have invested their time into writing a design doc that we could discuss well before they submitted a PR.
I didn't have any trouble with the comic but I do already know these things about how react hooks work so I'm not going in fresh.
I think it's a little whimsical, perhaps too much for what info it conveys (a bullet list with the same component names would probably be equally informative), but I thought it was easy to understand and follow. I think there is -something- here; I don't need THIS comic but if it was more about the context and goals of the change then maybe that would be powerful. Especially if it was consistently done over many PRs.
We’re all just in a big LLM-generated self-licking-lollipop content farm. There aren’t any actual humans left here at all. For all you know, I’m not even human. Maybe you’re not either.
Earlier on was only a couple of years if I remember correctly (obviously my time messing with Neopets is a little fuzzy hardly a core memory!)especially once it was acquired by Viacom.
Did a cursory search so take all this with a grain of salt, but looking at the timeline of when ads are introduced, then the acquisition, peak users, etc. I’d say most people were playing in a pretty serious corporate sandbox for most of its most relevant years.
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