The sibling comment gives a wider perspective. I’m going to only respond narrowly on that final paragraph’s original point.

String theories arise naturally from thinking about objects vibrating in spacetime. As such, they’ve generally been included in tests of particle physics whenever feasible. The LHC tested and (statistically) falsified some string theories. String theorists also have a sort of self-regulating ratchet which excludes unphysical theories, most recently excluding swampland theories. Most money in particle physics is going towards nuclear power, colliders like LHC or Fermilab’s loops, or specialized detectors like SK (a giant tank of water) or LIGO (artfully-arranged laser beams) which mostly have to sit still and not be disturbed; in all cases, that money is going towards verification and operationalization of the Standard Model, and any non-standard theories are only coincidentally funded.

So just by double-checking the history, we see that some string theories have been falsified and that the Standard Model, not any string theory, is where most funding goes. Hossenfelder and Woit both know better, but knowing better doesn’t sell books. Gutmann doesn’t realize, I think.

It’s been frustrating to watch Gutmann slowly slide. He hasn’t slid that far yet, I suppose. Don’t discount his voice, but don’t let him be the only resource for you to learn about quantum computing; fundamentally, post-quantum concerns are a sort of hard read in one direction, and Gutmann has decided to try a hard read in the opposite direction.

Page 19, complaining about lattice-based algorithms, is hypocritical; lattice-based approaches are roughly as well-studied as classical cryptography (Feistel networks, RSA) and elliptic curves. Yes, we haven’t proven that lattice-based algorithms have the properties that we want, but we haven’t proven them for classical circuits or over elliptic curves, either, and we nonetheless use those today for TLS and SSH.

Pages 28 and 29 are outright science denial and anti-intellectualism. By quoting Woit and Hossenfelder — who are sneerable in their own right for writing multiple anti-science books each — he is choosing anti-maths allies, which is not going to work for a subfield of maths like computer science or cryptography. In particular, p28 lies to the reader with a doubly-bogus analogy, claiming that both string theory and quantum computing are non-falsifiable and draw money away from other research. This sort of closing argument makes me doubt the entire premise.

Look, I get your perspective, but zooming out there is a context that nobody’s mentioning, and the thread deteriorated into name-calling instead of looking for insight.

In theory, a training pass needs one readthrough of the input data, and we know of existing systems that achieve that, from well-trodden n-gram models to the wholly-hypothetical large Lempel-Ziv models. Viewed that way, most modern training methods are extremely wasteful: Transformers, Mamba, RWKV, etc. are trading time for space to try to make relatively small models, and it’s an expensive tradeoff.

From that perspective, we should expect somebody to eventually demonstrate that the Transformers paradigm sucks. Mamba and RWKV are good examples of modifying old ideas about RNNs to take advantage of GPUs, but are still stuck in the idea that having a GPU perform lots of gradient descent is good. If you want to critique something, critique the gradient worship!

I swear, it’s like whenever Chinese folks do anything the rest of the blogosphere goes into panic. I’m not going to insult anybody directly but I’m so fucking tired of mathlessness.

Also, point of order: Meta open-sourced Llama so that their employees would stop using Bittorrent to leak it! Not to “keep the rabble quiet” but to appease their own developers.

West Coast of USA, late 2000s to early 2010s, yes, the thick squared dark eyeglass frames were popular. Every time I see photos of these folks, I’m reminded of a couple people I know IRL as well as folks I know professionally who still prefer the thicker frames. Personally, I’ve always needed a very heavy prescription, and so I’ve always looked for the thinnest frames, but it really was a trend a decade ago.

Somebody pointed out that HN’s management is partially to blame for the situation in general, on HN. Copying their comment here because it’s the sort of thing Dan might blank:

but I don’t want to get hellbanned by dang.

Who gives a fuck about HN. Consider the notion that dang is, in fact, partially to blame for this entire fiasco. He runs an easy-to-propagandize platform due how much control of information is exerted by upvotes/downvotes and unchecked flagging. It’s caused a very noticeable shift over the past decade among tech/SV/hacker voices – the dogmatic following of anything that Musk or Thiel shit out or say, this community laps it up without hesitation. Users on HN learn what sentiment on a given topic is rewarded and repeat it in exchange for upvotes.

I look forward to all of it burning down so we can, collectively, learn our lessons and realize that building platforms where discourse itself is gamified (hn, twitter, facebook, and reddit) is exactly what led us down this path today.

Elon is an Expert Beginner: he has become proficient in executing the basics of the craft by sheer repetition, but failed to develop meaningful generalizations.

The original Expert Beginner concept was defined here in terms of the Dreyfus model, but I think it’s compatible with Lee’s model as well. In your wording of Lee’s model, one becomes an Expert Beginner when their intuition is specialized for seeing the thing; they have seen so many punches that now everything looks like a punch and must be treated like a punch, but don’t worry, I’m a punch expert, I’ve seen so many punches, I definitely know what to do when punches are involved.

There’s a good insight from this armchair psychoanalysis. The typical narcissist is technically capable of performing the whole pretend-to-care-for-game-theoretic-reasons behavior, provided that there is an incentive for them. However, if Elon genuinely believes himself to be Christ or Buddha or Roy, then his abilities don’t matter, because he will never have the incentive to deflate his beliefs and face his own limitations and mortality. In short, Elon’s attitude can’t be adjusted and his mental health will never improve.

You may have heard that Catturd doesn’t have any fiber in his diet and was hospitalized for bowel blockage. (Best sneer I’ve seen so far: “can’t turd.”) Along similar lines, Srid isn’t taking his statins for high cholesterol caused by a carnivore diet.

Meta: I’m kind of pissed that Catturd is WP notable but laughing my ass off at the page for carnivore diets. Life takes and gives.

Yeah, as somebody in the USA, I think that both you and @gerikson@awful.systems are pearl-clutching over laboratory conditions while ignoring the other, more serious safety problems being addressed; the presentation was not exaggerating when they were talking about the lifesaving impact of gender-affirming therapy. Last thread, you sheepishly admitted that part of the synthesis is complicated by criminalization and over-regulation; this thread, I’d like a sheepish admission that about a third of the USA (by population) suffers from restrictions on their reproductive rights.

Like, yes, you shouldn’t brew your own high-proof alcohol at home, because you can go blind from methanol poisoning. But also, there was a time in the USA when high-proof alcohol was over-regulated, and it incentivized a lot of people to homebrew.

Today’s “Luigi isn’t sexy” poster is Thomas Ptacek. The funniest example is probably this reply on the orange site:

That’s an extrapolation from a poll, not literally 50 million people…

A cryptographer not believing in statistical analysis! I can’t stop giggling, sorry.

John “Animats” Nagle choosing the most racist angle possible to respond to problems in education. The topic is giftedness and yet Nagle needs to start with “Ashkenazi Jews”.

I’m imagining no fewer than three fictional versions of Eris/Discord laughing at this orange-site fool:

Meanwhile I cannot turn my living room LED lights on or off because I control them through discord.

I wasn’t going to explain my downvote, but it’s been a few days and apparently everybody here is thinking about MRAs when there’s more at stake.

I see Nixon in Trump: somebody who starts and prolongs wars for their own political gain. Of my three uncles who qualified to go to Vietnam, one was permanently disabled during basic training, one didn’t come back home, and one fell apart before I was born. I had to “voluntarily” register as a potential servicemember in order to access various standard government services as a young man in the 2000s, while the USA was invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Under a sufficiently fascist government, the USA has shown itself capable of sending its men to death. This system is explicitly misandrist; only men are required to register and only my uncles suffered this hate.

Misandry isn’t equal and opposite to misogyny. Our society was never obligated to hate men and women in ways that are nicely symmetric and amenable to analysis; indeed, critical theory suggests that society deliberately structures itself to obfuscate its hate.

Trump would have to literally kill all lawyers. Think of the DoJ as a pile of folks who all took an oath to the law itself. When pundits complain that it’s being “weaponized”, they’re actually talking about a facet of overcriminalization where the DoJ’s limited attention can be controlled somewhat; it’s always going to be a full-power laser that targets what the law perceives as criminality.

In particular, the President doesn’t have the authority to tell the DoJ to stop an investigation, and the DoJ usually can’t tell individual prosecutors to stop filing motions. Trump wasn’t able to protect Cabinet member and Teapot Dome Candidate #2 Michael Flynn from prosecution, nor can he protect Eric Adams. The worst that he can do is a Saturday Night Massacre, where he fires lawyers until the investigations stop, and the entire pattern of special counsel is purpose-designed to prevent that from actually working.

Personally I’m betting on Teapot Dome: somebody in the Cabinet will be convicted of something like bribery, foreign influence, or electoral interference; and the cleanup will implicate multiple other Cabinet members. Trump needs to do this at some point anyway; he’s already done all of the Nixon things like Watergate and interfering in foreign wars, and while he attempted a Teapot Dome last time with Ryan Zinke, he needs to actually have a Cabinet member removed or convicted in order to truly be a worse president than Warren G. Harding.

I haven’t done a headcount yet and the election’s not fully tallied, but I think that the Senate still has around 70% support for NATO, and historically we can expect to see a “blue dog” phenomenon in the House as a reaction to Republicans gaining seats. Effectively, both the Democrats and Republicans will function as big tents of two distinct parties, and there is usually tripartisan support (everybody but the far-right Republicans) for imperialism. We may well see votes where the legislators override presidential vetoes to force weapons sales and otherwise fulfill NATO obligations.

And yes, you read that correctly; Democrats move right as a reaction to Republicans doing well. Go back to bed, America…

Orange site envrionmentalism:

Lawns are functional though, they aren’t just a status symbol.

I grew up with a mossy front yard, and I have clover and ferns in my current yards to compete with grasses; there are better options, my dude.

Well, it’s more like 2000, really, in the sense that the courts are being used to restrict voting rights. There’s strong evidence of flagrant UOCAVA violations: thousands of absentee ballots which should affect the federal election have been challenged in swing states. Edit: Here is part 1 and part 2 from an attorney whose Pennsylvania UOCAVA ballot was challenged; he goes through the law and explains what he’s going to do.

That still puts Larry Ellison in the danger zone, at least.

Feynman reminds me of the brujo (one specific man, not brujería in general) from Pirsig’s Lila. Feynman’s safecracking and unorthodox approaches are like the brujo’s routine flaunting of social norms; through routinely doing things the wrong way (sacred clowning), new possible behaviors and modes of social existence are explored. Also, Feynman’s attitudes towards women remind me of that brujo’s tendency to spy on women by looking through their windows into their homes while they were not necessarily dressed, which the brujo’s society did not tolerate.