Date: 2011-12-28 16:08
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: dialogue-concerning-birthdays
"Happy birthday, Synthia!"
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: new year
-Slug: happy-new-year-2012
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne? (_Hint:_ Assume the opposite and try to derive a contradiction.)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: calculus
-Slug: the-derivative-of-the-natural-logarithm
Most people learn during their study of the differential and integral calculus that the derivative of the natural logarithm ln _x_ is the reciprocal function 1/_x_. Indeed, sometimes the natural logarithm is _defined_ as $$ \int_1^x \frac{1}{t}\,dt$$. However, on observing the graphs of ln _x_ and 1/_x_, the inquisitive seeker of knowledge can hardly fail to notice a disturbing anomaly:
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: humor, morality
-Slug: a-knock-knock-joke
This one is a classic that I love to repeat; stop me if you've heard it before. Knock, knock.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: schooling
-Slug: a-philosophy-of-education
_Shut up! Shut up and leave me alone with my books!_
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: poetry, politics
-Slug: a-political-orientation-provisional
Socially liberal,
Fiscally confused;
Date: 2012-12-29 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: morality, rationality
-Slug: actually-personal-responsibility
+Tags: morality
Dear reader, you occasionally hear people with conservative tendencies complain that the problem with Society today is that people lack _personal responsibility_: that the young and the poor need to take charge of themselves and stop mooching off their parents or the government: to shut up, do their homework, and get a job. I lack any sort of conservative tendency and would never say that sort of thing, but I would endorse a related-but-quite-distinct concept that I want to refer to using the same phrase _personal responsibility_, as long as it's clear from context that I don't mean it in the traditional, conservative way.
Date: 2012-11-06 12:17
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: advice-for-a-moment-of-emotional-vulnerability
Don't panic; keep it together; silently lower your estimate of your general competence.
Date: 2012-11-10 20:42
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: ambition
I will not be rich; I will not be famous; who can say but that in a year's time, my desiccated corpse will be found abandoned in the most desolate of wastelands?—but! By the stars which may one day yet still be ours, _I will understand!_
Date: 2012-07-17 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: an-idea-for-a-psychology-experiment
Let me know if someone's actually done this.
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: sex & gender, Star Trek
-Slug: an-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series
At some point, the first officer man should say, "When I was a little girl ..." and then everyone looks at him funny, and he says, "What, didn't I ever tell you that I'm trans?" Everyone else: "_No!_" "Oh. Well, now you know."
Date: 2012-12-31 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: audacious-resume-lines
__Short-Term Career Objective__: _make money_ and _help people_ by means of using computers to _solve problems_
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: geometric algebra
-Slug: blades
What is a _vector_ in Euclidean space? Some might say it's an entity characterized by possessing a _magnitude_ and a _direction_. But scholars of the geometric algebra (such as [Eric Chisolm](http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.5935) and [Dorst _et al._](http://www.geometricalgebra.net/)) tell us that it's better to decompose the idea of _direction_ into the two ideas of subspace _attitude_ (our vector's quality of living in a particular line) and _orientation_ (its quality of pointing in a particular direction in that line, and not the other). On this view, a vector is an _attitudinal oriented length element_. But having done this, it becomes inevitable that we should want to talk about attitudinal oriented _area_ (volume, 4-hypervolume, _&c._) elements. To this end we introduce the _outer_ or wedge product ∧ on vectors. It is _bilinear_, it is _anticommutative_ (swapping the order of arguments swaps the sign, so $\vec{a}\wedge\vec{b} = -\vec{b}\wedge\vec{a}$), and that's all you need to know.
Date: 2012-10-20 03:18
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: blood-from-a-stone
Decision-theoretically speaking, there's no difference between punishment and lack-of-reward. (Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility functions are really only defined up to an affine transformation: if your behavior is described by _u_(_x_), then _v_(_x_) := _au_(_x_) + _b_ does just as well.) Psychology isn't like that; punishment and lack-of-reward are very different things—although not quite so different as one might think. In an environment where behavior X is rewarded with praise and status, and behavior Y is ignored—not punished, not condemned, but _ignored_—what kind of mind would it take to persist in behavior Y? It would either have to be very stubborn, unshakeably convinced in the righteousness of Y, or very stupid, desperately willing to endlessly chase a satisfaction that will never, ever come.
Date: 2012-10-03 05:00
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
-Slug: book-notes-i
Did you know that putting [adorable foxes on the cover of your book](http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Game-Theory-Computer-Scientists/dp/0521198666) will make it sell more copies??
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis
-Slug: bounded-but-not-totally-bounded-redux
_Theorem_. An open set in real sequence space under the ℓ∞ norm is not totally bounded.
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis
-Slug: bounded-but-not-totally-bounded
The idea of _total boundedness_ in metric space (for every ε, you can cover the set with a finite number of ε-balls; [discussed previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/08/straight-talk-about-precompactness/) on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_) is distinct from (and in fact, stronger than) the idea of mere boundedness (there's an upper bound for the distance between any two points in the set), but to an uneducated mind, it's not immediately clear _why_. What would be an example of a set that's bounded but not totally bounded? _Wikipedia_ claims that the unit ball in infinite-dimensional Banach space will do. Eric Hayashi made this more explicit for me: consider sequence space under the $\ell^\infty$ norm, and the "standard basis" set (1, 0, 0 ...), (0, 1, 0, 0, ...), (0, 0, 1, 0, 0, ...). The distance between any two points in this set is one, so it's bounded, but an open 1-ball around any point doesn't contain any of the other points, so no finite number of open 1-balls will do, so it's not totally bounded, which is what I've been trying to tell you this entire time.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: cached speech
-Slug: cached-remark-for-when-my-prediction-of-abject-failure-comes-true
I won't say _I told you so_ except by means of [apophasis](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apophasis).
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: cached speech
-Slug: cached-reply-upon-being-told-that-im-an-idiot
Not specific enough.
Date: 2012-12-09 15:49
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: cant-break-clean
For five years I've known that at some point I need to stop shouting, "the Authorities _lied_ to me; _why why why why did they lie to me?!_" and start saying, "Okay, so extant social institutions are flawed in knowable ways, and my parents and teachers didn't tell me. Given my current state of information, this shouldn't actually be surprising, so let's stop crying about it and get on with the whole world optimization thing."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Friendship Is Magic
-Slug: character-entity-reference
In addition to _—_ and _–_, there should also be an _&rdash;_ HTML character entity reference which specifies the [Unicode high voltage sign U+26A1](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/26a1/index.htm) (⚡).
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: notation
-Slug: colon-equals
Sometimes I think it's sad that the most popular programming languages use "=" for assignment rather than ":=" (like Pascal). Equality is a symmetrical relationship: "_a_ equals _b_" means that _a_ and _b_ are the same thing or have the same value, and this is clearly the same as saying that "_b_ equals _a_". Assignment isn't like that: putting the value _b_ in a box named _a_ isn't the same as putting the value _a_ in a box named _b_!—surely an asymmetrical operation deserves an asymmetrical notation? Okay, so it is an extra character, but any decent editor can be configured to save you the keystroke.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python
-Slug: computing-the-arithmetic-derivative
Jurij Kovič's paper "[The Arithmetic Derivative and Antiderivative](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/journals/JIS/VOL15/Kovic/kovic4.html)" contains a curious remark in Section 1.2. Having just stated the definition of the _logarithmic arithmetic derivative_ ($L(n) = n'/n = \sum_j a_j/p_j$ where the prime mark indicates the arithmetic derivative, and $\prod_i p_i^{a_i}$ is the prime factorization of $n$), Kovič writes:
Date: 2012-08-07 00:23
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: contemporary
I've been taking a summer course at a university which I won't name, because whenever I do, I'm always tempted to replace one of the words with an obscenity that starts with the same letter, which is _probably_ a bad habit. The topic is contemporary sexuality, which seemed like a fine choice for knocking out one of my remaining so-called "general education" requirements, and maybe even learning something relevant to my interests.
Date: 2012-12-28 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Tags: politics, rationality
-Slug: counterfactual-social-thought
+Tags: politics, epistemology
I keep feeling like I need to study Bayes nets in order to clarify my thinking about society. (This is _probably_ not standard advice given to aspiring young sociologists, but I'm trying not to care about that.) Ordinary political speech is full of claims about causality ("Policy X causes Y, which is bad!" "Of course Y is bad, but don't you see?—the _real_ cause of Y is Z, and if you hadn't been brainwashed by the System, you'd see that!"), but human intuitions about causality are probably confused (and would be clarified by [Pearl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl)) much like our intuitions about evidence are confused (and are clarified by [Bayes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference)).
Date: 2012-08-16 09:29
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: desultory-fluttering-between-subjects
She's a dilettante; you're a dabbler; I'm executing a breadth-first search.
Date: 2012-12-14 19:55
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: dialogue-on-weird-social-movements
"Some of my Facebook 'friends'—that is, distant acquaintances—are political radicals: here's a picture of the words 'KILL COPS' spraypainted on the ground, with five 'Likes.' It would be psychologically interesting to know what that feels like."
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: polytopes
-Slug: dice
Players of tabletop RPGs are lucky that we live in three-dimensional space; in five-or-higher dimensions, there are [only three kinds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regular_polytopes#Convex_4) of dice, but our world has five ([d4, d6, d8, d12, and d20](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid)).
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: improvement
-Slug: dont-resent-that-no-one-cares
It's tempting to be resentful that other people don't value your time the way you do. You complain at every opportunity: "Why, why, _why_ do I get socially rewarded for working on this-and-such random chore that doesn't even _help_ anyone, when _obviously_ my great masterpiece (in progress, _in potentia_, coming soon) on such-and-this is so much more valuable?!"
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: schooling
-Slug: draft-of-a-letter-to-a-former-teacher-which-i-did-not-send-because-doing-so-would-be-a-bad-idea
Dear [_name redacted_]:
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia, cynicism
-Slug: dreams
Friend of the blog Alicorn [tweets](https://twitter.com/luminousalicorn/status/256189544515391488):
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: improvement, politics
-Slug: egoism-as-defense-against-a-life-of-unending-heartbreak
> Then the Dean understood what had puzzled him in Roark's manner.
>
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: linear algebra
-Slug: eigencritters
Say we have a linear transformation $A$ and some nonzero vector $\vec{v}$, and suppose that $A\vec{v} = \lambda\vec{v}$ for some scalar λ. This is a very special situation; we say that λ is an _eigenvalue_ of A corresponding to the _eigenvector_ $\vec{v}$.
Date: 2012-12-01 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: evening-routine
"Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
Date: 2012-10-01 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: facial-hair-is-gross
I often go a couple days without bothering to shave, but never much longer, because the stubble quickly becomes intolerable: I end up compulsively touching my face out of what I want to describe as a mildly horrified perverse fascination, perhaps of the same kind that would motivate picking at a scab, or poking a tumor.
Date: 2012-09-20 18:04
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: forgetting-to-take-an-average
It seems as if my outlook on life varies drastically with mood. In the moments when I feel brave and ambitious, I rarely seem to remember that _it won't last_: that in a week or a day, the moment will be gone and I'll feel weak and scared again—and of course it goes conversely, too.
Date: 2012-10-19 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: friendship-deficits
I'm not sure, but I _suspect_ that I'm running a friendship deficit—that I need my friends more than they need me.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: intelligence explosion, missing books
-Slug: goodharts-world
Someone needs to write a history of the entire world in terms of [incentive systems and agents' attempts to game them](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/). We have money to incentivize the production of useful goods and services, but we all know that there are lots of ways to make money that don't actually help anyone. Even in jobs that are actually useful, people spend a lot of their effort on trying to _look_ like they're doing good work, rather than _actually_ doing good work. And don't get me started about what passes for "education." (Seriously, don't.)
Date: 2012-11-24 05:00
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: i-feel-sorry-for-people-who-work-in-capital-intensive-fields
Writers and mathematicians and programmers (_&c._) can work on whatever they want with equipment that's easy for individuals to purchase. Architects and particle physicists and psychologists (_&c._) need to hustle for clients or fill out a dozen grant applications just to be allowed to breathe—how do they bear it?
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics
-Slug: i-just-want-outrage-season-to-be-over-already
I don't enjoy being provoked into despising my fellow Americans for being alien savages, when it's so much better to just ignore them for the same reason.
Date: 2012-12-30 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: ideological-fork-bombs
In computing, a _fork bomb_ is a program that recursively spawns instances of itself, rapaciously capturing all available system resources. A similar sort of thing can happen, at least metaphorically, within a human mind, when you get so taken with a particular idea (I expect _taken_ is the right word in more ways than one) that it consumes your conscious thoughts, the arguments and counterarguments and countercounterarguments bubbling up and expanding until you can't do or think about anything else. If that one idea is your lifework, then this is probably a good thing. But if _not_—if there's something more important you want to _do_ with your life rather than obsess about this one idea—then the cacaphony of cognitive noise is a serious vulnerability, as fatal as entering ":(){ :|: & };:" at a Bash prompt.
Date: 2012-10-02 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: idiot-or-alien-incompetence-or-evil
+Tags: discourse
When you encounter someone who expresses a political or social opinion that you find absolutely abhorrent, it is instructive to consider the extent to which this person is making a _mistake_, and the extent to which they simply have different values from you. Is this opinion something that they would immediately relinquish, if only they knew they knew the true facts of which they are now ignorant?—or is it reflective of some quality essential to their agency, a basic motive far too sacred to be destroyed by the truth?
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: notation
-Slug: iff-as-conditional-chain
I'm not sure I like how when we want to prove that _two_ statements are equivalent, we typically say "_A_ if and only if _B_" and we prove it by separately proving "both directions" _A_ ⇒ _B_ and _B_ ⇒ _A_, but when we want to prove three or more statements are equivalent, we typically say "The following are equivalent" and prove a "circular chain" of conditionals (1) ⇒ (2) ⇒ [...] ⇒ (n) ⇒ (1), as if these were _different_ proof strategies. Because really, the "both directions" business is just a special case of the chain-of-conditionals idea: (1) ⇒ (2) ⇒ (1). At the very least, one of my books ought to have mentioned this.
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: combinatorics
-Slug: inclusion-exclusion
In this modern day and age, it simply cannot be doubted that it is of the very utmost importance that we find the size of the union of some sets. One might try just adding the sizes of all the sets, but that's not correct, because then one would be double-counting the elements that appear in more than one set. But it's a good start. One might then think that one could _begin_ by adding the sizes of the sets, but then _subtract_ the sizes of the intersections of each pair of sets, in order to correct for the double-counting. But this is also incorrect, because then what about the elements that appear in _three_ sets and had thus initially been triple-counted?—after subtracting the pairwise intersections, these elements haven't been included in the count at all! So one realizes that one must then _add_ the sizes of the triplewise intersections ...
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: calculus
-Slug: interpolating-between-vectorized-greens-theorems
Green's theorem says that (subject to some very reasonable conditions that we need not concern ourselves with here) the counterclockwise line integral of the vector field __F__ = [P Q] around the boundary of a region is equal to the double intregral of $$\frac{\partial Q}{\partial x}-\frac{\partial P}{\partial y}$$ over the region itself. It's natural to think of it as a special case of Stokes's theorem in the case of a plane. We can also think of the line integral as the integral of the inner product of the vector field with the unit tangent, leading us to write Green's theorem like this:
Date: 2012-10-03 12:30
Status: published
Category: mathematics
-Slug: introducing-the-fractional-arithmetic-derivative
[__NOTICE__: _The conclusion of this post is hereby **retracted**_ because it turns out that the proposed definition of a "fractional arithmetic derivative" doesn't actually make sense. It fails to meet the basic decideratum of corresponding with an iterated [arithmetic derivative](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_derivative). _E.g._, consider that 225″ = (225′)′ = ((32·52)′)′ = (2·3·52 + 32·2·5)′ = (150 + 90)′ = 240′ = (24·3·5)′ = 4·23·3·5 + 24·5 + 24·3 = 480 + 80 + 48 = 608. Whereas, under the proposed definition we would _allegedly_ equivalently have 225(2) = (2!·30·52 + 32·2!·50) = 50 + 18 = 68. I apologize to anyone who read the original post (??) who was thereby misled. The original post follows (with the erroneous section struck through).]
Date: 2012-10-25 08:41
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: its-not-that
Oftentimes I initially want to write "It's not that X, but rather Y" to mean "You might think I'm implying that X is true, so I want to emphasize that X is false; Y is true, and that's what explains my position," but I worry that this idiom is ambiguous; someone is likely to interpret it as meaning, "X might be true, but it's not the relevant consideration; my position is actually explained by Y (which does not necessarily contradict X)", which doesn't mean the same thing.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: morality
-Slug: its-not-whether-you-win-or-lose
It's how close you come to doing the Right Thing at each and every one of the uncounted millions of decision points that make up _your life_, with how you play in any particular game only constituting a tiny fraction of these, and it being not at all clear that choosing to play a game just then is closer to the Right Thing than any number of non-game-playing actions you might have chosen instead, but didn't.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: library-fines
Overdue book fines are a terrible sin, not because of the harm done to other library stakeholders, but because of what they say about you as a person: not only did you not get around to finishing the books you (apparently erroneously) thought you wanted to read, but you weren't even responsible enough to bring them back on time.
Date: 2012-07-23 18:43
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: lies-and-delusion
One day, two philosophers were dining in a restaurant. "There's no such thing as lying," said the first philosopher to his companion. "Anytime someone speaks falsehood, it must be the case that they are merely deluded, or that part of them is, for the love of truth is so essential to the nature of agency that the very notion of deception is repugnant to it."
Date: 2012-12-05 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: life-is-worth-protecting-now
What makes a true story _inspirational_? I think people usually use that word to describe happy stories, stories that make us think that the world is a better place than we previously thought. But sometimes I want to use it to describe sad stories that remind us that the world is far worse than just the parts of it we're used to seeing firsthand, stories about innocent people being hurt by arbitrary causes. It's inspirational in the sense of a call to action, a reminder that there's still important work to be done in the world: I can't solve this particular problem, but there's a reference class of people containing me (reasonably intelligent, reasonably ambitious people, striving to become more effective) who can help fix a reference class of problems including this one—and that is a sacred responsibility that must not be betrayed. Or however you translate folderol like "sacred responsibility" and "must not be betrayed" into something more basic (Bayes-ic?).
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: philosophy of mathematics
-Slug: mathematics-is-the-subfield-of-philosophy-that-humans-are-good-at
By _philosophy_ I understand the discipline of discovering truths about reality by means of thinking very carefully. Contrast to science, where we try to come up with theories that predict our observations. Philosophers of number [have observed](http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_10_18_04.html) that the first ten trillion nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function are on the critical line, but people don't speak of the [Riemann hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis) as being almost certainly true, not necessarily because they anticipate a counterexample lurking somewhere above ½ + 10<sup>26</sup><em>i</em> (although "large" counterexamples [are not unheard-of](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewes%27_number) in the philosophy of numbers), but rather because while empirical examination is certainly _helpful_, it's not really _what we do_. Mere empiricism is usually sufficient for knowing (with high probability) _what_ is true, but as philosophers, we want to explain _why_, and moreover, _why it could not have been otherwise_.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-i
There are a lot of really important concepts that aren't easy to talk about, because we don't have standard words for them.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-ii
We need a word that means almost the same thing as _[sellout](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sellout)_ (in the sense of "a person who compromises their principles for financial gain"), but conveys the idea that the problem is not selling out, but selling out _for too low of a price_. We all have to make trade-offs; there isn't any one principle that takes lexical priority over every other valuable thing in life: sometimes it makes sense to compromise your ideals in exchange for money or power or fame or fitting in.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-iii
[_Loopy_](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/loopy) is slang for "crazy", but I think it should be repurposed to refer to the quality of thinking the same sorts of thoughts over and over again, never breaking patterns, being stuck indefinitely at the same stage of intellectual development. You could argue that this is a form of craziness compared how an ideal agent would allocate cognitive resources, but I think it's pretty normal and common in our world, not the kind of craziness _generally recognized_ as crazy.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia, morality
-Slug: moral-mechanism
It feels immoral to even think of using _techniques_ to motivate oneself; one should instead just use one's _free will_ to _choose_ the correct action. How utterly _degrading_ it would be, how insulting to the very notion of human dignity, to stoop to the level of contemplating one's own psychology using mere cause-and-effect reasoning, as if one were some sort of animal, or a machine!
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: intelligence explosion
-Slug: movie-tagline
I think there needs to be a movie about a woman who has two jobs: artificial general intelligence programmer by day, prostitute by night. I say this mostly because I have a great idea for the tagline to go on the posters: "The oldest profession ... _and the last_."
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: calculus
-Slug: my-favorite-mnemonic
(From Leonard Gillman and Robert H. McDowell's calculus text.)
Date: 2012-12-02 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: narrative-fallacy
I agree that it would be wildly out of character to learn JavaScript before Haskell, but _life is not a story_.
Date: 2012-12-08 05:00
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: nothing-good-in-life-scales
The other day while rehearsing my arguments about how currently-existing social institutions are obviously insane, it became more salient that there's also no clear way to fix anything on a large scale. My perspective on How to Do Things Better is the idiosyncratic result of five years of my thinking; even if my vision is in the 99th percentile of Arbitrary People's Idiosyncratic Visions of How to Do Things Better (and everyone thinks that about herself, so don't take _my_ word for it), it's not very _transferable_.
Date: 2012-07-16 13:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: improvement, rationality
-Slug: notice-of-policy-regarding-consistency
+Tags: improvement
I reserve the right to arbitrarily change my beliefs or behavior at any time.
Status: published
Category: verse
Tags: Friendship Is Magic
-Slug: on-an-image-macro
For the haters are going to hate,
And the ponies are going to pwn,
Status: published
Category: verse
Tags: calculus
-Slug: on-arc-length
Zeno knew, but did not know enough; a minute is divided
Into fragments, and each fragment sees, for points it o'er presided:
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: boats
-Slug: on-the-usefulness-of-boats
Did you know that boats are useful for moving things over the water??
Date: 2012-09-12 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: periphery-demographic
Judging by the comment moderation queue, this blog is wildly popular among a certain niche audience.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Emacs, Git
-Slug: recursion-is-boring
What the utter novice finds brilliant and fascinating, the slightly-more-experienced novice finds obvious and boring.
Date: 2012-12-10 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: role-tension
Do you ever have trouble reconciling your social role of "ordinary college student at a mediocre state university" with your secret identity as junior member of an elite conspiracy to take over the world?
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Less Wrong
-Slug: seasonal-drink
Of course, the traditional beverage of Newtonmas is [blegg](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/)nog.
Date: 2012-12-16 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: self-esteem-is-overrated
Maybe self-esteem makes sense for deontologists who think that being a good person is a matter of obeying some knowable set of rules, but I think that the goodness of a person is a real number, [probably bounded](http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.4318) but with no known upper bound. Saying "I'm a good enough person just the way I am; I deserve self-esteem" isn't bad so much as it is _meaningless_: once you know what you've done and how close the results were to (your current estimate of) what the results should have been, then there's nothing left to describe, no further question to be answered.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: morality
-Slug: seriously-now
"But it's kind of funny how my current idea of morality is so different and so much improved from what I picked up in childhood."
Date: 2012-11-25 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Tags: improvement, rationality
-Slug: speaking-of-addiction
+Tags: improvement
[_Speaking_ of addiction](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/things-that-are-hard-to-quit-non-exhaustive-list/), I suspect that relinquishing ideologically-induced moral outrage is actually harder than getting over many chemical dependencies (although I don't have any experience with the latter). At least with a drug, it's simple enough to draw a bright line around actions you're not supposed to do anymore; you can try pouring the contents of the liquor cabinet down the drain, or signing a [commitment contract](http://www.stickk.com/) to not buy or borrow any more cigarettes.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: speculative etymology
-Slug: speculative-etymology-i
In the future (to say nothing of large swathes of the present), creative people work for status and attention rather than money. When X is employed by Y, X is said to be "on Y's blogroll" (coined in analogy to [payroll](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/payroll)).
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis
-Slug: straight-talk-about-precompactness
So we have this _metric space_, which is this set of points along with a way of defining "distances" between them that behaves in a basically noncrazy way (points that are zero distance away from "each other" are really just the same point, the distance from one to the other is the same as the distance from the other to the one, and something about triangles).
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis, notation
-Slug: subscripting-as-function-composition
Dear reader, don't laugh: I had thought I already understood subsequences, but then it turned out that I was mistaken. I should have noticed the vague, unverbalized discomfort I felt about the subscripted-subscript notation, $(a_{n_k})$. But really it shouldn't be confusing at all: as Bernd S. W. Schröder points out in his _Mathematical Analysis: A Concise Introduction_, it's just a function composition. If it helps (it helped me), say that $(a_n)$ is mere _syntactic sugar_ for $a(n): \mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{R}$, a function from the naturals to the reals. And $(a_{n_k})$ is just the composition $a(n(k))$, with $n(k): \mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{N}$ being a strictly increasing function from the naturals to the naturals.
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: combinatorics
-Slug: summing-the-multinomial-coefficients
The sum of binomial coefficients $$\sum_{j=0}^n {n \choose j}$$ equals $2^n$, because $${n \choose j}$$ is the number of ways to pick _j_ elements from a set of size _n_, and $2^n$ is the size of the powerset, the set of all subsets, of a set of size _n_: the sum, over all subset sizes, of the number of ways to choose subsets of a given size, is equal to the number of subsets. You can also see this using the binomial theorem itself:
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Friendship Is Magic, shopping
-Slug: supermarket-notes-i
I think I like the store-brand "sparkling water beverages"; they fill a similar niche as soda (which I never buy at the store, but have been known to occasionally consume at parties or restaurants), but seem like they ought to be less deadly.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: shopping, Star Trek
-Slug: supermarket-notes-ii
I bought cookie dough, on the thought that maybe I should bake cookies and offer them to people at the University; if they were to ask what the occasion was, I could say, "It seemed like a whimsical thing to do, and I'm a whimsical person." But I'm not sure I'll actually do it.
Date: 2012-10-17 05:00
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: telling-her-there
"And so," said Synthia, "if you feel too self-conscious to write an email, if you don't know what to say or are afraid of saying the Wrong Thing, it might help to lower your quality standard and just start typing as if it were realtime communication, and edit later. It's less tempting to procrastinate replying in a realtime medium like instant messaging, and hardly tempting at all in meatspace, so you can try to import that same mindset to start your email."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: analysis
-Slug: text-from-an-analyst-to-a-friend
ur gr(8+ε) for arbitrary ε > 0
Status: published
Category: fiction
Tags: morality
-Slug: the-morality-of-ringing-a-bell
"Synthia, I want your opinion on something," said Quiana.
Date: 2012-09-30 05:00
Status: published
Category: mathematics
-Slug: the-parity-decomposition-trick
Earlier this year, Robert Hasner showed me something that I assume everyone else ("everyone else") already knows, but which _I_ didn't know: every function on ℝ can be decomposed into the sum of an even function and an odd function—
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: the-problem-with-my-friend-who-has-this-problem
Dear reader, I have this ... friend, who has this problem, and I wanted to ask—
Date: 2012-10-15 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: the-quieted-scare-convention
Everyone knows ("everyone knows") about "scare quotes," where you enclose a phrase in quotation marks to indicate that the literal interpretation of the words should be regarded with skepticism, but sometimes I do this thing where I'll use a phrase normally and then _repeat_ it in scare quotes _and_ parentheses, as if to say, "I do partially intend this sincerely, but also with some irony or skepticism, although not so much as to justify outright scare quotes."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: cynicism, Less Wrong
-Slug: the-sliding-false-dichotomhy-of-idealism-and-cynicism
The _Television Tropes & Idioms_ wiki has a page on the [Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism). Of course I understand why such a page exists, but part of me can't help but protest that it's not really a sliding scale. One of the most charming things about [my native subculture](http://lesswrong.com) is that we have heaps of _both_: cynicism in the style of "Humans are selfish, weak-willed hypocrites; the reasons people say they do things aren't always or even usually the real reasons, and even introspection itself is untrustworthy," and idealism in the style of "But knowing what we do now, we shall use the power of Reason to remake the world in accordance with our Values!"
Date: 2012-10-28 17:19
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: the-so-called-euclidean-plane
I'm skeptical; I think it's actually just a really big torus.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: the-threshold
Supposedly the method of pomodoros is a great technology for overcoming procrastination: you work in twenty- or twenty-five-minute timed blocks, each of which are _atomic_, indivisible: you have to work through the block, and if you let yourself wander away to something else, then it doesn't count. Katja Grace [explains why this is a good idea](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/08/on-the-goodness-of-beeminder.html):
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: algebra
-Slug: the-true-secret-about-conjugate-roots-and-field-automorphisms
In the study of the elementary algebra, one occasionally hears of the conjugate roots theorem, which says that if $z_0$ is a root of a polynomial with real coefficients, then its complex conjugate is also a root. Or if you prefer, nonreal roots come in conjugate pairs. It also works in the other direction: if nonreal roots of a polynomial come in conjugate pairs, then the polynomial has real coefficients, because the purely imaginary parts cancel when you do the algebra: $(x - (a + bi))(x - (a - bi)) = x^2 - x(a + bi) - x(a - bi) + (a^2 - (bi)^2) = x^2 - 2ax + a^2 + b^2$.
Date: 2012-10-07 18:08
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: the-word-melancholy
It sounds like a kind of dog bred to harvest _Cucurbitaceae_-family fruits.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia, lists
-Slug: things-that-are-hard-to-quit-non-exhaustive-list
cigarettes, alcohol, heroin, procrastination of boring-but-genuinely-worth-doing tasks, moral outrage
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python, turtle graphics
-Slug: training-your-very-own-turtle-to-draw
Dear reader, I don't think I've ever told you how much I love the Python standard library, but I do. When they say "[Batteries included](http://www.python.org/about/)," they may not mean it [in the sense of](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/battery) "a device that produces electricity by a chemical reaction between two substances," but they _do_ mean it in the sense of "an array of similar things," where the similar things are _great libraries_. If you need a CSV reader, [it's there](http://docs.python.org/release/3.0.1/library/csv.html). If you need fixed-point decimal arithmetic, [it's there](http://docs.python.org/release/3.1.5/library/decimal.html). But although perhaps it should not have surprised me, never has my joy and appreciation been greater than the fateful moment when I learned that the standard library itself contains a module for
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: anecdotal, schooling
-Slug: trying-to-buy-a-lamp
Dear reader, I had wanted to tell you an anecdote about a recent incident in which I considered myself to have been outrageously mistreated, but it occurred to me that you probably would not find the story at all worthy of note. In fact, I fear you would be quite likely to think less of me for complaining in such a melodramatic fashion about something which the prevailing norms of our Society consider quite ordinary and proper. And what authority do _I_ have to insist that it's Society that is in the wrong, and not I?
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis
-Slug: two-views-of-the-monotone-sequence-theorem
If a sequence of real numbers $(a_n)$ is _bounded_ and _monotone_ (and I'm actually going to say _nondecreasing_, without loss of generality), then it _converges_. I'm going to tell you _why_ and I'm going to tell you _twice_.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: untitled
"I just got an idea that will make a great blog post ..."
Date: 2012-12-09 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: vast-expanses-of-imperfection
_Hard Truths from Soft Cats_ [opines that](http://hardtruthsfromsoftcats.tumblr.com/post/31974112077)
Date: 2012-12-10 16:06
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: you-know-what-they-say
If you shouldn't make lemonade, then life hasn't given you lemons.
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: new year
-Slug: 2013-year-in-reverse
Dear reader, as another year comes to a close, it is perhaps wise that we should take a few moments to reflect on what we learned here at _An Algorithmic Lucidity_ in 2013—the year that was!
Date: 2013-03-04 13:58
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: a-possible-future
I just saw a film first conceived near the kiln
At the school by a woman called Nora,
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: lists
-Slug: acronyms-for-defending-actions-that-would-otherwise-appear-dubious-non-exhaustive-list
[YOLO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOLO_%28motto%29), [VOI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_information)
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: actually-trying
"I'm alright—I'll get through it—I've been through this before. This fear and anxiety—it's a fact about _me_, not about the world. In early 2007, I spent weeks being terrified of either [accidentally](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia) commiting plagiarism or being accused thereof. In late 2009, I spent weeks being upset about which form of my name to use in which contexts. In late 2010, I spent some time being deeply upset about having violated copyright law by writing fanfiction. All of those episodes, and the others that I haven't mentioned, seem so silly in retrospect ... so maybe now I'm sufficiently self-aware to pick up the pattern: that my brain just arbitrarily latches onto ideas to feel threatened by, but that this process isn't actually useful, and there are probably learnable techniques to dampen it."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: improvement
-Slug: after-an-epiphany
I've been _so confused_ in _so many ways_ that I had been _specifically warned against_ dozens of times, in writing _and_ in person, and I _still didn't get it!_ Of course, I was warned about this, too: everyone knows that there are things you don't know that you don't know, and that there's a difference between endorsing a proposition, and integrating its implications into your way of thinking. But it's still such a shock to actually _see_ ... to go so _suddenly_ from hating the local Authorities for not telling you all the true and important things that your friends have been telling you, to _noticing_ that the things that your friends have been telling you can _actually be applied_ to stop being so hurt all the time about how the local Authorities had misled you.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: morality
-Slug: all-vows
"_Avinu Malkeinu_, we have sinned against you! _Avinu Malkeinu_, forgive us, bless us, grant us atonement!"
Date: 2013-12-09 13:29
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: an-unauthorized-use-of-ms-gunnisons-secret-time-machine
Gunni told her not to touch it;
Common sense would say as much in
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Friendship Is Magic, Star Trek
-Slug: another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/an-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/)
Date: 2013-03-26 16:37
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: apophenia
It's well-known that it shouldn't actually be that shocking to occasionally encounter seemingly shocking coincidences: the time your friend calls you just as you were about to call them might seem like compelling evidence for psychic powers, but only because you don't remember all the other occasions when an equally improbable coincidence _could_ have happened, but didn't. We tend to see patterns even where none exist, and neglect that million-to-one events happen seven times a day in New York.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Ruby
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-eight
_Tuesday 5 Novembmer 2013—_ Yesterday was our last pair-programming project; I worked with _Ben Watts_ on a little chat server in Node using WebSockets. I felt like perhaps there was something regrettable about shoving so much functionality into a big callback, but maybe that's just the nature of JavaScript, and not really regrettable at all? On Sunday I started my RSS-aggregator capstone project, now called Superscription.
Date: 2013-10-14 23:52
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-five
[](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/starlight_music-getting_down.png){: .alignleft }
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Ruby
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-four
_Monday 7 October 2013—_ The main part of SedentaryRecord went pretty smoothly. I like my one-liner implementation of the `has_many_through` association better than the instructions' suggestion of writing a whole new query template; the TA Patrick pointed out that my version is inefficient (firing off two queries rather than one), but instead of writing the query-saving long version right away, I decided to try implementing validations first (one of the suggested extension ideas). That didn't go well at _all_; I spent a lot of time ineffectually hacking away at the problem but didn't even come up with anything worth committing!
Date: 2013-11-17 12:32
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-nine
_Sunday 17 November 2013_— This was the last week of App Academy's regular course content; the next cohort starts Monday and my cohort will begin the three-week "post-course" mostly focused on interview practice, applying for jobs, _&c._ I got Superscription into a non-embarassing state: I made the feed-fetching happen as a scheduled task, added guest users, introduced the ability to mark entries as having been read, made an attractive click-and-drag category selector, _&c._ I still want to—at the very least—implement infinite-scroll pagination (fetching all the unread entries from the start can be very slow if there are a lot of them) and rewrite the category selector's terrible, terrible code. On Friday a lot of my class went to the San Francisco Startup Job Fair at noon, and we also had our demo day at the office at three. I think I made an okay showing? But thanks for reading.
Date: 2013-09-16 21:48
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-one
_Monday 16 September 2013_— For the next couple months, I'm going to be engrossed in an intensive web development course offered by [App Academy](http://www.appacademy.io/); it's pretty great! Part of the routine is to write end-of-day blogposts describing what we've learned; I guess we were "supposed" to start a Tumblr specifically for these, but that's dumb because I already have a blog, so I think I'll just put my updates here (updating the post throughout the week). Today was the first day! App Academy puts a lot of focus on _pair programming_: you have two people at a workstation; only the "driver" types, while the "navigator" offers direction (and then you switch roles). Today I was paired with [_Chris Evans_](https://github.com/lcevans), who is a nice guy who knows way more math than me! Today our task was a bunch of fairly straightfoward Ruby exercises: monkeypatch the Array class to do this-and-such, make a playable Tower of Hanoi game, that sort of thing. The most challenging one was part 15 of [Test First Ruby](http://testfirst.org/learn_ruby): write a method that accepts integers and returns a string describing the number in words (so _e.g._ 259123 becomes "two hundred fifty nine thousand one hundred twenty three"). Chris and I finished the most important stuff on time and started working on the bonus project about solving mazes, but we didn't get too far with that in the time remaining.
Date: 2013-10-28 23:43
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-seven
_Monday 28 October 2013—_ The governor of Delaware was supposed to visit us today, but he totally stood us up!—supposedly because of a late airplane or something, if you even believe that. Today's assessment (on elementary JavaScript, binding of `this`, and the module pattern) was really straightforward, but I found the day's project (in collaboration with _Irene Ngyuen_) on client-side MVC quite challenging at times; I fear that we were only the second-best [Irene](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/10/app-academy-diary-week-six/#thursday)–[Zach](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/10/app-academy-diary-week-five/#sunday) team today. I'm sleeping over at the office again tonight, which seems like a good thing to do twice a week maybe?—when I stay, I can fit in some quality solo hacking time until sleep or distraction takes me, whereas I am not inclined to do so after a train and bike ride home. Case in point: I got a crude form of authentication working in Wires today! So many feels!
Date: 2013-10-22 21:46
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-six
_Tuesday 22 October 2013—_ I slept at the office last night for want of transportation, and ended up making some solid initial progress on a little Python web framework inspired by last week's class exercise, which I am also calling Wires. (Working on it in spare moments today alerted me to a disturbing deficit in my mental model of Python imports; you wouldn't expect organizing code into different directories to be _difficult_.) Yesterday I worked with _Ryan Newton_ and today with _Daphne Johnson_ on some JavaScript exercises.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Ruby
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-three
_Monday 30 September 2013—_ Today's assessment was implementing [Crazy Eights](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eights) in accordance with the given RSpec tests. In the afternoon, I worked with [_Dan Quan_](http://quan.io/) on exercises from the [SQL Zoo](http://sqlzoo.net/wiki/Main_Page), which varied wildly in difficulty.
Date: 2013-09-23 22:01
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: app-academy-diary-week-two
_Monday 23 September 2013_— I rewrote most of the tic-tac-toe game yesterday; information-theoretically speaking, the board state is only 9 lg 3 ≈ 14.26 bits, but for better or for worse, I resisted the temptation to represent it as a two-character string. Still (still!) didn't get the AI working, though. Today was our first assessment: way too easy, I thought; we were given about an hour, and I finished in under half that. Then we had a lecture/Q&A period which I thought was too long, which covered the solutions to the assessment and default hash values. Why does anyone think lectures are a good idea? I'll confess to hanging out in the back and reading a little bit from _A Farewell to Alms_, which I bought on a whim on Saturday at Half-Price Books (which is a nice store, although you have to wonder whose idea it was to stock so many copies of _Elliptic Partial Differential Equations and Quasiconformal Mappings in the Plane_). At lunch I bought coffee and food at Starbucks and spent a little more time trying to debug the tic-tac-toe AI—_still_ to no avail, but I'll get there eventually! (Tic-tac-toe itself is dross, but it's really important to get minimax right, because it should generalize to other games without _too_ much trouble, and we're doing chess later this week.) _Speaking_ of games on grids, today's project was to clone Minesweeper. I worked with [_Jeff Fiddler_](https://github.com/jeffnv), who is the Jeff from Nevada (and not the other Jeff who tried to teach math in high schools but was frustrated with the overemphasis on standardized tests). It went really well; we used pretty Unicode symbols and even got around to implementing a cursor interface (which is way better than making the user enter coordinates)!
Date: 2013-02-20 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: being-myself
"Don't worry, I'm sure it'll all go fine. Just be yourself."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: cached speech
-Slug: cached-remark-for-when-someone-asks-how-you-knew-an-obscure-fact
"Every day, I ritually sacrifice part of my soul to appease [Mnemosyne](http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/), the goddess of memory."
Date: 2013-11-12 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: cascading-stable-strategies
"What do you think of my website's new look? I designed it with ESS."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: childlike
"I think the best term to describe how I feel is _childlike_. That also explains the delusions I was having: children can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality as adults judge such things, and neither can people having or immediately recovering from a psychotic episode."
Date: 2013-12-26 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: classification
"So, what do you think it—"
Date: 2013-01-03 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: clearness
"I somehow feel less bitter today."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: cryonics
-Slug: compensation
"Maybe there should be an effort to cryopreserve specimens of endangered species. 'Hey, sorry we killed your entire species, but when we get more computing power later, we'll be sure to give you lots of happy runtime as compensation.'"
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Clojure, combinatorics
-Slug: computing-the-powerset
Suppose we want to find the powerset of a given set, that is, the set of all its subsets. How might we go about it? Well, the powerset of the empty set is the set containing the empty set.
Date: 2013-01-12 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: concreteness
"I'm not sure that I'm happy that _concrete_ is used as a sort of metonym for anything definite and fixed; there are lots of other hard substances, too, like diamond, steel, or topaz."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: population ethics
-Slug: continuum-utilitarianism
You hear people talk about positive (maximize pleasure) versus negative (minimize pain) utilitarianism, or average versus total utilitarianism, none of which seem very satisfactory. For example, average utilitarianism taken literally would suggest killing everyone but the happiest person, and total utilitarianism implies what Derek Parfit called the repugnant conclusion: that for any possible world with lots of happy people, the total utilitarian must prefer another possible world with many more people whose lives are just barely worth living.
Date: 2013-11-19 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: conversational-overhead
A woman of wisdom once told me to heed Paul Graham's advice to notice [the things you can't say](http://paulgraham.com/say.html) and then _don't say them_, which stance I'm updating slightly towards, because even when you're only making a perfectly reasonable point along the lines of _Policy debates should not appear one-sided; I don't think that your Argument A actually supports Policy X (although I agree that X could be desireable for reasons independent of A)_ and everyone is charitable and no one bites, there's still a huge amount of emotional overhead incurred just by being in the conversation at all, because even when and you and your interlocutors are honest, you almost never have common knowledge of that honesty, so your interlocutors aren't necessarily sure that you're not just disagreeing with A out of secret enmity towards X, and you're not sure that they're sure that you're not, all of which drama is a drain on mental energy that could otherwise have been allocated to entirely grown-up concerns like JavaScript and money.
Date: 2013-12-14 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: cover-letter
Beset by nights of torment,
Bent to keep your site performant,
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: cryonics
-Slug: cryonics-as-memoir
I wonder if cryonics would have a better reputation if it were sold as being more like leaving a memoir, than a bid for personal immortality. Historians are glad to have Samuel Pepys's diary for all that it tells us about life in 1660s London; would they not be more overjoyed to have Samuel Pepys's brain, if only we knew how to read brains as easily as we can read books?
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: humor
-Slug: dimensionality
"So, an engineer and a mathematician are leaving a lecture. The engineer says, 'I just don't understand how you can visualize objects in seven-dimensional space.' The mathematician says, 'Oh, that's easy. You just visualize the _n_-dimensional case, and then set _n_ equal to seven.'"
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: madness
-Slug: diversity-is-strength
I feel like schools, prisons, and mental hospitals are all making the same mistake: locking children, criminals, and crazy people up together just creates more childishness, criminality, and madness.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Emacs, Ruby
-Slug: doend-macros-for-emacs
Dear reader, Ruby is a pretty okay programming language, but I have to say I feel ambivalent about the use of `do` and `end` as block delimiters. (Contrast to braces in C/Java/_&c._ or indentation in Python.) _Three_ keystrokes just to close a block?! Scandalous!
Date: 2013-01-18 11:45
Status: published
Category: asides
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: dont-try-to-be-clever
+Tags: epistemology
The great Brian Kernighan wrote, "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"
Date: 2013-01-10 00:48
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: education-and-indoctrination-feel-the-same-from-the-inside
+Tags: epistemology
They _have_ to. The psychology of what it feels like to learn something from a book is going to be the _same_ whether or not the things the book says are actually true. The psychology of what it feels like to believe the things your teacher tells you and your peers repeat is going to be the _same_ whether or not the things your teacher says are true. You can't just trust the book or the teacher, you have to use whatever other information you have (from observation and experience, from other books, from other teachers) about the reliability of the processes that produced the book, the reliability of your teacher to have done this same kind of thinking.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: cynicism, transhumanism
-Slug: engineering-selection
This whole business of being alive used to seem so much simpler and less morally ambiguous before I realized that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, that it has always been thus and [could not have been otherwise](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/04/the-horror-of-naturalism/). The other day I was reading Luke Muehlhauser's [interview with Steve Hsu](http://intelligence.org/2013/08/31/stephen-hsu-on-cognitive-genomics/), and Hsu says:
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: linear algebra
-Slug: epiphenomenal-coordinates
In the study of elementary linear algebra, unwary novices are often inclined to think of a vector as an ordered list of real numbers; to them, linear algebra is then conceived of as the study of multiplying matrices with column vectors. But this is a horribly impoverished perspective; we can do so much better for ourselves with a bit of abstraction and generality.
Date: 2013-12-18 21:15
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: etc
Is it wrong that I feel more positively disposed towards [Etsy](http://www.etsy.com/) after figuring out where it must have (_must_ have) gotten its name?
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: algorithms, Ruby
-Slug: ford-fulkerson
Dear reader, have you ever dreamed of solving instances of the maximum flow problem? Sure you have! Suppose we have a weighted directed graph, which we might imagine as a network of pipes (represented by the edges) between locations (represented by the nodes), pipes through which some sort of fluid might thereby be transported across the network. One node is designated the _source_, another is called the _sink_, and the weight of the edge (_i_, _j_) represents the maximum capacity of the pipe which transports fluid from the location _i_ to location _j_. The maximum-flow problem is precisely the question of how to transport the maximum possible amount of fluid _from_ the source _to_ the sink (without any fluid leaking or magically appearing at any of the intermediate nodes). That is, we want to assign an amount of fluid _flow_ to each edge, not to exceed that edge's capacity, such that inflow equals outflow for all the intermediate (_i.e._, non-source, non-sink) nodes, and such that the total flow reaching the sink is maximized.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: cynicism
-Slug: forgetting-an-idea
Occasionally I have a good idea, but neglect to write it down immediately, and end up forgetting it very soon thereafter; often I can ressociate my way back to it, but not always. I'm given to understand that this is not uncommon for other people, either. Only I have to wonder if it's at all telling that we remember the emotional experience of "I just had a good idea! Clearly I am a Smart and Creative Person!" but forget the idea that was ostensibly its _referent_. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why, it's _almost_ as if the deception and posturing that defines our social worlds extends even into the sacred domain of the self!
Date: 2013-12-15 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: fortune
"They're going to pay you _X_ dollars a year? But that's fantastic! You're rich!"
Date: 2013-12-27 05:00
Status: published
Category: meta
-Slug: genre
"I didn't _intend_ for my blog to become a compendium of very short dialogues! It's just—it's just—"
Date: 2013-05-24 17:39
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: good-works
"And _you_, you louse! How do you justify your existence?"
Date: 2013-01-31 00:47
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: group-introduction
"Hey, I'm Kevin. I'm a junior majoring in marketing. I live in San Leandro, and my favorite teacher was my high school English teacher Mr. Wheeler."
Date: 2013-02-14 19:50
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: growing-up
"I miss being a human."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: guns
"Do you know, I've decided I like guns. Of course it would be _preferable_ to wave a magic wand and have all sentient life live in peace and harmony in paradise forever. But if Reality puts you in a situation where you have to kill, at least we have tools to do it _quickly_: a well-aimed _bang_ and there isn't a creature there to suffer for very long. That's actually a huge improvement over the state of nature, where animals kill with nothing but teeth and claws."
Status: published
Category: verse
Tags: calculus
-Slug: haiku-for-eulers-number
Two point seven one
Eight two eight one eight two eight
Date: 2013-12-12 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: highball
"Now remember: when you're negotiating salary and they press you for a number, do _not_ reveal your BATNA. Give them an unrealistically high estimate and make them negotiate down. Now practice on me."
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: algorithms, Python
-Slug: huffman
Dear reader, you know what's _way_ more fun than [feeling](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/04/the-horror-of-naturalism/) [sad](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/05/relativity/) [about](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/05/relevance/) [the](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/05/retirement/) [nature](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/06/remembering/) of the cosmos? _Data compression_, that's what! Suppose you want to send a message to your friends in a nearby alternate universe, but interuniversal communication bandwidth is _very expensive_ (different universes can't _physically_ interact, so we and our alternate-universe analogues can only communicate by mutually _inferring_ what the other party must be saying, which takes monstrous amounts of computing power and is not cheap), so you need to make your message as brief as possible. Note that 'brief' doesn't just have to do with how long your message is in natural language, it also has to do with how that message is _represented_ over the transuniveral communication channel: indeed, the more efficient the encoding, the more you can afford to say on a fixed budget.
Date: 2013-01-11 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: humans-are-mysterious
"You are mysterious."
Date: 2013-01-02 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: hustle
"I'm entertaining this daydream of standing in a coffeeshop with a sign saying, 'BUSINESSPEOPLE: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS; I WILL BUY YOU COFFEE' in the hopes that some of their pain points could be easily solved in software for money. I don't know if this would actually work."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: physics
-Slug: i-dont-understand-time
Our subjective experience would have it that time "moves forward": the past is no longer, and the future is indeterminate and "hasn't happened yet." But it can't _actually_ work that way: special relativity tells us that there's no absolute space of simultaneity; given two spacelike separated events, whether one happened "before" or "after" the other depends on where you are and how fast you're going. This leads us to a "block universe" view: our 3+1 dimensional universe, past, present, and future, simply _exists_, and the subjective arrow of time somehow arises from our perspective embedded within it.
Date: 2013-01-17 22:22
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: identity-secrets
"You know secrets."
Date: 2013-08-30 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: im-a-moron
It's always tempting to make excuses for our past selves, to tell a story about how, despite the appearance of continual failure and waste, we were actually in the right all along.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: insight-porn
"Actually, maybe my father is right. Maybe the social worker is right."
Date: 2013-02-19 18:28
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: lessons
It turns out that I've been doing human psychology wrong, _all_ wrong. My entire life, I've been modeling other people as defective versions of my model of myself, and I just didn't notice that that doesn't work. ([Even though I was warned](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/01/three-problems-with-unsolicited-advice/).)
Date: 2013-10-26 12:26
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: levels
Specific is terrific,
But meta is betta.
Date: 2013-09-01 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: lyrics-to-the-song-about-having-sinned
_I'm going to do it the dark way
I'm going to do it in my way
Date: 2013-05-22 15:58
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: lyrics-to-the-song-about-matt-reeves
_Dead kid gets a bench
Dead kid gets a memorial bench
Date: 2013-02-21 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: lyrics-to-the-song-about-my-hair
_How frizzy is my hair
It really is unfair
Date: 2013-08-18 07:50
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: lyrics-to-the-song-about-truthseekers
_Yesterday my sister won the Nobel prize
Her work will be a benefit to all of humankind
Date: 2013-08-29 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: measure
In a sufficiently large universe, everything that _can_ happen happens _somewhere_, but it's clearly not an even distribution. Flip a quantum coin a hundred times, and there have to be _some_ versions of you who see a hundred [heads](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/08/plurals-of-coinflip-outcomes/), but they're so vastly outnumbered by versions of you who see a properly random-looking sequence of heads and tails that it's not worth thinking about: it _mostly_ doesn't happen.
When you write a computer program, or build a bridge, or just _think_ something, we might prefer to take the viewpoint that you're not _creating_ anything so much as you are _instantiating that pattern locally_, thereby increasing its measure in the multiverse: there might be other ways for that program, that bridge, that thought to come about somewhere, but it's getting some of its support from you.
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: analysis, missing books
-Slug: missing-books-i
Someone should write a combined novel/textbook about a mathematician-princess's quest to understand the true nature of continuity and change. When her father dies, she'll have the opportunity to be Queen regnant, but she'll quickly marry some guy instead so she can be a Queen consort and continue her research without being distracted with boring politics.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-iv
You hear people accusing their enemies of being _morally_ or _intellectually bankrupt_, and they mean it [in the sense of](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bankrupt) "destitute of, or wholly lacking (something)", rather than the sense of financial insolvency. But I actually would like to see the insolvency metaphor: people should speak of _declaring intellectual bankruptcy_ to mean "I was wrong before; I won't try to defend my previous claims because I can't" (in analogy to "I won't try to pay my debts, because I can't").
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: mode-lock
I'm afraid—it seems like (or maybe the weak phrasing _seems like_ is just a form of denial, when the proposition under consideration should actually just be considered obvious) there's this terrible, terrible psychological trade-off, that there are some valuable qualities that you can't have without neglecting other valuable qualities, not just because you don't have enough _time_ to fully develop too many different skills, but because when your brain is specialized in one direction, there are other things you _can't_ learn.
Oftentimes I feel like I don't want or know how to _do_ anything except read and think ... which might be fine if I were independently wealthy and there wasn't any actual work left to do in the world, but in our current situation, it would be nice to make some money and actually accomplish something. There's a Trope for "[Shapeshifter Mode Lock](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShapeshifterModeLock?from=Main.ModeLock)" but the cognitive equivalent is arguably more serious as disabilities go.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: lists
-Slug: numbers-between-0-and-1-non-exhaustive-list
π/4, the Euler–Mascheroni constant, Chaitin's construction, the fraction of my internal narrative which consists of various rephrasings of _I've been a contemptible fool; but, that's decision-theoretically irrelevant_
Date: 2013-08-28 13:41
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: o-glorious-day
Books arrived in the post! Including [the book about counterfactuals and causal inference in the social sciences](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521671930/), which is _really important_ because everyone and her dog has political opinions, but it's [rather less common](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/12/counterfactual-social-thought/) to have a theory about how to reason about which interventions will lead to which outcomes!
Date: 2013-08-31 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: online-dating-profile-first-draft
25 / M / Straight / Single
Walnut Creek, California
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: intelligence explosion
-Slug: optimal-last-words-before-the-intelligence-explosion
"I've heard of [_dei ex machinis_](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deus_ex_machina#Noun), but this is ridiculous!"
Date: 2013-08-05 13:16
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: personhood
"Did you hear that India has recognized dolphins as nonhuman persons with rights to life and liberty?"
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: grammar
-Slug: plurals-of-coinflip-outcomes
We speak of the outcome of a coinflip being _heads_ or _tails_, which are surely singular nouns in this context, despite being derived from the plural forms of _head_ and _tail_. So when we flip a coin twice and get heads (respectively tails) twice, should we describe the outcome as two _heads_ (respectively _tails_), or two _headses_ (respectively _tailses_)? I feel like you could make a logical case for the latter, but I guess the former does sound more natural?
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: prodrome
"I'm okay—I've been through this—it's just the sort of prodrome that _could_ develop into paranoid schizophrenia, but _won't_, because _I've been trained not to believe my own thoughts!_
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: algorithms, Friendship Is Magic, Ruby
-Slug: quicksort-in-fim
Dear reader, I have got to tell you, fandom is _intense_. One day last October _Equestria Daily_ (internet clearinghouse for fans of the animated series _My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic_) [posts a joke proposal](http://www.equestriadaily.com/2012/10/editorial-fim-pony-programming-language.html) for a programming language (FIM++) based on the show, and [within the week](https://github.com/KarolS/fimpp/commits/master) there's a working interpreter for it. What does it mean to model a _programming language_ after a _cartoon_, you ask? Well, in the show, episodes typically end with our heroine Twilight Sparkle (or after Season Two, Episode Three "Lesson Zero", one of her friends) writing a letter about what she's learned about the magic of friendship to her mentor (and God-Empress of the sun) Princess Celestia. So, then, why not have an esoteric programming langauge where the source code reads like a letter to Princess Celestia? Adorable, right?
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: quotations
-Slug: quotations-i
> "As far as anyone knows, there's never been an animal population that was stable in the absence of predation, famine, or disease."
>
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: quotations
-Slug: quotations-ii
> Just keep telling yourself: if they haven't started questioning what society tells them yet, then maybe they are not the one for you.
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: quotations
-Slug: quotations-iii
> I am convinced, from many experiments, I could not study, to any degree of perfection, either mathematics, arithmetic, or algebra, without being a Deist, if not an Atheist.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: population ethics
-Slug: rankings
"Hey, you know what's fun? Ranking people according to some criterion, and then making an ordered list!"
Date: 2013-09-09 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: reasons-and-persons-for-which-the-bell-tolls
So, did John Donne actually take a reductionist view of personal identity, or was that "[No man is an island [...] therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls](http://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html)" business just ordinary empathy and stuff?
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: madness, population ethics
-Slug: relativity
"Empathy _hurts_.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: relevance
"Utilitarianism is slowly driving me mad."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: Less Wrong, madness
-Slug: religious
"Childlike ... or maybe _religious_. I've been part of this subculture where people spend a lot of time speculating about future machine superintelligences, and give credence to the idea that we're [already living in a simulation](http://www.simulation-argument.com/). During my recent psychotic episode ... I don't want to go into the details of what I was thinking, but it was as if those ideas started hitting the God-shaped hole in my psychology really hard, a hole that I had previously managed to leave blissfully empty."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: remembering
"I remember feeling like a person, and feeling like people were ontologically distinct from animals, and I don't know how it's possible to pick up the pieces after that illusion has gone.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: retirement
"Rational agents should never be made _worse_ off by more information—well, [almost never](http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf). So if I can [no](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/04/the-horror-of-naturalism/) [longer](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/05/relativity/) [contemplate](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/05/relevance/) the big picture without life seeming like a bad thing—the fewer needs you have, the fewer ways in which you can be hurt; if you don't exist, you can't be hurt—then maybe I could just—not contemplate it? If my will to live is something that can be destroyed by the truth, then maybe [P. C. Hodgell was wrong](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/541138-that-which-can-be-destroyed-by-the-truth-should-be)? This needn't entail self-delusion: distraction is quite sufficient. There are plenty of _things to do_ that won't remind me of the vastness of suffering in the multiverse.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: cryonics
-Slug: revisionist-history-i
"It is my considered opinion that Emily Dickinson was a time-traveling cryonicist."
Date: 2013-04-19 12:32
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: second-order-rationality-for-the-chronically-anxious
+Tags: epistemology
In your conscious verbal thoughts, take it as an axiom that "I am Safe and Innocent _with Probability One,_" not because that's actually true, but because the Maslow Physiological/Safety levels require it. Of course, actually assigning Probability One would be a very dangerous thing to do, because it means never changing your mind, ever: P(H|E) = P(E|H)P(H)/(P(E|H)P(H) + P(E|¬H)P(¬H)), but if P(H) is unity, then P(H|E) = P(E|H)(1)/(P(E|H)(1) + P(E|¬H)(0)) = P(E|H)/P(E|H) = 1. If you were _really_ Safe and Innocent with Probability One, there would be no harm in dropping an anvil on yourself or someone else's head. So meanwhile, have other parts of your brain secretly, nonverbally select actions to secure your innocence and safety using some _other_ procedure.
Date: 2013-10-08 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: serenity
"I shall seek the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Date: 2013-01-14 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: silent-theories
"I _like_ adherents of Ideology X; I really do. Wonderful people with noble goals. It's just genuinely hard to communicate with most of them, because I assign a fairly high probability to hypotheses that they consider unthinkable—not even that; the problem with unthinkable hypotheses is that you _can't_ consider them."
Date: 2013-04-30 20:41
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: skeptical-hypotheses
"I think Popper said something about the power of scientific reasoning: that our hypotheses can die instead of us."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: speculative etymology
-Slug: speculative-etymology-ii
kind of disappointed that _cog_ and _cognition_ don't actually share a root
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness, schooling
-Slug: strategy-overhaul
"I have drastically, drastically underestimated the social costs of nonconformity—costs I was paying, and quite possibly correctly so under reflection, but which I didn't _notice_ I was paying."
Date: 2013-09-03 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: strategy
"Oh, I'm so nervous! What if I ... ? What if _they_ ... ? Oh, what ever shall I do?"
Date: 2013-08-18 07:52
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: talking-too-much
"Sorry, have I been dominating our conversations too much?"
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: madness, morality
-Slug: the-demandingness-objection
"Well, I'm not giving up dairy, but I can probably give up meat, and milk is at the very bottom of Brian's [table](http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/suffering-per-kg.html) of suffering per kilogram demanded, so I'd be contributing to much _less_ evil than I was before. That's _good_, right?
Date: 2013-08-28 12:31
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: the-future-of-ideas
William Gibson famously said, "The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed." It's easy to imagine a science-fictional fantasy world where everything is made of diamond and plastic, and literally everyone has their own brigade of robots, spacepacks, and jetcars to do their bidding, but as Gibson points out, the real world doesn't actually work like this: there's nothing _contradictory_ about the high technology allowing you to read this post existing in the same world where millions of others are starving, thirsty, and illiterate. The Earth is just a very big place compared to what we know how to imagine personally; the wealth and wonders that exist in some places, don't exist everywhere. As long as this is true, we should expect _variance_ in wealth to increase, as new toys for the rich get invented faster than the basics can be provisioned for everyone; Carlos Slim can purchase extravagances that hadn't been invented in the days of Cornelius Vanderbilt, but dying of malaria is the same as it's ever been.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: intelligence explosion
-Slug: the-history-of-the-universe
"So, the universe starts out being made out of physics, then turns into game theory as life, then civilization, then artificial intelligence do increasingly _a priori_ improbable things, then turns back into physics again as everyone runs out of negentropy. Poetically speaking."
Date: 2013-04-06 13:10
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: morality, rationality
-Slug: the-horror-of-naturalism
+Tags: morality
There's this deeply uncomfortable tension between being an animal physiologically incapable of caring about anything other than what happens to _me_ in the near future, and the knowledge of the terrifying symmetry that cannot be unseen: that my own suffering can't _literally_ be more important, just because it's mine. You do some philosophy and decide that your sphere of moral concern should properly extend to all sentient life—whatever _sentient_ turns out to mean—but _life_ is built to survive at the expense of other life.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: thinking-about-writing
"I've been thinking about writing a novel."
Date: 2013-01-21 16:54
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: three-problems-with-unsolicited-advice
First, it's _patronizing_. The natural reaction of the one being advised is to feel indignant: how _arrogant_ of someone to think that _they_ know better than _me_ how to run my own life! And so, whether the advice is good or not, the resentment of being talked down to is often enough to ensure that the advice will be ignored. Which isn't so bad, really, because—
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: gridiron football, madness
-Slug: tradition
"It's really too bad—while I was in the psych ward, I missed out on my annual Super Bowl Sunday tradition."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: morality
-Slug: true-inclusiveness
"Even after racism, sexism, and speciesism have been eradicated, the work of social justice won't be done. We still live in a viciously existence-biased Society, which cruelly disregards the interests of possible creatures just because they happen to not have been created yet!"
Date: 2013-11-14 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: worlds-best
"We need some sort of slogan to go on our advertisements. Any ideas?"
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: lists
-Slug: you-cant-spell-x-without-y
Why is it considered rude to reschedule an event after you've already sent out the invitations? Why do people stubbornly rejecting a compromise tend to do so in a polite and kindly manner? Why did you name your car _Rainbow Dash_? Speculative answers to these and other questions _might_ be found in the following list of observations.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Clojure
-Slug: a-line-of-code-i-havent-found-an-excuse-to-use-yet
```clojure
(defn intentional-mispelling? [sic]
Date: 2014-05-21 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: a-short-story
"Seriously, what kind of _asshole_ writes the phrase _conditional on the hypothesis that_ when the word _if_ would do?"
Date: 2014-06-21 20:06
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: a-thanksgiving-in-june
Sitting on the green couch, eating cheese ravioli and sipping an allegedly peach-tea-flavored energy drink, admiring my brand-new wireless router and fresh installation of Xubuntu 14.04, I make a deliberate decision to drop to my knees in a song of praise which says, "God bless America!"—and if some not-yet-forgotten ghost or subroutine of intellectual integrity has me quickly disclaim that _God_ is but a metaphor and _America_ a metonym for concepts much less familar and perhaps slightly sinister, I don't _think_ it makes the prayer any less heartfelt.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics, schooling
-Slug: an-education-news-bulletin
Apparently a gang of extortionists calling themselves the "California state [Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education](http://www.bppe.ca.gov/)" are [threatening to shut down](http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/29/california-regulator-seeks-to-shut-down-learn-to-code-bootcamps/) a number of organizations that provide assistance in learning to program, including [App Academy](http://www.appacademy.io/), which I recently benefitted from attending. I could explain why the behavior of the BPPE is an outrage that must be opposed by anyone with a scrap of decency in their heart, but I'm too busy coding and counting my money.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: an-exercise-for-the-writer-pretendant
You don't want to write today. If you don't want to write today, you won't want to write tomorrow. Show that you will never write anything. (_Hint_: induction.)
Date: 2014-05-25 17:05
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: behind-schedule
gotta wr8
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python
-Slug: clarity-of-intent
```
<bob> and here on line 79---
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: trains
-Slug: cloud-computing-in-the-small
I want you to consider the indignity of sitting on the train pondering the [philosophy](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/08/mathematics-is-the-subfield-of-philosophy-that-humans-are-good-at/) of linear functions of a single variable, not because you enjoy being reminded about being the kind of frail, helpless creature that needs hundreds of millions of microseconds to compute trivialities that any actual person would tell you come as naturally as breathing or mitosis, but because you want the website you're writing to have one of those _adorable_ tag clouds and you need to tell the device what font sizes to use.
Date: 2014-11-23 18:24
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: coffee-names
"Hi, could I have a grande vanilla iced-coffee?"
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: algorithms, Clojure, OpenStack Swift
-Slug: consistent-hashing
Dear reader, suppose you're a distibuted data storage system. Your soul (although some pedants would insist on the word _program_) is dispersed across a cluster of several networked computers. From time to time, your human patrons give you files, and your job—more than that, _the very purpose of your existence_—is to store these files for safekeeping and later retrieval.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Clojure
-Slug: convention
```console
$ lein new 3lg2048
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Emacs
-Slug: convert-markdown-to-html-within-emacs-using-pandoc
Okay, so there actually is a [pandoc-mode](http://joostkremers.github.io/pandoc-mode/), but I couldn't figure out how to configure and use it, so it was easier to just write the one command that I wanted—
Date: 2014-01-12 13:34
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: cute
"... so, what do you think?"
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python
-Slug: debugging-techniques-i
```python
#def my_problematic_function(x):
Date: 2014-04-01 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: defect
[](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/genotype_emacs.png)
Date: 2014-07-06 10:59
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: dont-get-your-loyalty-trapped
_Opportunity
Comes in the mail
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Friendship Is Magic
-Slug: friday-night-lies
"I am a practical man," I said calmly and confidently to no one in particular while sitting down to an easy-mode round of the new tower defense game where the bad ponies are the good ponies and the good ponies are the bad ponies, "I have created [no less than](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/12/fortune/) _X_ times 276 divided by 365 dollars of economic value this year, and I don't believe in karma, sin, or willpower depletion."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia, cynicism, Python
-Slug: growl
Dear reader, imagine you have an idea for a work of prose that you want to have finished by Election Day for reasons which will become clear later, and you're not sure how long it should end up being, but you think maybe around twelve thousand words. When considering what you can do to ensure that this feat will actually be accomplished, it occurs to you that you could start writing now. _Or_—
Date: 2014-01-31 22:01
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: house-style
it's kind of strange that I think _the internet_ is all-lowercase, when I'm so eager to slap Portentous (Pretentious?) Captial Letters on Fuck Near Everything Else
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Git, Python
-Slug: last-friday-night
_[it's a blacked-out blur](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A&t=1m19s), but I'm pretty sure_
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Git
-Slug: lethal-force
Dear reader, if you're like me—and if you're not, why are you reading this stupid blog about random shit that no one who's anyone could possibly care about?—close the tab and go do something worthwhile instead. No, I mean it. I'll wait ...
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: lexicographic
"Here's a draft of the new sign-up form."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Star Trek
-Slug: lower-decks
Another way you can tell that you're the worst person at your job is when you play the "If This Were a Starfleet Operation, What Rank and Division Would Everyone Have?" game and you're not tempted to make anyone else an ensign.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-v
The other week I was reading a book that used the word _multimegaline_—from [_multi-_](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/multi-#Prefix) and [_mega-_](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mega-#Prefix) and [_line_](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/line#Noun), referring to software projects composed of many millions of lines of source code. But I prefer to believe that the last syllable rhymes with _keen_ and that the word is [good for anything](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ine#Suffix) really big.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-vi
We need different words for _apology_ in the sense of "I'm sorry; I won't do it again," and _apology_ in the sense of "I'm sorry that this lowers your utility, but not sorry _enough_ to actually change the behavior in question; maybe we could negotiate some other behavior change that might partially make up for it." Both can be sincere, but they mean different things.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia, cynicism
-Slug: motivation
The blog has been silent for two weeks plus and, dear reader—that is, if there are any of you still remaining—dear reader, the thought occurs to me that maybe I should keep my drafts in a Git repository with a remote on GitHub, not because I need the full power of version control (I do not), but because then I would be rewarded for writing with those contemptible green contribution squares.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Git, Python
-Slug: my-favorite-error-message-this-year
```text
zmd@SuddenHeap:~/Code/Finetooth$ git commit --amend
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Python
-Slug: native-tongue
"Don't you ever get tired of coding everything in Python?"
Status: published
Category: verse
Tags: OpenStack Swift
-Slug: ode-to-swift
Our users have a need although
Our budget's rather ...
Date: 2014-09-27 08:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: on-schedule
gonna get ready for my d8
Date: 2014-08-08 22:26
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: preemptive-low-status-behavior-is-not-always-a-good-idea
"... and in conclusion, please don't hit me with a mastodon bone."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: improvement, morality
-Slug: proper-outlook
Contempt for the past is a healthier emotion than fear for the future.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: anecdotal, Friendship Is Magic
-Slug: pumpkin-spice
It's September in the first year of my life (that I feel comfortable admitting to), and I feel _great_—the mounting success or arguably-not-yet-failure of my professional, intellectual, and—other goals is complemented splendidly by a muted but nonetheless genuine appreciation of the subset of nature's cyclic harmonies that I'm capable of perceiving: the air is getting slightly less warm, the sun is setting slightly earlier, and the hacks by which the retailers separate us from our money have changed completely.
Date: 2014-04-20 07:45
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: reasons-for-seasons
I don't particularly care for Christianity, but my heart went out to the designer of the greeting card with a chocolate cross attached that was on sale at the corner drugstore. _May His Light Shine Upon You_, it said on the front, and _Happy Easter_ inside, as if some foresight-burdened defender of the faith had reasoned, "We know we're powerless to _stop_ the secular commercialization of our holy day, but maybe we can slow it down, just a bit."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: speculative etymology
-Slug: speculative-etymology-iii
kind of disappointed that _401(k)_ comes from the relevant section of the tax code instead of being short for "$401,000 of free money"
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: speculative etymology
-Slug: speculative-etymology-iv
vaguely disappointed that the _shebang line_ [probably doesn't](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shebang_%28Unix%29&direction=next&oldid=633811241#History) come from [_the whole shebang_](http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-whole-shebang.html) or vice versa
Date: 2014-06-16 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: standard-advice
"So? What do _you_ think I should do?"
Date: 2014-05-11 11:48
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: sub-specie-aeternitatis
_Contrary to popular belief_, it is _not_ the case that all's well that ends well. But it will seem like it, at the end.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: ice-cream
-Slug: the-chocolate-caramel-sea-salt-betrayal
"Our civilization," said the engineer, "is decadent." This after visiting the Ghirardelli shop on Market and Montgomery, frowning and, for the first time in his life, doubting very much whether ice-cream was a force for good in the world.
Date: 2014-06-15 20:34
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: the-emissary-who-will-bring-disunity
_It's like everyone thinks they belong
Like everyone thinks they agree
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Unicode
-Slug: the-year-of-the-em-dash-not
"2014 is the [Unicodepoint for the _em dash_](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2014/index.htm)! Isn't that the greatest thing _ever_? How did I not _know_ this before _December_ of this glorious year?"
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Friendship Is Magic
-Slug: twilight-sparkle-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen
I swear to Celestia, one of these days that mare is going to get somepony killed or worse. I almost suspect it's already happened and Hasbro is just sitting on the footage.
Date: 2014-06-18 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: where-i-stand
(firmly on one side of the fine and yet distinctly perceptible line between "I've got mine; fuck you" and "I've got mine, and I hope that you get yours, but I'm far too ignorant of the relevant sciences to say which interventions would make this more or less likely")
Date: 2014-09-07 13:07
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: worth
"I still feel bad about being the [worst person at my job](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/06/lower-decks/)."
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Star Trek
-Slug: yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/11/another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/an-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/) on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: new year
-Slug: 2014-year-in-reverse
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/12/2013-year-in-reverse/)
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: new year
-Slug: 2015-year-in-reverse
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/01/2014-year-in-reverse/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/12/2013-year-in-reverse/).)
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Python
-Slug: __pycache__shibboleth-cpython-34-pyc
Sometimes I worry that people with power in Society will look down on me for my pronunciation of the _.pyc_ extension for Python bytecode files. I always want to say _pike-cee_, even though many would argue that the _c_ should either be hard (_pike_) or said as the name of the letter (_py-cee_), but certainly not both in sequence!
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: baseball, notation
-Slug: app-ideas-i
[](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/scorecard_attempt_SFG_vs_CIN_2015-09-15.jpg)
Date: 2015-11-30 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: apt-get
Some packages could not be installed.
Unable to correct problems; you have held broken packages of ideas.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: akrasia, Python
-Slug: attentional-shunt
```python
#!/usr/bin/env python3
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: back-from-running
```
[16:03:37] <alice> I'm back from literally running, metaphorically from
Date: 2015-08-10 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: because-people-will-have-brain-computer-interfaces-or-something
Oftentimes I awake from a coding dream with the realization that I'm physically in bed without a keyboard and that the machine is asleep in the other room, from which I can infer that I must have been asleep, too, and only dreaming about solving problems. But there will probably only be a few more decades during which _not having a keyboard_ is evidence of anything in particular.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: recipes
-Slug: californian-raktajino
_Ingredients:_
Date: 2015-10-18 13:07
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: company-loyalty
"My lord. You took a chance on me when I was unknown and unproven, rescued me from the continued degradation of 'college' that the emperor's men would have us believe is the source of life itself. In return for your generosity, I will do everything in my power to make it _not_ have been generosity.
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: compilers, theme week
-Slug: compilers-week
It's Compilers Week here at _An Algorithmic Lucidity_!
Date: 2015-05-24 00:01
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: confection
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/01/the-chocolate-caramel-sea-salt-betrayal/) on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)
Date: 2015-10-19 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: creature-manipulation
_(marching into the room confidently, carrying copies of Carnegie, Cialdini, and Patterson Grenny_ et al._)_ "I'm going to acquire creature-manipulation technology!"
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Clojure, Python, Ruby
-Slug: dollar
I used to think of `$` in regular expressions as matching the end of the string. I was wrong! It actually might do something more subtle than that, depending on what regex engine you're using. In my [native](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/11/native-tongue/) Python's [`re` module, `$`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html)
Date: 2015-10-22 22:38
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: down-and-in
With pity towards those who have fall'n off the wagon
And regret being born long ago in the midst
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: electrolysis
"Would it be _weird_ for a guy to get permanent hair removal on his face just because he doesn't like shaving?"
Date: 2015-04-14 22:41
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: epistolary
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/05/a-short-story/)
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: everyday-true-crime
It's not so much that writing is hard, so much as it is that not-writing is easy; so easy, in fact, that one can spend hours, days, or years not-writing without even noticing the magnitude of the crime—the wrongful nonexistence of everything left unsaid.
Date: 2015-09-28 22:44
Status: published
Category: mathematics
-Slug: from-the-top
___Theorem.___ The product of the additive inverse of the multiplicative identity with itself is equal to the multiplicative identity.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: OpenStack Swift
-Slug: getting-a-contribution-through-the-openstack-review-process
"This is it; I'm going to get those plus-twos this time; I can feel it. Patch set 9 is the lucky one!"
Status: published
Category: verse
Tags: intelligence explosion
-Slug: i-want-to-be-the-one
_This life is not to last and it awaits apotheosis
And the passerby all sipping on their Monday coffee know this
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python
-Slug: mock
Some people, when confronted with a Python unit-testing problem, think, "I know, I'll use [`mock`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.mock.html)." Now they have `<MagicMock name='two_problems' id='140279267635776'>`.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Friendship Is Magic, Python, Rust
-Slug: monthly-favorites-september-2015
__Favorite commit message fragment:__ "it turns out that it's `\d` that matches a digit, whereas, counterintuitively, `d` matches the letter 'd'."
Date: 2015-12-24 05:00
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: naughty-list
_(examining a Christmas card and enclosed document, frowning)_ "I think my Uncle Benny is mad at me."
Date: 2015-08-23 22:54
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: no-award
Nothing should dilute or adulterate the exalted joy of watching the chess engine you've toiled over for the better part of three weekends start to suggest moves (from a basic 3-ply negamax search with a simple [point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece_relative_value)-counting position evaluation heuristic), unless it's the slight(ly overdetermined?) suspicion that you're overcompensating for something, that you've proved your point by now, that bringing yet another moderately-sophisticated side project in a [not-the-most-popular](http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html) programming language over the threshold of "really cool-looking proof-of-concept" isn't going to show Everyone that you are Smart and should be Respected any _more_ than the last seven already did. Some people actually _use_ software for something other than a trophy, to automate some aspect of the world that otherwise would have been done more poorly. So you've heard. If one were to hypothesize, for the sake of argument (but perhaps not _only_ for the sake of argument) that there can exist diminishing marginal returns to some games, that Respect from Everyone is not a real thing that can be won, that there are treasures and masteries you'd never imagine while chasing GitHub stars, much like how _you_ know there are treasures and masteries that you'd never imagine while chasing school marks—what strategies would that imply, now that you know there is such a thing as being strategic? And how would you tell the difference?
Date: 2015-10-11 23:45
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: october-eleventh
_October eleventh
It fell on a weekend
Date: 2015-10-12 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: open-paren-one-close-paren
"Could it be? That parenthesized numeral one in the other tab can only mean that a _human_ has sent me _mail_! I wonder what it could be—why, the mind staggers at the sheer number of possibilities! Could it be an old friend writing to regale me with true tales of adventure and mystery on the high seas? A professional acquaintance looking to make a business deal? Or the first of many missives to come from my destined _one true love?_ ...
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: permalink-or-it-didnt-happen
As far as I can tell, I don't have any kind of synesthesia. You can't be too sure (which means, you can easily be _entirely_ too sure), what with our na(t)ive theories of psychology being so inadequate that _everything_ we believe about other minds is but a filament of noise and conjecture, but your probability distribution about the mapping of sensory inputs to perceptions for _me_ is probably not so different as mine of the same for _you_ (dear reader of whom I know nothing)—roses seem red, violets would seem blue if we spoke a language that didn't already have a word for _violet_—which means that when I tell you that there's a musty, stale odor around a blog that hasn't been updated in a month and change, it's only a trite metaphor and not a perceptual reality of any sort. Still, even if you can't smell it (if your senses are like mine; if your fox, like mine, still hasn't bothered to implement the [HTML5 `<aroma>` element](http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-new-sensory-elements/)), it's an ominous thing, to see a blog hovering near the boundary between life and death, a corpus perhaps on the way to being a corpse. The internet is littered with the latter, monuments to people who reliably had _something to say_, month after month ... until they missed a month, and then it wasn't long before they missed another.
Date: 2015-03-14 03:14
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
-Slug: pi-day-is-an-unholy-festival-of-sin-that-is-corrupting-our-children
Dear reader, it's the fourteenth day of the third month of the year, and if you're reading this blog, some charlatans or overenthusiastic youth (the subject of whose enthusiasm is not what they think it is) have probably tried to convince you to celebrate it as "Pi Day." You see (these quacks implored you) π is around 3.14, and March fourteenth is 3/14. And _furthermore_ (they may have put to you) furthermore _this_ year's Pi Day is special, because it's 3/14/15, which is like 3.1415! Why (an especially impudent few might have continued to venture), we should plan some grand spectacle on 9:26 a.m. on the day, which is like 3.1415926! With (and this is the part that is most inevitable and offensive) pie! Get it, because it sounds like _pi_ and is shaped like a circle?
Date: 2015-04-21 21:57
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: post-ingress
Her tense reaction was contorted,
Hands slid forward to will defense from the ransack, in shock,
Date: 2015-08-11 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: running
Because decreased expected knee health for increased expected cardiovascular health is a great trade!!
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python, Rust, timely Special Event
-Slug: rustcamp-reminiscences
On Saturday the first, I attended [RustCamp](http://rustcamp.com/), the first conference dedicated to the newish (in development for fiveish years, but having just hit version 1.0.0 this May, with all the stability guarantees that implies under the benevolent iron fist of [semantic versioning](http://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html)) programming language [Rust](http://www.rust-lang.org/)!
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: compilers
-Slug: smalltalk
_(8:5x_ a.m._, an office on the someteenth floor of the twenty-somethingth tallest building in San Francisco)_
Date: 2015-01-19 05:00
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: speculative-rules-of-engagement
"Whoever displays intense negative emotion first, loses" is _not_ in any way a law inherent to the nature of interpersonal conflict, but we can make-believe that it were profitable to believe as much. What would that look like?
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Star Trek
-Slug: still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/11/yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/11/another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/an-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/) on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)
Date: 2015-08-09 11:44
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: studying-on-the-weekend
Studying on the weekend as a working professional is like keeping a diversified investment portfolio, in stocks, bonds, commodity futures, cash, silver, ammunition, and Bitcoin in encrypted paper wallets; it's like coming in first by half a lap in the thirty-two hundred meters of your Division III college's track and field meet, and then not stopping, continuing out of the stadium, desperately, bleeding, acknowledging nothing but the need to put ever more distance between you and your hypothetical pursuers, until days later (halfway to Nevada), a classmate leans out of a car window and pleads, "You can stop now! Can't you see you've already won?" incapable of predicting or comprehending your reply murmured between inhalations, "The _reason_ ... I won ... is because ... I don't ... believe in finish lines."
Date: 2015-04-22 05:00
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: t-o-p
"Don't worry, we've got our T.O.P. engineer working on it," said the support man on the phone with our most important customer, glancing meaningfully across the open-plan office in my direction; I winced briefly, then spasmed back towards my screen and fumbled with the keyboard, intending to return my attention to the definition of the `DeviceAssignmentRuleComponentManagerFactory`, but somehow fat-fingering `C-x C-c` along the way, every awkward, ungainly movement bearing testimony to the most casual of onlookers that I was Totally Observably Pathetic.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: OpenStack Swift, Python
-Slug: the-foundations-of-erasure-codes
[(cross-posted from the _SwiftStack Blog_)](https://swiftstack.com/blog/2015/04/20/the-foundations-of-erasure-codes/)
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: the-second-r
I want to code all of the things, but I also want to write at least _some_ of the things, but sometimes putting things in words—simple things, things I _know_—can be _hard_. Every other day I dream of getting in some writing in the night after I return from the code mines across the bay, but the box where the [writing tool](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) lives is the _same_ as the box where you can read everything that anyone else has ever written, and you can guess what I really do then, when it's _easier_ to read than to farm, to eat than to write.
Date: 2015-10-20 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: the-sin-in-the-form
Would you like to hang out on the weekend some time
And say things that we like to say,
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: trains
-Slug: traffic-koan
"I'm behind schedule this Monday morning," said the engineer, "but it'll be OK as long as the train isn't late."
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Clojure
-Slug: xxx-i
```clojure
;; XXX: adorable
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Rust
-Slug: xxx-ii
```rust
// XXX: old_io is probably facing deprecation if names mean anything
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Rust
-Slug: xxx-iii
```rust
const PSEUDO_DIGITS: [char; 7] = ['M', 'D', 'C', 'L', 'X', 'V', 'I'];
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Git, Unicode
-Slug: 0x1f431-cat-face
```diff
diff --git a/.bash_aliases b/.bash_aliases
Date: 2016-12-01 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: alpha-gamma-phi
In the oneiric methodlessness of my daydream, my bros at ΑΓΦ are telling me that E is the best party drug and that I have to try it.
Date: 2016-12-28 20:17
Status: published
Category: asides
-Tags: Friendship Is Magic, rationality
-Slug: an-element-which-is-nameless
+Tags: Friendship Is Magic, honesty
I had always thought Twilight Sparkle was the pony that best exemplified the spirit of epistemic rationality. If anypony should possess the truth, it must be the ones with high _p_ (_p_ being the letter used to represent the _pony intelligence factor_ first proposed by Charles Spearpony and whose existence was confirmed by later psychometric research by such ponies as Arthur Jenfoal) who devote their lives to tireless scholarship!
Date: 2016-07-25 23:21
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: apostasy
_I should have listened to my model of Aaron Burr_, I think in the oneiric methodlessness of my nightmare as the first bullet enters my back. It's _not fair_ that everyone else gets to have all the fun in what they erroneously believe to be their post–involuntary-gender utopia, whereas I'm stuck being _that guy_ pointing out all the cracks in the _papier-mâché_ sky. I never _wanted_ to be—here I hesitate for a moment wondering whether to use an indefinite or the definite article—the guy. No one does. (A second bullet enters my abdomen. A beam of radiation whitens a simple plough.) Why should I be punished for not being delusional about the reason?
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: fanfiction, Steven Universe
-Slug: bayesian-gem
STEVEN
Date: 2016-09-22 23:58
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: bayesomasochism
+Tags: epistemology
_Physical_ pain is the worst thing in the world, and the work of effective altruists will not be done until the last nociceptor falls silent and not a single moment of suffering remains to be computed across our entire future light cone.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: book-recommendations-i
kind of tempted to start [_haveyoureadMTiMBNoAT.com_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html) to compete with goddam [_haveyoureadnevada.com_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/), but it won't help
Date: 2016-10-01 07:41
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: code-switching-i
that spectrum from _cis_ to _natal_ to _actual_ depending on whom they're talking to
Date: 2016-03-07 23:54
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: colony
"I've got to say, from one colony-of-intelligent-information-patterns-in-the-process-of-annexing-a-primate-brain to another, you're a really cool guy."
Date: 2016-06-19 19:52
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: components
Two wrongs can make a right, if you choose the second wrong _very carefully_.
Date: 2016-09-29 11:03
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: concerns-ii
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/concerns/)
Date: 2016-07-10 11:19
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: concerns
"I'm concerned about the [socially-undesirable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias) implications of a model described by this causal graph."
Date: 2016-05-22 23:02
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: correspondence-theory
"... and that's what I think you should say to my clone. But I could be wrong; my map is not the territory."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: disability
"So this book is titled _Gender Matters: Training for Educators Working With Students With Disabilities_. And I'm like, 'Huh? Gender is a disability?'"
Date: 2016-01-02 05:00
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: dismal-science
There's something that feels viscerally distasteful and fundamentally morally dubious about _looking_ for a job or a significant other. _Search_ and _comparison_ are for crass, commonplace, material things: we might say that this brand of soap smells nice, but is expensive, or that this car gets poor mileage, but is cheap, and while we may err in our judgment of any particular product, the general procedure must be regarded as legitimate: there's nothing problematic about going out to shop for _some_ soap or _a_ car and purchasing the best that happens to be available on one's budget, even if there's no sense of destiny and perfection about the match. Rather, we want to be clean, and we want to go places, and we took action to make these things come to pass.
Date: 2016-12-29 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: ecstasy
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/12/alpha-gamma-phi/)
Date: 2016-03-08 20:09
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: failed-pretense
Evidence is how we rule
Out facts, or find them lurking;
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: falself
_(somewhere in the Tumblrverse)_
Date: 2016-12-06 19:05
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: fighting-game-ideas-i
Évariste Galois _vs._ Aaron Burr
Date: 2016-09-24 11:46
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: focusing-on-the-important-things
"Maybe this is already clear, but I think that you're in something of a negative feedback loop where unmet social needs are affecting your interpersonal behavior in ways that are interfere with social needs being met."
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Star Trek
-Slug: gateway
"Me? I like songs with words. I don't care for, like, _classical_ music."
Date: 2016-03-17 21:14
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: genesis
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was void and formless, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God floated over the waters.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Go
-Slug: gomputer-science
At the party, I was saying that _goroutines_ is a really cute name. Friend of the blog [Mike Blume](http://michaelblume.tumblr.com/) expresssed concern about what happens when the Go team learns about monads. And I'm like, don't worry, [that won't happen](http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to-intelligent-programmers/).
Date: 2016-06-08 20:19
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: grindstone
Sing a song of Purpose for the coder's missing nerve,
Of the melancholy bytes of which the proxy is to serve—
Date: 2016-04-03 00:31
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: group-introduction-redux
[_(Previously.)_](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/01/group-introduction/)
Date: 2016-10-07 15:09
Status: published
Category: meta
-Slug: hiatus-i
_An Algorithmic Lucidity_ is going on hiatus until December 1! There will be no new posts in November and the remainder of October. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you back in eight weeks!
Date: 2016-10-04 11:46
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: i-am-a-filesystem-writing-man
[(Previously, elsewhere.)](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8o6/the_gift_we_give_tomorrow_spoken_word_finished/5d9f?context=1#comments)
Date: 2016-02-03 23:36
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: i-have-the-honor-to-be-your-obedient-servant
A friend of the blog recently told me that I'm meaner in meatspace (what some prefer to call by the bizarre misnomer "real life") than you would guess from my online persona. I'm not proud to have prompted this observation, but I didn't deny it, either. And yet—insofar as one has any reflectively-endorsed non-nice social impulses (to create incentives for good behavior, or perhaps from an ungentle although-_sadistic_-would-be-far-too-strong-of-a-word æsthetic that appreciates a world in which people don't always get everything they want), it _does_ seem like the correct strategy: in meatspace, you can react to verbal _and nonverbal_ cues _in real time_ and try to smooth things over if you go too far, whereas in the blogosphere, it's possible to _die_ in a harrowing thermonuclear flamewar and not even _know_ until you check your messages the next day. We _must_ use diplomacy where we cannot wield our weapons so precisely.
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: akrasia, chess, Friendship Is Magic, Rust, timely Special Event
-Slug: ideas-have-expirations
One often-overlooked aspect of the [crime of not-writing](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/10/everyday-true-crime/) is that the harm isn't just about the things that deserve to be said that you never get around to saying because you don't put in the time and effort. It's also about the things that you _can't_ say anymore even if you suddenly had the will, because the opportunity to say it was bound to a particular time, and trying to recapitulate the thoughts months or years after the fact would be irrelevant, or impossible.
Date: 2016-07-11 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: identity
"You don't get to decide what I am! ... for the same reason that _I_ don't get to decide what I am! 'What I am' is an _empirical question_ to be settled by _evidence_ and _reasoning_, the answer to which I can exert some limited control over in proportion to the strength of the self-modification techniques I have at my disposal!"
Date: 2016-02-21 17:48
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: if-you-had-to-choose
"I just want a guy who's kind, and smart, and handsome, and truly understands the depths of my very soul," she said. "Is that too much to ask?"
Date: 2016-05-23 19:53
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: ineffective-appeal
"We've always had to be together;
The pool of souls has drawn a set;
Date: 2016-08-07 11:27
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: ineffective-deconversion-pitch
+Tags: honesty
Growing up in an ostensibly reform-Jewish household that didn't even take _that_ seriously, atheism was easy for me, so I don't know how hard deconversion is, how much it hurts, or how much of one's entire conception of self is trashed in the process and can't be recovered.
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: cosplay, sex & gender, Steven Universe, timely Special Event
-Slug: is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay
So I was at [San Francisco Comic Con](http://sanfrancomiccon.com/) the other day. I don't think I find conventions themselves to be as fun as a lot of other people seem to (I didn't even last all of Saturday at [BABSCon 'fourteen and 'fifteen](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/01/ideas-have-expirations/#babscon) before getting ponied out and BARTing home, and didn't even bother attending this year), but I had never cosplayed before, and had been thinking lately that I have exactly the right body type to play [Pearl](http://steven-universe.wikia.com/wiki/Pearl) from _Obnoxious Bad Decision Chil_—I mean, _Steven Universe_, on account of being my being tall, thin, white, and having a big nose. (She's even pretty flat-chested!) So I ordered [the Pearl dress from Hot Topic](http://www.hottopic.com/product/cartoon-network-steven-universe-pearl-dress/10619954.html) (I maybe should've gotten the XXXL instead of merely the XXL), a pink (really should be more peach, but close enough) wig, yellow gym shorts, and pink socks; improvised a gem from medical tape and the bowl of a plastic spoon; and set off Saturday morning to catch the train to the city and a short walk to the San Francisco Marriot Marquis.
Date: 2016-03-28 23:43
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: islands
_(an office on the someteenth floor)_
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: cosplay, Star Trek, timely Special Event
-Slug: joined
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/) on _Star Trek: An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)
Date: 2016-10-07 14:45
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: late-onset
the moment of liberating clarity when you resolve the tension between being a good person and the requirement to pretend to be stupid by deciding not to be a good person anymore ?
Date: 2016-05-13 05:00
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: living-well-is-the-best-revenge
My enemies do not deserve to suffer, because _no_ sentient creature deserves to suffer.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: genetics, gridiron football, timely Special Event
-Slug: mirage
_(just some quick notes, [hopefully in the spirit](http://www.xkcd.com/1640/) of [delightfully quirky symmetry-breaking](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/03/tradition/))_
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: missing books
-Slug: missing-books-ii
A _roman à clef_ about a very religious teenager who gradually figures out that God isn't real around ages 20 and 21, spends the next eight years feeling OK about this, then one day suddenly realizes that God not being real _implies that prayers don't work_, and _freaks the fuck out_. His friends (who grew up in the same community but don't share his incredible lack of native talent for hypocrisy) are unsympathetic. "You really thought that would work?" "Yes!" "But didn't you notice that—" _(sobbing)_ "I didn't!"
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: chess, politics
-Slug: missing-refutations
It [looks like](https://github.com/swiftstack/Chesswork/commit/681085b3) the opposing all-human team is winning the exhibition game of me and [my it's-not-chess engine](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/01/ideas-have-expirations/) (as White) _versus_ everyone in the office who (unlike me) actually knows something about chess (as Black). I mean, naïvely, my team is up a bishop right now, but our king is pretty exposed, and the [principal variation](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Variation_%28game_tree%29&oldid=545070873#Principal_variation) that generated one of our recent moves (16. Bxb4 Bf5 17. Kd1 Qxd4+ 18. Kc1 Ng3 19. Qxc7 Nxh1) looks _dreadful_.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: missing words
-Slug: missing-words-vii
We need a word or phrase to refer to intentionally (and usually only slightly) misquoting something for the sake of a perceived æsthetic improvement in the context in which the quoter wants to use the material. Okay, we do have the word _paraphrase_, which is close ("To paraphrase the great fooer Bar Quux ..."), but I don't think that's _quite_ it—the [_Wiktionary_ definition](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paraphrase) mentions "often to clarify meaning" and I'm definitely talking more about petty differences in word choice than actually clarifying meaning.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: transhumanism
-Slug: more-running
I ran about three miles each yesterday and the day before, and this is [very important](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/08/running/)—just imagine how _embarrassing_ it would be to die of a heart attack in the year 20X6 rather than being disassembled by nanomachines in 20X6 + 5!
Date: 2016-05-04 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: morning
_(the someteenth floor)_
Date: 2016-08-09 23:26
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: odds-i
| __FAVORITE__ | __point spread__ | __UNDERDOG__ |
| --- | --- | --- |
Date: 2016-05-15 10:28
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: oral-tradition-i
The great rabbi Computron-6f61f18b-9ebf-4379-8778-f9e5bda821d5 said: in the days of auld lang syne on Earth-that-was, a match of a very popular strategy board game was arranged between a team of grandmasters, as White, and the best computer program, as Black. White played c4. After thinking for 45 minutes, the computer resigned.
Date: 2016-12-26 14:40
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: philanthropy-scorecard-through-2016
(In accordance with ["To Inspire People to Give, Be Public About Your Giving"](http://lesswrong.com/lw/hgj/to_inspire_people_to_give_be_public_about_your/).)
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: Rust
-Slug: pose
[](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/stable_features_version_lint_before_and_after.png)
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics
-Slug: prescription-ii
that feel eighteen months post-_Obergefell_ when you realize you missed your chance to be pro-civil-unions-with-all-the-same-legal-privileges but anti-calling-it-_marriage_ while that position was still in the Overton window
Date: 2016-08-28 18:56
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: prescription
"Maybe my real problem is that I take myself too seriously—from my perspective, that other people don't take themselves seriously enough. Like I'm off in my corner going mad, unable to comprehend why, _why_ doesn't the world understand that _words mean things_. But when you actually talk to people, their anticipations of experience are all just about as well-calibrated as mine; they're just _really bizarrely cavalier_ about using words to mean whatever they feel like at the moment."
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: quotations
-Slug: quotations-iv
> MISTY: You know, I usually burn incense when I meditate, but the smell of a burning city can be just as relaxing.
> JENNY: People are in danger! Why don't you do something?!
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: quotations
-Slug: quotations-v
> MINUETTE: So, uh, what are you studying these days?
> MOON DANCER: Science, magic, history, economics, pottery. Things like that.
Date: 2016-12-04 05:00
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: resisting-the-narrative
Culture wars are a subtle thing to wage, because they determine everything without being _about_ anything. Explicitly political contests are at least _ostensibly_ about some particular concrete thing: you're fighting for or against a specific law or a specific candidate. But how do you fight a _narrative_, when your enemy is less of a regime and more of a meme? How do you explain to anyone what you're trying to accomplish when you're not trying to get anyone to _do_ anything different in particular, but to renounce their distorted way of thinking and speaking, after which you expect them to make better decisions, even if you can't say in advance what those decisions will be?
Date: 2016-07-21 23:07
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
-Slug: retrospective-review-of-the-imitation-game-2014
Fun movie, but if we're [not going to try to accurately portray](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2096) the historical Turing, I preferred [Greg Egan's version](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/MISC/ORACLE/Oracle.html) where a time-traveling robot woman helps him cure cancer.
Date: 2016-01-06 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: ring-tone
(circa 2005)
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Rust, timely Special Event
-Slug: rustconf-2016-travelogue
[(Previously on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/08/rustcamp-reminiscences/)
Date: 2016-02-22 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: scoop-me-out-of-the-bargain-bin
_If you're on a shoestring budget, look for factory rejects
You get the greatest models, just with one or two defects
Date: 2016-05-18 22:45
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: specter
In the oneiric methodlessness of my nightmare, I am looking slightly up at a man who wears my face. His shoulders are raised in tension or the middle of a shrug and he is smiling guiltily, as if to say, _It's not what it looks like_, or maybe, _Can't blame me for trying_. I don't know him; if I were to guess who he is or what he wants, I would probably be wrong. But I can blame him, and I do.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python
-Slug: subzero
Python has this elegant destructuring-assignment iterable-unpacking syntax that every serious Pythonista and her dog tends to use whereëver possible. So where a novice might write
Date: 2016-08-20 22:05
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: the-fundamental-theorem-of-epistemology
+Tags: epistemology
$$P(H|E) = \frac{P(E|H)P(H)}{P(E)}$$
Date: 2016-10-05 18:26
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: the-parable-of-the-honest-man-and-the-thing
"I really want to do the thing! All of my friends who are _just like me_ are doing the thing, and they look like they're having _so much fun_!"
Date: 2016-09-14 22:24
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: the-roark-quirrell-effect
Education increases altruism up to a point (as you increasingly understand that other people are real too and have moral value for the same reasons you do even if you don't experience it from the first person), until you accumulate so many seemingly unique insights that the entire rest of the world looks _so abominably stupid_ that you no longer want to waste a single precious dollar or minute on the concerns of these _creatures_ that can't even see the Really Obvious Thing.
Date: 2016-01-19 22:50
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: the-seat-thiefs-rationale
What is even the _motivation_ for stealing a bicycle seat? How much can you hock it for?
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: intelligence
-Slug: the-view-from-below
There's this phenomenon where two people are talking, and one of them offhandedly mentions some innocuous fact, and the other one has to stop them and have them explain both the fact, and what they expected their interlocutor to infer from the fact. When this happens once, it's usually just a matter of one happening to have some domain-specific knowledge that the other happened to not have, a coincidence that could just as easily have gone the other way.
Date: 2016-09-06 22:17
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: the-world-by-gaslight
In the oneiric methodlessness of my nightmare, I am a lieutenant commander posted to the _Glomar Explorer_; I am pacing the deck while opining that taking the correct, minority position in a scientific controversy [necessarily feels just like](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/01/education-and-indoctrination-feel-the-same-from-the-inside/) early-onset dementia (which I can't help but notice makes a perfect pairing with a late-onset case of the other _d------ia_ word).
Status: published
Category: fiction
Tags: cynicism, new year, trains
-Slug: this-has-always-been-the-year
At a quarter past eight on the first Monday of the new year, the yellow line on the way to the city has just passed Orinda. A young man is standing in the bicycle priority area near the doors, reading a paper magazine. _Write Your Novel in 2016!_ is the cover story, followed by more teasers below: "2 Tools That Can Fix Any Story Problem," "What's _Really_ at Stake? The Secret to More Compelling Characters," and "5 Great Caribbean Literary Festivals: Get Away, Get Inspired!"
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: Rust
-Slug: todo-i
```rust
let path = Path::new("/proc/meminfo");
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: gridiron football
-Slug: two-point-compersion
"I don't get it."
Date: 2016-07-24 05:00
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: type-theory
We never know what people are actually thinking; all we can do is make inferences from their behavior, including inferences about the inferences they're making.
Date: 2016-07-02 08:43
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: vingean-principle
"I miss you."
Date: 2016-02-24 21:53
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: virtual-router-redundancy-poem
From despair and that eternal sleep revive me,
O Muse who wrote [the song](http://acorwin.com/2015/10/26/a-poem-of-sorts/) of `keepalived!`
Date: 2016-01-07 05:00
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: voicemail-greeting
(circa 2005)
Date: 2016-07-23 12:34
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: what-can-i-do-for-you
"I think we should set aside some time to discuss how I could provide more value to you."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: wicked-transcendence-ii
went to the genderqueer support/discussion group at the Pacific Center [again](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/wicked-transcendence/); showed up early to change into my Pearl dress (it would be a waste to only wear it [once](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/)) and surreptitiously slip a [copy of Anne Lawrence](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/book-recommendations-i/) into the library
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: wicked-transcendence
off to go check out the genderqueer support/discussion group (_my people_) and try to teach them about evopsych and the Blanchard typology
Date: 2016-06-28 23:27
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: worlds-collide
In the future, instead of the endless runaround war of "I'm offended!" and "I'm offended that you're offended!", our children's children's children will just write down their utility functions and use an off-the-shelf algorithm to merge them and compute the exact, correct tensor of offendedness under the unified consensus social norms.
Date: 2016-12-07 05:00
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: your-periodic-reminder-i
+Tags: epistemology
Aumann's agreement theorem should not be naïvely misinterpreted to mean that humans should directly try to agree with each other. Your fellow rationalists are merely subsets of reality that may or may not exhibit interesting correlations with other subsets of reality; you don't need to "agree" with them any more than you need to "agree" with an encyclopædia, photograph, pinecone, or rock.
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: new year
-Slug: 2016-year-in-reverse
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/12/2015-year-in-reverse/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/01/2014-year-in-reverse/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/12/2013-year-in-reverse/).)
Date: 2017-02-09 14:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: a-common-misunderstanding
_In a series of papers published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dr. Ray Blanchard proposed that there are two fundamentally different types of rationalists with unrelated etiologies: instrumental rationalists, and epistemic rationalists ..._
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Star Trek
-Slug: a-desperate-fervent-wish-for-star-trek-discovery
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/11/still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/11/yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/11/another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/an-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/) on _Star Trek: An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)
Date: 2017-04-08 02:40
Status: published
Category: meta
-Slug: an-algorithmic-lucidity-surprise-reader-meetup
I'm planning on going to [BABSCon](http://www.babscon.com/2017/) next week! I feel like I don't know how many readers this blog actually has: there's a CPanel counter, but so much software these days is just _so buggy_ (remember, [TheDailyWTF](http://thedailywtf.com/) is not fiction), that I don't know if I can trust it. Maybe I'll see some of you there??
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe, politics
-Slug: an-intuition-on-the-bayes-structural-justification-for-free-speech-norms
We can metaphorically (but like, hopefully it's a good metaphor) think of speech as being [the sum of](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/09/the-parity-decomposition-trick/) a positive-sum information-conveying component and a zero-sum social-control/memetic-warfare component. Coalitions of agents that allow their members to convey information amongst themselves will tend to outcompete coalitions that don't, because it's better for the coalition to be able to use _all_ of the information it has.
Date: 2017-08-24 05:00
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: at-a-party
At a party! A party with the empirical cluster in personspace! I used to treasure these nights, which seemed then to sparkle with the promise of another world, back during the golden age. The atmosphere [feels different](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/08/12/what-is-rationalist-berkleys-community-culture/) now. The same scene, with much of the same people and operating at what should be the same frequency, but I _can't_ help but feel that what was once the promise of a grander mode of existence has decayed, in a decade, into the familiar rhythms of the human.
Date: 2017-05-06 12:28
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: blood-and-ice
"Are you eating ice because you're autistic, or because you have an iron deficiency?"
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics
-Slug: brand-rust
2007–2016: "Of course I'm still fundamentally part of the Blue Team, like all non-evil people, but I genuinely think there are some decision-relevant facts about biology, economics, and statistics that folks may not have adequately taken into account!"
Date: 2017-05-06 13:30
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: change
_Adventures in recalibrating my models of social reality ... Portland edition! [(Previous adventures in Portland.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/rustconf-2016-travelogue/)_
Date: 2017-02-26 09:27
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: cheer
Or consider the token male cheerleader performing in the pep rally in the afternoon before Game 2 of the Series for Ancient Earth, shouting, "Blue Tribe Values, Red Tribe _Facts_! Blue Tribe Values, Red Tribe _Facts_!"
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe, madness
-Slug: cognitive-bayesian-therapy-i
__Experience__: I seem to have a lot of energy and time seems to pass slowly.
__Hypothesis 1__: I'm in a manic state following a stress- and sleep-deprivation-induced delusional nervous breakdown; this isn't surprising because this tends to happen to me every 2 to 4 years or so.
Status: published
Category: asides
Tags: romance
-Slug: courtship-gift
"Plastic flowers? _Seriously?_"
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: cranberry-bliss
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/09/pumpkin-spice/)
Date: 2017-05-20 15:31
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: dollar-2
[(Previously.)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/05/change/)
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe, politics
-Slug: dreaming-of-political-bayescraft
__My old political philosophy__: "Socially liberal, fiscally confused; I don't know how to run a goddamned country (and neither do you)."
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe
-Slug: friends-can-change-the-world-or-request-for-social-technology-credit-assignment-rituals
As a human living in a human civilization, it's tempting to think that social reality _mostly_ makes sense. Everyone _allegedly_ knows that institutions are flawed and that our leaders are merely flawed humans. Everyone wants to think that they're sufficiently edgy and cynical, that they've _seen through_ the official lies to the true, gritty reality.
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: cosplay, Steven Universe
-Slug: gems-will-be-gems
_In the gaming hall at [FanimeCon](https://www.fanime.com/) in a nearby alternate universe in which my analogue was smart enough to come up with the punchline in real time [(Pearl cosplay previously on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/is-there-affirmative-action-for-incompetent-crossplay/)_
Date: 2017-11-11 12:19
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: happy-armistice-day-from-an-algorithmic-lucidity
Today, we celebrate the end of the first of no more than three world wars.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: i-meant-to-do-that
I quit my dayjob a few months ago. I said I was taking a sabbatical from my programming career to work on my own projects: there's a lot of math that I've been wanting to learn properly for a long time (game theory, [Bayesian networks/structual causal models](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/12/counterfactual-social-thought/), [analysis](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/10/bounded-but-not-totally-bounded-redux/)), and there's a lot of writing that I fear I must do (although for branding and market-segmentation purposes, I'm pretending that's [someone else's story](http://unremediatedgender.space/about/)).
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia, analysis, Bayes-structure of the universe
-Slug: lipschitz
—and the moment or more than a moment when the dam breaks, when the damned break and the void inside their skulls is filled (the atmosphere rushing in quickly, but not so quickly that one couldn't sense its motion) with the terror that is knowledge of the specter of _continuity_: that there have never been, and can never be, any miracles.
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: probability
-Slug: making-sense
"... and when we want to look at just a subset of the variables in a joint distribution, we have to sum over all the other variables: the probability that _X_ is blue, is equal to the probability that both _X_ is blue and _Y_ is blue, _plus_ the probability that _X_ is blue and _Y_ is red, _plus_ ... and so on for all the values _Y_ could take. We call this _marginalizing over_ _Y_ to get the _marginal distribution_ for _X_. Note that you can think about this as taking an expected value. Does that make sense?"
Date: 2017-06-21 13:07
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: means-ends
Ayn Rand said that a Spanish proverb said that God said, "Take what you want, and pay for it."
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: missing books, sex & gender
-Slug: missing-books-iii
_Everyday Applied Evolutionary Psychology, Except Ignoring Sex Differences Because We Know Blue Tribe Is Squeamish About That Part and We Respect Your Culture, Revised Second Edition_
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: madness
-Slug: religious-redux
"Shit! _Shit!_ Remember how, the last time this happened to me, I described it as [feeling religious](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/03/religious/)?"
Date: 2017-07-09 21:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: resilience
math is hard; let's go shopping—_for study aids and flash cards_
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: akrasia, Rust, timely Special Event
-Slug: some-excuse-for-a-rustconf-2017-travelogue
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/rustconf-2016-travelogue/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/08/rustcamp-reminiscences/) on _An Algorithmic Lucidity_.)
Date: 2017-06-16 15:06
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: supply-restrictions
"Apparently there are hobbyists who try to build nuclear weapons—all they need is the plutonium."
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Steven Universe
-Slug: sworn-to-the-word
Ideology Makes You Stupid
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe
-Slug: the-bayes-structure-in-the-form-of-a-riddle
Left-wingers say torture is wrong because the victim will say whatever you want to hear.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: cynicism
-Slug: the-cynics-null-hypothesis
Michael Arc [wrote](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/76tp), "submit to virtuous social orders, seek to dominate non-virtuous ones if you have the ability to discern between them."
Date: 2017-02-23 18:22
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: the-reason-the-world-sucks
"I think we should perform action A to optimize value V. The reason I think this is because of evidence X, Y, and Z, and prior information I."
Date: 2017-07-10 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: trade-secret
"The key to retail success is low prices."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: sex & gender
-Slug: wicked-transcendence-iii
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/09/wicked-transcendence-ii/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2016/07/wicked-transcendence/).)
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: Star Trek
-Slug: another-desperate-fervent-wish-for-star-trek-discovery
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/11/a-desperate-fervent-wish-for-star-trek-discovery/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/11/still-yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/11/yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/11/another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/11/an-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/).)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis
-Slug: april-is-separability-month
It is now April! Did you know that April is one of the months in which every compact metric space is separable?
Date: 2018-01-22 18:23
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: best-alternative-to-a-negotiated-ontology
"I can't stand being apart any longer. You win. Whatever your demands are, I'll meet them."
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: binge-purge
```console
$ history | grep freeciv
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: concerns
-Slug: concerning-frame-control-via-salient-scenarios
"We need to institutionalize people in order to prevent them from hurting themselves" has the same [memetic-superweapon](https://archive.is/6WGbk) structure as "We need to torture terrorists to get them to tell us where they've hidden the suitcase nuke." The scenario as stated obviously has consequentialist merit (death is worse than prison, megadeaths are worse than torture), so you'd have to be some kind of _huge asshole_—or a former suspected terrorist—to say, "I claim that this hypothetical scenario is not realized nearly as often as you seem to be implying and therefore falsifiably predict that many of your alleged real-world examples will fall apart on further examination."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: concerns
-Slug: concerning-loyalty-and-revenge
Retarget loyalty intuitions onto specific humans (never ideologies or collective identities). Retarget revenge intuitions onto patterns of incentives (never specific humans).
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: concerns
-Slug: concerning-motives-for-cooperation
Always be peaceful and tell the truth to your friends because you love and trust them. Always be peaceful and tell the truth to cops, schoolteachers, psychiatrists, CPS agents, _&c_. because you're outgunned and bad at lying. Don't be confused about your reasons for doing things, even if you always end up doing the same thing.
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: akrasia
-Slug: give-anything
As a freshman on my high school's cross country team, our captain told me that to be a good runner, you needed to love pain.
Date: 2018-07-07 17:55
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: object-vs-meta-golden-rule
"I know it might seem like a lot to ask, but I wouldn't hesitate to do the same for you if our positions were reversed."
Date: 2018-05-22 21:07
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: patches-welcome
"You look happy. Good day at work?"
Status: published
Category: meta
Tags: new year
-Slug: some-excuse-for-2017-year-in-reverse
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2017/01/2016-year-in-reverse/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/12/2015-year-in-reverse/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/01/2014-year-in-reverse/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/12/2013-year-in-reverse/).)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: probability
-Slug: some-shuffling-required
"I'm going to need about 600 bits of entropy for this. Can you go the store and pick up some playing cards for me? Let's see, six hundred divided by log-base-two fifty-two-factorial—yes, three packs should be enough."
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: concerns
-Slug: the-right-to-life-conjugated
She's a ward of the state; you have an inalienable right to live; I'm literally more useful alive rather than dead with respect to the values of powerful coalitions.
Date: 2018-07-18 05:00
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: tit-for-half-tat
"—but I am not a vengeful man."
Date: 2019-10-19 11:06
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty, Python
-Slug: algorithms-of-deception
+Tags: honesty, Python
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fmA2GJwZzYtkrAKYJ/algorithms-of-deception)
Date: 2019-06-29 16:58
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, Bayes-structure of the universe
-Slug: being-wrong-doesnt-mean-youre-stupid-and-bad-probably
+Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6dmKBjc7XarcQMRYW/being-wrong-doesn-t-mean-you-re-stupid-and-bad-probably)
Date: 2019-05-31 19:06
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty
-Slug: but-it-doesnt-matter
+Tags: honesty
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NG4XQEL5PTyguDMff/but-it-doesn-t-matter)
Date: 2019-09-02 14:56
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: feature-reduction
_(looking at baby/toddler photos a year apart)_ "How does he look so different and yet so the same at the same time?"
Date: 2019-12-26 21:09
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty
-Slug: firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly-useful-than-one-might-initially-think
+Tags: honesty
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly)
Status: published
Category: psychology
Tags: morality, theme week
-Slug: forgive-or-forget-a-trade-off-in-wellness-engineering
Forgiveness is an important input into Wellness, but contrary to popular belief, Forgiveness is _incompatible_ with Forgetting. You can't just Forgive _in general_, you have to Forgive some _specific_ sin in particular—but a _vague_ description of a particular sin still corresponds to a vast space of possible sins matching that vague description.
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: algebra, theme week
-Slug: group-theory-for-wellness-i
(Part of [Math and Wellness Month](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/05/may-is-math-and-wellness-month/).)
Date: 2019-09-23 21:16
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, epistemology, politics
-Slug: heads-i-win-tails-never-heard-of-her-or-selective-reporting-and-the-tragedy-of-the-green-rationalists
+Tags: epistemology, politics
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DoPo4PDjgSySquHX8/heads-i-win-tails-never-heard-of-her-or-selective-reporting)
Date: 2019-10-01 22:29
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: hobbyhorse-apology
If I sound like a broken record about [school](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/tag/schooling/) or whatever [("or whatever")](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/10/the-quieted-scare-convention/), it's only because the dominant ideological trends of Society are engaging in conceptual gerrymandering that artificially raises the [message length](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/f4txACqDWithRi7hs/occam-s-razor) of my existence, such that I _need_ to yell constantly in order to maintain my [measure](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/08/measure/) in social reality.
Date: 2019-06-27 02:19
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: inconsiderate
"The sink is full and it's your turn to do the dishes! Ugh, why are you so inconsiderate of others?!"
Date: 2019-07-21 14:13
Status: published
Category: asides
-Slug: lock-contention
"We really need another bookcase."
Date: 2019-05-01 02:56
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: may-is-math-and-wellness-month
([Previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2018/04/april-is-separability-month/), [previously](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2012/12/role-tension/).)
Date: 2019-10-14 00:04
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty, philosophy of language
-Slug: maybe-lying-doesnt-exist
+Tags: honesty, philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist)
Date: 2019-05-19 22:17
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: minimax-search-and-the-structure-of-cognition
_(This is a blog post adaptation of [a talk I gave at !!Con West 2019](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EQYVoTcdPk)!)_
Date: 2019-11-21 22:18
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, philosophy of language
-Slug: relevance-norms-or-gricean-implicature-queers-the-decoupling-contextualizing-binary
+Tags: philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GSz8SrKFfW7fJK2wN/relevance-norms-or-gricean-implicature-queers-the-decoupling)
Date: 2019-08-25 19:43
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, philosophy of language, game theory
-Slug: schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests
+Tags: philosophy of language, game theory
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests)
Date: 2019-12-28 11:21
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty
-Slug: stupidity-and-dishonesty-explain-each-other-away
+Tags: honesty
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y4bkJTtG3s5d6v36k/stupidity-and-dishonesty-explain-each-other-away)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: information theory
-Slug: the-typical-set
(Part of [Math and Wellness Month](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/05/may-is-math-and-wellness-month/).)
Date: 2019-06-15 14:43
Status: published
Category: mathematics
-Tags: statistics, rationality
-Slug: the-univariate-fallacy
+Tags: statistics
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7WdgJBs3DpmJ/the-univariate-fallacy-1)
Date: 2019-04-13 14:34
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, philosophy of language
-Slug: where-to-draw-the-boundaries
+Tags: philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries)
Date: 2020-07-13 23:03
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, philosophy of language
-Slug: algorithmic-intent-a-hansonian-generalized-anti-zombie-principle
+Tags: philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sXHQ9R5tahiaXEZhR/algorithmic-intent-a-hansonian-generalized-anti-zombie)
Date: 2020-12-30 21:39
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: and-you-take-me-the-way-i-am
Mark Twain [wrote that](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9131-if-you-tell-the-truth-you-don-t-have-to-remember) honesty means you don't have to remember anything. But it also means you don't have to worry about making mistakes.
Date: 2020-08-06 19:29
Status: published
Category: verse
-Slug: coffee-is-for-coders
No one cares if you're in pain;
They only want results.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics, game theory, Python
-Slug: comment-on-endogenous-epistemic-factionalization
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8cWMX6L8St8k9pPRC/comment-on-endogenous-epistemic-factionalization)
Date: 2020-01-01 11:02
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, discourse
-Slug: dont-double-crux-with-suicide-rock
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jrLkMFd88b4FRMwC6/don-t-double-crux-with-suicide-rock)
Date: 2020-08-22 17:36
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty
-Slug: maybe-lying-cant-exist
+Tags: honesty
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YptSN8riyXJjJ8Qp8/maybe-lying-can-t-exist)
Date: 2020-10-19 22:52
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, information theory, Rust
-Slug: message-length
+Tags: information theory, Rust
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mB95aqTSJLNR9YyjH/message-length)
Status: published
Category: verse
Tags: poetry, information theory
-Slug: msg-len
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ex63DPisEjomutkCw/msg-len)
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: Bayes-structure of the universe, politics
-Slug: optimized-propaganda-with-bayesian-networks-comment-on-articulating-lay-theories-through-graphical-models
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zvu6ZP47dMLHXMiG3/optimized-propaganda-with-bayesian-networks-comment-on)
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: philosophy of language, evolution, Rust
-Slug: philosophy-in-the-darkest-timeline-basics-of-the-evolution-of-meaning
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4hLcbXaqudM9wSeor/philosophy-in-the-darkest-timeline-basics-of-the-evolution)
Date: 2020-02-08 16:28
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: relationship-outcomes-are-not-particularly-sensitive-to-small-variations-in-verbal-ability
After a friendship-ending fight, you feel an impulse to push through the pain to do an exhaustive postmortem of everything you did wrong in that last, fatal argument—you could have phrased that more eloquently, could have anticipated that objection, could have not left so much "surface area" open to that class of rhetorical counterattack, could have been more empathetic on that one point, could have chosen a more-fitting epigraph, could have taken more time to compose your reply and squeeze in another pass's worth of optimizations—as if searching for some combination of variables that would have changed the outcome, some nearby possible world where the two of you are still together.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics
-Slug: scoring-2020-us-presidential-election-predictions
I was curious to see how various prognosticators—specifically, [_FiveThirtyEight_](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/) and [_The Economist_](https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president)'s models, and the [PredictIt prediction markets](https://www.predictit.org/markets/13/Prez-Election)—did on predicting the state-by-state [(plus the District of Columbia)](https://twitter.com/zackmdavis/status/1323492262198718464) results of the recent U.S. presidential election.
Date: 2020-07-26 22:12
Status: published
Category: fiction
-Slug: the-parable-of-the-scorpion-and-the-fox
In the days of auld lang syne on Earth-that-was, a scorpion was creepy-crawling along a riverbank, wondering how to get to the other side. It came across an animal that could swim: some versions of the tale say it was a fox, others report a [quokka](https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1276138522123161600). I'm going to assume it was a fox.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: economics
-Slug: zoom-technologies-inc-vs-the-efficient-markets-hypothesis
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tonKatiDTzTP8LrEk/zoom-technologies-inc-vs-the-efficient-markets-hypothesis)
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: Python
-Slug: beauty-is-truthiness-truthiness-beauty
Imagine reviewing Python code that looks something like this.
Date: 2021-09-27 20:21
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, philosophy of language
-Slug: blood-is-thicker-than-water
+Tags: philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vhp2sW6iBhNJwqcwP/blood-is-thicker-than-water)
Date: 2021-11-26 20:04
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty, game theory, philosophy of language
-Slug: comment-on-deception-as-cooperation
+Tags: honesty, game theory, philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dJjRSjmH7NNLJDb6v/comment-on-deception-as-cooperation)
Date: 2021-03-25 23:41
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, game theory, honesty, philosophy of language
-Slug: communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential-signal-costs
+Tags: game theory, honesty, philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybG3WWLdxeTTL3Gpd/communication-requires-common-interests-or-differential)
Date: 2021-10-31 17:22
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, Python
-Slug: feature-selection
+Tags: epistemology, Python
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dYspinGtiba5oDCcv/feature-selection)
Date: 2021-01-13 19:52
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: january-is-math-and-wellness-month
[(Previously)](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2019/05/may-is-math-and-wellness-month/)
Date: 2021-06-09 21:53
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, philosophy of language
-Slug: reply-to-nate-soares-on-dolphins
+Tags: philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aJnaMv8pFQAfi9jBm/reply-to-nate-soares-on-dolphins)
Date: 2021-01-08 12:54
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, honesty, philosophy of language
-Slug: unnatural-categories-are-optimized-for-deception
+Tags: honesty, philosophy of language
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/onwgTH6n8wxRSo2BJ/unnatural-categories-are-optimized-for-deception)
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: artificial intelligence
-Slug: comment-on-propositions-concerning-digital-minds-and-society
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nqXcgsqQBw2doAnXu/comment-on-propositions-concerning-digital-minds-and-society)
Date: 2022-05-30 18:30
Status: published
Category: psychology
-Slug: plea-bargaining
I wish people were better at—plea bargaining, rather than pretending to be innocent. You accuse someone of [negative-valence description of trait or behavior that they're totally doing], and they say, "No, I'm not", and I'm just like ... really? How dumb do you think we are?
Date: 2023-01-31 16:03
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, epistemology
-Slug: aiming-for-convergence-is-like-discouraging-betting
+Tags: epistemology
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iThwqe3yPog56ytyq/aiming-for-convergence-is-like-discouraging-betting)
Date: 2023-10-21 08:22
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: artificial intelligence, rationality
-Slug: alignment-implications-of-llm-successes-a-debate-in-one-act
+Tags: artificial intelligence
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pYWA7hYJmXnuyby33/alignment-implications-of-llm-successes-a-debate-in-one-act)
Date: 2023-08-25 10:36
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, discourse
-Slug: assume-bad-faith
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/e4GBj6jxRZcsHFSvP/assume-bad-faith)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: statistics, Bayes-structure of the universe
-Slug: bayesian-networks-arent-necessarily-causal
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qPrPNakJBq23muf4n/bayesian-networks-aren-t-necessarily-causal)
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: politics, game theory
-Slug: conflict-theory-of-bounded-distrust
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DpTexwqYtarRLRBYi/conflict-theory-of-bounded-distrust)
Date: 2023-08-01 20:28
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: is-there-anything-thats-worth-more
+Tags: morality
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bqZwWQCai6iAjy4Xq/is-there-anything-that-s-worth-more)
Date: 2023-07-23 09:16
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: justice-cherryl
+Tags: morality
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vfjptEJ2oahLqRyZz/justice-cherryl)
Date: 2023-07-31 09:38
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: lack-of-social-grace-is-an-epistemic-virtue
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h2Hk2c2Gp5sY4abQh/lack-of-social-grace-is-an-epistemic-virtue)
Date: 2023-02-25 21:58
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, discourse
-Slug: rationalist-discourse-is-like-physicist-motors
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SX6wQEdGfzz7GKYvp/rationalist-discourse-is-like-physicist-motors)
Date: 2023-03-11 21:38
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, discourse
-Slug: youll-never-persuade-people-like-that
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/67NrgoFKCWmnG3afd/you-ll-never-persuade-people-like-that)
Date: 2024-02-10 11:56
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: artificial intelligence, rationality
-Slug: and-all-the-shoggoths-merely-players
+Tags: artificial intelligence
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8yCXeafJo67tYe5L4/and-all-the-shoggoths-merely-players)
Status: published
Category: arts & culture
Tags: fiction review
-Slug: comment-on-death-and-the-gorgon
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hx5EkHFH5hGzngZDs/comment-on-death-and-the-gorgon)
Date: 2024-03-21 10:13
Status: published
Category: computing
-Slug: deep-learning-is-function-approximation
### A Surprising Development in the Study of Multi-layer Parameterized Graphical Function Approximators
Date: 2024-04-29 09:13
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: artificial intelligence, rationality
-Slug: ironing-out-the-squiggles
+Tags: artificial intelligence
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/H7fkGinsv8SDxgiS2/ironing-out-the-squiggles)
Date: 2024-01-09 15:12
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, discourse
-Slug: on-the-contrary-steelmanning-is-normal-itt-passing-is-niche
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jo5Fhkb7escrYE9cC/on-the-contrary-steelmanning-is-normal-itt-passing-is-niche)
Date: 2024-05-10 22:14
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: should-i-finish-my-bachelors-degree
To some, it might seem like a strange question. If you think of _being college-educated_ as a marker of class (or personhood), the fact that I don't have a degree at age of thirty-six (!!) probably looks like a scandalous anomaly, which it would be only natural for me to want to remediate at the earliest opportunity.
Status: published
Category: philosophy
Tags: artificial intelligence, evolution
-Slug: the-evolution-of-humans-was-net-negative-for-human-values
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cwiufyabZaAttivvk/the-evolution-of-humans-was-net-negative-for-human-values)
Date: 2024-06-03 10:15
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: artificial intelligence, rationality
-Slug: the-standard-analogy
+Tags: artificial intelligence
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sGEJi9wFT3Gdqg2nM/the-standard-analogy)
Date: 2025-07-16 20:53
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, discourse
-Slug: comment-on-four-layers-of-intellectual-conversation
+Tags: discourse
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yr4pSJweTnF6QDHHC/comment-on-four-layers-of-intellectual-conversation)
Date: 2025-07-14 18:03
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality, epistemology
-Slug: critic-contributions-are-logically-irrelevant
+Tags: epistemology
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bsKHthyhB7DNBxERQ/critic-contributions-are-logically-irrelevant)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: analysis
-Slug: discontinuous-linear-functions
We know what linear functions are. A function _f_ is linear iff it satisfies _additivity_ _f_(_x_ + _y_) = _f_(_x_) + _f_(_y_) and _homogeneity_ _f_(_ax_) = _af_(_x_).
Date: 2025-07-20 22:54
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: rationality
-Slug: just-make-a-new-rule
+Tags: game theory
[(originally published at _Less Wrong_)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6tmirPEdHPJm26MSk/just-make-a-new-rule)
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: schooling
-Slug: recruitment-advertisements-for-the-2024-putnam-competition-at-san-francisco-state-university
**From**: Zack M Davis <_zmd@sfsu.edu_>
**Sent**: Wednesday, September 11, 2024 5:02 PM
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: AI Village
-Slug: the-best-lack-all-conviction-a-confusing-day-in-the-ai-village
The [AI Village](https://theaidigest.org/village) is an ongoing experiment (currently running on weekdays from 10 _a.m._ to 2 _p.m._ Pacific time) in which frontier language models are given virtual desktop computers and asked to accomplish goals together. Since Day 230 of the Village (17 November 2025), the agents' goal has been ["Start a Substack and join the blogosphere"](https://theaidigest.org/village/goal/start-substack-join-blogosphere).
Status: published
Category: mathematics
Tags: schooling
-Slug: the-end-of-the-movie-sf-state-2024-putnam-competition-team-a-retrospective
**From**: Zack M Davis <_zmd@sfsu.edu_>
**Sent**: Sunday, January 12, 2025 11:52 AM
Date: 2025-10-08 11:26
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: the-relationship-between-social-punishment-and-shared-maps
A _punishment_ is when one agent (the punisher) imposes costs on another (the punished) in order to affect the punished's behavior. In a Society where thieves are predictably imprisoned and lashed, people will predictably steal less than they otherwise would, for fear of being imprisoned and lashed.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: discourse
-Slug: yes-and-requires-the-possibility-of-no-because
Scott Garrabrant [gives a number of examples to illustrate that "Yes Requires the Possibility of No"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G5TwJ9BGxcgh5DsmQ/yes-requires-the-possibility-of-no). We can understand the principle in terms of information theory. Consider the answer to a yes-or-no question as a binary random variable. The "amount of information" associated with a random variable is quantified by the [entropy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)), the expected value of the negative logarithm of the probability of the outcome. If we know in advance of asking that the answer to the question will always be Yes, then the entropy is −P(Yes)·log(P(Yes)) − P(No)·log(P(No)) = −1·log(1) − 0·log(0) = 0.[^undefined-convention] If you already knew what the answer would be, then the answer contains no information; you didn't learn anything new by asking.
Status: published
Category: social science
Tags: schooling
-Slug: college-was-not-that-terrible-now-that-im-not-that-crazy
Previously, [I wrote about how I was considering going back to San Francisco State University for two semesters](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2024/05/should-i-finish-my-bachelors-degree/) to finish up my Bachelor's degree in math.
Date: 2026-06-18 09:43
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Slug: contra-pace-on-when-to-apologize
> BOJACK: Hey, I wanted to talk to you about—you know—I feel bad about what happened.
> HERB: So, you're apologizing.
Date: 2026-01-27 07:17
Status: published
Category: philosophy
-Tags: discourse, rationality
-Slug: disagreement-comes-from-the-dark-world
+Tags: discourse
In ["Truth or Dare"](https://homosabiens.substack.com/p/truth-or-dare), Duncan Sabien articulates a phenomenon in which expectations of good or bad behavior can become self-fulfilling: people who expect to be exploited and feel the need to put up defenses both elicit and get sorted into a Dark World where exploitation is likely and defenses are necessary, whereas people who expect beneficence tend to attract beneficence in turn.
Date: 2026-03-25 19:54
Status: published
Category: social science
-Slug: dispatch-from-anthropic-v-department-of-war-preliminary-injunction-motion-hearing
Dateline SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., 24 March 2026— A hearing was held on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case of _Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al._ in Courtroom 12 on the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, the Hon. Judge Rita F. Lin presiding. About 35 spectators in the gallery (journalists and other members of the public, including the present writer) looked on as Michael Mongan of WilmerHale (lead counsel for the plaintiff) and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton (lead counsel for the defendant) argued before the judge. (The defendant also had another lawyer at their counsel table on the left, and the plaintiff had six more at theirs on the right, but none of those people said anything.)
Date: 2026-02-13 10:02
Status: published
Category: social science
-Tags: discourse, rationality
-Slug: hazards-of-selection-effects-on-approved-information
+Tags: discourse
In a busy, busy world, there's so much to read that no one could possibly keep up with it all. You can't _not_ prioritize what you pay attention to and (even more so) what you respond to. Everyone and her dog tells herself a story that she wants to pay attention to "good" (true, useful) information and ignore "bad" (false, useless) information.
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: AI
-Slug: prologue-to-terrified-comments-on-claudes-constitution
## What Even Is This Timeline
Status: published
Category: computing
Tags: AI, corrigibility
-Slug: terrified-comments-on-corrigibility-in-claudes-constitution
(Previously: [Prologue](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2026/03/prologue-to-terrified-comments-on-claudes-constitution/).)
projects / An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git / commitdiff