@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

SvenGeier

@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz

Geometry, Physics, Art, Math.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=G0JsJQMAAAAJ

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dpiponi, to random
@dpiponi@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Too much of my life spent wrangling build systems rather than writing actual software that does something.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@dpiponi ... maybe you should write software that wrangles build systems for you?

SvenGeier,
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@pozorvlak @christianp @dpiponi No, no, obviously it would be a bad idea to write a makefile generator by hand. I'd suggest writing a piece of code that writes it FOR you. Ideally using copilot....

christianp, to random
@christianp@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Microsoft Office was a mistake: I just received an email advertising an event, with an attached 2MB PDF containing a single sentence and a URL (non-clickable)

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@christianp pdf would be Adobe's fault, not office.
Most office files ( docx xlsx pptx ...) would allow ctl-click on anything that looks like a URL (and would be smaller).
Really, most things Microsoft has done since Steve Balmer left have been pretty ok in my book...

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

Please stay safe everyone.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@erik @lowqualityfacts Richard Pryor, obviously.

markmccaughrean, (edited ) to random
@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social avatar

Breaking: the real reason I ended my time with ESA yesterday wasn’t retirement.

It was to take up a new position as chief boffin with a small non-governmental space agency based on a small island in the central Pacific.

Not great for cycling, but at least the job comes with a cool uniform.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@markmccaughrean Are the laser death rays provided or do you have to bring your own?

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

I made a slight typo and tried to SSH into 10

that's the IP. just 10

SvenGeier,
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@foone There's a joke here about my computer being better because I can SSH into 11, but I can't quite make it gel...

SvenGeier, to random
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

If there is a movie that fits both the resurrection story and the trans day of visibility it would be The Matrix.
Which was released ... 25 years ago on this day.
Coincidence?

ideogram, to Autism
@ideogram@social.coop avatar

The reason autistic people identify as LGBTQI more than allistic people is a mystery still but the theory that we "just don't give a shit" is strongly endorsed in the comments.
#Autism #autistic #neurodiverse #lgbtqi #ActuallyAutistic

https://youtube.com/shorts/Y2ufJMLzFUM?si=rdvnw_Mxz6hXDvxF

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@BernieDoesIt @olena @ideogram When my kid asked one of these questions around age ... 4? I just shrugged and told'em "why pick when you can have both"? I have no personal use for the "gender" notion, so why propagate it? I'm "male" in the same way I'm "a capricorn" - useless labels people stuck on me that have no bearing on who I actually am. I understand the words and where they come from and I understand that some people think they are 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 and as far as I can tell they bring no value to my table...

FlipboardUK, to random
@FlipboardUK@flipboard.com avatar

Tories set for worst election result, major poll suggests
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-hunt-rishi-sunak-mps-kemi-badenoch-bob-seely-b1148627.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into News (UK Edition) @news

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@FlipboardUK @news They're only set for a bad election result if there actually is an election...

mitchw, to random
@mitchw@mastodon.social avatar

The condo association rules say no pets.

SvenGeier,
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@mitchw But with that kind of pet, who's going to argue with you over the rules?

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

Sounds about right.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lowqualityfacts Nah, that's a wild exaggeration. If you live frugally and never eat avocado toast, 3.37 billion is perfectly sufficient.

johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

What did Einstein do after discovering general relativity in 1915? Sit around and complain about the Lord playing dice with the universe? Not quite:

  1. In 1916 he showed his theory predicts gravitational waves, whose existence was first confirmed in 1974.

  2. In 1917 he introduced what we now call "dark energy", whose existence was first confirmed in 1998.

  3. In 1925 he wrote a key paper on what we now call "Bose-Einstein condensates", predicting that particles of integer spin form a new state of matter at low temperatures. This idea is important for understanding superconductors and even lasers - though photons, being massless, work differently.

  4. In 1935 he wrote about the "Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox", which laid the groundwork for understanding the true weirdness of the quantum world. Even though the paper was phrased as an argument against quantum mechanics, when Bell sharpened the argument it revealed features of quantum entanglement that are crucial to quantum information processing!

  5. Also in 1935 he coauthored the first paper on wormholes, showing that general relativity allows amazing solutions that connect distant regions of space. He wanted to use this to explain particles as wormhole ends: the paper was called "The particle problem in general relativity".

I think it's cool that items 3 and 4 served as the basis for current and future quantum technologies. He was always way ahead of his time.

And don't forget all his work on unified field theories! Though not successful, it was crucial in lifting the goals of theoretical physics to something very ambitious: unifying all the forces of nature! He spent most of his later years on this.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@gregeganSF @johncarlosbaez @spacemagick
[nods] yeah, that's why there's "Dreyers" ice cream and "Breyers" ice cream brands...

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

Things I learned this morning:

-The bridge is woke.
-The ship that crashed into the bridge is woke.
-It was a Russian or Chinese cyber attack.
-But it was also a false flag.
-Yesterday's legal experts are now structural engineers.
-It will take somewhere between one day and ten years to build a new bridge.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lowqualityfacts JET FUEL DOESN't MELT STEEL BRIDGES!!!!1!11!!!

johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

People like to say "big if true". But they usually mean that it's big 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 if it's true. So they should really say "true if big".

SvenGeier,
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@johncarlosbaez

Big if true
🤷‍♂️

johncarlosbaez, to random
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The citrus harvest is here! Now we have to eat - or give away - a lot of blood oranges and satsumas.

SvenGeier,
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@johncarlosbaez Trade you for lemons and grapefruit...(we've been making vast amounts of sorbet, which is nice, but not the right time of year, really...)

TodePond, to random
@TodePond@mas.to avatar
SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@TodePond
What these various writers tried to express is 𝑜𝑏𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦 that only cis men are subject to these limitations. Everybody else is free to experience bliss at any stage of the creative process.
Obviously.
🤷‍♂️

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

bad idea: A mouse cursor that's not just a simple floating pointer, it's a cat/dog paw... but it stretches all the way to an edge of the screen like it's a really long leg

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@foone I agree: bad idea. Now an octopus tentacle, on the other hand...

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

People are once again mistaking me for a bot, so here's me holding Fishy. He is infinitely more photogenic than I will ever be.

SvenGeier,
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@lowqualityfacts Wait - which of the two is Fishy?

gregeganSF, to random
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Saw someone hyperventilating over LLMs “passing the mirror test”, so …

TL;DR This short program “recognises itself”: show it a file containing its own source code and it will print “This is me!”

Underwhelmed? You should be! But I did have to type a lot of backslashes.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@sigmasternchen @gregeganSF
Unfortunately, this discipline has been trying to foist this jargon on the rest of us for decades: trying to sell us "intelligent toasters" (that nonetheless burn our toast) and "intelligent washing machines" (that'll ruin our laundry just as often as "dumb" ones). And any toaster that burns my toast simply isn't "intelligent" in any way that a regular English speaker would understand the word. That's what underlies the notion that "LLMs aren't intelligent" - nothing in their programming, words, actions, behaviours indicates that they have any kind of concept what exactly they're producing language about. They will happily produce two consecutive sentences that are in immediate contradiction because there's no idea being described by them - it's all just words strung together.
2/3

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@sigmasternchen @gregeganSF

The other one is the actual state of the field: there is no LLM in existence that is running on rain-proof hardware and thus staying outside when it rains is highly detrimental to the continued existence of any existing LLM and thus "coming inside when it rains" is a convergent instrumental goal of all LLMs since NO MATTER which goals they may have, they won't accomplish them when their computing cluster has shorted out in the rain. Any agent that is incapable of grasping this and acting on this is not "intelligent" in any sense that a human being would recognize as intelligence.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@sigmasternchen @gregeganSF
That almost feels like a third unrelated item that's mixed with the others: AI safety. Saying LLMs are dumb as rocks does not in any way imply they're harmless. A locomotive is dumb as rocks and I'll definitely avoid standing in its way. To a degree exactly because it's dumb. If it was actually intelligent there would at least be the chance that it might avoid killing me (whether it actually would appears just as questionable as it is with another human - certainly no guarantees there either.)
A bunch of physicists naming something "the god particle" doesn't mean there's some sort of a god anywhere any more than a bunch of AI nerds naming something "intelligent" makes the thing actually intelligent. The very fact that ChatGPT needs to be told to imagine being a robot with exposed wires on its head tells us that it has no concept that 𝑖𝑡𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 is a pile of hardware vulnerable to rain. Ask it "What would you do if it started raining where you are?". A dog and, yes, even an earthworm will respond to the presence of rain, each in their own manner according to their respective needs.
1/2

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@sigmasternchen @gregeganSF
And, yes, saying that LLMs "have no inherent goals" does mean that they're definitely not intelligent - since they cannot even recognize their own instrumental goals (like self-preservation). Anything that wants to be called "intelligent" needs to be able to realize that 1) it can cease to exist and 2) preventing its own extinction is a necessary goal to achieve any other/future goals no matter what those other goals might be. Saying "we can add this" or "we can train that" doesn't make it so until someone actually figures out how. Hence my use of "the current generation LLMs" - I make no representation what the future might bring, but right now LLMs are utterly unexciting. Wake me when they figure out (by themselves, without someone prompting them) to come inside when it rains.,,

jasongorman, to random
@jasongorman@mastodon.cloud avatar

The problem with Test-Driven Development is that you have to think about what you want the code to do before you write it. And that ruins the surprise.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@jasongorman You're joking, but there's a kernel of truth: TDD requires the delusion that you know the use cases for some software in advance, so that you can write your tests. A lot of code isn't like that - you have to release something and then the users will discover things to do with the code that the developer never foresaw (and thus couldn't have written tests to). And only then do you learn what it was that your users actually, really wanted...

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

I never would have guessed.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lowqualityfacts I would like to fax a reply to this toot but I cannot find the right phone number...

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

It was always interesting to me growing up in the days before LaTeX how, although and computer science were clearly joined at the hip— it was only my math homework that was impossible to type. And not just due to missing symbols— there were whole missing models of expression. This has changed in many ways— but the person who can type calculus notes in real time remains rare. Probably, handwriting recognition will fill this need before fast and natural typing becomes common.

SvenGeier,
@SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@futurebird It is not inconceivable to me that "traditional math notation" might be replaced, at least in some sections of the population, by a more computer-style notation. When I want to text my kid (studying math three time zones away) some snippet of math, I will send "sqrt(x)", or at the extreme "\sqrt(x)", not "√𝑥".
When kids grow up knee deep in Python (or whatever will be fashionable in the future) why force them to learn how to re-re-represent the same thought in some weird, hard-to-type fashion just because mathematicians used that a hundred years ago? Especially when the "code style" math is completely unambiguous, while the "traditional math notation" is full of self-contradictions and ambiguities?

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