The final chapter of The Problems of Philosophy always resonates with me:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm

Are you going to post the other poems? :D

>There's nothing terrifying about it.

That's pretty subjective, and that was obviously used to add some flavor to the article. Just like the SKYNET bits.

>they're finding statistical correlations that humans have not found.

That sounds like outwitting to me.

>"Google no longer understands how its "deep learning" decision-making computer systems have made themselves so good at recognizing things in photos" is not the same as "Google researchers can no longer explain exactly how the system has learned to spot certain objects."

How are those different other than one being a bit more precise?

>Considering those are the underpinnings of the article...

Unquestionably the most pretentious person I've ever seen on the internet. I don't get it either. Your post would have been cool otherwise, but you had to play up this "they're wrong; I'm right; here's why" bullshit.

What part of the article contradicts any of this? Or makes you say they do not understand machine intelligence?

Yeah, I don't get it. I guess it's an easier way to evaluate how an individual movie's treatment of female characters is without having to analyze anything about the film. Of course, the people that like to invoke the test also seem to always qualify the films that fail but they happen to like. But it's about some bigger trend in the film industry? Fine, but even so there's still way better metrics, like how many (or lack thereof) female directors, writers, cinematographers, et al exist.

Shoot a short film I'm actually proud of.

Begin listening to music again.

I'm currently reading two different pieces of literature. The first, and the one I spend more time reading, is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It's complex, funny, and verbose -- a lot like Neal Stephenson's stuff, who wrote my favorite book (Baroque Cycle). Second is The World of Mathematics by James Newman. This is a collection-and-commentary about a range of things related to mathematics. A lot of it is biographical and historical. A little bit less of it is original research papers by mathematicians. Less so is essays about mathematics, such as Hardy's Apology. I'm digging it. It's a fun, relaxing tour through the strange wilderness that is mathematics, lead by some fantastic tour guides.

So, the issue is that there's a max number of Nobel recipients: three. The "third" paper was a collab. between three physicists. The first two spots were already filled for the Nobel, and it's really unclear who should have gotten the third. So, the committee just decided nobody. If Brout was alive (he collaborated with Englert), he would have surely been the third. Now, in terms of modern relevance, the Brout-Englert model, with some alterations, is still in use today. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's more accurate, however. Now, you might be wondering, why in the fuck is it called the Higgs-boson then? Well, one of the major differences between the two papers is that Brout and Englert made up the model that features the particle now referred to as the Higgs-boson, but they didn't really mention much of it. Higgs, on the other hand, spent most of his time mentioning it; that is, he explicitly proposed the existence of the particle. Hence, it's known as the Higgs-boson.

1. Fragrance of Dark Coffee

2. One More Time - Daft Punk

3. Human Legacy - Ivan Torrent or An Ending - Brian Eno or The Scientist - Coldplay or Into the Mystic - Van Morrison

4. Hungarian Dance no. 1 in G Minor - Brahms (can't find a rendition I like on Youtube, but there's good ones on Spotify!)

Cliche, I know.

Is it possible that the amount of time Einstein spent thinking about math, physics, and philosophy altered the physical make-up of his brain? Seems like it would make more sense to compare his brain to other mathematicians and scientists (not necessarily prominent ones) and see what differentiated him from them.

I'm having trouble navigating her blog. Specifically, I can't find the blog post for her day one website. I'm curious what resources she used to learn HTML/JS/CSS, and how much background she had (her day one website seems pretty advanced for somebody that had never used HTML/JS/CSS before).

Sure! Simply put, they do not require enough of the reader. This is true for two reasons. First, the Red Books fail to dive deep enough into the science. Now, they're certainly a great overview (and on the spectrum from most basic to most intricate, they're certainly closer to most intricate than Asimov's work), but their depth is quite different from what a physics student would study. Second, it's impossible to understand physics in the same way that a physics student would if you're not actually doing physics. In other words, you need to do "homework," i.e. exercises; with pretty much any STEM subject, and especially physics/math, you need to get your hands dirty! This is usually done by reading a textbook. So, the Red Books and Understanding Physics are great for enrichment, but by themselves cannot satisfy the level of the understanding that a physics student would have. In fact, the Red Books are so good that I've seen a few upper-level physics classes list them under the recommended reading of the course syllabus.

Note: If you've gone through a physics program, or know a lot about it, then just skip this. Fortunately for any aspiring autodidact, the physics curriculum at most schools follows a similar path. First, the student will begin with engineering physics and calculus (unless he/she places out of them via AP credit; also note that the curriculum I describe is for USA programs only). There's a standard calculus text that most schools use nowadays, and that is James Stewart's Calculus. The engineering physics book is usually titled something like "Physics for Scientists and Engineers." There's like four or five of these books that most schools will pick from. My favorite is Haliday/Resnick's or Giancoli's. After calculus, the student will usually take three additional math classes (generally more if they wish to go to graduate school). The two obvious ones are linear algebra and differential equations. The third one is a course that applies mathematics to physics specifically. This course exists mainly to prepare students for the physics classes that come after engineering physics. Two pretty common books used for this are Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences by Boas and Shankar's book. After that, the student will generally take six courses: 2 classical mechanics courses, 2 EM courses, and 2 quantum mechanics courses. The rest of the student's program will be filled in with electives (and some required labs, which you obviously cannot really do outside of school, and probably a thermal/stat. mech course). Now, there's two really cool things about those courses. The first is that most universities use the same textbooks for each respective course sequence. Those textbooks are: Taylor's Classical Mechanics, Griffiths Introduction to Electrodynamics, and Griffith's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. The second cool thing is that those books don't really presuppose any knowledge of physics. When it says introductory, it means introductory. Of course, they presuppose that the reader has knowledge of linear algebra, differential equations, and a lot of the stuff learned in the math of physicists class (like vector calculus). The two course course-sequences will generally cover the entirety of each book.

So, as you can see, there's a lot of material that a physics student will know by graduation. It's quite clear, then, that the Red Books couldn't possible cover all of that material, yet they remain a great tool for enrichment and exploration of physics.

Now time for one of my favorite Feynman stories, a story that, like most Feynman stories, nobody really knows is true or not:

| Caltech uses an honor system and the exams are take-home exams. The instructions for the exam read “You have three hours. You may use your class notes and Feynman [referring to the Red Books; it's customary to call textbooks by the author's last name rather than the title].” The student took the exam to Feynman’s office, and he agreed that the instructions included him as a valid resource. Feynman completed the exam in half an hour and the student got a perfect score.

This might sound odd: I think the simplicity promotes more depth in the links and discussion. I mean, this looks like one of the stack exchanges, which regularly see discussion from top people in certain STEM fields. On reddit, there's thumbnails (this is a big one), upvote/downvote counters in two contrasting colors, a single quantity of net votes, and so on. Reddit, which I try to use as a discussion forum, is in many respects more suited as purely a social media website with some commetning ability. I came to Reddit from other forums, one's with avatars and no good way of knowing if someone replied to your posts. The discussion on those was tremendously bad compared to Reddit. There seems to be an inverse correlation between flashiness and discussion quality.

I don't necessarily agree that Hubski allows more freedom to choose a browsing experience. I think Reddit and Hubski both do this well, Reddit especially with the recent "multi-reddit" changes. Sure, the default subreddits aren't very good, but the strength of Reddit lies in the ability to subscribe to certain subreddits and ignore others. I can effectively use Reddit by entirely ignoring the goings-on in r/atheism, r/pics, and r/gaming.

I think one obvious disadvantage and advantage is size. Hubski is considerably smaller. This can be a disadvantage. For example, the physics tag isn't very robust yet. It can also be an advantage. For example, the funny/humor tag isn't loaded with garbage.

Something I like about Hubski is the ability to follow people. You can do this on Reddit too, but it's pretty far removed from the traditional Reddit experience and I'd wager most people aren't aware you can even do it. Hubski is different in that it's promoted as a key feature. If people followed me, I'd feel more obligated to post good content.

Less concrete: Hubski sort of feels like a mature Reddit. I also feel like I can much more easily "waste time" on Reddit than I can on Hubski, which is good for Hubski. Lastly, I'll be perfectly honest and admit that there's a certain charm to smaller communities.

Feynman's Red Books, a name given to the Lectures affectionately by many physicists and physics students on account of their color, are wonderful for those seeking enrichment in physics. However, they aren't so good if one doesn't already have some background in the subject, and they're certainly not very good if one seeks a level of understanding similar to physics students (for that, the traditional textbooks are still best). For the layman, I think another red book is even better: Isaac Asimov's Understanding Physics.

Understanding Physics has a couple core advantages over the Red Books. First, the treatment is less mathematical. This is not necessarily an advantage, but I certainly think it is when offering the book to a layman (which is what many try to do with the Red Books). Second, Asimov introduces historical context into every section. In fact, Understanding Physics is almost as much about the science of physics as it is about the history of physics. That's not to say Feynman ignores the past in the Red Books, but Asimov certainly gives it a much greater degree of attention. I find two outcomes after reading Understanding Physics: (1) If you know physics, then you'll come out with a greater appreciation of it and its history (2) If you don't know physics then you'll come out knowing basic physics (note the emphasis) and a greater appreciation of it and its history. You can find the entire first part here. Part 1 is about "Motion, Sound, and Heat."