Hacker News

Top stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust(nvidia.com ↗)
    251comments
  2. One Year of Sponsored Servo Development(servo.org ↗)
    discuss
  3. Keys Not Included: recovering the signing keys for US driver's license barcodes(ryan.science ↗)
    55comments
  4. The Relation Between Mathematics and Physics by Paul Dirac(cam.ac.uk ↗)
    7comments
  5. My temporary PHP fix from 2014 has nearly 20M installs. Today I'm deprecating it(jakeasmith.com ↗)
    9comments
  6. Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres(rohanbansal.com ↗)
    110comments
  7. Comparison of Malloc() Algorithms(egbert.net ↗)
    6comments
  8. Xiaomi Mimo 2.6 live post-training dashboard(xiaomi.com ↗)
    103comments
  9. Cloudflare/Security-Audit-Skill(github.com/cloudflare ↗)
    5comments
  10. Backups Aren't Simple(filipovski.net ↗)
    133comments
  11. Lucasart's Afterlife(togameforlife.wordpress.com ↗)
    1comments
  12. Small programming tricks(will-keleher.com ↗)
    228comments
  13. Developing provably correct Rust code with Verus(amazon.science ↗)
    12comments
  14. Breaking the 1.58-bit Barrier for Ternary LLMs(arxiv.org ↗)
    31comments
  15. The engineering behind the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve(johnjwang.com ↗)
    77comments
  16. A 32-year-old bug walks into a Telnet server(watchtowr.com ↗)
    18comments
  17. The Return of Sail Power: Cargo Ships Are Turning Back to the Wind(gcaptain.com ↗)
    51comments
  18. OpenSpec – A lightweight and configurable AI spec framework(openspec.dev ↗)
    55comments
  19. PCB is brought to you by Fable 5(a6mzero.com ↗)
    43comments
  20. HarnessTax: How Much Does the Harness Matter for Coding Agents?(harnesstax.github.io ↗)
    48comments
  21. Show HN: An e-ink frame that hears birds and draws them as 1800s illustrations(github.com/arnegiacomo ↗)
    243comments
  22. AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran(wsj.com ↗)
    328comments
  23. Performance Improvements in .NET 11(devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet ↗)
    58comments
  24. Japan's book scene is moving from bookstores to libraries(untranslatedjp.substack.com ↗)
    75comments
  25. Reversing Factorio's RNG(gegell.github.io ↗)
    29comments
  26. US interest rates raised for first time in three years(bbc.com ↗)
    29comments
  27. Jev Ultrafast: A browser agent with a dynamic, indexed action space(github.com/browser-use ↗)
    3comments
  28. Part-human part-mouse brain developed in science breakthrough(bbc.com ↗)
    25comments
  29. Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"(evanhahn.com ↗)
    223comments
  30. Reverse-engineered Jev-like model(github.com/vinnylarouge ↗)
    17comments

The Relation Between Mathematics and Physics by Paul Dirac

33 pointsby 3d agodamtp.cam.ac.uk
7 comments
59m agoHN ↗

there is a quote from Pauli about Dirac : 'There is no God and Dirac is his prophet' Heisenberg and Dirac had different opinions on the existence of a god and Pauli, asked for his opinion, had the former to say

42m agoHN ↗

Haven’t even made too far down, but:

”There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success. This must be ascribed to some mathematical quality in Nature, a quality which the casual observer of Nature would not suspect, but which nevertheless plays an important role in Nature's scheme.”

I mean, Hume answers this, but so does time, and I guess they both answer it together. Our observed measurements are true for the certain time period we’re in and remain true while we are in that window. To conclude with Hume, it’s all true until it isn’t, in time (well I suppose even in timelessness, entire properties can change - even so, with respect to measuring, I believe that requires a physical step function so we can’t avoid time here :)).

Aside:

”This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.”

Thorough worshipping of Math and “Mathers”, like as if they are a gift from God. Again, let’s stick with Hume, you’re the shit until you’re not. Einstein went to death not understanding Physics as he wanted to.

Hey, I’m a programmer, I didn’t necessarily want robots to do my job either. God loves that essay Hume wrote, truly.

It’s all fun and games until God mindfucks your understanding.

8m agoHN ↗

This is probably a reference to Hume's problem of induction, i.e. that observing a regularity in the past cannot justify assuming that it will hold in the future. It's vaguely related to the article, but talking about "time windows" and "Mathers" muddles the point.

4m agoHN ↗

Is it vaguely related? He wondered why measuring anything even works. Why wouldn’t the measurement disappear, thus making all this measuring pointless? Because it’s true each time step, and it will be true for that time, until it’s not true. Why it works? Well, God , I guess.

Sorry, I had to critique that immediately because I could already see that other paragraph I quoted coming, as in, this author probably worships Math, Science, and those that do it.

5m agoHN ↗

There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all,

One reason I can think of is if we consider that some regularity in the physical behavior is required for consciousness to evolve and so consciousness only forms in such worlds.

19m agoHN ↗

Shouldn't this have a "(1939)" suffix on the title according to HN rules? ;)