ccppurcell

I have to confess to being wrong in exactly that way in the past. On the other hand it is probably always good to behave as if the next step up in the hierarchy is still available. There's no point letting these things spoil your day twice.

Now I'm forced to think about it much more carefully. I don't believe that current LLMs can find every possible proof on their own from now on. I also agree that the PR returns have fully diminished. Given how hard it's been in recent years to fund e.g. a poorly paid postdoc, I doubt there's a ton of money lying around for getting the best models to work on mathematics problems. I think there's a chance we're heading into a really good era. I was able to make so much progress back when Google search was a useful research tool...

I think a lot of people are tempted to define the people they disagree with as idiots. Not all of them write down their thoughts at length. Both the verbosity and the edgelordery seem to be part of the culture of that community rather than inherent consequences. I think the sequences and HPMOR started or popularised a sort of norm that length is indicative of serious thought.

Once you decide that you believe what you believe because you are very smart and almost always believe true things, and the things you believe just happen to be the true ones (I am being unfair but I think this is the psychological effect of this so-called rationalism) it's not a big leap to: everything I have to say is worth hearing.

Nice. I was trying to think of a linear time sorting algorithm using a similar cheat. Any ideas?

As a theorist, it's sort of true that I "don't care" about galactic constants. I'm interested in the structure of computation for philosophical reasons. But I really do care about the model of computation.

To put it another way, the constants inside a big-O are not really constant: they depend on what you assume is a constant-time operation.

Czech republic has some really nice quarries and dams where you can swim for free or next to free. One thing I've noticed is that Czechs only seem to go to such places when it's really really warm. So they're often empty even when they're perfect for swimming. At least the ones near me in Plzeň. I grew up swimming in the Atlantic so my idea of swimming temperature may be different to average Czechs!

I still listen to the bastion soundtrack from time to time.

I'm hoping and actually expecting that eventually there will be a simple way to locally host a small model that is good enough for simple things. For a lot of use cases, the capability of free chatgpt one year ago was more than enough.

Maybe there already is! But last I checked it was a little bit of a mess of manually installing things from multiple websites with little documentation.

Here's a dumb question. If there was just one tax, the lvt, what would stop businesses sort of rediscovering income tax.

I mean putting a line on your pay slip called "lvt contribution" and then state the pre-lvtc salary in job descriptions and stuff like that.

Similarly with vat and related taxes. The incentive in both cases being to signal: here's what we would pay/charge if it weren't for the government. Which is presumably the current incentive to state before tax salary/cost (this assumption could well be totally wrong).

Another way to interpret the advice is not to buy the airport sandwich.

Crazy take. Whatever justification existed before exists now. Why is generation of proofs justified but not understanding? What's the point of a proof if no one understands?

And anyway a mathematician's lifetime salary is basically nothing. I think total worldwide mathematics budget is less than a tenth of a percent of GDP. Meanwhile, openai cumulative loss stands at tens of billions?

I'm going to guess that they have really good predictions, it's just that it doesn't benefit them at all to reveal those to customers.

Reading between the lines here, and taking an admittedly very negative view of openai, but they train on user prompts. So if they hear a rumour that someone is about to make a big breakthrough, they have an incentive to scoop by running the model and hoping the solution is in the new training data. Also the statement from the mathematicians in question alleges that they tried to pressure him into academic malpractice. Just appalling timeline we're in, cheers.

I just read that book. Embarrassingly enough, given the context, I got chatgpt (or whatever) to recommend me a list of books based on ones I'd previously enjoyed and that came up. As a mathematician it really sang to me, given the current situation. Bearing the torch forward, I mean.

Well they brought it upon themselves by making it about being tortured to death etc., instead of the much more reasonable economic and social risks.

Weird side swipe at Marx. Or not so weird I guess. Correct me if I'm wrong but I doubt Marx ever predicted that a workers' uprising would lead to classless utopia. It's clearly a necessary but not sufficient condition.

That just means it's not their top priority.

If you haven't read it already, Fads and Fallacies by Martin Gardner is a great book. A bit more focused on pseudoscience than on cults but Scientology comes up for instance.

I've been saying "ask chatgpt" when I don't think I have anything more useful to add.

Do you believe that 30 to 40 Palestinians per night pose an immediate threat? Elsewhen in history, genocidal acts have been justified by claiming a non existent immediate threat (of disease, of economics, of fifth columnists, of terrorism).

Also high pollen count. I am much more sensitive to heat than my partner but she has allergies. We sort of alternate. Sleeping with AC all night has its own issues.

Dinner originally had a meaning like "biggest meal of the day". That used to be midday, culturally shifted to the evening. In some places and some contexts the language followed but not in every case. In southern England dinner is typically in the evening but we still say "school dinners" for subsidised lunches and "dinner ladies" for the women who serve them.

Supper has always meant evening as far as I know but referring to the evening meal as supper became a marker first of the upper class and then of pretension. Hearing someone say supper is quite jarring for me.

He almost admits as much if you replace "America" with "Anthropic and openai" at certain places.

Reality has a left wing bias. That's a quote from something. Not sure I agree necessarily, but a plausible explanation.

Isn't it just what you studied in depth? I am not in this area but can understand what's going on "at a high level" here. But I studied no other science formally since the age of 15 (this is possible in the UK school system). So physics and biology just go over my head unless they are sufficiently mathematical.

I agree with your broader point but I'm always skeptical of the claim "we should teach xyz in schools!" Because, well, choose your least favourite subject at school. A language, history or geography, mathematics perhaps. How much do you remember? The reason you don't remember is because you weren't motivated to learn, since you didn't, at the time, think it worth learning. If you think kids are champing at the bit to learn systems thinking, or how to file taxes, or law or anything else really then you are unfortunately wrong.

Tree cover is great but I wish cities would just consider shade a bit more. As the world heats up, it's insane that so many places humans need to be for extended amounts of time have enough shade for a handful of people at best and often nothing. I'm thinking long sidewalks, waiting areas, playgrounds.

Which phone and is it android then? Maybe I'm out of the loop on Motorola. I just bought a pixel, thinking of trying graphene. I was a bit miffed about the lack of jack until my partner pointed out I hadn't used the one on my old phone for over a year. I'd like to in the future though.

The job market being as it is, a lot of people simply don't have that luxury.

Everything you do online publicly is usable in principle. Might as well also be public good. And my understanding is that Pokémon go made use of the camera. The kind of data you add using street complete is like "does this crossing have a traffic light?"