sidnt/jrnl

jrnl's Issues

discipline required

in places where the structure itself leaves options open, and we want to author a structure/grammar in that open field. Could a tag like #disciplineR become meaningful/useful enough in the wilderness?

some orthogonals from the program design world

datastore is the place, where all the dead data is stored. the datastore might be distributed in a small space, behind a smaller abstraction, such as a single file on your filesystem, or it might be distributed in a much larger space, behind a larger abstraction, such as a distributed datacenter, maybe a dgraph cluster. but datastore, is the store, the actual store, where the data is stored. in a dead form. importantly, the datastore takes up resources. reading it takes resources.

aside: there is an isomorphism, at the kernel, between the physical datastore and its corresponding virtual manifestation. a physical datastore, is always exposed exactly as the same abstraction, in the virtual form. the hardware might still expose a broken software api, or even deeper, maybe the hardware itself is faulty. but over the years, these have come to work with near perfection.

data is the actual bitstring, the information, that is usable for a certain context. we need dataX now, we don't need dataY now. generally, more data is stored in the datastore, than what is actually required for a context. so the datastore is a container, and our data pieces are scattered/organized inside it. we never need all of it at once, our use cases can make do with parts of it, at once. data (at least, in this interpretation of it,) is a helpful abstraction, and an essential abstraction to keep in mind now.

for example, a program runs on my computer, such as the calculator. but when i turn off my computer, surely the calculator must be stored somewhere, in some form, such that it can be resurrected the next time, i invoke it? this is the software.

• this is just the thing that programmers write.
• the (eventual) dead bitstrings that would be run later.
• programmers write just nothing other than software.
• software is just the thing that
  • programmers write.
  • program designers design.

it's software. just the instruction. it is what our computer, the hardware, will read, to figure out, how to work, if deployed to do so, in some context. for our purposes, we will equate program and software and instruction. so they are just synonyms of each other. software = instruction = program. as noun, they all mean the same thing to us. (program can be used as a verb)

aside: ( now among data, program, software & instruction, we'll differentiate only data slightly from the rest, even though, at the end of the day, instruction is data (as stored on a powered-off computer) and data is instruction (when read to continue work), eg, when a computer reads

• a jpeg file, to know what to paint on which pixel of the display
• or even a text file for the same purpose
• or an, audio protocol to know how to signal the speaker(s)
• or an audio file along with a protocol, to know, what signal to compute, to send to the speaker(s).
• lots of datum, from a database, about students registered with a university, to just know, what the rankings are for a particular examination, or calculate the same, from information they depend on.

again, instructions become data, as stored on a powered-off computer and data becomes instruction, as it is read to continue work. so, )

now, it's not only the software that is stored as dead data, it is also the pieces that the software animates/manipulates, that are stored as data. the definition for all the stages in dangerous dave for example, must have been stored
it is different. it is literally different, this model exactly maps to the arrangement of programs and their data on the physical device, physically.
i have to know where the next instruction is stored and/or i have to know where the next data is stored, to make progress.

sometimes it is their much much less alive distant cousins, it is also what the process knows

come mayday, and a software is enlisted to work in a real world context. this creates a process. a process is a program under execution. threads are like its hands. more than one hands might be trying to do exactly the same thing.

now software and its process, must be isomorphic. doesn't matter how many times i run the software, i should get exactly the same well defined behaviour. isomorphic because, for explaining the behaviour of our program, we always have regions in code to point to. so the hardware must not be buggy. it should always run the same instruction, in the same well defined manner.

process

an incompletely defined software, will have undefined behaviour. at runtime.

master of abstractions

to be atomic / or to be dispersed

by being atomic i yield a complete artifact in a step/transaction
by being dispersed, i yield multiple incomplete artifacts as-wip, in a step/transaction
the completion of artifacts is dispersed across transactions

and then, there are languages we build for personal use

self ref

🚪

syntactic sugar exist. how do we say which is better?

maybe just look at invocations that end in the same result. maybe it's just just a different expression of the same thing, and since we are programmatic, every piece of information expressed is precisely weight and marked, and so,

we know the inputs are same, we know the outputs are same, it's just the userland syntax that's different. it's like driving a car, everything else same, one in which the gear is on the steering wheel, and in the other, beside the driver.

maybe we can look at expressing a bigger program, like a webserver,
in both the styles. then might we get some feel of the ux of the syntax and could posit that this feels better than the other.

building bigger programs, in fact is where the divergence happens. it is much more elegant to express bigger programs via an IO monad, than otherwise.

managing the concurrent self

why not just keep a note of the fork join tree

two events appear simultaneous

but that might happen because of the limitation of the detectors. if we could detect more, maybe the simultaneous appearing events could appear not aligned in time. alignment, just for their starts and ends.

overdubbing on textual compositions

overdubbing is a familiar concept from sound art. we record a layer of audio. we replay it, and we simultaneously record another layer, exactly parallel to it. and the structure can grow very rich and complex from here.

an analogue into textual composition:
eg, when i develop documentation using github issues, i tile two tabs side by side. one contains one layer that is committed earlier, ie, a read view for an issue, and in another tab, i open the same issue in edit mode. so i can read in a flow from the former, and change the latter, on the fly. and i can repeat, for any such improvement iteration.

introducing an abstraction with semantics not yet completely defined

imaging state like flowing from point A to point B. A/B are places where we properly defined. these are like quantum jumps of the state. an incomplete state is one somewhere in the middle where, simply, the methods for dealing with it (ie, the state in progressing), just don't exist. if a method for dealing with an: s:State exists, that means our application has well defined abstractions.

GANs and Debates

GANs can help pit one algorithm against another. Systematic application of the same concept in real life learning scenarios. Having humans learn from each other. Which has already been the case.

a sibling instance of the same abstraction/protocol/program.

a climate change scenario

we don't really think through all the things that could go seriously awry in complicating climate change scenarios. those times will see game theory playing out, because we really haven't thought through what conditions will be there, what risk would what people be exposed to, depending on what decision making, where on earth, of what people, what all, people down the line, will be forced to decide on.

in our short lifetime memory, we have seen a hospitable earth, with climate and weather not too out of bounds for life, for our life and of our loved ones and our loved cultures, expectations and addictions, that we can't imagine ourselves ever out of. and we never think, how bad could it get.

and then we have always seen a functional economy. we think that money will still have the power to move heaven and earth, no matter where on earth, what time of day it is, no matter what part of the century we are in.

could it get that bad, that

• the earth starts expanding areas that are fierce towards life, expanding like a fire, gripping smaller pockets at first and then expanding from there?
• conducting certain domains of trade and commerce, becomes progressively costlier and eventually impossible? what if, eg, tourism ceases in an economy driven primarily on tourism?
• lives of people will be thrown in disarray, and we will be forced to tackle entirely different set of problems, which we will not like.

we don't imagine that the numbers in the economy will swing. as conditions change, beyond our control, the numbers will shape up accordingly. maybe water price leads us into a new era of slavery.

we don' think about the ground beneath our feet. we must think. like our grandparental generation used to pay reverence to and worship the elements that provide life, ie, fire, sky, earth, soil, water, air, food, because they saw scarcity and the utter difficulty in spinning up an economy where it is easier to procure the necessaries and conveniences of life.

how to make more people, more educated, in a decentralized fashion, on mind expanding classics tomes of knowledge? eg, the wealth of nations?

and since there might not be any other system of accounting, to trade necessaries and conveniences of life, than what we are selling us into now, ie, some people buying into the right things, and others buying into the wrong things, people and cultures will be left very very vulnerable. what if some of us can't buy all that, some of others, can sell? we will go out of business, and fall to god-knows-which layer in the economy. maybe we have to take up a new work all from scratch?

• we have never imagined scenarios in which conducting trade and commerce simply becomes impossible. maybe its too hot out there. now these regions will become like gas chambers or concentration camps. inhospitable to life.

• we don't imagine that the economy itself will reflect these numbers. prices will swing. maybe water becomes too much costly down the line, and there's a new era of slavery?

studying climate change is an opportunity for all us to become more scientific. and understand that all these structures of predictability that we have been building, are illusions, because they are actually unsustainable. instead of binge watching all those interesting shows and maya, we should be watching more content on the

there's all the intellectual capacity and informational bandwidth available there. as a part of conforming to the environment protection goals, why can't governments just commit a part of their system towards environmental education, and take it up in the hierarchy of importance of citizens?

govt

we have to start expanding our knowledge. and this is a golden opportunity to understand about our beautiful earth and its complicated and rich systems, in ever growing more ecologically responsible manners. it's a great opportunity to create newer systems and models to conduct life in.

interdependent economy means people have outsourced their capacity to produce some layer of the proper life stack, to some economy outside. and so we become unpracticed, more and more over the time. if something hits, and that economic link breaks, what will happen to the life in that region?

if we are doing anything today, it is submitting the collective to greater risks, in the name of

the indo gangetic plain for example. its in the tropical region, so it's right there in the way of the sun.

things might go out of business altogether. maybe there are drastic changes in climatic patterns ch that a certain class of activity isn't doable anymore

what happens to the people who were totally dependent on that economic activity for their bread and butter? in the scarcity dominated scenarios, what will happen to our grace for sharing? will people literally start dying from within a population, because of the inaction of other people in the same population? the most vulnerable will start dying first? what will happen to 'इंसानियत' ?