Magos Logis Logan @jmw150@qoto.org

Good general advice for academia

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/

@fribbledom pretty easy choice for me. Python is the language of choice for AI researchers these days.

Also sympy, numpy, matplotlib make it mathematica and Matlab but free. It also replaces R, Javascript, and Java for most use cases.

@wolf480pl @fribbledom as of 3.8 python has types.

Interesting as always

https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/thinking-ladder.html

@johnabs But also imagine if literary scholars were highly offended by reading middle English. lol

@johnabs Yeah. I find it primitive.

But I also think this is natural long term. The language will just evolve to free up space. It will force English to mutate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knv1OSMW2rU

@lucifargundam Yeah. I doubt is actually common.

So I usually speak against just letting companies have your data. This is one of the reasons why. Data might seem harmless, but it is often rich with inference-able structures. Not to mention this kind of data does not deprecate.

Original research
https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.04135

Article overview with less math-speak
https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/11/22/107128/neural-network-learns-to-identify-criminals-by-their-faces/

So..

- Your face alone could give away that you are an independent thinker, had an atypical childhood, or anything that puts a criminal record on you in China.

- Law abiding citizens in tend to all look like each other.

@sandfox lol why is the poll a github repo? That is a lot of fingerprinting attached to a political statement.

@lupyuen yeah a bit. I try to keep my name off the nets when it is spicier stuff. Haha

@lupyuen I guess removing rms from his own organization was not enough to sate their blood lust.

The 21st century is weird. It seems like every time I think of a cool research direction, I look for some literature and find a whole team of people doing just that.

Yeah, there are totally 7+ billion of us. So, for example, over 140 million people could get into Mensa. Not that Mensa is a criteria for intelligence itself. But it kind of demonstrates the point that there are potentially a lot of smart people out there.

Science is being done at a rapid pace. So much stuff is being done that people in the same field cannot keep up on the literature and end up accidentally repeating research results.

I think there is plenty of value to not trying to be original in the mess of it. A researcher probably could take the time to be thorough, or to organize and digest.

@Hyolobrika oh people complaining about Biden lying to get in office.

A person can promise the moon. But a lot of American political actions are public record. He has about 50 years of political history to draw conclusions from.

@kev hmmm

Yay that cancel culture didn't win for once.

But.. I think a different group should take FSF's place in free software. As a group it is going to splinter or die. It is not free software that is failing, just them really.

@lupyuen Makes sense. The FSF is pretty much just an extension of Stallman. Their funding probably got cut in half without him being the face for it.

@lupyuen This is why I am here. Academia is not a safe space for free thought anymore. Everything I say in emails has to be excessively polite. It is kind of stifling.

Interesting series. Security and verification go really well together.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA6Ht2dJt3SITo6PYTyzr9832epkyFD48

@kakure to nitpick.. sentience is something we made up.

Computers already have goals. They are not like us. So it is hard for many people to register programs with their informal ideas about intelligence.

@kakure Yep. Pretty easy to farm out manual actions to something like lazyfox.

https://lazyfox.io/

@fribbledom that is tough. Old MIT AI language vs the new MIT AI language.