Musings

I was teaching my partner some mandarin recently and I came to the conclusion that "yes" and "no" are very weird constructs of language.

We were practicing one day, where I'd ask her questions in English and she'd reply in Mandarin. I asked her a yes/no question and she replied 不, to which I surprised myself by pointing out that 不 is ever only used in a negatory manner. People who know some Mandarin would interject and say, but there is 不(bù), 没(méi), and 无(wú) that can be used in stead of "no". Yes, they can, but they're usually not used without context.

Let's look at some concrete examples to understand. [Read More]

Over the years I have come up with some fun ideas of binary classifying people. They say “those who can’t do, teach”. That’s a binary classification – teachers and doers. I once did something like that, with a longer elaboration: Hackers and Engineers Abstract Thinking Capabilities Some people have better abstract thinking capabilities than others. I’ll use an example that makes this a particularly dangerous thought. Consider two young girls, A and B, who are playing with Barbie dolls. [Read More]

This morning my computer crashed. So I rebooted it. I was in the midst of a project that had a lot of git branches (as I was working on competitive ideas to see which version would work best), and I couldn’t recall which branch I was on. I thought it would be a good time to update my .bashrc file to perhaps add a git status to my bash prompt. Afterall, there are some pretty nice prompt string hacks for git out there. [Read More]

George Price was a rather interesting fellow. A few months ago, I was reading a rather interesting piece about his life from HN. If you follow my blog posts (hello to the two of you), you’ll note that altruism and cooperative games is one of the things I like to blog about.

Following that article, I discovered the Price equation* Funny story. I was quite surprised I hadn't heard of the Price equation, so I hit the books. I found the equation being referenced very very very very briefly in Martin Nowak's Evolutionary Dynamics, and that was all . While grokking the equation, it had suddenly occurred to me that kin selection and group selection were indeed the same thing. It was a gut feeling, and I couldn’t prove otherwise.

I recently had a lot of time on hand, so I thought I’d sit down and try to make sense of my gut feel that kin selection and group selection were in fact the same thing. Bear in mind I’m neither a professional mathematician nor am I a professional biologist. I’m not even an academic and my interest in the Price equation came from an armchair economist/philosopher point of view. And so, while I grasp a lot of concepts, I may actually have understood them wrongly. In fact, just be forewarned that this entire post was a result of me stumbling around.

So, let’s recap what the Price equations look like (per Wikipedia):

Simply put, $latex \Delta z$ is the difference in phenotype between a parent population and the child population. And that difference is a function of two things:

1. The covariance of fitness and phenotype — $latex \frac{1}{w} cov(w_i, z_i) $ where $latex w $ is the average fitness of the population, $latex w_i $ is the individual fitness of $latex i $, and $latex z_i $ is the phenotype shared in the group.
2. The expected value of the fitness of the difference between the group’s phenotype and the parent group’s phenotype.

[Read More]

I started lifting weights a few months ago after a bit of health awakening. At first, it was a lot of fuckaround. Eventually I got into a program, and a routine. I started seeing progress in my strength, and I kept a record of how much I can lift – I’ve got nice charts to show my strength progressions. It’s not much but I can bench press about 60% of my body mass now. [Read More]

Have you had an experience you couldn’t quite put to words? Or understood some things that cannot be described well, and everything you tried to describe it in feel like poor analogies of it? Or that you even have to resort to using analogies to begin with?

And then someone mentions a word that sounds familiar, and suddenly, the connection makes sense. It made sense for the word to mean the experience/series-of-events/phenomena that you had experienced/understood.

Earlier this afternoon I had that experience. I had experienced something that is really difficult to describe, and put to words. I took a lot of notes about it, but I wasn’t able to accurately or satisfactorily explain it with words. What the experience was and the topics it surrounded is not of much importance, nor is it profound because I spent the rest of the afternoon obssessing about the fact there are no names to describe exactly what I had experienced.

In fact, the whole meta-ness about names makes even writing this blog post a little difficult, but I hope I am able to express what I mean quite clearly.

Names are pretty important, because without them, we do not understand the world. In fact, when you name a colour, you actually start perceiving the colour as a separate colour, as did the Chinese and Japanese discovered when they named the colour blue.

Given that names are pretty important, there are a lot of problems with names.

[Read More]

I own a Canon 40D with a couple of large constant-aperture lenses. I also own a number of coffee making equipment, from the Aeropress to a nice Rancilio Silvia V2. I have a computer with a fairly nice processor and a fairly decent graphics card, with a large amount of RAM and 3 SSDs. While these things are slightly older now, I acquired them when them when they were rather new. [Read More]

I had this thought the other day: latte art is signalling. To pour a rosetta in a cappuccino, you would need perfectly brewed espresso, and perfectly steamed and textured milk. If you do not pull enough crema in your espresso shot, or if the crema dissipates too quickly, you cannot pour a rosetta. If the milk isn’t properly textured, and there is too much air in the milk (or too little), you won’t be able to pour a rosetta because the milk wouldn’t drag across the surface of the crema easily. [Read More]

ᕜɷ ՓლᏜⵙᎺኡႣǬ ※Ꭴኡⴿ ՓኡփᏜ ᙢႣփᏜ ⵓⴾⵙᕶ Ꭴᕶⴾლ ᙢⴾᎺዯ ლᕶⴾӼᕶლփ ኡᗎ ᙢᏑǬᕶ (ⵓᕶӼᎤᏑ ᏜᏑ ᏜⵓᏜ ※ᏑᏜⵓ ኡᙢ ዯኡႣ) ᏑǬᏜᏑ ᏜⵓᏑᎺᖝᏑᎺⴿ Ꮡ ⵓⴾლ ⴿኡǬᕶ ᙢⴾӼ. Ꮡ ⵓⴾӼǬ’Ꮬ. ᎺᏜ ᙢႣփᏜ ⵓⴾⵙᏜ ※ᕶᕶᎺ ᙢⴾლӼᕶǬᏑᎺⴿ, ɷⵓኡᏜ ɷᎺᏜⵓ փᕶӼᗎ-ᎤᏑᎺᖝᏑᎺⴿ ՓኡփᏜփ ⴾᎺლ ᕜኡᕜՓᎤᕶⴾᕶ ⴾᎺლ ႣᏜⴾᕶⵓ ⴿᏑⵙ※ᕶლᏑǬⵓ. ᏜⵓᏑփ Ꮡփ Ꮬⵓᕶ փᏜኡⵓዯ ኡᗎ ⵓኡɷ Ꮡ ӼლᕶⴾᙢᏜ ᎤՓ ⴾǬ ᕶᎺᕜኡӼᏑᎺⴿ ᗎኡლ Ꮬⵓᕶ ᕶᎺⴿᎤᏑǬփ ᎤⴾᎺⴿႣⴾⴿᕶ. Ꮡ ⵓⴾლ ※ᕶᕶᎺ ӼዯᏑᎺⴿ ᏑᎺ ※ᕶლ, Ꭴኡⴾᕶ ᎤⴾփᏜ ǬᏑⴿⵓᏜ, ᏜⵓᏑᎺᖝᏑᎺⴿ ⴾ※ኡႣᏜ ᕜዯ ኡɷᎺ ՓᕶⵓᕜᏜՓᏜᎺኡǬ ኡᗎ ᏜᏑᙢᕶ ⴾᎺӼ ǬՓⴾᕜᕶ. [Read More]

I run in multiple circles of acquaintances. Amongst my circles of acquaintances, one is a heavily transhumanist/futurist/post-human circle. I would often engage in discussion – over drinks usually – about the Singularity and what’s to come, our minds would meander amongst the hopeful and not so hopeful futures. There were many ideas floated. Most were interesting, but few were realistic. Being around transhumanist acquaintances gives me a feeling of hanging out amongst science fiction authors of the 1950s. [Read More]