{c}
{tag=Mind uploading}
{title2=2022}
{wiki}

Some criticisms:
* <mind uploading>


Avatar: The Way of Water

Directed graph

= Broken educational system
{synonym}

Once Ciro was at a University course practical session, and a graduate was around helping out. Ciro asked if what the graduate did anything specifically related to the course, and they replied they didn't. And they added that:
\Q[One has to put the bread on the table.]
Even though Ciro was already completely disillusioned by then, that still made an impression on him. Something is really wrong with this <shit>.

Other people that think that the educational system is currently <bullshit> as of 2020:
* <Einstein>, quoted in The New York Times, March 13 1949, p. 34:https://www.institute4learning.com/2020/01/15/14-great-quotes-from-einstein-on-education-with-sources/{ref}
  \Q[It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.]
* <Ron Maimon>
* <Xavier Niel>: https://fortune.com/2018/11/30/billionaire-xavier-niel/ "Want This Billionaire's Attention? Drop Out of School" (2018). He also created <42 (school)>.
* <Year On>
* by Zach Caceres
  * https://zach.dev/blog/unschooling-myself
  * https://zach.dev/blog/mpc
* Anand Raja submission "Students and Universities": https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmdius/170/170ii.pdf[], https://www.linkedin.com/in/anandraja/[].
* https://xsrus.com/life-school-and-the-80-20-rule[]. Also GPA 2.0 linked from https://xsrus.com/ to https://xsrus.com/gpa-2.0 but https://twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1506185601816530944[down now]
  \Q[[School rewards effort linearly [...]. Unlike school, the real world is nonlinear. By that, I mean most of what you do at work is a waste of time.]]
* A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
* https://www.learningforreal.org/ by Mary Ruth McGinn, a K12 teacher in the USA.

  https://www.learningforreal.org/quotes/[] quotes Elbert Hubbard:
  \Q[School should not be preparation for life. School should BE life.]
  She's somewhat focused on the <performing arts>, but what she says applies basically equally well to the <natural sciences>. A talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYL9gQeVEk She talks about <authentic learning>.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson (2017)
* <Erik Finman thinks school is broken>

\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAxzkl2cmNY]
{title=Peter Gregory from <Silicon Valley (TV series)> shows his hate for <university> in a fake <TED (conference)> talk}
{description=
Key moment: someone from the crowd cries:
\Q[The true value of a college education is intangible!]
to which the speaker replies:
\Q[The true value of snake oil is intangible as well.]
<IMDb> https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0927706[says] it's not a cameo. It really looked like one, good acting, but what a missed opportunity. Imagine a <Xavier Niel> appearance.
}

\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4y1FN--_6M]
{title=David Deutsch on Education interviewed by Aidan McCullen (2019)}
{description=
Key quote that hits the nail:
\Q[
\[...\] the existing assumptions behind educational systems are that the purpose of education is to transmit valuable knowledge faithfully from on generation to the next. From people who already have that knowledge, to people who don't.

So the knowledge is conceived of as a kind of valuable fluid, which you pour from one generation to the next, pour it into their brains.
]

So right... the purpose of education is not to teach facts. The purpose of education is to propose ways of thinking, which students themselves must try to apply and decide if it suits them! And use the patterns of thinking that are useful to <how to teach/help students achieve their goal>[reach their goals]. 

<video The Purpose of Education by Noam Chomsky (2012)>[Like Noam Chomsky], he proposes education has been a system of indoctrination more than anything else e.g. https://twitter.com/daviddeutschoxf/status/1406374921748496386[]:
\Q[All compulsory education, "tough" or not, "love" or not, in camps or not, and whether it "traumatises" or not, is a violation of human rights.]
At https://twitter.com/DavidDeutschOxf/status/1051475227476185089 another good quote by <Churchill>:
\Q[Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.]

The same video also mentions in passing that <john Wheeler> used to be Deutsch's boss, but I can't find a reference for it very easily.
}

\Video[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-bGAOGIX3g]
{title=Quote selection by <Charles Bukowski> (2016)}
{description=\Q[Generally speaking, you're free until you're about 4 years old. Then you go to grammar school and then you start becoming... oriented and shoved into areas. You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it... Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something. Then you get married like marriage is a victory, and you have children like children is a victory... Marriage, birth, children. It's something they have to do because there's nothing else to do. There's no glory in it, there's no steam, there's no fire. It's very, very flat... You get caught into the stricture of what you're supposed to be and you have no other choice. You're finally molded and melded into what you're supposed to be. I didn't like this.]}


Education is broken

Female

Milk chocolate

Organism model

TODO what is the point of them? Why not just sum over every index that appears twice, regardless of where it is, as mentioned at: https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/part-iii/files/misc/index-notation.pdf[].

Vectors with the index on top such as $x^i$ are the "regular vectors", they are called <covariant vectors>.

Those in indices on bottom are called <contravariant vectors>.

It is possible to change between them by <Raising and lowering indices>.

The values are different only when the <metric signature matrix> is different from the <identity matrix>.


Raised and lowered indices

{wiki=Test_(assessment)}

= Exams are useless
{synonym}
{title2}

Exams as a prerequisite for a degree are useless. Exams as part of a degree must be abolished. And degrees must be abolished. Ultimately the only metrics that really matter are <money> and fame. See also: <ourbigbook com/motivation>.

The only thing exams should matter for is as a screening tool to select people with specific abilities that you care about as an employer or <principal investigator>. If:
* you have no idea about what the content of specific exams are (and you don't because they are all ad-hoc university secrets)
* or don't have a way to <machine learn> what grades correlate with your desired performance (you don't because where's the data?)
then exams are useless for your purposes. then might as well just go by interviews (basically what all employers do already, though not PIs). Degrees are too course grained to mean anything to anybody. Employers and PIs likely only care about very few specific subjects.

Once the question of an exam has been formulated, the usefulness of the problem is already been completely destroyed, because formulating the problem that matters is the most important part of things. And any problem with an answer, is useless to put effort into: <how to teach/give answers>.

Furthermore, preventing people from searching for answers while answering an exam, AKA preventing "cheating", also makes absolutely no sense. In the real world, we want people to find answers as quickly as possible! We should be teaching people how to "cheat"! What we should teach them instead is what a <fucking> <license> is, and what you have to do to comply with it.

And if you must absolutely have exams, <exam as a service>[they must be open to anyone who wants to applies. Then people have to pay to take the exam, with subsidies for "official course takers", who are spending 100x more anyways due to not living with their parents].

And if you pass the exam, you pass the course, without any further time requirements.

And those exams must be applied by professional test application companies to ensure no cheating and to factor out the anti-cheat work, while still making the tests available to people anywhere.

A quote from <Richard Feynman> present in the book <Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman chapter O Americano, Outra Vez!>:
\Q[
You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.

You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting.
]

The only metric that matters is "to feel that you've satisfied youre curiosity". When one studies for that, it can take a lot more time to actually learn everything, because it is sometimes not as clear when you should stop. But it is the only way to go deeper.

A person's understanding is the most <illiquid> asset that exists, to judge that based only on standardized exams, is a certain way to fail to identify top talent.

Related: <how to teach/exams and homework are useless, only projects matter>


Exam

Continuous mechanics problem

Made the website navbar and article lists more mobile friendly. Main motivation: improvised demos to people I meet IRL!


Misc advances

{wiki}

https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1988/what-is-the-use-of-categorical-quantum-mechanics


Categorical quantum mechanics

{c}
{title2=2012}
{title2=Ray Kurzweil}
{wiki}


How to Create a Mind

Test data 14

Electronic test equipment

This section is about functions that operates on arbitrary <sets>.


Set function

Russian invasion of Ukraine

{wiki}

A generalized definition of <derivative> that works on <manifolds>.

TODO: how does it maintain a single value even across different <coordinate charts>?


Title	Created	Updated
Avatar: The Way of Water	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Directed graph	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Education is broken	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Female	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Milk chocolate	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Organism model	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Raised and lowered indices	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Exam	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Continuous mechanics problem	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Misc advances	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Categorical quantum mechanics	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
How to Create a Mind	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Test data 14	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Electronic test equipment	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Set function	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Russian invasion of Ukraine	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Covariant derivative	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Calling convention	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
1932 Nobel Prize in Physics	1970-01-01	1970-01-01
Appendix	1970-01-01	1970-01-01

Ciro Santilli (@cirosantilli, 32)