Optimization Process

Free will is like temperature: a useful tool for analyzing the behavior of certain systems which are too big and complicated to model in exact detail. If you know the positions and velocities of every atom in a box of gas, then with enough work you can predict its future...

This Technology Connections video on heat pumps made me realize I don't intuitively understand how refrigeration works. I tried to drill down until I understood what was happening with every molecule, and... arrived here. Would any local thermodynamics experts enjoy pointing out the important gaps?

As you know, histograms are decent visualizations for PDFs with lots of samples... 10k predictions, 20 bins ...but if there are only a few samples, the histogram-binning choices can matter a lot: 10 predictions, 4 binssame 10 predictions, 7 bins The binning (a) discards information, and worse, (b) is mathematically...

Learning quantum mechanics involves two things: 1. learning the fundamentals, the nature of the stuff of which Nature is made; and 2. loads of universe-imposed incidental complexity, spinors and vector calculus and Lie algebras and Hilbert spaces, in order to be able to effectively apply the fundamentals to the real...

You know elementary cellular automata, where each of the boolean-valued cells evolves according to x(k)t+1=f(x(k−1)t,x(k)t,x(k+1)t) where f:{0,1}3→{0,1}. I think the natural quantum-mechanical extension of this is: * there are 2(N := tape size) basis states: |00⋯00⟩ through |11⋯11⟩ * its time-evolution is given, of course, by a unitary operator U,...

(I was musing about what it means for an incoherent lump of meat to "have preferences," and thought it might be illuminating to consider what I'd do if I were, approximately, God. It, uh, hasn't been illuminating yet, but it's been entertaining and still seems at least potentially fruitful.) Problem...

(I wanted to write some rationalist-flavored bedtime stories for my friends' four-year-old. I don't really have the knack, but ChatGPT did an imperfect-but-respectable job, given a fair bit of thematic guidance. Here are the first two I've churned out, intended to be read together, for reasons which... will become apparent.)...