DonaldFisk

Some of the Lisp features that people don't like are built into the language. If you don't like them, there are other languages you can use instead. If you're already using a language you prefer, why are you complaining about Lisp?

Some features are dialect dependent. If you like the idea of a Lisp, but specifically don't like e.g. Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure are alternatives. If you don't like these either, nothing is stopping you from writing your own Lisp and using that instead. I have. Lisp is one of the easiest languages to implement and there are two excellent books explaining how to do just that.

And if your problem is just with formatting or getting the parentheses right, you're probably using the wrong editor. You won't have these problems with EMACS.

It isn't Prograph, but there are some similarities.

I don't think it's right but if it got as far as it did it could be corrected after several rewrites, so not a complete failure and not bad for a first attempt given the limited documentation I put on my web pages.

If I'm reading it correctly, polar is a function which is supposed to convert from polar to Cartesian coordinates, and rayPolygon seems to convert a list of polars to a list of Cartesians. But it's unclear exactly what it's doing. Also, there is no fillPolygon or fillEllipse.

Not sure that's right in general. Steam trains -> electric trains, ICE cars -> electric cars, thermionic valves -> transistors, copper wire -> optical fibre, incandescent bulbs -> LEDs, CRT televisions -> digital televisions, film cameras -> digital cameras. Same sort of thing with more efficient technology.

For software, we've gone from machine code to high level languages, but were still writing algorithms, which is the important thing as you still use your brain for that. Until vibe coding came along.

I've avoided using LLMs. You might not have the option of doing this in paid employment, but you certainly can in your spare time, and if you don't you'll gradually lose the ability to think in a programming language. This applies similarly to any other cognitive skill too: writing music or playing a musical instrument, speaking and reading a foreign language, doing cryptic crosswords, playing chess or go, etc. You wouldn't stop playing chess just because computers are now much better at it. The point is learn, understand, and do those things yourself.

Here's my advice, based on what I have done: implement a programming language yourself, from scratch, without using an LLM, and then program in that. Don't release your implementation, or any code you've written in it.

Most (almost all) of my programming at home has been done in a Lisp dialect I designed and wrote myself, which is superficially similar to Common Lisp, but with subtle differences, including some deficiencies that I have to work around. And in my Lisp dialect, I implemented a visual dataflow language. Code samples are on my web site, but they're PNG images, so are safe from LLMs (I think). The language was designed to run on MIMD hardware, which doesn't exist in the real world. I've also implemented a Prolog which doesn't use Edinburgh syntax, which I use for type checking, and for parsing a controlled English implementation. So the temptation, and also the option, of using an LLM was never there.

In the course of doing all this, I've learned a lot along the way, which I wouldn't have if I'd used an LLM.

Dirac was talking about the fundamental laws. In favour of his point, and not known at the time he gave the talk, the standard model of particle physics is based on the symmetry groups U(1), SU(2), and SU(3), so Lie groups (which mathematicians find interesting) appear to have been chosen by nature.

Correct (but now we know it should be somewhat higher than that), and 1039 should be 10^39, one of Dirac's Large Numbers, the size of the observable universe in atomic units, and also the ratio of electromagnetic to gravitational forces in the hydrogen atom.

> Why can't a computer program have those?

Because it isn't a physical object capable of sensing the physical environment, the way the brain is via the sense organs. I don't rule out the possibility that a robot, equipped with with a camera and microphone and processing the information it receives from them might be conscious of sight and sound, but not a program. If I read and execute a computer program in my head, I'm conscious of my thoughts while doing that, but are those thoughts themselves conscious?? I don't think so. What would they be conscious of, anyway?

> You have yet to clearly articulate what this magical pixie dust of consciousness is supposed to be.

Nobody has an explanation of consciousness, so the magical pixie dust remains a mystery. I think it's fundamental. Nobody has proven the opposite: that it arises from things (e.g. information processing) happening in matter.

Sorry for the late reply.

> If consciousness is fundamental (ie substance dualism) then how is it exerting influence over our behavior?

If I understand you correctly, it might not be exerting influence over our behaviour.

By influence, are you referring to free will rather than just the illusion of it? That's precluded by classical physics, and quantum mechanics just adds randomness. You can make a measurement, but there's no evidence you can influence the result you get.

> Isn't it the equivalent of watching a movie at that point?

Yes.

There's some simplification. I was initially puzzled about why it was United Kingdom and not Great Britain, as part of UK is on the island of Ireland. Also absent are countries that aren't fully independent, the largest being Greenland. Singapore is plain wrong. It doesn't share a land border with Malaysia.

> Aren't you inventing that whole cloth?

I should have said, "I think that consciousness ..."

> So on the one hand you claim it's an extra (ie independent) step ...

I should have said, "The conscious experience (of qualia) is an extra step, and if consciousness is fundamental then that's a kind of substance dualism.

Thanks for pointing these out - I should have proof-read my reply before posting.