Memo: A language that remembers only the last 12 lines of code
43 points
8 hours ago
| 6 comments
| danieltemkin.com
| HN
dcre
4 hours ago
[-]
How exciting, I get to be the pedant: it’s “stream-of-consciousness,” not “stream-of-conscious.” Conscious is an adjective; there can’t be a stream of it.
reply
efilife
1 hour ago
[-]
I think the same when I see "your subconscious". No, it should be "your subconsciousness"
reply
nofriend
3 hours ago
[-]
It's a noun too
reply
fc417fc802
3 hours ago
[-]
I was about to object that the latter is not in fact a noun but was surprised to see that wiktionary lists it as such. However it provides no usage examples and I strongly suspect it is in error.
reply
sheept
2 hours ago
[-]
I think it is occasionally used with "the," i.e. "the conscious" (referring to the conscious part of your body, for example). Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
reply
thaumasiotes
2 hours ago
[-]
I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English ( https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ ) for 'conscious_n', which means the token "conscious" with a 'noun' part-of-speech tag.

There are five results. All five of them are tagging errors:

If we scan to get enough info, then model the cells well enough, and have enough computers to run the simulation of the models, then the input-output of the emulation of the brain will be the same as the input-output of the original brain. It will act like it is conscious. [adjective, modifying it]

Well, first we work on working the body together, so that we can go places with both of us conscious. [adjective, modifying both of us]

Lady Bertram looks barely conscious. [adjective, modifying Lady Bertram]

In a few years, he believed, this institution would be needed in Ukraine, as new conscripts became more religiously conscious. [adjective, modifying new conscripts]

It is in this sense that Rahner means that grace is conscious. [adjective, modifying grace]

Examples 3 and 4 are so far from being nouns that they're being modified by adverbs.

It seems safe to conclude that in fact there is no nounal use of the word "conscious".

> Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"

That isn't actually what's happening in "the poor". The position occupied by the token poor in that phrase can be filled by all kinds of things:

God loves everyone equally. The rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, the sane and the schizophrenic, the possessed-of-billions-of-dollars and the penniless...

Do you want to argue that "possessed of billions of dollars" is a noun?

We can apply our in-passing observation from earlier and contrast the fully-awake with the barely-conscious. Here, as above, it's impossible for conscious to be a noun, because it is being modified by an adverb. And it's... dubious... for barely conscious to be a noun phrase, because it is headed by conscious, which we know isn't a noun.

reply
fc417fc802
1 hour ago
[-]
Nice dataset, I didn't know about that one.

Is my impression correct, that in general "the {thing}" is a noun phrase without implying anything about {thing} itself?

reply
dcre
1 hour ago
[-]
No it isn't. Can you give an example?
reply
LoganDark
1 hour ago
[-]
I am a conscious because I am conscious. Similar to how I am an autistic because I am autistic.

I would argue, though, that doesn't make conscious a noun, but simply uses an adjective as a noun.

reply
culopatin
59 minutes ago
[-]
Isn’t it an adjective on both? Being conscious because you have consciousness. Otherwise you’re repeating the same thing. I’m happy because I’m happy. I’m pink because I’m pink? Disclaimer: ESL
reply
omoikane
2 hours ago
[-]
I think it's actually the last 10 lines of code, not 12. I just wrote these 10 lines:

   Remember A as forty-two
   Tell me about A
   Remember B as A
   Tell me about B
   Remember C as B
   Tell me about C
   Remember D as C
   Tell me about D
   Remember E as D
   Tell me about E
And you can see how it plots the dependencies as a graph on the right, which is kind of neat. But when I add the 11th line:

   Remember F as E
You see the graph being turned into a forest with no dependencies, because it has forgotten the root dependency A. Indeed, if you enter "Tell me about A", it will say it does not remember A.

Another neat thing to try is:

   Remember x as zero
   Remember y as x
   Remember x as y
reply
dlcarrier
5 hours ago
[-]
In my country, we call that an interactive shell.

Fun fact, if you run Python from a command line, with no options, it defaults to such a shell.

reply
moron4hire
5 hours ago
[-]
Most scripting languages are designed to present a REPL (read-eval-print loop) in such a scenario.
reply
addaon
1 hour ago
[-]
Needs a compiler for the Mill architecture.
reply
NooneAtAll3
2 hours ago
[-]
why does the knob in the top right corner do nothing?
reply
stitched2gethr
5 hours ago
[-]
This is intriguing.

On another note, I do not understand how posts make it to the top of the front page with essentially no comments.

reply
tomhow
4 hours ago
[-]
How do they get comments without being on the front page? :)

A post just needs to get a handful of organic upvotes soon after submission, to get near the top of the front page. And submissions can easily stay on the front page for hours without much discussion. They just have to be interesting enough that people consider them worthy of an upvote.

reply