"Everything can be made radically elementary." ~Steven Rudich
AI is fantastic at prototyping. A quick draft of an essay, a mockup of a website, a demo of a video game, concept art or trailer for a movie, or the core argument of a proof – each now takes one prompt instead of a week. 1000x speedup. AI is useful for helping finish longer […]
Last time, I introduced the concept of the “Fat Newt” (fatigue neutral) build, a way of skilling up characters in Battle Brothers that aims to be extremely economical with the fatigue resource, relying entirely on each brother’s base 15 fatigue regeneration per turn. This choice frees up stat and skill points to distribute evenly among […]
Today, I want to introduce an experimental PhD student training philosophy. Let’s start with some reddit memes. Every gaming subreddit has its own distinct meme culture. On r/chess, there’s a demon who is summoned by an unsuspecting beginner asking “Why isn’t this checkmate?” These posts are gleefully deluged by responses saying “Google En Passant” in […]
I left China at the age of four. My memories of those first four years are scattered impressions: a three-leaf clover I chowed down on while Mom’s back was turned, the smell of a revolting herbal remedy, the time an older girl scratched me on the cheek in daycare. We went back to visit every […]
[I am delighted to be visiting Inkhaven for the next four days and will attempt to post every day I’m here.] There is a Chinese tradition for using water as a metaphor for human nature. 人往高处走，水往低处流As water flows downwards, people climb upwards. ~ proverb Here the nature of water is that it inexorably follows the […]
[Calling it for this November, happy to have gotten a few short posts out.] For a couple years in my childhood, my mom picked up an obsession that can only be described as extreme couponing. At the time, CVS and Rite Aid offered an enormous variety of discounts and rebates with strange, time-limited conditions and […]
Today I want to review a concept present in many domains, but most clearly articulated by TCG players. In a game like Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone, gameplay divides neatly into two phases: deck-building and execution. Deckbuilding involves all the choices and calculations that go into preparing your custom deck of cards before you even […]
Today I want to end this discussion about research collaboration with my most useful tip for grad students: build an explicit model of how collaborators work, especially your PhD advisor. One of your primary goals in graduate school is to set aside 20% of your brain for simulating your advisor, who is typically the best […]
Today we continue our discussion about research meetings with a few concrete strategies. When I was a new graduate student, I often had long meetings with my PhD advisor and other professors that went completely over my head. Such meetings are extremely demanding: they require a broad base of shared knowledge, they involve carrying out […]
I once heard the following story about Szemerédi: His daughter was in elementary school at the time, and her teacher asked everyone to share a bit about their parents’ occupations. The kids went around the room and each said a little story about what their parents did for a living: “My mommy is a doctor, […]