AI winter Updated 2025-07-16
AGI research has become a taboo in the early 21st century Updated 2025-07-16
Due to the failures of earlier generations, which believed that would quickly achieve AGI, leading to the AI winters, 21st researchers have been very afraid of even trying it, rather going only for smaller subste problems like better neural network designs, at the risk of being considered a crank.
While there is fundamental value in such subset problems, the general view to the final goal is also very important, we will likely never reach AI without it.
This is voiced for example in Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) section "Opinions about the future of machine intelligence" which in turn quotes Nils Nilsson:
There may, however, be a residual cultural effect on the AI community of its earlier history that makes many mainstream researchers reluctant to align themselves with over-grand ambition. Thus Nils Nilsson, one of the old-timers in the field, complains that his present-day colleagues lack the boldness of spirit that propelled the pioneers of his own generation:Nilsson’s sentiment has been echoed by several others of the founders, including Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, and Patrick Winston.Concern for "respectability" has had, I think, a stultifying effect on some AI researchers. I hear them saying things like, "AI used to be criticized for its flossiness. Now that we have made solid progress, let us not risk losing our respectability." One result of this conservatism has been increased concentration on "weak AI" - the variety devoted to providing aids to human
thought - and away from "strong AI" - the variety that attempts to mechanize human-level intelligence
Goldstone's theorem Updated 2025-07-16
Higgs mechanism Updated 2025-07-16
Riesz representation theorem Updated 2025-07-16
A blog in every web framework Updated 2025-07-16
A (multi-user) blog is the hello world of the web, so creating one of those is the best way to quickly evaluate web technology, i.e. time to Hello World.
Some new frameworks like FeathersJS are making a chat app instead, as that highlights the push notifications a bit better.
TodoMVC Updated 2025-07-16
Abraham Updated 2025-07-16
Cyrus the Great Updated 2025-07-16
Satan Updated 2025-07-16
Semiheavy water Updated 2025-07-16
Girdler sulfide process Updated 2025-07-16
B Reactor Updated 2026-08-21
This was the first full scale nuclear reactor in the world, and was brought up slowly to test it out.
Hanford B Reactor tour by Studio McGraw
. Source. 2016.- youtu.be/8rlVHEY7BF0?t=335 good description of the fuel element. It uses uranium metal, not Uranium dioxide
- youtu.be/8rlVHEY7BF0?t=652 N Reactor and F Reactor were identical, and came up 2 months later, but much faster because of what they learned on the B
Baryon Updated 2025-07-16
Neutron Updated 2025-07-16
Proton Updated 2025-07-16
Meson Updated 2025-07-16
composite particle made up of an even number of elementary particles, most commonly one particle and one anti-particle.
This can be contrasted with mesons, which have an odd number of elementary particles, as mentioned at baryon vs meson vs lepton.
gwern.net Updated 2025-07-16
One thing that annoys Ciro Santilli about that website are the footnote overload. Ciro likes linear things.
Colonial college Updated 2025-07-16
Ivy League Updated 2025-07-16
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.