The paper that I’m writing about today is “The size of the expressed HIV reservoir predicts timing of viral rebound after treatment interruption” by Li et al. I will quote passages from the paper, and then try to explain what all of those fantastically long words mean. Objectives: Therapies to achieve sustained antiretroviral therapy-free HIVContinue reading “HIV rebound”
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It sure doesn’t feel like predictive processing
Reddit user @Daniel_HMBD kindly re-wrote some parts of my previous essay to make it clearer. I am now posting this corrected version here. Broad claim: The brain (conscious or unconscious) “explains away” a large part of our surroundings: the exact motion of a tree or a blade of grass as it sways gently in theContinue reading “It sure doesn’t feel like predictive processing”
An article for my school magazine
I wrote a write-up for the school magazine of The Heritage School, Kolkata. I attended the school from classes 4 to 10, and it was fun to relive some of the moments I spent at that school. I am reproducing the article below. I was a part of the first batch of students to joinContinue reading “An article for my school magazine”
Of dead Russian authors and dead-er French kings
Note: I’m in a gradual process of anonymizing this blog. This is just so that I can write more freely, and include observations from my life that cannot be tied to my boring real world grad student existence. We’ll see how that goes. There’s a theme from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy that has stayed withContinue reading “Of dead Russian authors and dead-er French kings”
The case for falling in line
Picking up bits and pieces from various writers that I admire and producing a relatively inferior narrative. A lot of instagram is basically a bunch of people encouraging each other to be “fierce”, not care what others think of them, keep on doing what they love, keep on being who they are, etc. This isContinue reading “The case for falling in line”
Last year in retrospect
I turn (even) older today. Hence, this seems as good an occasion as any to put the last year in retrospect and think about things I could have done better. Blogging I decided last summer to start blogging about research papers outside of my field. I would often email these pieces to the authors ofContinue reading “Last year in retrospect”
Yet another stab at image recognition
Like every other idiot with an internet connection, I am fascinated by machine learning and neural nets. My favorite aspect of AI is image recognition, and I’ve written about it in the past. I am going to try and talk about it in reference to a book I’ve recently been reading. The book that I’veContinue reading “Yet another stab at image recognition”
EA- February and March
EA news: I might be spending some time learning about/working on AGI-related issues for EA later this year.
Find out what you don’t know, and protect it from half-baked explanations
I’ve thought about these ideas for a long time, and they’ve only been strengthened by reading biographies and articles like Ambidexterity and Cognitive Closure. In this article, I’ll try to untangle this mess of ideas, and also try and provide a refutation of The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan. Why are the greats thatContinue reading “Find out what you don’t know, and protect it from half-baked explanations”
Dostoevsky is a two-trick pony
Like most other people who enjoy self-abuse through reading thousand-page novels, I’ve had the experience of reading Dostoevsky and marveling at his ability to capture “reality”. I’ve read “Crime and Punishment” in the past, and am now reading “The Brothers Karamazov”. Needless to say, there have been many parts that have completely floored me. IContinue reading “Dostoevsky is a two-trick pony”
