A blog about math, philosophy, puzzles, politics, and more.
Written in my personal capacity. Thanks to many people for conversations and comments. Written in less than 24 hours; sorry for any sloppiness. [Link to donate here -- please use this link rather than going to his website -- but please read at least the first few paragraphs!] It’s an uncanny, weird coincidence that the two … Continue reading Consider donating to AI safety champion Scott Wiener
Written in my personal capacity. The views expressed here are my own. Thanks to Zach Stein-Perlman, Jesse Richardson, and many others for comments. [Link to donate here -- please use this link rather than going to his website -- but please read at least the first few paragraphs!] Over the last several years, I’ve written a … Continue reading Consider donating to Alex Bores, author of the RAISE Act
Thanks to Jesse Richardson for discussion. Polymarket asks: will Jesus Christ return in 2025? In the three days since the market opened, traders have wagered over $100,000 on this question. The market traded as high as 5%, and is now stably trading at 3%. Right now, if you wanted to, you could place a bet … Continue reading Will Jesus Christ return in an election year?
I spent most of my election day -- 3pm to 11pm Pacific time -- trading on Manifold Markets. That went about as well as it could have gone. I doubled the money I was trading with, jumping to 10th place on Manifold's all-time leaderboard. Spending my time trading instead of just nervously watching results come … Continue reading Seven lessons I didn’t learn from election day
In January, I defended my PhD thesis. My thesis is called Algorithmic Bayesian Epistemology, and it’s about predicting the future. In many ways, the last five years of my life have been unpredictable. I did not predict that a novel bat virus would ravage the world, causing me to leave New York for a year. … Continue reading Algorithmic Bayesian Epistemology
Yesterday, I had a coronectomy: the top halves of my bottom wisdom teeth were surgically removed. It was my first time being sedated, and I didn't know what to expect. While I was unconscious during the surgery, the hour after surgery turned out to be a fascinating experience, because I was completely lucid but had … Continue reading My hour of memoryless lucidity
[Note: images may not load if you're using the WordPress app. Try opening this post in a browser, or reading it on LessWrong.] Thanks to Drake Thomas for feedback. I. Here’s a fun scatter plot. It has two thousand points, which I generated as follows: first, I drew two thousand x-values from a normal distribution … Continue reading How much do you believe your results?
In December 2020, I made 100 probabilistic predictions for 2021. As promised, I’ve come back to evaluate them on two criteria: calibration and personal optimism/pessimism. I also challenged readers to compete with me. More on this later, but first, here are my predictions, color-coded black if they happened and red if they didn't. I. US … Continue reading Grading my 2021 predictions
[Originally posted on the EA Forum] When I ask effective altruists who their hero is, it’s always the same names. Peter Singer. Stanislav Petrov. Jonas Salk. No one ever mentions Ea-nasir, the ancient Sumerian coppersmith and businessman. Which is a shame, really. I guess it makes sense. Most people haven’t heard of him, and those … Continue reading Introducing EA-nasir
This is a re-post of a puzzle I wrote for the 2021 Mathcamp Puzzle Hunt. The difficulty is 5/10 or so (easier than the first puzzle I wrote for this blog, but harder than the second). If you haven’t done these sorts of puzzles before, I recommend starting with e.g. this one or this one … Continue reading Puzzle: A More Earthly Calendar
Unexpected Values 