Literature-Note

Neuroprosthetics is an interesting term. It was the spring of 1955. I was finishing my second year of graduate physics at U.C.L.A…I changed my field of study from physics to mathematics…I attended classes and studied 50–60 hours a week, generally including Saturdays and Sundays. I had read about the psychology of learning in order to be able to work longer and harder. I found that “spaced learning” worked well: study for an hour, then take a break of at least ten minutes (shower, meal, tea, errands, etc.). One Sunday afternoon about 3 p.m., I came to the co-op dining room for a tea break…My head was bubbling with physics equations, and several of my good friends were sitting around chatting. ...

I thought this was a very interesting blog post, if a bit technical1. Zotero item: 3BDN4EI6 In the sense of having big unfamiliar words. ↩︎

Meta: I am reading the free online copy of this textbook published by one of the authors, the legendary Richard Sutton. I have written my Anki notes below, and provided a link through which you can download the decks as APKGs for easy import into Anki. If you notice any errors in my notes or have any advice for how I should write these notes, email me at krishna@amitav.net. This post is very likely to change over time as I read more and more of the textbook. No spoiler warnings because this is a technical text. ...

This is a science-fiction novel about a society in which human producers in the economy are mostly unnecessary. As for content warnings, it’s a little bit sad and makes reference to drugs and sex once or twice I believe but should be family-friendly overall. You can buy a copy here (not an affiliate link) or find the free version the author published online here. Spoilers ahead. Click here to expand this full blog post. There are heavy spoilers inside of this block. Overall the book has some good ideas, but the writing feels half-done. It doesn’t really end on a cliff-hanger, but the ending feels unsatisfying. The book feels unrealistic in many ways: ...

Summary of Gwern’s take in my own words: “We should create LLMs that are personalized to each person to the extent that they can act as a stand-in for that person.” The rest of the essay is mostly discussing the mechanisms that would enable that and/or the things that would enable. Gwern refers to this hypothetical LLM as a “guardian angel.” For the rest of this blog post I will use the word “agent” to mean what Gwern means by “guardian angel.” ...

One action item for myself from this is to read this post by Neel Nanda on asking good questions. Summary Keep in touch with people, Organize things, Be sincere, Be lenient. Zotero item: G8DA5FQT

This was googled in relation to this post: https://amitav.net/posts/on-animals.html. As you can see in the second photo, the penis of the dog is relatively prominent. I considered censoring it, but I don’t think it matters that much. Zotero item: LLKP3D3K

Hello! This was an interesting piece. I found it via https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1v4zjfj/chinese_6yearold_girl_dies_after_receiving/ Zotero item: D2NU36AK