As part of our Templeton-funded Proofs & Reasons project, I travelled to the ICM in Philadelphia this year, to help a collaborator run some new experiments on expert mathematicians. The ICM is an every-four-years event that you may remember as where Hilbert launched his field-defining 23 problems, or the place they announce the Fields Medals.… Read the full article
Some personal thoughts from a now-tenured professor on building an academic career. Mentorship. A crucial part of early-career academia is finding mentors. Mentors provide targeted advice on how to build a career that meets you where you are, in all your individual complexity. A mentor transmits, among other things, the tacit knowledge and hidden curriculum… Read the full article
Thanks to a new grant from the John Templeton Foundation, we are hiring three postdoctoral fellows (three year positions, post-PhD), and up to three predoctoral fellows (minimum term 3.5 months, one year positions with possibility of extension, for those who have yet to begin a PhD). This is an interdisciplinary grant in the study of… Read the full article
Update — we have new positions available; please see the latest on our predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships in mathematics and cognitive science. Update: we are currently happy to receive rolling inquiries about this opportunity, for start dates in the Fall 2023 or Spring 2024. Inquiries received by May 31st will receive full consideration. If you will… Read the full article
This post is based on a discussion hosted last night at Harlem House, which included Jessica Taylor, Ben Hoffmann, and Hazard of the East. It announces a systemic vulnerability, the League of Legends Vulnerability, and the associated Forbidden Image Attack, common to Turing-complete systems including Ethereum. Needless to say, please do not actually conduct this… Read the full article
1. Physics advances, discovering infinity beneath the finite. Not one reference frame, but an infinite number. Not so-and-so many celestial spheres, but an infinitude of possible orbits. Even quantum theory, supposedly the source of discrete units, does this: not two states (“up” or “down”) but an infinite number (points on the Bloch sphere). Not so-and-so… Read the full article
PLEASE NOTE—the final syllabus has been sent to all registered students. The syllabus below is not the current one! (Because the final syllabus contains private links, etc, it won’t be public until the course is complete.) In mid-November, I’ll be teaching a graduate level seminar on the science and philosophy of intelligence. Titled Future Theories… Read the full article
TL;DR: outrage mobs aren’t a bug. They’re a feature. After the introduction, there are five parts: the algorithm is real, the algorithm wants you online, the algorithm will find you, walk away from the algorithm, no, but seriously. Update: a new post on charting a post-social media future. Update: a nice piece by philosopher Anne-Sophie… Read the full article
Devs is an eight-hour film about computerland. This post will do a reading of Devs, and Garland’s previous film, Ex Machina, but before I do that I want to talk briefly about what computerland is, and why we might care. In an essay for FQXi’s prize competition this year, I defined computerland as the pair… Read the full article
People have hated on Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic” as long as it has existed. In this essay I will show that this hate is deeply misguided. Morissette’s song is, in fact, a compendium of different forms of irony that few rhetorical guides have equalled. First, the song itself. Now the analysis. An old man turned… Read the full article