Trying to work out what I think about things by writing it down.
Anyone in Cambridge need a programmer? I'll give you £500 if you can find me a job that I take. CV at http://www.aspden.com I make my usual promise, which I have paid out on several times: If, within the next six months, I take a job which lasts longer than one month, and that is not obtained through an agency, then on the day the first cheque from that job cashes, I'll give £500 to the person who…
I wonder why religious conservatives are mostly synonymous with capitalism supporters ? I mean arent most religions inherently socialistic ? What makes conservatives support capitalism , despite not being among the rich? Asked a redditor on lemmy, which is the new reddit. https://old.thelemmy.club/post/1302560 I normally avoid politics as being mostly kayfabe, but the same thought has occasionally…
(in answer to a redditor confused about the seed-oil hypothesis) You shouldn't believe things at all. There are lots of different ideas, any of which might be true. You should develop the ability to hold them all in your head at the same time, and shift the weight of your belief according to the evidence you see. Think less about modern religion, with its "one truth and you burn if you get it…
From AskReddit : People who don’t reply until days later, why? I get asked this all the time, so here's my answer in written form for those who like that sort of thing! Communication in writing is very low bandwidth and notoriously difficult to get right. A conversation by text message or email will take hours to do what you could do in live conversation in minutes, and is also more liable to go…
A gentleman on the cambridge subreddit is annoyed by his neighbour throwing stale bread into a public garden. My reply: I found that when I lived in London, I used to get annoyed by the regular rapes and murders. When I moved back to Cambridge, I got annoyed by parking permits and traffic and tourists. When I hid out in Wicken Fen in the perfect peace and stillness of the pandemic, all alone for…
Scott Adams wished his father dead: ( https://www.scottadamssays.com/i-hope-my-father-dies-soon/ ) And this paragraph stuck out for me: If you're a politician who has ever voted against doctor-assisted suicide, or you would vote against it in the future, I hate your fucking guts and I would like you to die a long, horrible death. I would be happy to kill you personally and watch you bleed out. I…
r/scifi asks us: "What are your alltime top five science fiction novels" https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/upaxq8/what_are_your_alltime_top_5_scifi_novels/ ** Top Five (in no particular order): A Deepness in the Sky Protector Permutation City Blindsight The Sparrow ** Runners Up for Top Five (again in no order, but none of these displace one of the top five for me): Children of Time /…
Turns out Group Theory's really neat, with lots of pretty diagrams and cool intuitions and beautiful theorems. (Disclaimer, only gone as far as the Sylow Theorems, but still...) This unexpected revelation came to me through Nathan Carter's 'Visual Group Theory', possibly the most readable maths book I've ever come across.…
I have over the last few months derived great pleasure from the blog of Bret Devereux, an academic historian interested in military history, the classical world, and speculative fiction. He is a sufficiently good writer that he can make subjects I'm not particularly interested in (ancient steel-making processes???) seem fascinating and important. And of course some of his major interests are at…
Epistemic Status: Ravings Importance: Easily the most important problem in the world. If we can escape the proof of doom, we will likely also solve all our other problems as a side effect, and all that remains will be the fundamental limits. Our new questions will be things like "How much joy can the universe physically support?" It seems to me that the world, and everyone in it, is doomed, and…
The Onion spoke wisely: https://www.theonion.com/cdc-announces-plan-to-send-every-u-s-household-pamphle-1848354068 And in response someone on reddit said: Can you share an example of the way it changed your worldview? I did not experience a similar perspective shift when learning the same material, and I'm curious if there's something I've missed out on. To which my reply was: Principally for me…
Just suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man had very mild flu symptoms, but thought nothing of it because he'd had the flu vaccine a couple of days before. And further suppose that he went round to his friend's house, in order to practice Christmas Carols for a hypothetical Carol Sing the following day. And imagine that that man woke up the following day with a temperature of 38.6, and did…
Stolen from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta )
I want to share a link to the following delightful paper: Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox, by Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576513001148 Here is an example paragraph: 3.1.1. Data storage It should be noted that data storage does not seem to offer much of the restriction…
Like most rationalists, I do not identify as a rationalist. Nevertheless I notice that that movement has grown to the point where there are people who do identify as rationalists but do not remember where it came from. And indeed there are persons attacking the movement for being unduly convinced of the power of human reason. This would indeed be good attack on rationalism, the 16th century…
An interlocutor recently spoke disdainfully of Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings about Quantum Physics. The relevant excerpt is: like the infamous quantum mechanics sequence, that seemed to fail to change anyone's mind with relevant domain knowledge And I replied: It's funny that you should mention the quantum mechanics sequence. That was actually my introduction to his thinking. I did a degree in pure…
I have recently been really impressed by some of the people struggling to reconcile the Word of God with the evidence all around us, which does not seem terribly supportive on its face. (An excellent example: https://creation.com ). They strike me as some weird mirror of us. I really don't think they're being dishonest. What they're saying is: "Given that we know that the Bible is true, what's the…
(Question I) A train is speeding down a track towards the point where seventy million terrified people are tied across the line. Their only hope is a group of young men working on a side branch, who are desperately trying to open a set of points which will divert the train into the siding. If they succeed, several of them will probably be killed by the train, but they will save tens of millions.…
I got my vaccine. Apparently AstraZeneca are making the stuff on a non-profit basis, and getting a lot of shit for it from various quarters. When people do things that save millions of lives I think we should be grateful. When they do it for free I think we should be extra grateful. Does anyone know where I can get a 'Thank You AstraZeneca' T-shirt, with their logo on it? A more general 'Thank You…
I have numbered the elements I have charted the stars in their courses And I know why they choose their paths I know the weight of the earth And the secret of fire And I know that it is the secret of life I can read the book of life And write in it too, making strange new forms I can heal the sick, I can make the lame walk I can make the very rocks to think and act And serve as a channel for…
The other day I found myself writing a python one-liner to emit a sed invocation to modify a bash script to run a series of comby invocations to modify a tree full of C programs. I know roughly what some of the C programs do, but very little about how they work. Those programs are executed by servers and devices I've never seen. Some on processors which don't yet exist. Some run in perfectly…
I am late to this party, I am ashamed of my inattention. But over the last few days I have been reading with increasing concern. It appears that we have a three-or-four day doubling time and a 1-2% death rate: Death rate could be lower for various reasons to do with counting, could be higher if the health system is overwhelmed. Therefore: 200 cases in UK today (March 7th) 800 next week 3200 the…
Hand sanitizer is worth its weight in gold these days, but the popular brand Purell is just 3 parts ethanol to 1 part glycerin. Both these things are still (7th March) readily available and cheap in large quantities. Isopropanol should also work, I think.
A reddit comment that got a lot of upvotes, so posting it here. Will probably come back and turn it into a proper essay at some point I have found in the course of learning and teaching many different things that a good coach will: (a) spend a few minutes watching what you're currently trying to do (b) work out what the right thing to teach you next is (this is the hard part of teaching, learning…
I have a friend who's a parish councillor. He was telling me recently how they had paid £10,000 (half their annual budget!) to have 'Keep Clear' painted on the road. At a single place, not all over the parish or anything. I said that I'd do it for him for £1000, using the right paint and font and everything, including driving half-way across England to do it. And that once I'd got the kit and…