As mentioned at Human Compatible by Stuart J. Russell (2019), game theory can be seen as the part of artificial intelligence that deas with scenarios where multiple intelligent agents are involved.
The best example to look at first is the penalty kick left right Nash equilibrium.
Then, a much more interesting example is choosing a deck of a TCG competition: Magic: The Gathering meta-based deck choice is a bimatrix game, which is the exact same, but each player has N choices rather than 2.
The next case that should be analyzed is the prisoner's dilemma.
The key idea is that:
- imagine that the game will be played many times between two players
- if one player always chooses one deck, the other player will adapt by choosing the anti-deck
- therefore, the best strategy for both players, is to pick decks randomly, each with a certain probability. This type of probabilistic approach is called a mixed strategy
- if any player deviates from the equilibrium probability, then the other player can add more of the anti-deck to the deck that the other player deviated, and gain an edgeTherefore, using equilibrium probabilities is the optimal way to play
And before he kicks, the goalkeeper must also decide left or right, because there is no time to see where the ball is going.
Because the kicker is right footed however, he kicker kicks better to one side than the other. So we have four probabilities:
- goal kick left keeper jumps left
- goal kick right keeper jumps right
- goal kick left keeper jumps right. Note that it is possible that this won't be a goal, even though the keeper is nowhere near the ball, as the ball might just miss the goal by a bit.
- kick right and keeper jumps left. Analogous to above
I wonder where the spray painted sign went: twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1229952158667288576/photo/1. As mentioned at officechai.com/startups/amazon-first-office/ and elsewhere, Jeff did all he could to save money, e.g. he made the desks himself from pieces of wood. Mentioned e.g. at youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=345 from Video 4. "Jeff Bezos presentation at MIT (2002)".
Jeff Bezos interview by Chuck Films (1997)
Source. On the street, with a lot of car noise. CC BY-SA, nice.Order from Bulgaria by Jeff Bezos (2002)
Source. Full video: Video 4. "Jeff Bezos presentation at MIT (2002)"- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=220 why Seattle: tech talent, and nearest to the largest book warehouse in Roseburg Oregon
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=232 first hire, VP of Engineering, Shel Kaphan
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=267 screenshot of the first version. Can't find any working version from before 2000 on web.archive.org/web/19990601000000*/amazon.com unfortunately.
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=303 kadabra/cadaver
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=345 Shel, how tall do you want your desk to be?
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=610 order from Bulgaria: Video 3. "Order from Bulgaria by Jeff Bezos (2002)"
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=733 customers don't really know what they want. One is reminded of Steve Jobs customers don't know what they want quote
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=1010 item merging in a single package from warehouse
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=1187 and other points mentions repeatedly how much effort they've put into result personalization. But of course, that also means tracking everything people do. Including users that are not logged in. Would not fly well in 2020's increasing privacy concerns!
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=1251 A/B testing
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=1314 passes word to employee Robert Frederick, MIT alumni, black dude, AWS manager
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=1517 demos something in AWS
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2171 Jeff's back
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2312 similarity searches on some somewhat perverted for-male books. Golden. 2020's political correctness would never allow that in a presentation. A bit further ahead mentions they've optimized to run it in "small machines" with only 2GB RAM, still likely large for the time. Also mentions that if you do it naively, then you're going to say "also bought Harry Potter" for everyone (hugely popular book at the time). You've got to work harder to do better non obvious recommendations.
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2409 warehouse uses a technique called random stow, which store items randomly.
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2563 OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner. The reviews must be fake, but Jeff doesn't recognize it. Priceless. Still on sale: www.amazon.co.uk/OXO-Good-Grips-Salad-Spinner/dp/B009KCFHAW
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2599 decentralized pub/sub pattern, cache warming
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2685 "you've bought this previously feature" that reduces sales: people forget they bought things and buy them a second time!
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=2938 vote fraud after someone from crowd mentions. God reviewed the Bible.
- youtu.be/J2xGBlT0cqY?t=3253 hiring slide with contact jeff@amazon.com Send your CV, today!
Jeff Bezos Revealed by Bloomberg (2015)
Source. cosine by Jeff Bezos (2018)
Source. Yasantha Rajakarunanayake: twitter.com/yasantha62/status/1042052665893511168.
Bibliography:
- archive.ph/ucSHN This is what it was like to work at Amazon 20 years ago (2015). Good annecdotes from the first offices.
Related ideas:
Poet, scientists and warriors all in one? Conquerors of the useless.
A wise teacher from University of São Paulo once told the class Ciro Santilli attended an anecdote about his life:It turned out that, about 10 years later, Ciro ended up following this advice, unwittingly.
I used to want to learn Mathematics.But it was very hard.So in the end, I became an engineer, and found an engineering solution to the problem, and married a Mathematician instead.
Ciro once read that there are two types of mathematicians/scientists (he thinks it was comparing Einstein to some Jack of all trades polymath who didn't do any new discoveries):
- high flying birds, who know a bit of everything, feel the beauty of each field, but never dig deep in any of them
- gophers, who dig all the way down, on a single subject, until they either get the Nobel Prize, or work on the wrong problem and waste their lives
TODO long after Ciro forgot where he had read this from originally, someone later pointed him to: www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf Birds and Frogs by Freeman Dyson (2009), which is analogous but about Birds and Frogs. So did Ciro's memory play a trick on him, or is there also a variant; of this metaphor with a gopher?
Ciro is without a doubt the bird type. Perhaps the ultimate scientist is the one who can combine both aspects in the right amount?
Ciro gets bored of things very quickly.
Once he understands the general principles, if the thing is not the next big thing, Ciro considers himself satisfied without all the nitty gritty detail, and moves on to the next attempt.
In the field of mathematics for example, Ciro is generally content with understanding cool theorem statements. More generally, one of Ciro's desires is for example to understand the significance of each physics Nobel Prize.
This is also very clear for example after Ciro achieved Linux Kernel Module Cheat: he now had the perfect setup to learn all the Linux kernel shady details but at the same time after all those years he finally felt that "he could do it, so that was enough", and soon moved to other projects.
If Ciro had become a scientist, he would write the best review papers ever, just like in the current reality he writes amazing programming tutorials on Stack Overflow.
Ciro has in his mind an overly large list of subjects that "he feels he should know the basics of", and whenever he finds something in one of those topics that he does not know enough about, he uncontrollably learns it, even if it is not the most urgent thing to be done. Or at least he puts a mention on his "list of sources" about the subject. Maybe everyone is like that. But Ciro feels that he feels this urge particularly strongly. Correspondingly, if a subject is not in that list, Ciro ignores it without thinking twice.
Ciro believes that high flying birds are the type of people better suited for venture capital investment management: you know a bit of what is hot on several fields to enough depth to decide where to place your bets and how to guide them. But you don't have the patience to actually go deeply into any one of them and deal with each individual shit that comes up.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) episode 1 mentions as quoted by the Wikipedia page for Eratosthenes:That's Ciro.
According to an entry in the Suda (a 10th-century encyclopedia), his critics scorned him, calling him beta (the second letter of the Greek alphabet) because he always came in second in all his endeavors.
This dude looks like a God. Ciro Santilli does not understand his stuff, but just based on the names of his theories, e.g. "Yoga of anabelian algebraic geometry", and on his eccentric lifestyle, it is obvious that he was in fact a God.
Good film about him: Blaise Pascal (1972).
Good quote from his Les Provinciales (1656-57) Letter XII, p. 227:French version reproduced at: www.dicocitations.com/citation/auteurajout35106.php.
All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, but only serve to exalt it the more.When force opposes force, the more powerful destroys the less; when words are opposed to words, those which are true and convincing destroy and scatter those which are vain and false; but violence and truth can do nothing against each other.Yet, let no one imagine that things are equal between them; for there is this final difference, that the course of violence is limited by the ordinance of God, who directs its workings to the glory of the truth, which it attacks; whereas truth subsists eternally, and triumphs finally over its enemies, because it is eternal, and powerful, like God Himself.
A way to defined geometry without talking about coordinates, i.e. like Euclid's Elements, notably Euclid's postulates, as opposed to Descartes's Real coordinate space.
There are 5: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Euclidean_geometry&oldid=1036511366#Axioms, the parallel postulate being the most controversial/interesting.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact