Thermonuclear weapon Updated +Created
British newspaper Updated +Created
Definite matrix Updated +Created
The definition implies that this is also a symmetric matrix.
Human Compatible Updated +Created
The key takeaway is that setting an explicit value function to an AGI entity is a good way to destroy the world due to poor AI alignment. We are more likely to not destroy by creating an AI whose goals is to "do want humans what it to do", but in a way that it does not know before hand what it is that humans want, and it has to learn from them. This approach appears to be known as reward modeling.
Some other cool ideas:
  • a big thing that is missing for AGI in the 2010's is some kind of more hierarchical representation of the continuous input data of the world, e.g.:
  • game theory can be seen as part of artificial intelligence that deals with scenarios where multiple intelligent agents are involved
  • probability plays a crucial role in our everyday living, even though we don't think too much about it every explicitly. He gives a very good example of the cost/risk tradeoffs of planning to the airport to catch a plane. E.g.:
    • should you leave 2 days in advance to be sure you'll get there?
    • should you pay an armed escort to make sure you are not attacked in the way?
  • economy, and notably the study of the utility, is intrinsically linked to AI alignment
Nuclear magnetic resonance Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli once visited the chemistry department of a world leading university, and the chemists there were obsessed with NMR. They had small benchtop NMR machines. They had larger machines. They had a room full of huge machines. They had them in corridors and on desk tops. Chemists really love that stuff. More precisely, these are used for NMR spectroscopy, which helps identify what a sample is made of.
Basically measures the concentration of certain isotopes in a region of space.
Video 1.
Introduction to NMR by Allery Chemistry
. Source.
Video 2.
How to Prepare and Run a NMR Sample by University of Bath (2017)
Source. This is a more direct howto, cool to see. Uses a Bruker Corporation 300. They have a robotic arm add-on. Shows spectrum on computer screen at the end. Shame no molecule identification after that!
Video 3. Source.
This video has the merit of showing real equipment usage, including sample preparation.
Says clearly that NMR is the most important way to identify organic compounds.
Video 4.
Introductory NMR & MRI: Video 01 by Magritek (2009)
Source. Precession and Resonance. Precession has a natural frequency for any angle of the wheel.
Video 5.
Introductory NMR & MRI: Video 02 by Magritek (2009)
Source. The influence of temperature on spin statistics. At 300K, the number of up and down spins are very similar. As you reduce temperature, we get more and more on lower energy state.
Video 6.
Introductory NMR & MRI: Video 03 by Magritek (2009)
Source. The influence of temperature on spin statistics. At 300K, the number of up and down spins are very similar. As you reduce temperature, we get more and more on lower energy state.
Video 7.
NMR spectroscopy visualized by ScienceSketch
. Source. 2020. Decent explanation with animation. Could go into a bit more numbers, but OK.
Nuclear triad Updated +Created
Capacitor Updated +Created
The fundamental intuition about capacitors is that they never let electrons through.
They can only absorb electrons up to a certain point, but then the pushback becomes too strong, and current stops.
Therefore, they cannot conduct direct current long term.
For alternating current however, things are different, because in alternating current, electrons are just jiggling back and forward a little bit around a center point. So you can send alternating current power across a capacitor.
The key equation that relates Voltage to electric current in the capacitor is:
So if a voltage Heavyside step function is applied what happens is:
  • the capacitor fills up instantly with an infinite current
  • the current then stops instantly
More realistically, one may consider the behavior or the series RC circuit to see what happens without infinities when a capacitor is involved as in the step response of the series RC circuit.
Figure 1.
Electronic symbol of a capacitor
. Source.
Video 1.
Finding capacitance with an oscilloscope by Jacob Watts (2020)
Source. Good experiment.
Video 2.
Capacitors Explained by The Engineering Mindset
. Source. 2019.
Derivative test Updated +Created
Deterministic game Updated +Created
Direct current source Updated +Created
Discrete Updated +Created
Something that is very not continuous.
Notably studied in discrete mathematics.
Occam's razor Updated +Created
Absorbing Markov chain Updated +Created
CC BY-NC-SA Updated +Created
Too restrictive. People should be able to make money from stuff.
The definition of "commercial" could also be taken in extremely broad senses, making serious reuse risky in many applications.
Notably, many university courses use it, notably MIT OpenCourseWare. Ciro wonders if it is because academics are wary of industry, or if they want to make money from it themselves. This reminds Ciro of a documentary he watched about the origins of one an early web browsers in some American university. And then that university wanted to retain copyright to make money from it. But the PhDs made a separate company nonetheless. And someone from the company rightly said something along the lines of:
The goal of universities is to help create companies and to give back to society like that. Not to try and make money from inventions.
TODO source.
The GNU project does not like it either www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#CC-BY-NC:
This license does not qualify as free, because there are restrictions on charging money for copies. Thus, we recommend you do not use this license for documentation.
In addition, it has a drawback for any sort of work: when a modified version has many authors, in practice getting permission for commercial use from all of them would become infeasible.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_NonCommercial_license#Defining_%22Noncommercial%22 also talks about the obvious confusion this generates: nobody can agree what counts as commercial or not!
In September 2009 Creative Commons published a report titled, "Defining 'Noncommercial'". The report featured survey data, analysis, and expert opinions on what "noncommercial" means, how it applied to contemporary media, and how people who share media interpret the term. The report found that in some aspects there was public agreement on the meaning of "noncommercial", but for other aspects, there is wide variation in expectation of what the term means.
Discrimination Updated +Created
Distributed computing Updated +Created
Distributed social network Updated +Created
SQL aggregate function Updated +Created
Change of basis matrix Updated +Created
The change of basis matrix is the matrix that allows us to express the new basis in an old basis:
Mnemonic is as follows: consider we have an initial basis . Now, we define the new basis in terms of the old basis, e.g.:
which can be written in matrix form as:
and so if we set:
we have:
The usual question then is: given a vector in the new basis, how do we represent it in the old basis?
The answer is that we simply have to calculate the matrix inverse of :
That is the matrix inverse.

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