On Bayesianism, the Many Worlds Interpretation, and personal identity.
Some thoughts worked out in a letter to a friend, which is the kind of thing you do when off Twitter for a glorious week. (🧵)
https://t.co/DhHmN0ndjx
Is there a fact of the matter as to whether the cat is alive before you open the box?
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
I would say not, and all your references to how the world "is" are similarly incoherent.
Wait so you disagree with 'quantum splitting means that that there are futures where you become the next US president and futures where you murder your family and futures where you spontaneously combust' takes?
— Peli Grietzer (@peligrietzer) November 8, 2020
Can you defend this distinction between past and future splits?
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
You mentioned personal identity, are you going to argue that personal identity splits even if we're unaware of any differences?
My issue is what forks \u201cspace\u201d itself? Obv we need a QG theory, but MWI assumes some background independence or metaphysical substrate in which alternative quantum states can resolve.
— U.S.O.U.S. (@hyperauxetic) November 8, 2020
You think there's a fact of the matter about whether you are Classical Simon1 or Classical Simon2? My instinct is that there isn't, if they are qualitatively identical to each other
— Peli Grietzer (@peligrietzer) November 8, 2020
If both have the exact same memories and you can't tell which one "you" are, then from your perspective there shouldn't be a fact of the matter as to which one you are. At least, that's my view on personal identity. What's the argument against?
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
Not sure how that's relevant to personal identity.
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) November 8, 2020
Simon, I don't mean to distract you from your brilliant thread, here, but what would you say to a Meillassouxian-type committed to an arche-fossil as the basis of absolute contingency?
— NAF Loves Meillassoux (@LovesNaf) November 8, 2020
Not sure this is what you\u2019re looking for, but Tegmark uses cosmic rays causing cancerous mutations as one example of quantum splitting have observable macro effects.
— Matt Clancy (@mattsclancy) November 8, 2020
More from Simon DeDeo
Imagine for a moment the most obscurantist, jargon-filled, po-mo article the politically correct academy might produce. Pure SJW nonsense. Got it? Chances are you're imagining something like the infamous "Feminist Glaciology" article from a few years back.https://t.co/NRaWNREBvR pic.twitter.com/qtSFBYY80S
— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) October 13, 2018
The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.

Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)

There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.

At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
More from Data science
https://t.co/EwwOzgfDca : Deep Learning framework in Java that supports the whole cycle: from data loading and preprocessing to building and tuning a variety deep learning networks.
https://t.co/J4qMzPAZ6u Framework for defining machine learning models, including feature generation and transformations, as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs).
https://t.co/9IgKkSxPCq a machine learning library in Java that provides multi-class classification, regression, clustering, anomaly detection and multi-label classification.
https://t.co/EAqn2YngIE : TensorFlow Java API (experimental)
Here is a compilation of resources (books, videos & papers) to get you going.
(Note: It's not an exhaustive list but I have carefully curated it based on my experience and observations)
📘 Mathematics for Machine Learning
by Marc Peter Deisenroth, A. Aldo Faisal, and Cheng Soon Ong
https://t.co/zSpp67kJSg
Note: this is probably the place you want to start. Start slowly and work on some examples. Pay close attention to the notation and get comfortable with it.

📘 Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning
by Christopher Bishop
Note: Prior to the book above, this is the book that I used to recommend to get familiar with math-related concepts used in machine learning. A very solid book in my view and it's heavily referenced in academia.

📘 The Elements of Statistical Learning
by Jerome H. Friedman, Robert Tibshirani, and Trevor Hastie
Mote: machine learning deals with data and in turn uncertainty which is what statistics teach. Get comfortable with topics like estimators, statistical significance,...

📘 Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
by E. T. Jaynes
Note: In machine learning, we are interested in building probabilistic models and thus you will come across concepts from probability theory like conditional probability and different probability distributions.
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Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019
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@dgaytandzhieva
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2. Bat Virus Database
Access to the database is limited only to those scientists participating in our ‘Bats and Coronaviruses’ project
Our intention is to eventually open up this database to the larger scientific community
https://t.co/mPn7b9HM48

3. EcoHealth Alliance & DTRA Asking for Trouble
One Health research project focused on characterizing bat diversity, bat coronavirus diversity and the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in the region.
https://t.co/u6aUeWBGEN

4. Phelps, Olival, Epstein, Karesh - EcoHealth/DTRA

5, Methods and Expected Outcomes
(Unexpected Outcome = New Coronavirus Pandemic)

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?
A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:
Next level tactic when closing a sale, candidate, or investment:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) February 27, 2018
Ask: \u201cWhat needs to be true for you to be all in?\u201d
You'll usually get an explicit answer that you might not get otherwise. It also holds them accountable once the thing they need becomes true.
2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to
- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal
3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:
Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.
Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.
4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?
To get clarity.
You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.
It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.
5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”
Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.