You say that the times are bad. Be better yourselves, and the times will be better: You are the times. Technology must multiply human agency. DMs closed.
New York, USA
Joined October 2018
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akhil retweeted
A more provocative answer would be one word: Arminius. His victory at Teutoburg Forest caused the Roman Empire's withdrawal from Germania Magna, and thus prevented Germany from becoming Latinized.
Ancient Rome was known to be more practical than the philosophical Greeks.
akhil retweeted
The British governor of Jamaica Edward Eyre (1865) having authorized the Morant Bay massacre of 500 men, women, & children, London's prosecutorial committee included JS Mill and Albert Venn Dicey, the defence committee Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold.
akhil retweeted
We can't brute force compute all possible moves in Go, a static game with a simple 19 x 19 grid, yet somehow people think we're going to simulate a dynamic system of trillions of cells each containing trillions of molecules.
If you had an exponential amount of compute you could solve simulate biology exactly and wouldn't need to run any experiments.
Some of you will think "of course, but that's an unrealistic assumption" and others will think "no, you need experiments even with that much compute. That's just How It's Done".
You would of course need evaluations once you have a solution, but you don't in principle need experiments to find it: Experiments are a way to save compute, dating from a time when it was much more expensive.
And I think the presentation is exponential but real systems aren't irreducibly exponential. AlphaFold worked, after all.
akhil retweeted
Economics of AI at the moment suggests there's $10K out there in someone's pocket that is worth more than the many hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing around because those dollars can get the necessary leverage over depleted physical resources and start a non-zero-sum game.
akhil retweeted
National Museums Scotland announced it had acquired a rare, 8thC, gold sword pommel #OTD in 2022. A detectorist found it at Blair Drummond, Stirling, in 2019. Encrusted with garnets, it has eyes and a beak on each end. 📸National Museums Scotland
ALT A close-up of the sword pommel.
akhil retweeted
Es gab einst viele berühmte deutsche Gräzisten. Die Synthese (ja gar Symbiose) von Deutschland und Griechenland wirkte noch bis ins frühe 20. Jahrhundert fort (Carathéodory), und wurde dann planmäßig zerstört. (U.a. durch Bildungsreformen; quasi-Abschaffung des Gymnasiums.)
Wenn die Deutschen schon mit der stupidesten Indifferenz den Zerfall ihrer Sprache über sich ergehen lassen, will ich wenigstens auf einen Griechen (Kondylis) aufmerksam machen, der Deutsch zu seiner philosophischen Wahlsprache erhoben hat und hier eine Liebeserklärung an die deutsche Sprache gibt (wie verständlich kann ein Text noch sein, in dem ein Ausdruck wie "geistige Ehrlichkeit" vorkommt?):
"Wenn ich aber selber schreiben muss, kann ich nur meinen eigenen stilistischen Neigungen folgen, um ein eigenes Denken in die angemessenen Kanäle einzugießen. Und gerade die Strukturierung meines Denkens führt mich in die Nähe des transparenten und möglichst schlichten Stils, und zwar weil dann, wenn es sich um theoretische Texte handelt, die geistige Ehrlichkeit es verbietet, Mängel des Denkens mit Verblümungen und lexikalischen Seiltänzen zu überdecken. Insbesondere bietet die Sprache, in der ich ursprünglich meine Bücher schreibe, dem Kenner der klassischen Sprachen außerordentliche Vorteile: Die deutsche Sprache enthält weit mehr als andere Sprachen die syntaktischen Strukturen und lexikalischen Modi der altgriechischen und lateinischen Sprache. Insbesondere die fast unbeschränkten Möglichkeiten der Verbindung von Haupt- und Nebensätzen innerhalb längerer Satzperioden erlauben die präzise Formulierung mehrschichtiger Gedanken, wo in der syntaktischen Verbindung reliefartig die Verknüpfung und das Gewebe der Beziehungen zwischen den verschiedenen Dimensionen des Sinns ausgedrückt werden. In keiner anderen der mir bekannten Sprachen kann zum Beispiel so gut der Stil des Thukydides wiedergegeben werden. Meinen deutschen Lesern, die mich fragen, wie ich zwanglos und sogar mit Ansprüchen eines persönlichen Stils in einer fremden Sprache schreiben könne, antworte ich, dies sei größtenteils auf meine Vertrautheit mit den klassischen Sprachen zurückzuführen." (Panajotis Kondylis: In konkreter Lage. Gespräche)
Was Kondylis hier über die Verwandtschaft des Deutschen und Altgriechischen sagt, sagte auch mein Altgriechischdozent gleich am Anfang der ersten Sitzung, bevor auch nur ein Wort übersetzt wurde.
[S.E.]
akhil retweeted
How do you find topological phases that symmetry indicators can't capture? A new paper constructs topological invariants systematically from the Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence, fully classifying superconductors in 159 of 230 space groups.
More: go.aps.org/4eRPNBV
ALT Rectangle diagram titled “All 3D topological phases in K-theory.” A large yellow rectangle represents 2D topological invariants and is divided into three columns: Gapless, TI/TSC, and Atomic states. Inside it is a smaller orange rectangle (1D invariants), with a red-and-orange striped region within labeled "Symmetry indicators.” A small green rectangle (3D invariants) sits on top of the TI/TSC column. A legend on the right identifies each color: red for 0D, orange for 1D, yellow for 2D, and green for 3D invariants.
akhil retweeted
"The myth of technological and political and social inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience. Its service is to remove responsibility from the shoulders of everyone who truly believes in it."
— Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason
akhil retweeted
Lecture notes: "Quantum field theory and four-manifolds: Perspectives from physics and geometry" (by Niklas Garner, Martijn Kool, Jan Manschot, Yuuji Tanaka): arxiv.org/abs/2610.30288
akhil retweeted
This last letter Darwin wrote to Haeckel before his heart began to fail that winter.. offers him $15k or so modern USD to help make up for the loss
Importance of friendship and loyalty even in academia. Evolution was difficult to popularize, friendships such as made it possible
akhil retweeted
often non-domain-expert scientists start focusing on consciousness in the senescence of their careers. it's a cautionary tale about the state of "maturity" of the field if it gets too focused on consciousness
akhil retweeted
Lendo um ensaio de David Bentley Hart sobre o “Heidegger tardio”. A primeira parte é um (bom) resumo de manual. No finalzinho, porém, DBH se permite um certo lirismo, sem forçar a mão no registro barroco de algum de seus texto. Achei bonita a imagem neste trechinho:
akhil retweeted
G.K. Chesterton on mysticism
ALT Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also.
akhil retweeted
Heidegger was right when he went beyond Jünger and pointed out that this mode of thinking and constant busyness is a byproduct of technological advance, which forces us to conceive of ourselves as labour units in relation to technology, blinding us to deeper, primordial Being.
