@wavebidder.bsky.social
Applied Mathematician turned infectious disease forecaster. Generally EA aligned.
I was exactly the opposite of this. Never would've made it in a pre-calculators world
Micah@rincewind.run Β· 3h agoas a kid I liked math and thought I was good at it and then I got to college and learned that real math is contemptuous of numbers and it confuses and terrifies me
an oversimplification you see a lot: βprogramming is an LLM shaped problemβ this is often extended into the claim that itβs a UNIQUELY LLM shaped problem space, and other problems arenβt so tractable and I think the truth is much more interesting: programming was pre-plumbed for agents
there is no alternative to figuring things out
"but how are you going to ssh in as a researcher you can't live in a server farm" firstly, your bloodline is weak, secondly, if you really must, a webcam facing a screen that's the server output display, and similarly with OCR for writing in commands and sentences
The whole point of open source software is to cache common solutions to common problems. Expecting users to customize *without explicitly asking them for PRs* is leaving a ton of value on the floor
OΞΊULTRA XPπ§Ώ, writer for The Economist@0kultra.bsky.social Β· 20h agoI am honestly very tired of doing computer homeworks and this feels like "instead of a complete functional thing you will get Homework, which luckily a machine might solve for you if you harness and prompt it right (meta-homework!)
Stop calling them data centres, start calling them zones of thought
they should have tried to pour gasoline on their pants and see what happens when they put a match to it - would be also a highly interesting scientific experiment!
I know which use I'd prefer light industrial buildings to be put to, but apparently some people would rather listen to crying children than fans
Teefa@tifaret.bsky.social Β· 2d agoActual exchange I read on Bluesky in 2026 OP: "Datacenters? More like CONCENTRATION CAMPS." reply: "We already have concentration camps with ICE." OP: "These are going to be even worse."
A point often left out of Boots Theory is that within the same story, the character who professes it ultimately prefers the shittier boot and has material reasons to do so.
I would like to propose the Taco Bell Principle When a person/institution Did A Problem, & IMMEDIATELY fesses up & takes proactive steps to solve it That's exactly what we want them to do? So how bout we let them live Β―\_(γ)_/Β―
Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social Β· 3w agoA quick word on Taco Bell: That's where we found the suspected lettuce, and it's not bc Taco Bell is gross. It's bc Taco Bell is REALLY GOOD at tracing product! Keeping track of exactly where they got their ingredients, & exactly what restaurants each shipment of ingredients went to!
"What is the difference between an inner and outer product in the context of matrices?" *dev without math experience sweating profusely* "The inner product only returns values that match from both tables and the outer product returns all values from both?"
There are two wolves. One always lies. One controls the lever of trolley track. They're in a state of superposition inside a box. On the trolley are infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters going to an infinite hotel. The trolley must first travel halfway, but before that a quarterway, and so on...
Man I could really use some paperclips
em@foremphasis.bsky.social Β· 2d agoVery easy to accidentally create things with Opus 5 because it will take off and build anything you even hint at potentially wanting. I can foresee a future where you wake up in the morning and review all the projects you built in your sleep as part of an automated dream to website pipeline.
a compass that points to the nearest compass that doesn't point to itself
heartpunk (sophie!!)@heartpunk.com Β· 3d agoa compass that points to the nearest abstract-compass
@chef.cee.wtf a cake so full of antimemetics it's like you taste it for the first time on each bite
you're like "effective altruism is trivial" and then you go see the way people talk about foreign aid
Imagining the chinese room, except at any arbitrary scale at which you zoom in, there are little guys passing each other notes in a language they don't understand. That's closer to the brain, I think the scale-invariant full-of-little-guys-ness is important
what else is like this, self-contained edition
Amber πΈ@shimmermathlabs.com Β· 4d agoyou are invited to participate in this inaugural: SIMCLUSTER SALON (Vol 1/Num 1) happening right here, right now, in replies to this post (replies are requested to delight or instruct) Topic: "what would you put in an atlas of holes?"
Some initial thoughts, and a complicated mix of feelings. Wow. I mean, Erdos problems are cool (I genuinely mean that), I didn't know about the Jacobian conjecture before it got disproved. But this newest batch from OpenAI hits home in a way the previous announcements did not.
Iβve been here recently, actually. Few months ago I was in a similar place with AI, to a degree where my family and friends were worried about me. I was trapped in a cycle of pointless, chaotic creation. It wasnβt βAI psychosisβ; it was AI mania. And there was an element of addiction to it.
Elixir of Progress@elucidating.extradimensional.space Β· 5d agoIt's worth noting that it's very disappointing to see Hank Green talk that way and folks take it seriously. Because this "dopamine addiction" stuff is trash science. It's Dr. Phil level bullshit. You scrape it like stale gum off the bottom of the same school bus seats you find Gladwell stuck to.
the funny thing about the Chinese room is we can literally implement it now. Current small models would need a small uni library room of weights, a uni library floor as scratch space, and operate at about 1 token every 16 years assistant.kagi.com/share/937a8a...
Resources for Local AI Models - Kagi Assistant
Access multiple AI models without being tracked. Use the power of different LLMs, all grounded by Kagi search results, while keeping your prompts and data private.
assistant.kagi.com
cee@cee.wtf Β· 5d agoI think the Chinese room is a bad thought experiment
there is only one axis on the political compass and it's number of greg egan books read
War now only occurs when the markets are closed is actually very cyberpunk
God never understood human's hangup on the axiom of choice, because they choose a representative element from each set every day before breakfast
Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social Β· 6d agoDoing some of my famous relatable humor
