Gvaerg

• Gvaerg 17 Jul 2013 6:27 UTC

  2 points

  on: Help us name the Se­quences ebook

  What’s the current progress on this?

• Gvaerg 1 Nov 2013 21:57 UTC

  23 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Novem­ber 2013

  “I spread the map out on the dining room table, and I held down the corners with cans of V8. The dots from where I’d found things looked like the stars in the universe. I connected them, like an astrologer, and if you squinted your eyes like a Chinese person, it kind of looked like the word ‘fragile’. [...] I erased and connected the dots to make ‘porte’. I had the revelation that I could connect the dots to make ‘cyborg’, and ‘platypus’, and ‘boobs’, and even ‘Oskar’, if you were extremely Chinese. I could connect them to make almost anything I wanted, which meant I wasn’t getting closer to anything. And now I’ll never know what I was supposed to find. And that’s another reason I can’t sleep.”

  Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (emphasis mine)

  What links here?

  • Richard_Kennaway's comment on Lone Ge­nius Bias and Re­turns on Ad­di­tional Researchers by ChrisHallquist (2 Nov 2013 6:50 UTC; 4 points)

• Gvaerg 3 Nov 2013 10:30 UTC

  0 points

  on: Hal­loween thread—ra­tio­nal­ist’s hor­rors.

  A year ago, I was going to the local Institute of Mathematics (I live in Bucharest) to attend a short talk on mathematical logic. The talk was scheduled at noon. Given that I had spent the night before at my girlfriend’s and we were going somewhere together in the afternoon, I took her with me. While walking towards the Institute, I said to her that I don’t remember the name of the speaker. She said that maybe it’s a guy that we had met at a conference two months before (that conference was on a completely different area of math, namely algebraic combinatorics). She didn’t have any prior knowledge of the logic talk or of that guy’s mathematical interests. As we entered the room, we saw that it was really that guy. I still can’t explain that..

• Gvaerg 8 Nov 2013 15:40 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: MalcolmOcean’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Novem­ber 2013

  Well, sort of—the protagonist is a child who tries to decipher a clue for a treasure hunt and so he realizes that a model that can predict anything is useless.

• Gvaerg 10 Nov 2013 17:01 UTC

  1 point

  on: Aca­demic Cliques

  This thing can happen even in mathematics or theoretical CS, where there can be a gradual growth of a group of people researching something which gets ignored by and/​or has no relevance to the mainstream community.

  A good example is institutional model theory, whose practicioners think it is the ultimate theory of abstract logic, even though its accomplishments remain to be seen.

• Gvaerg 11 Nov 2013 9:19 UTC

  1 point

  on: Very Ba­sic Model Theory

  From what I know, Chang & Keisler is a bit dated and can create a wrong perspective on what model theorists are researching nowadays. Maybe you should also look at a modern textbook, like the ones from Hodges, Marker or Poizat.

Wolfram’s new “Cloud” initiative

• Gvaerg 22 Nov 2013 11:26 UTC

  46 points

  on: 2013 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Took the survey. Can’t wait for the results.

• Gvaerg 23 Nov 2013 15:37 UTC

  2 points

  on: Book Re­view: Com­putabil­ity and Logic

  I tried to find a good book on the mathematics (not the philosophy!) of second-order logic on my usual sources (like mathoverflow.net discussions), but so far they have rendered nothing. Given that, as I understand it, there is some interest on these forums in SOL, can anyone help me with a recommendation? Thanks.

• Gvaerg 23 Nov 2013 18:05 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Ritalin’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 15-22, 2013

  There is also a TV adaptation from 1999), where the chronology is a bit mixed-up because it presents the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as some sort of “prelude” to the Flood, whereas in the Bible the Sodom story is several hundred years after Noah. The reason why I’m bringing this up is that in that film, the destruction of Sodom is presented with fireballs/​meteorites, which also feature in this linked trailer, so I’m lead to think this film will also distill the two stories together in some way (there is no fire-related destruction in the Bible anywhere near the Flood story).

  Also, I’m wondering if they will be incorporating popular/​deuterocanonical traditions a la The Passion of the Christ—for example, Methuselah dying seven days before the Flood.

• Gvaerg 23 Nov 2013 18:16 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Adele_L’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 23-30, 2013

  From what I’ve seen in the last year, MIRI has sort-of backpedaled on the “actually building an AGI/​FAI” goal, and pushed forward in their public declarations the “milder” goal of ensuring a positive impact of AGI when it finally gets created by someone.

• Gvaerg 23 Nov 2013 18:45 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Adele_L’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 23-30, 2013

  It’s more of an impression of mine than an actual statement of theirs.

• Gvaerg 23 Nov 2013 21:29 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Ritalin’s comment on: Open Thread, Novem­ber 15-22, 2013

  Well, God only claimed he would never destroy people with water again… everything else was fair game.

• Gvaerg 24 Nov 2013 23:27 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: wuncidunci’s comment on: Book Re­view: Com­putabil­ity and Logic

  Thanks, I’ll check them out.

• Gvaerg 3 Dec 2013 21:04 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: VAuroch’s comment on: Open Thread, De­cem­ber 2-8, 2013

  I did some Googling after reading the article and found this book by Dijkstra and Scholten actually showing how a first-order language could be adapted to yield easy and teachable corectness proofs. That is actually amazing! I have a degree in CS and unfortunately I’ve never seen a formal specification system that could actually be implemented and not be just some almost-tautological mathematical logic, like so many systems that exist in the academia. Thanks very much for the link.

• Gvaerg 4 Dec 2013 17:42 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Open Thread, De­cem­ber 2-8, 2013

  And simulation theory is kinda the opposite of statistics—whereas in statistics you deduce the distribution from sample data, in simulation you compute plausible sample data from a given distribution.

• Gvaerg 4 Dec 2013 17:44 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: kpreid’s comment on: Open Thread, De­cem­ber 2-8, 2013

  A related question: I clicked the (modified) URL that “admin” sent me, and the page contained a form where I could fill in my LW password in order to create a wiki account. I submitted it but I cannot login on the wiki with my LW credentials. What’s going on?

• Gvaerg 9 Dec 2013 20:45 UTC

  4 points

  on: Open thread for De­cem­ber 9 − 16, 2013

  I’ve noticed something: the MIRI blog RSS feed doesn’t update as a new article appears on the blog, but rather at certain times (two or three times a month?) it updates with the articles that have been published since the last update.

  Does anyone know why this happens?

• Gvaerg 26 Dec 2013 14:54 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: alexvermeer’s comment on: Open thread for De­cem­ber 9 − 16, 2013

  You can see it now in action: the RSS feed is two articles behind the blog. (I waited for the problem to show up.)

  EDIT (2013-12-28): The RSS feed has updated.

• Gvaerg 28 Dec 2013 1:18 UTC

  8 points

  on: Cog­nito Men­tor­ing: An ad­vis­ing ser­vice for in­tel­lec­tu­ally cu­ri­ous students

  I would like to see a review after someone goes through this process.