[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 months ago

Some thoughts of what might be helpful in that vein:

  • What is a Turing machine? (Described in enough detail that one could, you know, prove theorems.)

  • What is the halting problem?

  • Why is Kolmogorov complexity/algorithmic information content uncomputable?

  • Pursuant to the above, what's up with Solomonoff induction?

  • Why is the lambda calculus not magically super-Turing?

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 3 months ago

8 thousand words of Daria/Hellraiser crossover fic has not been enough to get me invited anywhere.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

For an exposition of Bayesian probability by people who actually know math, there's Ten Great Ideas About Chance by Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms (Princeton University Press, 2018). And for an interesting slice of the history of the subject, there's Cheryl Misak's Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2020).

For quantum physics, one recent offering is Barton Zwiebach's Mastering Quantum Mechanics: Essentials, Theory, and Applications (MIT Press, 2022). I like the writing style and the structure of it, particularly how it revisits the same topics at escalating levels of sophistication. (I'd skip the Elitzur-Vaidman "bomb tester" thought experiment for reasons.)

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago

Too long? Not long enough? Either way, every day is somehow worse than the one before.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

"Because, Lana, I care about the fluffiness of my baked goods."

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

In an essay that somehow manages to offhandendly mention both evolutionary psychology and hentai anime in the same paragraph.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

I doubted whether it would be a good use of time to read Michael Lewis’s new book Going Infinite about Sam Bankman-Fried (hereafter SBF or Sam). What would I learn that I did not already know? Was Michael Lewis so far in the tank of SBF that the book was filled with nonsense and not to be trusted?

I set up a prediction market,

10/10 perfect LessWrong, no notes

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

Qu'est-ce que fuck did I just read?

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

all alignment and no play makes jack a dull boy

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

I was a teenager in the '90s; I don't need to watch a movie for that. :-P

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

A joke I heard in the last century: Give a professor a nickel and they'll talk for an hour. Give 'em a quarter and you'll be in real trouble.

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