Pairs well with the Experimental History post I just read.

Where has all the weirdness gone?

Very well argued.

Our super-safe environments may fundamentally shift our psychology. When you’re born into a land of milk and honey, it makes sense to adopt what ecologists refer to as a “slow life history strategy”—instead of driving drunk and having unprotected sex, you go to Pilates and worry about your 401(k). People who are playing life on slow mode care a lot more about whether their lives end, and they care a lot more about whether their lives get ruined. Everything’s gotta last: your joints, your skin, and most importantly, your reputation. That makes it way less enticing to screw around, lest you screw up the rest of your time on Earth.

Wonder if this explains a lot of my bugbears and obsessions.

Yes. But so are men.

Never so quickly has an article made me transition from confusion to laughter to rage so quickly. Conservatives are weird. Everything’s here: pseudoscience, denial of the existence of racism and sexism, bio— and gender essentialism, and so many false dichotomies. The point of this article is to get a conservative white man’s dick wet. Furthermore, it’s one of those frustrating unfalsifiable “theories”: if I disagree with the author on the merits of what they’re written, then they can just claim I’ve been “feminized.” Utter bull crap.

via: https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/are-women-unsuited-for-the-pursuit

TIL behaviorism is very much responsible for the language of reinforcement learning in machine learning writ large.

I’ve heard a lot of negative things about Freud’s philosophy of psychology, but Paul Bloom presents it here in a neutral yet convincing fashion. I see a lot of connections between Freud’s philosophy and compulsion/intrusive thoughts.

Interesting math relevant to compiler optimization.

It’s our best theory of elementary particles and forces. It’s absolutely amazing: it took centuries of genius to discover that the world is like this, and it’s absolutely shocking. But nobody believes it’s the last word, so we simply call it The Standard Model. But what does this theory say?

The place of scientists in society over the past 80 years has been a historical anomaly.

Something to chew on as I get ready to apply to grad school and continue to seek a research profession.

Excellent set of talks.

It’s hard to make a saw that cuts trees but not arms.

We should not stop making powerful tools because they are dangerous. Rather, we should empower people to use powerful tools safely.

I like the sentiment, but I do worry that in our current moment that this is a justification for LLMs; sigh.

You always want to strictly control how your food is harvested, stored, and prepared. But what happens when any step in that process goes seriously wrong?

Engineers and category theorists take their analogies very seriously. The many tables seen in this article are regularly referred to in categorical spaces as “Rosetta stones.” The fact that people have found strong connections between classical mechanics and electromagnetism is quite astounding; clearly, differential equations are not to be underestimated.

via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAGJw7YBy8E

via: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/networks_santa_fe/

Here, the goals of category theory are made clear:

The dream: each different kind of network or open system should be a morphism in a different monoidal category. Relationships between different kinds should be given by monoidal functors.

Algo a great introduction to Petri nets. Very interesting that Petri nets, which clearly themselves are categories (via the free category of a directed graph) become morphisms instead of objects, as it usually goes in higher category theory.

via: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta/

A topic first heavily covered in my learning by Wadler, now reintroduced to by by Baez. Happy to see it has a name.

via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAGJw7YBy8E

via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAGJw7YBy8E

Scientists and engineers like to describe processes or systems made of smaller pieces using diagrams: flow charts, Petri nets, electrical circuit diagrams, signal-flow graphs, chemical reaction networks, Feynman diagrams and the like.   Many of these diagrams fit into a common framework: the mathematics of symmetric monoidal categories.  When we embrace this realization, we start seeing connections between seemingly different subjects.  We also get better tools for understanding open systems: systems that interact with their environment.  This takes us beyond the old scientific paradigm that emphasizes closed systems.

Going down the categorical systems theory rabbit hole; very good exposition from Baez as per usual. I also finally know what a monoidal category is, so that’s pretty handy. I ought to read the paper this talk is based on at some point.

see: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta/

via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoidal_category

Transcription of Thomas Jefferson’s ‘original Rough draught’ of the Declaration of Independence.

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither

Crazy that this shit got taken out.