Staging Changes To My Post.

"If we keep on optimizing the proxy objective, even after our goal stops improving, something more worrying happens. The goal often starts getting worse, even as our proxy objective continues to improve. Not just a little bit worse either — often the goal will diverge towards infinity. This is an extremely general phenomenon in machine learning. It mostly doesn't matter what our goal and proxy are, or what model architecture we use. If we are very efficient at optimizing a proxy, then we make the thing it is a proxy for grow worse."

Too much efficiency makes everything worse: overfitting and the strong version of Goodhart's law

first century: honestly off to a little bit of a slow start here like. jesus was obviously doing some big stuff, thats why its called the first century. han dynasty is neat but spans a longer time period so i cant give it too many points for that. 6/10 i’d say

second century: idk anything about the second century. not memorable, 4/10

third century: beginning of the mayan classic period. big fan of elagabalus. setting of (most of) romance of the three kingdoms. 6.5/10 honestly pretty good

fourth century: another one thats kind of, idk. council of nicaea i guess and wikipedia says this is when stirrups were invented. late classical vibes. 5/10

fifth century: fall of the roman empire! sexy! drama! attila the hun! not much else going for it honestly, but still like maybe 6.75/10 just for that. big fan of the huns

sixth century: sui dynasty is a pretty big deal, that’s about it. 5/10

seventh century: a lot going on. islam. tang dynasty. first written attestation of old english and (depending on exactly which inscriptions you wanna count) old japanese. hight of classic maya civilization. 9/10 love this one

eighth century: pretty much the beginning of japanese literature, man’yōshū etc. start of the islamic golden age. dresden codex. 8/10 would be higher but seventh century is a hard act to follow

ninth century: the invention of algebra, you gotta love that. we’re really on a roll now, 8/10

tenth century: this one always tricks me, the turn of the millennium happens at the end not the beginning. i know its the same with the twentieth century but that one’s in living memory so its different. song dynasty. “dark ages”. i like it but somehow it just doesn’t stick in my mind like the last couple. 6.5/10

eleventh century: norman conquest, heian jidai, 7/10 for sure

twelfth century: genghis khan is born, does some sweet ass steppe politics and power plays, 8/10

thirteenth century: a personal favorite of mine. the mongol conquests. half the known world. biggest contiguous empire. walk from one end to the other with a gold plate on your head. letter to the pope. im as big a fan of this century as temujins empire was thicc. 10/10 perfect score.

fourteenth century: i have nothing of interest to say about the fourteenth century. 5/10 by default

fifteenth century: ThE ReNaIsAnCe 7/10 love me some leonardo

sixteenth century: lots of genocide, 3/10 probably my least favorite. there’s lots of genocide in all the ones after this too but its not part of their aesthetic gestalt for me and thats what I’m basing this on

seventeenth century: sort of, wizard-astronomer with a big ass telescope vibes. calculus. 7/10

eighteenth century: american revolution, french revolution, haitian revolution, lots of drama. also i love townsends eighteenth century cooking, 7/10 

nineteenth century: overhyped fashion design, “lol what if the bad guys actually did conquer the world” edgey bullshit. marx was neat, also darwin. 5/10

twentieth century: dramatic, lots of twists and turns, very high concept. absolute masterpiece. 10/10.

twenty-first century: technologys gonna get so fucking crazy it could be great or terrible. honestly this coronavirus stuff will not be more memorable than the spanish flu in 100 years, in fact i bet less. trump’s bullshit will all just be like, idk weird facts to tell people about at parties like. ?/10 we shall see

Mordor by Dmitry Yakhouski

Zero is a funny number. The opposite of one is negative one. But the opposite of zero is still zero.

One drawback is that, despite having other work-related things to do, I am essentially drowning in the vast amount of material that is continuously recommended to me—books and information that are both good and very difficult to put down.

Both my biologist and math friends are constantly giving me new ways of looking at the world. I have a rich inner life because of this.

It's always annoying when a work of fiction presents a "revelation" that you didn't even realize was supposed to not be known. In Jennifer Government, there's a bit where this guy is infiltrating the villainous organization having copied the identity of a member of that organization. He meets a guy whose name is the same as his cover name, and a bit later he suddenly discovers that this is the person he's disguised as! In one Ghost in the Shell episode, they're looking through the pictures taken by a murder victim -- in a world where cybernetic implants are common, and which are clearly taken from his eyes rather than a camera -- and then much much later one of these crack professional detectives realizes that there's no camera and this is the key clue he needs to blow open the case. Even if I might buy someone from our time missing that, this guy lives in a world where such things are commonplace! How does he not realize this?

I love writing. I LOVE WRITING. THE ART OF ALL ARTS.

People in their thirties remember the olden days, when it was just you, your Windows 95/98/me desktop with floppy disks, and Nokia 5110 versus the universe.

Hachiko, the loyal Japanese akita. In 1924, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University brought him to live in Shibuya, Tokyo, as his pet. Each day, Hachiko would wait at the train station for the professor's commute home. This continued until 1925, when the professor died of a cerebral hemorrhage. For nearly 10 years—from then until his death on March 8, 1935—Hachiko would return to the train station, exactly as the train arrived each day, waiting for the professor to return.