Robert Williams

Aaron on just about everything tbf

google ai telling me today (as I searched for genuinely informative pages) that the last REF submission period ran from mid 2021 to end of 2020. Backwards in time. Some AI do impressive things. Weird that Google just forces us to watch it repeatedly stepping on rakes.

In the UK one, my sense is that it wasn’t evidence from patterns of murders that got traitors (and they did tend to go for things that would cause chaos rather than overthinking it). What got them was slip ups in face to face situations, or just bad luck.

(I have only seen this one, UK, season. Which has been terrific).

I feel there’s a big selection effect in what gets shown!

It’s oddly like cycling. I love them both.

One thing about the Traitors is it’s all about game theory. But it’s also about how useless game theory is when dealing with real people trying to do game theory.

if the framing was mob/hunted rather than faithful/traitor (or villagers/mafia) it would all still make sense

Hesperus, Phosphorus *crawls back under rock*

Hey, I'm been moved onto Grade 5 pieces (woo! 11-year old me is impressed). HOWEVER there are all these things you can isolate and practice, and then there's "feeling the pulse" (esp. through syncopation), and there's... nothing I know how to do to get better at it.

“The renovation displays a highly individual and visionary taste in certain quarters, extravagant in some respects, yet purposely made to create a home that’s not short on flair, glamour and presence.” Indeed.

Wait, it’s in Conwy? I knew I recognised the house. We used to go eat fish and chips outside it when we made the trip to visit Conwy’s model shop as teenagers.

Pigeon pose, single leg bridges, back extension, repeat. Sigh.

Map of run around Hebden Bridge

Recce’d the Hebden 15 today. Still undecided whether to do the 22 or the 15 in two weeks time. Legs, hips, back appeared to stand up to this after 6 months of trouble, though the true test is what they feel like tomorrow morning.

For Lewis, thinks like reduction of mind, mad pain and Martian pain, etc. insofar as their are novel arguments, they’re novel in a clarity that clearly comes because he’s measuring old arguments against a vision of how things work. I think!

The v v long introduction to the edited collection (meaning mathematics reality) is a brilliant summary/position piece.

I think science without numbers is some of it. An old argument (Quine Putnam indispensibility) but the main argument is creative vision of how to build a case for nominalism, and executing that.

So maybe that can incentivize bluffing skills that are irrelevant in contexts where you can just disappear into the crowd.

I mean, I remember at my red brick having frank conversations with people who were clear eyed their priority was DJing club nights. But I guess in Oxbridge the thing is you have to get through the accountability hoops *as well* as figuring out how to satisfice at summative assessment.

I’m thinking about my paradigms (Lewis, Field) and I don’t know if “veneration for arguments” applies to them *that* much. There’s an overarching development in each of old arguments, refined. But mostly creative explanation of a way the world could be, how it might work, how things hang together…

Odd to call that an oxbridge culture though! The idea that the representative oxbridge student is an Etonian bluffer isn’t right. They’re a fringe. (And while Oxbridge maintains its place as the main gateway to the establishment, removing the “not for me” vibe is kinda important).

I don’t really see what government loses by pausing before reacting. (I’m not sure what concretely they can achieve other than a slanging match, but taking a couple of days to think through how to respond to an increasingly unhinged but influential person doesn’t seem bad?)

Oxbridge essay culture involved lots of very stressed people (more than half from state school even in most unrepresentative bits of the system) doing mountains of reading and being held accountable for it several times a week. Oxbridge *political* culture otoh…

“playing hide and seek with the gamma ray source!”

It was safe! Sort of! (And provided you Did Not Remove Materials From Their Containers, when basically the fault is yours, nine year old).

Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory - Wikipedia

Idly imagined the various earlier technological revolutions handled handled as big firms are handling AI. And then remembered the “children’s atomic energy kit”: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert...

The combination of icky bloodthirstiness and human grief is… quite something. Achilles needs a slap though.

Just finished on audible, after the book featured in @samfr.bsky.social’s recommendations for last year. And I really enjoyed it. Shocked, shocked to find the version of the Iliad I had as a kid… was not this story. I’m very glad I got this one on audiobook, and the voice actor is terrific.

You say that like the overnight Catamaran to St Ives down the Manchester ship canal doesn’t exist. Which is sadly true.

This has to be true, but otoh, it’s like setting a target to “be happier”: doesn’t give much guidance to the specific things that will make you happy. And the proposals are contradictory: Less tax! Spend more! Fiscal Discipline! Better regulation! Fewer rules! Long term plan/emergency action!