A lot of people straightforwardly believe that minds are magic: that our decision making is not simply the result of electricity and biochemistry in neurons and synapses in the brain, but at the core is the product of an immortal soul. This, of course, I reject. But it seems to me that a lot ofContinue reading “Why “Minds Aren’t Magic”?”
Author Archives: Paul Crowley
The Paul way to get started with Python
This is really just for a friend on Facebook who knows someone who’s learning Python, but I thought I might as well put it in the world. I think a lot of beginner tutorials for Python start you off on the wrong foot—they recommend a second-rate editor, or start off with bad practices. Here’s myContinue reading “The Paul way to get started with Python”
Notes on “Among the A.I. Doomsayers” by Andrew Marantz
This came out today, and I’m in it a little bit because I attended a dinner party Katja threw for Marantz and arrived early. Mostly this is just disappointingly bad and it was a mistake to talk to him. He warned in advance “I’m going to have to talk about the people as well asContinue reading “Notes on “Among the A.I. Doomsayers” by Andrew Marantz”
Informal sampling of the Fatal Force Database
See a random example Police shot dead 1,160 people in 2023. What’s a typical shooting like? We learn about fatal police shootings through two routes. First, dramatic examples get in national news. However, these are clearly very atypical, or they wouldn’t be in the news. Second, we can compile statistics. The Washington Post’s Fatal ForceContinue reading “Informal sampling of the Fatal Force Database”
What about Alpha Centauri?
If we make Sphere the Sun, and Pluto is in San Francisco, where does Alpha Centauri go? Alpha Centauri is 4.344 light years away, so at our scale of 1:8.855 million, model Alpha Centauri must be placed 12 times further away than the Moon. Not 12 times further away than our model of the MoonContinue reading “What about Alpha Centauri?”
Make Sphere the Sun
The Sweden Solar System, at a scale of 1:20 million, is the world’s largest scale model of the Solar System, with the Avicii Arena representing the Sun. The Arena was the largest spherical building in the world… until the completion of Sphere in Las Vegas. It is clear what America has to do. Sphere isContinue reading “Make Sphere the Sun”
Responses to Cade Metz’s hit piece on Scott Alexander
This depraved rubbish got quite a few responses. Please let me know about any I’ve missed. Inner bullets are subtitles or exerpts. Open to adding good Twitter threads too!
NYT plan to doxx Scott Alexander for no real reason
UPDATE 2020-06-25: Please sign the petition at DontDoxScottAlexander.com! The New York Times is planning on publishing an article about Scott Alexander, one of the most important thinkers of our time. Unfortunately, they plan to include his legal name. In response, Scott has shut down his blog, a huge loss to the world. This will doContinue reading “NYT plan to doxx Scott Alexander for no real reason”
Some more numbers as lambda calculus
On Reddit, u/spriteguard asks: Do you have any diagrams of smaller numbers for comparison? I’d love to see a whole sequence of these. I have work to put off, so I couldn’t resist the challenge. Like the previous post, these are Tromp diagrams showing lambda calculus expressions that evaluate to Church integers. Code to generateContinue reading “Some more numbers as lambda calculus”
A picture of Graham’s Number
One of the first posts I made on this blog was Lambda calculus and Graham’s number, which set out how to express the insanely large number known as Graham’s Number precisely and concisely using lambda calculus. A week ago, Reddit user u/KtoProd asked: if I wanted to get a Graham’s Number tattoo, how should IContinue reading “A picture of Graham’s Number”
Minds aren't magic 