I got a grant to do independent research on the AI alignment problem and was able to quit my job.

I know exactly one party trick based on mathematical group theory, which I have actually used to impress non-mathematicians at a party.

There's a concept called the "center" of a "group", which is the set of operations that commute with every other operation in the group. The center always contains the identity operation of doing nothing. The group of scramblings of a Rubik's cube happens to contain exactly two elements in its center: the identity, and a move called the "superflip" which takes a little bit of effort to memorize how to do, but it's not so hard. Much easier than actually solving a scrambled Rubik's cube. It's like you do a simple move repeated 4x, and then you do that whole 4x set 3x with some rotations in between. Not terribly complicated. Importantly, once you memorize it it's not difficult to do just by feel, since it's a fixed sequence of mechanical motions.

So, the party trick goes like this:

You have a Rubik's cube that is exactly a superflip away from the solved state. You hand it to an unsuspecting party guest and say "go ahead and make one or two turns" (it's important to say something like "one or two" because if they do 3 the trick becomes challenging, and if they do 4 or more it might become impossibly difficult unless you're actually good at solving Rubik's cubes, which I am not). They take this obviously unsolved cube and make a couple more moves so now it appears even more scrambled.

You take the cube back and do the superflip behind your back, without looking at the cube.

Then you move the cube out from behind your back, and at the same time (trying to be slick about it) you undo the one or two moves remaining before it is solved. Everyone gasps and say "omg he solved it behind his back" (when really you did no such thing).

This works because if S is the superflip and X is the simple moves they did to it, S X S is equal to just X because S commutes with everything. (S is also its own inverse, so that S S = 1.)

One thing that definitely feels like "magic" is Monstrous Moonshine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstrous_moonshine) and stuff related to the j-invariant e.g. the fact that exp(pi*sqrt(163)) is so close to an integer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heegner_number#Almost_integers_and_Ramanujan.27s_constant). I hardly understand it at all but it seems mind-blowing to me, almost in a suspicious way.

Right. The farthest people have been is the Moon, which is still gravitationally bound to the Earth. Plenty of spacecraft have been out of Earth's gravity well, and also a car, but no humans.

Oh, the first time I read this I had a completely wrong idea what it was about. I thought it was talking about like the Dalai Lama having being reincarnated or something.

Explain more... do you mean, just something exactly intermediate between octopus and ice cream in every respect? Or like, octopus with the flavor of ice cream, or texture of ice cream inside?

This may be true but I hate the practice of referring to "plastic" as if it's a single substance. It's a bunch of different materials that don't really have that much in common with each other, especially from a health/toxicity standpoint.

For example, people treat it as common sense that "you shouldn't burn plastic" because the smoke is "toxic". For PVC this is totally true, it makes very nasty stuff like dioxin that will poison you. But on the other hand you can burn polyethylene (think milk jug) and it's no more toxic than burning a candle. Definitely way healthier to breath than wood campfire smoke, for example.

There's also such a silly pattern where people learn some chemical might have some effect on the body and suddenly everyone is up in arms about it. For example Bisphenol A in many applications was replaced by the very similar Bisphenol S just so things could be labeled "BPA Free". BPS probably has similar estrogenic effects to BPA.

I'd say the moral of the story is be wary of received wisdom about chemical toxicity from people who aren't chemists.

Particle man, particle man

Doing the things a particle can

...

When he's underwater does he get wet?

Or does the water get him instead?

Nobody knows, Particle man

I mean, milk could also easily be death-free, but it's not vegan. It's also not suffering-free. So this suggestion kind of misses the point.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor

Running short distances for no particular reason. Like if I'm a short distance from the car and realize I forgot something in it, I'll run there and then run back.

Sometimes people are like "what's wrong?? why are you running??" and I'm just like why not? It's fun.

It's commonly understood that when the moon sets and rises again the next day, that's not a "new moon" that is the same moon coming around in the sky again. But the moon does a cycle of waxing and waning again every month (well, 28 days), and then you get a "new moon".

So "one moon" = one cycle of moon phases = roughly 1 month. This is where months came from.