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David Chapman Profile picture
@Meaningness
Jun 11, 2021 • 7 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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🚂 Steam locomotive under construction. Brand new, not a restoration! Nevada Railroad Museum, Carson City. A must for engineering geeks in the region Image
🚂 This one is a restoration and it’s stunning ImageImage
🚂 A Victorian tech giant: Baldwin was the world’s biggest maker of steam locomotives. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_L… Image
🚂 Being a locomotive designer/builder in the early days must have been exhilarating—so many open possibilities, obvious ideas no one had tried!

But, actually, nothing is ever so easy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_L… Image
Same in software… When I got started, the space was wide open, and it was easy to do something exciting and new.

In 1981, I implemented a sophisticated hypertext system, with markup and CGI-like features for arbitrary server code execution, on the MIT CADR Lisp Machine. Image
I planned to use my hypertext system as a documentation server for the Lisp Machine manual (known as the Chine Nual, for obvious reasons).

Unfortunately the Lispms were literally hand-made, and so crashed every few hours. A server was infeasible. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=151869… ImageImage
BTW, have I mentioned that I invented the iPhone in 1977? metarationality.com/pocket-computer

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More from @Meaningness

David Chapman Profile picture
Aug 18, 2023
"People tell you everything you need to know about them in the first minute after you meet them"

On graduating, my sometime-collaborator Phil Agre went to interview for a faculty job at Yale, where Roger Schank was the senior AI guy. Phil came back somewhat shaken... (1/n)Image
Schank was a very weird dude. Phil was also a very weird dude.

In fact, everyone of significance in AI at that time was stupid, crazy, or evil.

Everyone of significance in AI now is also stupid, crazy, or evil. This is important; try not to forget it over the next few years.
Schank opened the interview with "why are you so hostile?"

Phil was not sure how to answer that, sputtered a bit, and asked why Schank would ask.

The conversation piled on layers of meta at a dizzying rate.
Read 8 tweets
David Chapman Profile picture
Jul 2, 2023
Huh! Just figured something out (I think). It was bugging me that the silly “pandita hat” worn by Buddhist academics (pandita=pundit) reminded me of something…
It’s the “Phrygian cap” worn throughout the Iranian world in ancient times…
Is it historically plausible that the pandita hat is a variant of the Phrygian cap? Yes it is! The Sakas, an Iranian people, controlled Gandhara and Taxila, which were the centers of Buddhist academia when Buddhist academia was just getting started (circa 100 BC).
Read 6 tweets
David Chapman Profile picture
Jun 15, 2023
An academic rant: startling cluelessness where I'd expected intelligent error...

I'm trying to understand how pomo replaced the classical undergraduate humanities curriculum, and how how people thought about it at the time, in preparation for writing about the consequences.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@StephenPiment BTW I'm reading Douthat's Privilege, about his time at Harvard, which is relevant and fun. I recommend it! twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Replies have been helpful, thank you!

My interest here is somewhat unusual. I understand pomo, and the opposition to it. What I don't know is why decision makers didn't understand replacing the undergrad humanities curriculum would be a disaster.
Read 8 tweets
David Chapman Profile picture
Mar 29, 2023
⌚️ I did not anticipate a future in which you lie to your watch about meeting your hydration goal for the day so it doesn't give you a hard time the next morning.
⌚️ When I was a kid, watches were all radioactive. The hands were coated in radium so you could see the time in the dark by the radioactive glow. Miniaturizing either a battery or an incandescent bulb into a watch was completely technologically impossible.
⌚️ The world with radioactive watches seems even more alien than the world with watches you have to lie to. It might as well be Ancient Rome, although I lived in it.
Read 5 tweets
David Chapman Profile picture
Mar 25, 2023
Incisive thinking about AI interaction, drawing on Brian Smith's work and reminiscent of the ethnomethodological stance, from @jessi_cata
Incisive thinking about transness, also from @jessi_cata. "Trans" is a iron maiden category constructed by cis authorities which, for many people trying to fit into it, is grossly false to facts and harmful, painful, sometimes fatal. unstableontology.com/2023/02/07/am-…
On May 7th, @_awbery_ and I will participate in an Evolving Ground community discussion of gender, including trans/enby, from a Vajrayana Buddhist perspective. This is something we've planned for ~15 years but never quite gotten to before!
Read 4 tweets
David Chapman Profile picture
Mar 13, 2023
An extraordinary essay on ethics by @jkcarlsmith, highly recommended for those willing to work through its difficulty.

What happens when you realize moral philosophy doesn't and can't work, but saying "whatever, then, I guess" is also utterly inadequate? joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/see…
"Seeing more whole" is difficult both textually and conceptually. I had to read it three times. It's probably also necessary to have read a precursor essay, which is less exciting but lays out distinctions the later one relies on: joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why…
What follows are some reactions to "Seeing more whole." These should not be taken as a reliable summary; I may misunderstand it, and the ways I think about ethics have different sources and vocabulary, although perhaps convergent implications. I will talk in my terms, not his.
Read 29 tweets

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