HN Distilled

Essential insights from Hacker News discussions

Eternal Struggle

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

Here are the key themes from the Hacker News discussion:

Visual Appeal and Metaphorical Interpretation

Many users were struck by the aesthetic qualities of the simulation and its resemblance to the Yin Yang symbol, interpreting it as an artistic representation of balance and duality.

  • "An excellent piece of artwork! Really captures the meaning of Yin Yang, at least to me." - SkipperCat
  • "so simple yet so deep!" - federico-peconi
  • "That is so cool! That is art in motion and a philosophical statement. Well done, man! That is beautiful and brilliant." - keepamovin
  • "Metaphor for American politics." - bilbo-b-baggins
  • "black-white here doesn't mean bad-good. they just mean opposites, different aspects of things." - nialv7

Simulation Dynamics and Stability

A significant portion of the discussion revolved around the behavior of the simulation over time, with users experimenting with speed and observing how the shapes evolved. The core question was whether the Yin Yang shape was a stable equilibrium or a transient state.

  • "I’m really keen to see what this looks like after significant time but I’m not going to leave it open on my phone for ages just to find out haha. Clever idea!" - jama211
  • "It's amazing how stable it is. It's been running in a background tab for a hour now, and it still has the yin/yang look." - Animats
  • "stephenlf: I think it’s just random chance. I haven’t run any simulations or anything, but I suspect the YY curve is no more stable than any simple 50-50 split. I bet over large timespans the YY curve straightens out just from entropy."
  • "crazygringo: It doesn't. It quickly just becomes a random curve after a few minutes at normal speed if you leave it open. For obvious reasons it tends to stay half white half black (if one half gets smaller its ball will bounce faster) but the shape and its orientation varies randomly."
  • "thejohnconway: People are responding to you saying that it doesn't retain the yin-yang shape, but I've been watching for a while on 64x speed, and the yin-yang shape is one it repeatedly returns to."
  • "federico-peconi: Is there any predictable mathematical proof or logic that explains why the shape tends to stick to the YY curve indefinitely given the \"eternal\" name? Or is there at least one bad starting configuration for which chaos can take place and we loose the YY curve?"

User Interaction and Control

Users quickly discovered ways to interact with and manipulate the simulation, particularly by adjusting the speed, which led to observations about the simulation's behavior under different conditions.

  • "PLEASE add a speed control so I can speed it up to it's logical conclusion and move on with my day." - MarcelOlsz
  • "fxwin: you can run frameRate(x) in your browser's console to speed it up a bit - might be limited by your monitor's refresh rate though"
  • "xav_authentique: You can execute this in the devtools console: data.whiteBall.v.x = 5; data.whiteBall.v.y = 5; data.blackBall.v.y = 5; data.blackBall.v.x = 5;"
  • "makepanic: You can press P to toggle the edge point visibility."
  • "francisduvivier: Some people here were asking for it so I quickly vibe forked a speed control slider for farming some karma here on Hacker News: https://francisduvivier.github.io/eternal-struggle-with-spee..."
  • "ks2048: Yes, going to 32x also won't let you back down to 1x. (16x and lower - yes)."

Bugs and Unintended Behaviors

Several users reported or discussed bugs and unexpected outcomes, most notably the simulation collapsing into a single color, often referred to as the "black ball joining the dark side."

  • "cocoto: Mine broke even without speeding up things, the black ball is now working together with the white ball."
  • "alyxya: I watched it for an hour, and at some point the black ball crossed the boundary onto the black side, so eventually the whole circle became black."
  • "drob518: It went to the dark side."
  • "volemo: The darkness has come upon the world!"
  • "camtarn: Hah! I was wondering if that was possible."
  • "cocoto: Had the exact same bug! Not so rare I think."
  • "wvbdmp: Not to alarm anyone, but when I ran this, the black ball eventually joined the dark side and the whole thing ended up black. I’m sure this doesn’t mean anything for the greater universe."
  • "soneca: This happened to me in the original site. I think it happens when the white and black balls collide at the exact same spot of the border."
  • "maxlin: Running 100x for some moments, the white part got pincer maneuvered by the black and I ended up with the whole circle becoming black. Don't know what to think of that lol"

Underlying Physics and Mathematical Interest

Some users delved into the mathematical principles behind the simulation's behavior, discussing concepts like equilibrium, probability, and potential for further mathematical analysis.

  • "MrJohz: The cool thing about this is that it's self-balancing - if either side gets larger than the other due to random chance, the ball in that side will have more space to bounce in, and therefore bounce less often, slowing its growth. Meanwhile, the ball in the smaller side will bounce more often in its smaller space, making up the ground."
  • "istjohn: Yes, because it's not actually area that balances out but mean time between bounce against the black/white boundary."
  • "romaaeterna: An edge point's probability of being hit should be proportional to the length of every path leading to that edge point. An area closer to many short black paths and many long white paths will show black expansion (and vice-versa). So I suspect that any variation of the central line from a straight bisection of the circle should get hammered out over time."
  • "joshdavdav: Is there any interesting mathematics associated with this system?"
  • "cluckindan: Now that we have the simulation, what is the closed form solution?"
  • "Cthulhu_: Here we have it, an internet toy demonstrating how this asymmetry occurred. I expect physics papers soon."
  • "ycombinete: To me it's working backwards though. i.e. the black ball is creating more whitespace and visa versa. It's not immediately evident to me why that would be the case."
  • "mikedelfino: Shouldn't each circle be pulling in its own color instead of pushing the other one out? Right now it looks like they're expanding the opposing color, when you'd think they'd be rooting for themselves."

Technical Implementation and Development

Discussions also touched upon the technical aspects of the simulation, including the source code, potential for improvement, and platform compatibility.

  • "hk__2: Source code: https://github.com/yoavg/yoavg.github.io/tree/main/eternal"
  • "Insanity: I guess it’s supposed to start on mouse move (based on skimming the source code). On a phone it doesn’t seem to trigger unless I changed the background so I spent a minute just staring at the symbol without anything happening lol :D"
  • "bqmjjx0kac: Hmm, not on iOS Safari."
  • "darkstarsys: Cool! It would benefit from better physics though, maybe supersampling the position in time especially when moving fast. Each ball can't push to its edge fully, for instance."
  • "patates: I think next level would be custom shapes, custom starting areas, more colors, ability to change physics (add gravity?), and user interacting (being able to help a fellow struggling entity -a ball in this case-, when it gets worse)."
  • "Hendrikto: > vibe forked a speed control slider Very on brand, it does not work correctly. I can turn the speed up but not back down again."
  • "rhubarbtree: Interesting data point on the vibe coding front, as this is very buggy. Doesn’t bode well for releasing an agent on a non-trivial problem!"
  • "4ndr3vv: It'd be interesting to see how the visuals change when you're viewing the path, rather than a filled area."