Monthly Archives: January 2021

Self-propulsion towards the extremes

Consider the following whatsapp forward I received a few years ago: I’m 25 this year. I’m very pretty, have style and good taste. I wish to marry a guy with 100 crore annual salary or above. You might say that I’m greedy, but an annual salary 2 crore is considered only as middle class nowContinue reading “Self-propulsion towards the extremes”

The neuroscience of meditation

I recently had the chance to read The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation by Tang, Hölzel and Posner. It is effectively a summary of all the research that has been done on the neuroscience of mindfulness meditation, and comments on how a lot of those studies suffer from design flaws, that make their conclusions questionable. InContinue reading “The neuroscience of meditation”

Evolution and adapting to changing conditions

I read an interesting paper today, titled “Dire wolves were the last of an ancient new world canid lineage” by Frantz et al. Having only heard of dire wolves in badly written fiction about really good looking vampires, I did not even know that these creatures actually existed in real life. On reading the paper,Continue reading “Evolution and adapting to changing conditions”

Why Grothendieck would say machine learning is mostly overfitting

Introduction Grothendieck is, by far, the single most influential mathematician of the 20th century. He solved long standing mathematical problems, created whole new fields of human thought, and then spectacularly abandoned it all when his institute refused to accept military funding. The overarching theme of all his research was that when we study mathematical concepts,Continue reading “Why Grothendieck would say machine learning is mostly overfitting”

What is the dimension of the space of entrepreneurial innovation?

I was reading a conversation between Sam Harris and Daniel Kahneman, in which Kahneman made the point that if you want people to do what you want, don’t push them to do it. Just make it easier for them to do it instead. If you push people, they will revolt. But if you make itContinue reading “What is the dimension of the space of entrepreneurial innovation?”