In my quest to read all the pop neuroscience available online, I read this fascinating article on Gerald Edelman. It was full of profound quotes like We don’t have goals. We just have values. More importantly, it talked about the concept of polymorphous sets as proposed by Wittgenstein. “Typical Wittgenstein,” Edelman mused. “There is aContinue reading “We gotta have some more pop philosophy- Mathematics, machine learning and Wittgenstein”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Moral asymmetry and Indian politics
I spent part of the morning reading a conversation between Sam Harris and Daniel Kahneman. In an almost textbook example of priming, when I saw something that I already believe, it led me to accord a greater degree of importance to the conversation. Soon I was connecting dots all over the place, and this postContinue reading “Moral asymmetry and Indian politics”
Stable systems and managing expectations
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari talks about how civilizations in the past fell not because of one error in judgement, but because of multiple such errors. For instance, many empires in ancient China fell because they were not receptive to scientific and military advances from the outside, the bureaucracy was stifled, etc. IContinue reading “Stable systems and managing expectations”
Perceptual Control Theory
Perceptual Control Theory is a very popular model of how the brain works. Its basic premise is this: our perception of the world is not merely based on what our senses perceive. It is also based on what we “expect to perceive”. For instance, when I am in a car driving down a road, IContinue reading “Perceptual Control Theory”
Learning as a process of re-labeling
Disclaimer: This article is highly speculative, and based on my own experiences and a couple of articles I might have come across. I will be happy to remove it when I come across scientific evidence that contradicts it. One defining feature of smart people is that they learn things fast. You tell them a conceptContinue reading “Learning as a process of re-labeling”
Machine learning and life lessons
Anyone who tries to draw “life lessons” from machine learning is someone who understands neither life, nor machine learning. With that in mind, let us get into the life lessons that I draw from machine learning. Disclaimer: The idea that I am going to expound below is something I first came across in the bookContinue reading “Machine learning and life lessons”
Capitalism and coordination problems
We all know that the world’s problems can be solved if “all of us can come together and act as one….” you’ve probably dozed off by now. Of course this is true. And of course this never happens. But why not? What is the single most important reason that we cannot get together as aContinue reading “Capitalism and coordination problems”
PTSD and Type II thinking
[Note: This article is highly speculative, and I will pull it down without warning if I find evidence to the contrary] Reading very many of Scott Alexander blogposts, which review basic neuroscience research, has given me the impression that PTSD and depression might be a fundamental neuroscience problem. Let me explain that below. What doesContinue reading “PTSD and Type II thinking”
IMO 2020, Problem 2
The following is a question from IMO 2020: The first time I tried to solve the problem, I thought I had a solution, but it turned out to be wrong. I wrongly assumed that would be maximized when , which is commonly true in Olympiad problems, but that needn’t be the case. I then lookedContinue reading “IMO 2020, Problem 2”
Quantum Computing
Today, I will be talking about quantum computing. I will be following Quantum Computing– Lecture Notes by Mark Osdin, who is a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. These lecture notes are roughly based on the book Quantum Computing and Quantum Information by Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang. So what exactly isContinue reading “Quantum Computing”
