> If you look at the level of public interest, then I think it becomes important to actually look into these things

This argument actually works on hormonal teens...as for everyone else, I think this is called ad populum or something, at any rate the appeal to popularity.

A logical fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

> We’ve all been hearing the hype lately about low-code and no-code platforms.

This is the first sentence of one of these "articles". It's a classic buzzword, just another brand of enterprise software marketing gimmicks.

Anything to keep people from using, say, 3x5 index cards in an innovative way or applying the concepts like RACI matrix outside a computing context, to the organizational structure itself.

This entire ecosystem is fascinating; I highly recommend working in enterprise software for at least 18 months, which is how long I made it before my brain short circuited.

When will OpenAI make GPT-3 available for academic study? Or are there no plans to do so yet?

I would argue that outright heresy is the way to go; rebellion only gets you so far.

Ironically, if you succeed in your argument that heresy is the way to to go, you'll find yourself in a logical absurdity.

If you are successful in your argument and convert sufficient numbers to aim at heresy, then "be a heretic" becomes the new orthodoxy. When that happens, "be orthodox" will be the new heresy, and it will be impossible not to be a heretic: the orthodox will aim at heresy, and those aiming at orthodoxy will be heretical.

That reminds me of this:

The price of success in philosophy is triviality. -- Clark Glymour

This is also said of mathematics, but rather when the student is successful in learning a theorem.

I like LSD too; I wish the government would legalize it.

related: https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp...

Bill Atkinson waited until 2016 to talk about LSD as it related to his work; Steve Jobs has also gone public about LSD.

LSD makes you pretty tough. Many people have a hard time digesting that, so they choose to be afraid of LSD instead of recognizing it.

What is the Tao-drug connection? I feel like this is a case of Orientalism where Western drug culture is getting in the way of popular perception of Taoism, especially Chuang Tzu. Why aren't intellectual snobs trading in-jokes about Taoism and Zen and Mahayana Buddhism and the Diamond Sutra? It's like they ceded a huge swath of territory to the stoners, and for no good reason, I might add.

Why is there no popular Taoist movement? Why was it marginalized in the hippie movement? Why did intellectuals allow the hippies to control the perception of Taoism?

Chuang Tzu is just so fundamental. I can't see how you can go wrong adding it to a standard Western education.

    YOUR LIFE HAS A LIMIT but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! If you do good, stay away from fame. If you do evil, stay away from punishments. Follow the middle; go by what is constant, and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your parents, and live out your years.

Hippies are marginalized?

I thought all of that movement has been more or less mainstreamed over the past forty years.

This isn’t exactly Crowley’s England.

Drug using hippies are marginalized.

Are they?

Everywhere I look cannabis use has virtually normalized outside of outdated and contrived legal frameworks, and 1%er business tycoons are micro-dosing on the job for presumed spiritual and/or perceptual advantages.

I'm not sure how that counts as marginalized.

You need to consider your informational sphere, considering you are on HN its probably vastly different than 95% of the US. Most of the US still views drug use as a criminal issue, including psychedelics. Psychedelics are still central to large pieces of the counter culture.

I live and operate well outside of the typical sphere of Hacker News. Cannabis has been normalized across my country for decades. It's well known for it.

I'm talking about things like LSD and MDMA, cannabis is not exactly a psychedelic.

MDMA and LSD are marginalized? Everyone I've ever known has either tried them or knows someone who has. Psilocybin even more so. That was practically a rite of passage growing up in rural Canada.

Your social circle is not the same as everyone else's. That was my entire point above.

You would think there would be more interest in psychological research. Or am I wrong, and it would be a copyright violation to download the source code and assets, compile, and ask volunteers to play the game?

I have a hard time believing the courts would object to psychological research conducted this way though; would video game companies really be willing to license this way? They would be liable for any ethical violations of experimenters; it doesn't seem like it would be a simple matter from the point of view of fiduciary duty. Better to leave the men in white coats alone.

This is interesting. What sort of psychological research are you thinking could only be conducted with old games, as opposed to newer games, which one can purchase without need to compile and build?

The release of the source code is actually more of a symbolic signal that the competitive value of the source code has reached a certain level. And that is within n orders of magnitude of the level where there is enough energy and money to pay lawyers to pursue, say, trademark violation or copyright infringement against anyone conducting such research.

So to be perfectly safe, one would be ultra-paranoid and stick to games released in the 20th century and then frame it as a kind of historical landmark in the video game market: what do video games in the 20th century say about what we knew about operant conditioning up to that point?

Example: suppose a behaviorist foundation and ask questions about really minute details related to visual and motor processing. Another: observe the expected and actual effects on behavior.

Would you conduct a Stanford Prison Experiment style of experiment if it were done with video games? That is, the players are associated with guards and prisoners, and they play out similar roles that the original experiment outlined, but in a virtual world?

There would be nothing illegal about such experiments if using legally purchased software. What would be the difference from e.g. a LAN party?

The prison experiment example already has a volunteer playerbase, it's called "Jailbreak mod" and versions exist for various iterations of Counter-strike and probably other FPS games, and almost certainly Roblox. It is role-playing, and attracts certain kinds of personalities. I have played it.

You may be able to do some of it with mods - but you want to compare how people react with different settings, sprites, sounds, or even gameplay rules.

Does listening to white noise increase the fractal dimension the same way as drugs?

No.

Sensory deprivation chambers may.