lukehandcool

Many people have mentioned magit and org mode. I just want to give another shout out to consult.el which is a wonderful way to grep and search through text.

Happy birthday emacs!

I remember being blown away by CNNs and GANs when they first gained popularity. I do think, with skin cancer diagnosis, a transformer architecture is going to be the better bet.

Yes, something is lost, and that something deserves to be mourned. It's a big change and it will take some time to figure out what math looks like going forward, so if you are upset that is totally valid. But... this has potential to be amazing. If we can prove anything with the snap of our fingers, let's see how far that can take us. Let's explore unknown areas of math. Let's develop new fields to unlock new understanding.

Secondly, what Grant didn't touch on was a different fear I have. The fear of what will happen if all this power is centralized into a few companies. It's hard for me to envision a world like that and be very excited about it. Math has almost always been accessible to nearly the whole world. If that changes, I don't see that being a good thing for any of us.

That's why I feel very strongly that open models and open source are the best path forward.

The question is, if OpenAI is in charge of all math, what will they research? Ideally they would do things to better humanity, but in the worst case scenario they would research war strategies, weapons development, voter suppression algorithms, etc.

OpenAI, and other similar companies seem to be so profit driven that their idea of research could so easily be perverted to cause net harm to not only the maths communities, but well beyond that.

One big problem here is that OpenAI would be hoarding this ability by 1) not releasing their top models for public use,as we have already seen them do, and 2) limiting the capability of the public API, which we have also seem them do.

This not only kills incentive for math, it means that OpenAI becomes the arbiter of math and research for the world. The research that will be done is the research OpenAI decides to do.

This seems very dangerous to me.

Another path forward is distributed local models. Professors can do research on their HPC machines, individuals can have full access to their models. It's a much more democratic approach.

I didn't tell anyone about this for 10 years and am only now doing so in hopes of raising money to expand this effort beyond myself. I didn't know how it would go but I was able to raise am impactful sum of money and am confident about how I can expand the effort. I do not regret that decision.

I certainly did not mean to offend you.

I had been planning to hire Anwarite when she was ready. I have spoken about this with her. I've known her for almost half of her life. She is a very impressive women, very smart, confident, and extremely hard working. She can do the ground work that I wont be able to if TEP expands to a dozen or more students.

I honestly hadn't given much thought to what you brought up in your second paragraph. At the moment the kids go to 4 different schools between the 5 of them (some schools are gendered, some students are in different grade levels). Expanding to a different village would be difficult but doable. These areas are very remote and disperse. It might be a half mile walk to your neighbors house.

You've given me some good things to think about. Thank you.

First of all, no western NGO workers profit from the Tanzania Education Project. On the western side, I'm doing all the work and I take zero money and I never will take money from this effort. All the money (except for bank fees) goes to the kids education and healthcare.

On the Tanzanian side, I think things are more complicated than you are presenting. While you may be right about western societies in pre-industrial times, we are no longer in pre-industrial times. Tanzania got their independence in 1964. Before that they were systematically oppressed by a host of different countries who would mine their resources, steal their land, and force their population into labor. Today's landscape is different. Powerful nations like the US and China compete for rights to Tanzania's minerals, they own their businesses, and they interfere in politics.

I've spoken at length with an economically and geographically diverse set of Tanzanian's about how to address the issues in their country. Every time the conversation returns to education. In many areas, especially rural, the state does not provide sufficient education, or any education at all. I don't know how we can expect anything to change if people don't have access to education, and powerful foreign (and some times domestic) agents are actively exploiting the population.

If you believe that wealth should be shared, then why don't you believe in sharing it with people who need it most? The goal of TEP is not to enrich anyone. The students are receiving what I think should be basic human rights, not sums of cash in their bank account.

Framing this effort as a way for people to feel good about themselves is disingenuous. I think you agree that these kids deserve access to education, so why don't we give it to them if we can?

As for the goal, it is to provide education and healthcare to the kids of Ibumila so they can have the tools they need to assess and change the environment around them. I believe this will lead to positive change.

If you have a better idea of how to address issues in Tanzania, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for your comment.

I take your point. I have some things I could submit and I'll contribute more hacker related topics soon.

In my mind there are serious barriers to systemic change in a place like a rural village in Tanzania. In many ways the place is systemically stuck in a state of stagnation due largely to outside forces that the people there cannot control.

My thought is that by providing education to the kids, you can give them the ability to assess and change their environment in a way that they otherwise couldn't. I think that will lead to positive change.

No I filed it myself. It was 5 years ago now but I remember the process being fairly simple.

I see you're using PayPal to take donations - any problems with that or considerations of alternatives?

No problems yet. It's quite annoying that PayPal takes a fee from each donation. That part doesn't sit well with me but I haven't found any alternative that takes a smaller fee.

Also very curious to know these questions, and the ongoing cost/maintenance/bookkeeping to maintain 501c3.

As far as the cost, there was an upfront cost that I paid out of pocket (not from donations). Each year I have to file a IRS form 990 and a annual report which are both very simple at the moment because my bookkeeping is quite simple as well. Bookkeeping is like any business. You need to track where each penny goes. That hasn't been an issue for me due to the small size of the charity.

I hope that helps.

That is sort of the light I see this in. Instead of people thinking "oh what a good person" I hope that they think "wow, look what a difference such a small amount of money can make. And look at all the untapped potential in these kids".

I actually spent 2 years in Córdoba Argentina studying medicine before covid threw a wrench in that. That's when I pivoted to come back to the US to pursue an idea for a medical imaging device I thought up.

My PhD was focused on building a proof of concept for a mobile and affordable medical imaging device. Honestly the concept certainly tied back to spending time in rural hospitals in Tanzania (for other people, I wasn't sick) and seeing the lack of imaging and resources in those places.

The lab I'm working in is "mathematical neuro-oncology" and it happens to be in the neurosurgery department of a major US hospital. We're essentially trying to use our computational skills to make progress in brain cancer research so they hired me for my background in computation and imaging and medicine.

I'm curious if you think a documentary could have a similar effect. I'm an amateur filmmaker by hobby and I've been thinking of filming a "Cinema Vérité" type documentary showing the humanity of Tanzania and trying to relate it to life in the US. I think it could be powerful but difficult to get right. I'd love to hear what you think about that.

Honestly I made my first social media account about 4 months ago just to prove I was a real person after I finished my PhD and was applying for the next steps. I've never been one to post on the internet or engage with social media. I don't really know the etiquette of any other social site so I figured I would reach out here first since it felt familiar.

My name is Luke Bodmer. I graduated in June with a PhD in Computational Science from the University at Buffalo in New York and I am currently working in los angeles as a post-doc in Nuerosurgery at a major hospital doing cancer research. I'm a real person, you can look me up!

Not listing the EIN was an oversight. It is EIN: 87-3919577. I'll add it to the site when I get home tonight from work. If you look it up you might see "Ibumila Fund" which is what it was called before I named it to Tanzania Education Project.

The epic western savior thing is very cringy and I don't know how to avoid it at his point in the project. I try to limit my role as much as possible and have everything done by Tanzanians in Tanzania. Eventually I hope to remove myself from the site and the story and have it be a fully Tanzanian effort. I don't see how I can remove myself at this point.

Ideally I don't want people to look at this effort as "oh look at how good of people we are!". My hope is that people will assess their situation and the situation of the children in the village and feel compelled to give because it is fair and right.

I appreciate your skepticism and I think its totally fair. This post is really the first time I'm going public beyond my inner circle with this effort and any tips on how I can build trust are really appreciated.

It used to be registered as "Ibumila Fund" but I changed the name since no one understood what that meant.

Thank you very much!

Again, there is a typo on the email on the site. It should be [email protected] not .org. I'll change that as soon as I get home tonight. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you!!