I love the smell of ban-worthy levels of condescension in the morning.

One area where I don’t know of good recommendations is theoretical computer science. I am not sure what to suggest that would accessibly teach topics like algorithmic/Kolmogorov information theory without sliding downhill into “we can automate the scientific method” crankery. Or, perhaps, which teaches the relevant concepts clearly and solidly enough to make it obvious that LW use of them is crankery.

Another suggestion: Instead of indulging in LW-style Feynman worship, read James Gleick’s biography of him. It does a pretty good job covering the actual science while giving a warts-and-all portrayal of the man.

I’m not dying on a hill; I’m saying that you’re coming off as a pompous twit who will get themselves banned from the community the moment I or the other mods find your pompous twittery no longer amusing.

Edit to add: Whoops! That already happened whilst I was typing the above. Enjoy your free trip to the egress.

So sorry you wasted the five seconds it took to tell that the thing someone felt like sharing was not, in fact, the latest volume of the Oxbridge Handbook of Deep Analysis and Arguments for the Ages.

Locker Weenies

(Geordi LaForge holding up a hand in a “stop” gesture) transhumanism

(Geordi LaForge pointing as if to say "now there’s an idea) trans humanism

What happened was that I had a handful of articles that I couldn’t find an “official” home for because they were heavy on the kind of pedagogical writing that journals don’t like. Then an acqusitions editor at Springer e-mailed me to ask if I’d do a monograph for them about my research area. (I think they have a big list of who won grants for what and just ask everybody.) I suggested turning my existing articles into textbook chapters, and they agreed. The book is revised versions of the items I already had put on the arXiv, plus some new material I wrote because it was lockdown season and I had nothing else to do. Springer was, I think, the most likely publisher for a niche monograph like that. One of the smaller university presses might also have gone for it.

I should add that I have a book published with Springer. So, yeah, my work is being directly devalued here. Fun fun fun.

AI slop in Springer books:

Our library has access to a book published by Springer, Advanced Nanovaccines for Cancer Immunotherapy: Harnessing Nanotechnology for Anti-Cancer Immunity.  Credited to Nanasaheb Thorat, it sells for $160 in hardcover: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86185-7

From page 25: “It is important to note that as an AI language model, I can provide a general perspective, but you should consult with medical professionals for personalized advice…”

None of this book can be considered trustworthy.

https://mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerbloom/114217609254949527

Originally noted here: https://hci.social/@peterpur/114216631051719911

Does this need to be marked NSFW? I think the joke about tagging the more serious posts that way ran its course a while ago, and we haven’t been sticking to it.

And a new language feature, generating a list by lack-of-comprehension

Sloppenheimer

For an exposition of Bayesian probability by people who actually know math, there’s Ten Great Ideas About Chance by Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms (Princeton University Press, 2018). And for an interesting slice of the history of the subject, there’s Cheryl Misak’s Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2020).

For quantum physics, one recent offering is Barton Zwiebach’s Mastering Quantum Mechanics: Essentials, Theory, and Applications (MIT Press, 2022). I like the writing style and the structure of it, particularly how it revisits the same topics at escalating levels of sophistication. (I’d skip the Elitzur-Vaidman “bomb tester” thought experiment for reasons.)

The description of “The questions ChatGPT shouldn’t answer” doesn’t seem to go with the text. Did you mean to link something else?

A Bluesky post by Jamelle Bouie prompted me to reflect on how I resent that my knowledge of toxic nerd deep lore is now socially relevant.

A lesswrong declares,

social scientists are typically just stupider than physical scientists (economists excepted).

As a physicist, I would prefer not receiving praise of this sort.

The post to which that is a comment also says a lot of silly things, but the comment is particularly great.

Are we actually going with vibe coding as the name for this behavior? Surely we could introduce an alternative that is more disparaging and more dramatic, like bong-rip coding or shart coding.

The phrase “trying to gatekeep what was once their moat” makes me feel like a character in A Scanner Darkly who has reached the “aphids, aphids everywhere” stage of Substance D abuse