Beat Toedtli

Of ~200 books I've read, the few that stayed with me over time and I find myself often thinking back to or referring to, in ~random order: All short stories by Ted Chiang, especially Exhalation, Division By Zero, Understand, The Story of Your Life, Liking What You See, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, What's Expected of us, just excellent themes ideas and reading all around. The Selfish Gene (nonfiction) - a classic for understanding evolution and natural selection, especially the realization that the gene is closer to the real unit of selection more than an individual, explaining altruism and colonies and a lot more. The Lord of the Rings (fantasy) - I return to LoTR all the time for comfort. I don't think anyone else has created a high fantasy Universe this complex, with so much mythology, symbolism, new languages, mysterious system of magic, ancient and powerful beings and artifacts, beautiful writing and dialog, themes of courage, friendship and heroism, the list goes on and on... You're thrown into a world with characters and references to so many things that are part of this ancient world and never really introduced. There's always more to find on each reading. The Martian (~scifi) - top tier science porn, competence porn, fast paced and fun. The Vital Question (nonfiction) - First time I intuitively grokked the bridge from geology to biology, the origin of life, and likelihood of life in the Universe at large at various stages of complexity and development. Also all other Nick Lane books. How To Live by Derek Sivers (nonfiction) - 27 conflicting answers to how to live life. Emphasizing the diversity of consistent and possible answers to the meaning and goals of life. 1984 (nonfiction) - Classic. Newspeak, Ministry of Truth, Doublethink, Thoughtcrime, Facecrime, Unperson, the list just keeps on going. Chilling world-building and the realization that weaker equivalents of everything exist. In Defense of Food by Pollan (nonfiction/food) - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. The book that first taught me to avoid the entire center of every grocery store and only shop on the outer ring. The realization that the food industry is out of control and the things they do with your food, what they put into it, what they are allowed to do, and how they are allowed to market it to you is quite a lot worse than I thought. The Accidental Superpower by Zeihan (nonfiction/geopolitcs) - I've found Zeihan to be a bit of a mixed bag over time but I still remember his books (esp this one) to be elucidating on geopolitics. Countdown to Zero Day (nonfiction/cyberwarfare) - Goes into detail on Stuxnet, imo very important and highly elucidating reading on cybersecurity, the future of warfare, and AGI. A Fire Upon the Deep (scifi) - Chapter one only, incredible portrayal of what superintelligence will be like that has stayed with me since. Guns Germs and Steel (nonfiction/history) - I'd probably recommend a summary of this book more than the book itself. I remember it being very dry, but it was very interesting because it is a comprehensive analysis of the resources grid (food, animals, freshwater, climate, ...) in our real-world game of Civilization, and the implications there of. Flowers of Algernon (scifi) - Just a totally crushing masterpiece on intelligence. Atlas Shrugged (scifi) - No one finishes this I think but the first few chapters and its worldbuilding are enough and, once seen in an exaggerated form in fiction, elements of it cannot be fully unseen in reality. An Immense World (nonfiction/bio, by Yong, among others of his) - Nice book on so many different sensors used by various animals, you repeatedly realize human senses are super inadequate and that we only measure such a tiny sliver of reality. The Master Switch (nonfiction/tech history, by Wu) - history of information technologies telegraph, telephony, radio, television, film, cable television, internet and the pattern of "The Cycle", where each medium starts decentralized, open and idealistic and then progresses towards centralization, control and oligopoly, for the very similar reasons, by very similar means, and usually at the expense of diversity, innovation and technological progress. Quite a few connections to draw on for LLMs, which are after all an information technology too. (I take recommendations for more that are likely to make this list!)

brace for the ensuing enshittification

@joerogan Which ist why I switched to bluesky

X is the most reliable, and most popular news source in the world.

@ziv_ravid Isn't this a very honest and appropriate comment? I hope the editor took it into account.

☹️

Looking at ICLR submissions with the lowest score - What a work of art! 🧵

@Anthony_Bonato Eigenfaces?

Give me real-life examples of eigenvectors

@PhilosophieW @martinmbauer I think it just means that measurements are never exact.

@martinmbauer If it holds that 'approximately is not the same as equal,' this means, for example, that the models of physics are not identical to the ontological reality, as they are merely approximations of it.

≈ ≠ =

#WorseThanExpected AMOC news keeps getting worse.

@ZPostFacto @martinmbauer 1=2, isn't it? I mean, up to some smug pedantry where for some weird reason they say that you can only sometimes add +1, and sometimes that's wrong. My teacher irritably insisted that when there's a "=", you HAVE to add +1 on both sides. Why? Why can't I just do what I want? 😊

@martinmbauer This sort of smug pedantry, the effect of which is to immediately block off any hope of intuition, is really irritating, counterproductive, but also unfortunately common. Not sure why people do this.

No it isn’t. That’s the whole point

@LeonSimons8 Maybe Kennedy believes in chemtrails?

Will this US administration be the first try and learn about the climate impacts of aerosols? 🙈

@Anthony_Bonato And how do you get to the elevator?! 😂

You will never forget what m and n stand for with this one

@burby_geek @Patrick_Wyman Or with climate change...

@Patrick_Wyman I’m waiting for some trump supporters I know who aren’t healthy to complain about having to make lifestyle changes to comply with new Medicare and Medicaid rules

I’m calling the new era we’re about to enter “The Dumb Guy Renaissance”

@PeterShor1 Not grammar difficult. We stupid speak, AI stupid. But no fun Twitter.

Now commencing that Twitter using training AI models is, should not we plan use complete garbage grammar on it in order turning Musk's AI competence to incompetence total? Plan good?

@Sounds_4_People @Mcclainseanm @skdh It's so funny to see someone losing her job. We all love it when others suffer. In particular, if they are not our fathers or spouses. Right?

@Mcclainseanm @skdh Ehat are all of the jobless government people going to do? Work at McDonald's or Uber? 🤣

In my twenties I seriously considered going into politics. I eventually concluded that I have the wrong personality. I'm not a people-person, I'm an idea-person all the way down. Elon Musk doesn't strike me as the sort of person who has the patience or the people-skills to flourish in politics either. So this will be very interesting to see. Incidentally, the main reason I concluded I don't have what it takes to survive in politics was mostly by observing another young woman who lived down the street and who was clearly better at it. Little did I know back then that she would go on to one day become the German minister of the interior.

@Golovanov_ammoc Why? Any kind of balanced ressource might convince me. What studies have been carried out, and why would you recommend this?

Dear Scientists & Mathematicians, Please use chalk and a duster when teaching. Give up teaching #STEM via PowerPoint/slides. A lot of you, particularly in the engineering sciences, teach entire courses using only slides. BTW, can you identify these geniuses from their photos?

@martinmbauer In topology you don't cut holes, do you? Only Homeomorphisms preserve topologies?

There is only one doughnut Universe whether you like it or not.

@dedezigile @martinmbauer Do you mean Perelman...?

@martinmbauer According to Pellerman, this donut (torus) after many deformations can be transformed into a complete shape of a tea cup! I read this in Pellerman's proof of the Poincaré hypothesis!

@Anthony_Bonato 😱

Who is going to tell him?

@DrFrankTurek If it's True, "yeah, told you so!" If it's False, "of course the bible means yes if it says no. It is not always expressed literally Congrats! You win every argument! The bible is superior to anyone else!

All the Bible is literally true, but it's not always expressed literally.

@mojave51319986 @skdh The latter follows by definition

@skdh Care to give an example, and proof that they don't care whether what they are saying is right or wrong?

"Bullshit" is a term introduced by the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt in 1986. In contrast to a lie, which is a deliberately false statement, bullshit is a statement made without regard to truth. Bullshitters just don't care whether what they say is right or wrong.

@JanSchwede @JDHamkins And then I should also prove that there are infinitely many primes?!

A Calculus 1a math problem my daughter had called me about to tell me her solution. Prove or refute: if a sequence of real numbers a_0, a_1, a_2, ... has the property that for every number n>1, the subsequence a_n, a_2n, a_3n, ... is convergent, then the sequence is convergent.