zachfisher - Network

Next year, we should give Juan Maldacena the Turing award

Next year, we should give Juan Maldacena the Turing award

Why should the fundamental laws of Nature be so that one cannot explain them to a high-school student – but only to a quite advanced...

Why should the fundamental laws of Nature be so that one cannot explain them to a high-school student – but only to a quite advanced graduate student in physics? And we claim they are simple! In what sense are they simple? Because we can write them in one line. But it takes 8 years of college education to understand the symbols. Is there any simple ideas in the laws?
-- R. Feynman, 1947

https://www.arxiv.org/pdf/2408.15070

#physics

Is there a name for the phenomenon that star ratings for books aren’t that useful because of the self-filtering of who would read them,...

Is there a name for the phenomenon that star ratings for books aren’t that useful because of the self-filtering of who would read them, based on things like cover, title, nicheness of topic?

GPT-2 memes hit different

GPT-2 memes hit different

I make the following claim: it is strikingly plausible that by 2029, Nvidia’s market cap will exceed the GDP of the entire world. That...

I make the following claim: it is strikingly plausible that by 2029, Nvidia’s market cap will exceed the GDP of the entire world. That doesn’t require believing in sci-fi; it just requires believing in straight lines on a graph.

I make the following claim: it is strikingly plausible that by 2120, the average Harvard undergrad will have an average GPA of 6.0. That...

I make the following claim: it is strikingly plausible that by 2120, the average Harvard undergrad will have an average GPA of 6.0. That doesn’t require believing in sci-fi; it just requires believing in straight lines on a graph.

Proposal: use language models to automatically tag all the logical fallacies in every social media post

Proposal: use language models to automatically tag all the logical fallacies in every social media post

Tired: put warning labels on social mediaWired: ban social media for kidsInspired: buy up social network companies and make them awful to...

Tired: put warning labels on social media

Wired: ban social media for kids

Inspired: buy up social network companies and make them awful to the point of unusable

https://oimo.io/works/life/

https://oimo.io/works/life/

Artifice of intelligence

Artifice of intelligence

Listen. Strange VCs lying in swamps distributing cash is no basis for a system of government. I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an...

Listen. Strange VCs lying in
swamps distributing cash is no basis for a system of government. I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened VC had lobbed a billion at me, they'd put me away!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/23/sam-altman-openai-peter-thiel-silicon-valley/

Remember, there’s a 10:1 exchange rate between British p(doom) and American p(doom)

Remember, there’s a 10:1 exchange rate between British p(doom) and American p(doom)

I wonder when “I’m a Bayesian” became synonymous with “I feel comfortable expressing my ungrounded priors as facts”

I wonder when “I’m a Bayesian” became synonymous with “I feel comfortable expressing my ungrounded priors as facts”

Critics of string theory would like you to believe that string theorists “move the goalposts”. But there are no goalposts in science....

Critics of string theory would like you to believe that string theorists “move the goalposts”. But there are no goalposts in science. String theory evolved because it turned out that the theory was richer and more subtle than any physical theory before it. Even if the only thing that came out of string theory were AdS/CFT, it would already have earned its place in the pantheon of great human achievements. #physics

Is there a word for when your wordle screen resembles the word it’s wordling?

Is there a word for when your wordle screen resembles the word it’s wordling?

Folks who dismiss LLMs as "just probabilities" are gonna flip out when they hear about quantum mechanics

Folks who dismiss LLMs as "just probabilities" are gonna flip out when they hear about quantum mechanics

Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?

Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?

Bing and nothingness

Bing and nothingness

🤔

🤔

Credit scores are the original quantum tech—they change when observed

Credit scores are the original quantum tech—they change when observed