Working on https://teapawt.net/t.co/4MuGaTtTEy --helping people make better homemade food for their dogs.
Hilbert Space
Joined October 2011
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I think being able to video chat with a cute woman who never gets tired of you is going to be a huge disaster for our already loser-based society
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The fatal epistemological flaw with simulation theorists is they go "huh, that seems a bit computerish, perhaps the universe is a computer!" instead of the obvious, which is that the computer is a bit universish, because it's made in this universe. (See yi jing for more details)
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Read a physical book. Turn real pages. Smell them. Go see other human beings and talk with them. Build human community, human connections. Move, breathe, look around at the real world.
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"You pray for the hungry . . . then you feed them. This is how prayer works."
Pope Francis
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the apple reference photo is likely one of the most consequential things that apple is shipping
watermarking AI gen content is a futile endeavor -- the smarter thing to do is to watermark real things instead
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Just tried my annual olive. Sorry to report that the answer is still no. Please check back next year.
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I am a mathematician but I avoided commenting on this because the problems are (far) outside my domain. Even if I sat down to read the technical details (which I have not), it would be hard to appreciate the context of prior work, etc. But I've gotten enough sense of things through colleagues to be confident about some aspects.
First of all, all the mathematics is fundamentally correct.
How impressive are the results? There is a spectrum of reactions (as with everything), but the consensus seems to be all the results could realistically land (by prior standards) in the very highest tier of publications, e.g., Inventiones for the math papers and "Best Paper Award" at STOC for the TCS papers.
What does this mean practically? Prior to 2026, a Ph.D. student whose only result was one of these 10 would likely land an interview for a tenure line job at a strong university. For some of the results, you could probably replace "tenure line" with "tenured". When Astra comes out, it will clearly be very disruptive to the existing system. I think it's good that the community has the time to react and prepare. Personally I think we should totally overhaul hiring and publishing practices.
Are the results "Fields Medal Level"? I have not heard a mathematician answer Yes to this, and the quoted reason is invariably that the solutions are very clever and beautiful but not "deep". This is consistent with what I can see from a cursory glance.
However, the same criticisms could be levied at certain human generated works which have won major prizes. Ultimately, comparing results is very subjective and also somewhat political, and I absolutely think that if a human had one of these results, and also the right influential senior advocate, then that advocate could make a strong case for the work to win major prizes. The fact is that most mathematicians, including prize committees, don't have the breadth or time to evaluate all the top results, so they rely on proxies for importance like: Is the problem longstanding? Is it famous? Was there a large community of people actively trying to solve it? For e.g. #3 (existence of non-sofic groups), the answer to each of these questions is undoubtedly Yes. I've always felt that people should pay less attention to these proxies and focus more on the actual mathematics; glad to see that is happening with the AI solutions, but the same standards should then also be applied everywhere.
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Me reading philosopher A: ”yeah this makes total sense”
Me reading philosopher B absolutely ripping A to shreds: ”wow I can’t believe A is such an idiot”
Me reading A again: ”yeah this makes total sense”.
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As temperatures warm up, please remember to drink lots of water and stay indoors between 10:30 a.m. and November 1.
If you are planning on doing crime, please do it outside our jurisdiction.
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WHOA! You've got to see this. This is the view looking northwest from Rochester, New York this evening. See that needle in the distance? That's not supposed to be there. But it is. You're looking at the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada over 100 miles away. The 1,815 foot observation tower should not be visible at this great distance. But under certain conditions, the bending of light can make it seem like it's right in front of you.
This is a spectacular example of a mirage. Layers of cool vs. warm air bend and warp light. It can distort objects, enlarge them, even make them feel like they're right in your backyard. Note how wonky the even sky looks adjacent to the CN Tower in this image. The mirage is affecting the clouds and sky as a whole. I've seen some strange mirages through the years and this is the most pronounced cases of the CN Tower I've captured.
