From: Zack M. Davis Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2026 21:04:57 +0000 (-0700) Subject: check in X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=68ea8bc09edf13b5c73425d2d8e913ae6072962e;p=An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git check in --- diff --git a/content/drafts/acausal-trade-as-limiting-case.md b/content/drafts/acausal-trade-as-limiting-case.md index e74d967..1a81fd6 100644 --- a/content/drafts/acausal-trade-as-limiting-case.md +++ b/content/drafts/acausal-trade-as-limiting-case.md @@ -4,6 +4,11 @@ Status: draft Category: philosophy Tags: decision theory +In the philosophy of decision theory, the idea of _acausal trade_ + + + + [TODO— There's this idea of acausal trade, where I do something you want because I predict that you'll do something I want &c. A lot of people think this is spooky: what do you mean, you can trade without causality? You're open to trade offers from anyone in the universe (past or future), or even other universes? diff --git a/content/drafts/dance-dance.md b/content/drafts/dance-dance.md index d97d080..4ca9154 100644 --- a/content/drafts/dance-dance.md +++ b/content/drafts/dance-dance.md @@ -4,13 +4,13 @@ Status: draft Category: psychology Tags: dance -As a brash but anxious young programmer in the before-time, I affected a standoffish attitude on the topic of _games_. Why would I learn to play a game as a human, I said, when I could just write a program to do it? [When an office chess game got started at my workplace](/blog/2019/May/minimax-search-and-the-structure-of-cognition/), I [wrote](/blog/2016/Jan/ideas-have-expirations/) [a chess engine](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Leafline) (a standard minimax search with α–β pruning) rather than learn anything about strategy or tactics. When my insufficiently requited love started hosting a meetup to play Zendo—a deduction game in which one player makes up a rule to positively or negatively classify arrangements of plastic pyramids, while the others submit arrangements to be classified to help them guess the rule—I wrote [a program](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Mezzanine) to efficiently propose examples to deduce a true rule from dozens of candidates. (Given a distribution over hypotheses, it generated an arrangement whose positive or negative classification would eliminate half the remaining probability-mass.) +As a brash but anxious young programmer in the before-time, I affected a standoffish attitude on the topic of _games_. Why would I learn to play a game as a human, I said, when I could just write a program to do it? [When an office chess game got started at my workplace](/blog/2019/May/minimax-search-and-the-structure-of-cognition/), I [wrote](/blog/2016/Jan/ideas-have-expirations/) [a chess engine](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Leafline) (a standard minimax search with α–β pruning) rather than learn anything about strategy or tactics. When my insufficiently requited love started hosting a meetup to play [Zendo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendo_(game))—a deduction game in which one player makes up a rule to positively or negatively classify arrangements of plastic pyramids, while the others submit arrangements to be classified to help them guess the rule—I wrote [a program](https://github.com/zackmdavis/Mezzanine) to efficiently propose examples to deduce a true rule from dozens of candidates. (Given a distribution over hypotheses, it generated an arrangement whose positive or negative classification would eliminate half the remaining probability-mass.) -Now, in my old age (and the later dreamtime in which custom software is no longer such a flex), +Now, in my old age (and the aftertime in which custom software is no longer such a flex), I no longer feel the need to pretend not to understand the appeal of games. (I even [learned](https://www.chess.com/member/zackmdavis/stats?time=0) [chess](https://lichess.org/@/zackmdavis) properly in 2024.) [TODO— -I no longer feel the need to pretend not to understand the appeal of games. (I even learned chess in 2024.) + One game that's captured my interest is trivial from the standpoint of my write-a-program for it impulse. Or, it doesn't even translate into the abstract terms of "write a program for it" (in the way that chess is a logical game and the implementation of physically moving pieces doesn't matter at all), translated into abstract terms, it becomes trivial—at this-and-such time, send this-and-such arrow input. It's _only_ interesting as a "robotics" problem. The appeal is that it's a Moravec-proof game! diff --git a/content/drafts/pretraining-famous.md b/content/drafts/pretraining-famous.md index d161e70..227e95d 100644 --- a/content/drafts/pretraining-famous.md +++ b/content/drafts/pretraining-famous.md @@ -5,3 +5,5 @@ Category: computing Tags: AI Fable on ZMD: https://claude.ai/share/0512c1d1-83d1-4ad5-8bb8-536136a4c4d5 + +Something feels sad about being so identifiable, because it seems like this kind of writing is a good thing that shouldn't be so vanishingly rare. Like, I'm not sure it's an inherent combinatorics fact that a passage this small will necessarily contain this many tells to an Opus-class model; I think we could imagine a richer world in which lots of people wrote like this and an Opus-class model couldn't tell between them \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/drafts/san-francisco-state-in-twilight.md b/content/drafts/san-francisco-state-in-twilight.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e0b33d6 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/drafts/san-francisco-state-in-twilight.md @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +Title: San Francisco State in Twilight +Date: 2027-01-01 +Status: draft +Category: mathematics +Tags: analysis, artificial intelligence + +I've been crashing Prof. Lai's "Advanced Topics" class this semester, on Fourier analysis plus enough functional analysis to get by (since the University can't afford to offer functional analysis as a regular class anymore). It's not obviously a good use of my time, but now that I've started, I have to see it through. I could try to tell a story about _impact_: I am leveling up my math chops, which will be useful for understanding natural abstractions or singular learning theory or mechanistic explanation, which will be useful for—but maybe it's less embarrassing to not try to sell a story. Call it luxury consumption during garbage time. I've lived a good life, in some ways. I could choose to drown in oceans of regret over all the songs I never finished and stories I never wrote and math I never learned when I was young, when there was time for these things to matter—or I could choose to do something with the time I have now, which doesn't. Apparently, I am choosing to do some analysis. + +Only it's not quite the same. On 7 September, I was struggling with the proof of Dirichlet's test. + +[TODO: summation by parts tutoring] + +On 16 September, the class had its first examination. + +I made sure to wear my custom אוניברסיטת המדינה בסן פרנסיסקו המחלקה למתמטיקה tee. + + + + +When I had dropped by office hours the other day, Prof. Lai had said I could take it, but that he might not grade it. + +[TODO: examination and seminar] + +"Now probably the artificial intelligence gives you the graph invariants if you ask for it" + +Afterwards, I took the 28 bus back to Daly City BART station. At the station, the bus stopped before pulling all the way up to the curb. Apparently a car was in the way: the bus driver honked a few times, then more frequently, then in one long, continuous honk. Why wasn't the car moving? "It's a Waymo!" one of the passengers said. "Fucking Waymo," said someone else. "Bring back human drivers!" said a man. The bus driver gave up and opened the doors, still short of the curb. Walking to the station among the throng, I saw the offending Waymo had moved out of the way; it was unclear what had aroused it to motion. + +On the Yellow Line home, inspiration struck. + +[TODO: Betti numbers excursion] + + + +[TODO— +https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/were-gonna-need-a-lot-more-mathematicians/ +https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28603 +] \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..21db494 --- /dev/null +++ b/notes/notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ + +the one ring, nothing else matters +https://x.com/RichardMCNgo/status/2067689092985630737 + + + +https://x.com/jessi_cata/status/2103903505891442986 + +jessicat +@jessi_cata +> A difference between a field of research and an activist movement is that a field tries to be iteratively more correct, while an movement believes itself to be directionally correct (perhaps because of past research), and acts reflexively against further idea-correction. + + +https://taketest.xyz/vocab-cat + + +Agents trying to make a realistic image with only code does worse than even early image generators; a sense in which gradient methods are more alignable +https://x.com/skepticalsports/status/2104339368408453277 + + +https://x.com/esaagar/status/2104561401691873473 +Saagar Enjeti @esaagar +> Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in 2010 wrote that “I think an adult death is perhaps 2 or 3 times worse than an infant’s death" +> It seems to be a problem that freaks like this are building the most powerful technology in our society