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
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".
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?
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
To my JVM friends looking to explore Machine Learning techniques - you don’t necessarily have to learn Python to do that. There are libraries you can use from the comfort of your JVM environment. 🧵👇
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)
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)
1/ A ∞-wide NN of *any architecture* is a Gaussian process (GP) at init. The NN in fact evolves linearly in function space under SGD, so is a GP at *any time* during training. https://t.co/v1b6kndqCk With Tensor Programs, we can calculate this time-evolving GP w/o trainin any NN
2/ In this gif, narrow relu networks have high probability of initializing near the 0 function (because of relu) and getting stuck. This causes the function distribution to become multi-modal over time. However, for wide relu networks this is not an issue.
3/ This time-evolving GP depends on two kernels: the kernel describing the GP at init, and the kernel describing the linear evolution of this GP. The former is the NNGP kernel, and the latter is the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK).
4/ Once we have these two kernels, we can derive the GP mean and covariance at any time t via straightforward linear algebra.
5/ So it remains to calculate the NNGP kernel and NT kernel for any given architecture. The first is described in https://t.co/cFWfNC5ALC and in this thread
2/ In this gif, narrow relu networks have high probability of initializing near the 0 function (because of relu) and getting stuck. This causes the function distribution to become multi-modal over time. However, for wide relu networks this is not an issue.
3/ This time-evolving GP depends on two kernels: the kernel describing the GP at init, and the kernel describing the linear evolution of this GP. The former is the NNGP kernel, and the latter is the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK).
4/ Once we have these two kernels, we can derive the GP mean and covariance at any time t via straightforward linear algebra.
5/ So it remains to calculate the NNGP kernel and NT kernel for any given architecture. The first is described in https://t.co/cFWfNC5ALC and in this thread
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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
Following @BAUDEGS I have experienced hateful and propagandist tweets time after time. I have been shocked that an academic community would be so reckless with their publications. So I did some research.
The question is:
Is this an official account for Bahcesehir Uni (Bau)?
Bahcesehir Uni, BAU has an official website https://t.co/ztzX6uj34V which links to their social media, leading to their Twitter account @Bahcesehir
BAU’s official Twitter account
BAU has many departments, which all have separate accounts. Nowhere among them did I find @BAUDEGS
@BAUOrganization @ApplyBAU @adayBAU @BAUAlumniCenter @bahcesehirfbe @baufens @CyprusBau @bauiisbf @bauglobal @bahcesehirebe @BAUintBatumi @BAUiletisim @BAUSaglik @bauebf @TIPBAU
Nowhere among them was @BAUDEGS to find
The question is:
Is this an official account for Bahcesehir Uni (Bau)?
Bahcesehir Uni, BAU has an official website https://t.co/ztzX6uj34V which links to their social media, leading to their Twitter account @Bahcesehir
BAU’s official Twitter account
BAU has many departments, which all have separate accounts. Nowhere among them did I find @BAUDEGS
@BAUOrganization @ApplyBAU @adayBAU @BAUAlumniCenter @bahcesehirfbe @baufens @CyprusBau @bauiisbf @bauglobal @bahcesehirebe @BAUintBatumi @BAUiletisim @BAUSaglik @bauebf @TIPBAU
Nowhere among them was @BAUDEGS to find
