Month: November 2015

Nobody will like all of these links, everybody will like at least one:

• If you use Google Photos for your personal pictures, try using search. It is incredible. Search for something like “Volkswagen” or “red shirt” or “acoustic guitar” or pretty much anything else. It just works. It’s also much faster than any other online photo backup / management app I’ve used.
• The bluegrass band The Cleverlys do Gangam Style entirely in Korean. Impressive.
• Jerry (who has no online presence) recommended this MIT course on algorithms. It’s taught by Erik Demaine who is a fantastic visual artist and one of the best teachers I can remember having. It requires a bit of programming knowledge but is otherwise very accessible
• The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello is a book that reminds me some of Krishnamurti, except from a Jesuit perspective. It’s a strong catalyst for change, even for a secular reader. It’s short and small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
• Mandatory language learning link: This one is personal and less than 140 characters: How I Learned Cyrillic. (spoiler alert: brute force)
• Hubert Dreyfus’ Lectures on Heidegger’s Being and Time. I haven’t listened to these yet, but I’m putting them here because someone should.
• And a semi-random thought to finish the list: There are four types of hormones – peptide, amino acid, eicosanoid and steroid.

I’ve never been to China, but would love to go, especially after reading Liu Cixin. It’s been fascinating exploring the Eastern way of thinking–very old, very mature, yet so different from Western thought.

• I loved the book Three Body Problem by Chinese author Liu Cixin, but The Dark Forest is twice as long and, I think, twice as good. This trilogy is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Cixin might not be as inventive as Neal Stephenson and he may not have the character breadth of fantasy authorBrandon Sanderson, but in terms of pure science fiction, he’s up there withIsaac Asimov.
• The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why by Richard Nisbett dives into why China never developed science in the Western sense, but how their very different way of thinking led to many pragmatic inventions and a worldview Westerners could learn a lot from. I’m only a couple chapters in, but have already have learned a ton.
• Speaking of different ways of thinking… I’ve seen The I Ching, or, Book of Changes referenced many times, but I’ve never read it. I’m still a complete noob but this version has a great forward by Carl Jung (read it online here). He explains how what could seem comparable to astrology or a magic book of spells can be useful to even the Western mind.
• ? is “wood” or “tree” in Chinese. ? is “forest.” Cool.
• That 423% number came from WolframAlpha, one of the most impressive search sites on the Internet.

My friend Seth and I have been trading short stories that explore the idea of God for the last few years. This is a list of some of the best. Sit back and enjoy them for what they are, fun stories and thought experiments. They’re all available freely online.

• The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. His “favorite story,” one that encompasses all of human history in just a few pages.
• Answer by Fredric Brown. Just read it :), the whole thing is almost short enough to Tweet.
• Talking to God from The Ragged Trousered Philosopher. God answers some questions in a chance encounter with an atheist on the bus.
• Hell Is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang. Angels visit Earth in a dramatic way. This one is a pretty dark. I included mostly just for the sake of completion… skip it maybe.
• The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke. What do a bunch of Tibetan monks need with a supercomputer?
• The Egg by Andy Weir, author of The Martian. If everyone thought this way, Earth would be awesome.
• I don’t know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility by qntm. What happens when a group of engineers creates a quantum computer capable of simulating the universe?

Start with this article on Wait But Why. Its fascinating and shouldn’t be missed even if you have almost no interest in computers.

The article is largely based on Nick Bostrom’s work. If you like it, you should check out his book book Superintelligence. It also discusses many of Ray Kurzweil’s ideas. Some of which are a bit far fetched, but hey, this is AI we’re talking about, it’s all far fetched.

More AI Stuff

• Edge.org’s question of the year was What do You Think About Machines that Think. They have complied 192 very short essays on the subject. The essays are also available in book format.
• Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? is a short essay by Nick Bostrom. Also see the site it spawned. Warning: this is not to be read in moments of existential angst.
• Here’s Bostrom speaking at Google.
• And finally, Our Final Invention, another AI book. This one by James Barrat.

Wim Hof has done all of it and wants to teach you how. His claims seem sensationalistic to put it mildly, but science is confirming them all. I think he’s on to something big. If you haven’t listened to him, it’s worth it. I’ve tried his breathing technique. It’s easy and it works.

• Listen to him on the Joe Rogan podcast (previous host of Fear Factor, not for the faint at heart).
• Or on the Tim Ferriss podcast, (somewhat more family friendly).
• Watch him on Vice.
• And yes, even the Oprah is down with Wim.

I recently did a survey of Coding Bootcamps. These are schools that train you to become a programmer over a few month’s time. There are many of them and some look pretty good. Here’s the list if you’re looking to change careers: App Academy, Bloc, Code Fellows, Coding Dojo, Dev Bootcamp, Fullstack Academy, General Assembly, Hack Reactor, Startup Institute.