upvote

points

by staplung7 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby SAI_Peregrinus5 hours ago|
next
[-]
It also needs a bit of biology. Our eyes don't have a flat response over frequency, they're more sensitive to blue than violet. Violet gets scattered even more than blue, and the violet light does shift our perception of the color. But it does so less than it would if we had photoreceptors more sensitive to violet, so the resulting perceptual color depends not just on the intensity of the light at different frequencies but also on our particular biology. People with tritanopia (blue-yellow color blindness) don't have blue-sensitive cones (S cones) and thus to them there is no perceived blue. Not to mention the linguistic history of the word "blue" and why English uses "blue" instead of "青" or some other word, the questions around qualia & what it means to perceive color, etc.
reply
upvoteby __MatrixMan__1 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
There are differences in receptor behavior across species, but they are understandably clustered around the parts of the spectrum in which sol is most luminous. An earth-like planet orbiting a different star would likely have evolved photoreceptor arrangements which match that star instead. So after scratching the biology itch we'll probably need to talk about fusion byproducts in sol-like stars.
reply
upvoteby reactordev3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
The real question is, is the sky blue for everyone? Some creatures can see ultraviolet. Some lack color at all…
reply
upvoteby daedrdev48 minutes ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Some animals have more cone types than humans, especially various birds, so would probably see a violet sky.

We don't have this because common ancestor for all mammals lost all cones but one, perhaps due to being nocturnal, and a second was re-evolved as mammals became more dominant (after dinosaur extension). A third cone was evolved in primates due to a gene duplication that gave us our green cone

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004269890...

reply
upvoteby mncharity1 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
I puttered on a color interactive where, to emphasize this distinction between world-spectra vs brain-color, you could swap in color deficiencies, a non-primate mammal ( dichromats), and a monochromat.
reply
upvoteby ecshafer6 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
"Could you be more specific" is a great question to find out more what the person knows and how they thing. You give an answer that, just due to the nature of knowledge and the limitation of language, has some black boxes. And "could you be more specific" is basically asking to go through the black boxes.

Its like asking how does Java work or something like that? You can go from "The JVM interprets java byte code" to quite a lot of depth on how various parts work if you have enough knowledge.

reply
upvoteby leeoniya5 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
i used something like this in unstructured technical interviews all the time.

"you type a phrase into google search, you press enter, get some results. tell me, in technical detail, what happened in that chain of actions"

the diversity of replies is fascinating, you learn a lot about a "full stack" candidate this way.

Feynman's classic "Why?" chain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA

reply
upvoteby SAI_Peregrinus5 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
I'd probably spend at least 20 minutes just to get through how the keyboard works, much more if it's a USB-HID device.
reply
upvoteby dmd4 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Hah - that is exactly what I did. Someone asked me this question and after 5 minutes in the weeds of the debounce on the mouse click they said "look all we wanted was to find out if you'd ever heard of DNS, let's move on, that was great".
reply
upvoteby leeoniya4 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
the good ones would usually follow up with, "how much detail do you _really_ want ;D"
reply
upvoteby ASalazarMX1 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
A great response is "What exactly do you want to know?", so we don't end up like Cliff giving answer after answer. In his case it was a great test question, but such a vague question is a horrible communication tactic if abused.
reply
upvoteby HPsquared2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
It's reminds me of that scene from Fargo: "He was kinda funny lookin'" ... "Could ya be any more specific?"
reply
upvoteby 5 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
deleted
reply
upvoteby jstummbillig5 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
I am positively excited about the upcoming first generation of humans who will have all their questions answered, correctly and in the way they can best understand, and as often and many of them as they want – and what that is going to enable.
reply
upvoteby brabel5 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
The same anticipation of great things happening preceded the arrival of widely available internet, but all we really got was cat videos initially, and doomscrolling more recently. I don’t have much hope for great things anymore.
reply
upvoteby mncharity1 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
I saw a Microsoft talk decades back, that was a dispirited "the people of India could be buying educational materials and... but no, all the money is in ringtones". For some kinds of business perspective, ok I guess. But for others, and for civilizational change, what's going on in the tail can matter a lot. Does China become a US engineering/science peer in early 21st C absent an internet/WWW?
reply
upvoteby reactordev3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
We got more than that. We got 24/7 surveillance.
reply
upvoteby mncharity1 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Does anyone have experience of early-childhood "Why?"-phase meets speech-enabled LLMs?

Startup wise, there's old work on conversational agents for toddlers, language acquisition, etc. But pre‑literate developmental pedagogy, patient, adaptive, endlessly repetitive, responsive, fun... seems a potential fit for LLMs, and not much explored? Explain It Like I'm 2-4. Hmm, there's a 3-12 "Curio" Grok plushie.

reply
upvoteby decimalenough2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
I presume you're referring to LLMs here, but if so, your presumption that their questions will be answered "correctly" seems a bit optimistic.
reply
upvoteby ryanmcbride4 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Me too but I don't think these sorts of Solved Society endgames are likely to show up. Basically presents the same issue with a utopia.

Progression and regression are always going to be at war with each other. There will always be humans that want to hurt instead of help, there will always be humans who TRY to help but ultimately hurt. There will always be misinformation, there will always be lies, and there will always be liars.

The good news is there will also always be people trying to pull humanity forwards, to help other people, to save lives, to eradicate disease, educate, and expose the truth.

I don't think society will ever be solved in the way you're saying because there will always be hurtful people, but there will also always be good people to keep up the fight.

reply
upvoteby Starlevel0043 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
When is that going to be?
reply
upvoteby kakacik3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
... and due to that, people will not appreciate all the knowledge, we will take it as air - invisible but cut the access in a myriad ways and its a catastrophe.

We value what we achieve with effort, I would say proportionally to energy put in (certainly true for me, thus I like harder efforts in activities and ie sport climbing).

reply