Observations

What I'm Reading, April 2021 Edition

You can find the March 2021 Edition here. BooksDucks, Newburyport; Lucy Ellmann. Critically acclaimed novel written as a single sentence in a stream-of-consciousness style. Read a dozen pages before I realized there was no way I'd be able to read 1000 more pages of

economics

The Origins Of Money

An article on the origins of money from the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Fascinating because it ties together insights from evolutionary biology, economics, and human nature to explain why even ancient societies needed some standardized medium of exchange, i.e., money. Lots of interesting bits

History

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism was a primitive computer, created in Greece over two thousand years ago to predict the positions of planets. Researchers at UCL made this fascinating video that covers some recent discoveries they made about the machine: Besides the fact that Greek astronomers

books

What I'm Reading, March 2021 Edition

You can find the Feb 2021 edition here. BooksWorking in Public, Nadia Eghbal. About how the community behind open-source software works. Enjoyed it, although the target audience was people who are unfamiliar with open-source and large software projects in general. If you've used Github

Flash Fiction

The Odds Man [Flash Fiction #3]

#1 Exactly at 9:00 on a cold winter morning on a busy London street, W walked out the door of his townhouse. As he started to walk down the short flight of steps, he had a vague feeling of unease. He was forgetting

computer-science

Paper: The Design Philosophy of DARPA Internet Protocols

This paper covers some of the design decisions made in designing the internet protocols. Short but insightful. Here are some of the highlights: The goal of the internet was to connect smaller networks: The top level goal for the DARPA Internet Architecture was to

AI

Don't Close Your Eyes To AGI

In the paper Concrete Problems In AI Safety, there's a great example of how AIs can evade objectives they are asked to accomplish. A cleaner robot is asked to vacuum the dirt it sees in the room. It perversely satisfies this objective by simply

books

What I'm Reading, Feb 2021 Edition

You can find the Jan 2021 edition here. BooksContinued my Agatha Christie winter binge: Spider's Web. Ok 3/5.The Mystery of the Blue Train. Ok 3/5.The ABC Murders. This was great! 5/5.Peril at End House. Ok 3/5.Cards

economics

The Use Of Knowledge In Society

Years ago, as a recent graduate with an engineering degree, I found myself drawn towards technocratic solutions to the problems I saw around me: Too much corruption? Appoint an anti-corruption commission that will focus on finding and prosecuting corrupt officials.Bread costs too much?

Flash Fiction

27 Defenestrations of Sirius Grey [Flash Fiction #2]

defenestrate: verb; to throw (a person or thing) out of a window. On the last few occasions the roof of his red Ford Fiesta had broken his fall, but this time he fell onto the windscreen. He heard it crack as his body dashed

AI

Don't Plan For The Expected Outcome

When planning for the future, we often try to prepare for the most likely outcome. But this isn't always a great idea. Sometimes you want to plan for the best possible or worst possible outcomes. You want to plan for the best possible outcomes

This Blog, 1 Year In

I started posting daily to this blog on the 9th of January 2020. Today marks the one year anniversary of this project. Reflecting on the past year, my main takeway from this project was that writing every day is fun but stressful. Some days

books

What I'm Reading, Jan 2021 Edition

You can find the December 2020 edition here. Continued binge reading Agatha Christie: Crooked House (great, 4/5), The Big Four (decent, 3/5).The Terracotta Dog, Andrea Camilleri: Detective fiction set in Sicily. Plot wasn't compelling and had too many digressions.Down and

AI

The Time For AI Safety Is Now

2020 was the year I started taking the risk of super-intelligent AI seriously. I blame this on OpenAI's language model, GPT-3 which was simultaneously impressive and scary. Some did people oversell its abilities – it isn't even close to as smart as a human being,

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