EDIT: The spacing has gone haywire. We'll try to fix it as soon as we can. In the meantime, try reading the article at the Medium mirror of this blog: https://medium.com/@sumdepony/for-communism-and-against-foreclosure-on-the-future-7a8082855fc4 By communism here we mean a system in which the principle of: From each according to their ability, to each according to their need … Continue reading For communism and against foreclosure on the future

Natural Language Processing (NLP) per Wikipedia: “Is a subfield of linguistics, computer science, information engineering, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages, in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data.” The field has seen tremendous advances during the recent explosion of … Continue reading Recent advances in Natural Language Processing- Some Woolly speculations

As the Paris Commune was ending, there was a great fear that the city was filled with crazed women who, out of pure bitterness and spite, were roaming the streets, and setting buildings alight- the so called Pétroleuses. Modern historians regard this as a fabrication, but at the time, France was gripped with the idea … Continue reading Of fake fire-starters and real panic-mongers

“Common sense is a chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions, and one can find there anything that one like.” -Antonio Gramsci I. Chesterton's fence is the principle that: "Reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. " (Courtesy of Wikipedia) It sounds so very reasonable- simply a more … Continue reading Chesterton’s fence and thinking using sayings

I wanted to outline the methods, strategies and approaches that have helped me with anxiety (moderate to severe OCD). Although I hope you might find something useful here, you may not. Seek qualified and competent psychological advice. To make it very clear that this is only my experience, and not general advice, I've written a … Continue reading My method for dealing with anxiety

The Kaldor-Hicks efficiency criterion is a test in welfare economics against which hypothetical policies are often measured- click here for the Wikipedia article. We've clashed horns with it many times on this blog. Here is another demonstration of the absurdity of the Kaldor-Hicks criterion: it implies that we should abolish all transfer programs. Perhaps you … Continue reading The Kaldor-Hicks efficiency criterion and transfer programs

This is an old puzzle- I recall reading it in Ted Chiang and I think other places as well. It's a great example of how seemingly reasonable intuitions can lead us astray. Premise 1. There could exist a book that contains infallibly accurate information about the future. Premise 2. A robot could read this book. … Continue reading Paradox of the book and the robot