Math

I’ve been thinking about math a lot recently. Learning it has become a bit of an obsession.
I’ve come to believe that there is a fundamental mistake in the way society conceptualizes math.

“You need it for physics, engineering, computer graphics…”
“It’s a subject at school. Pass the exam and forget it.”
or even “it’s the study of things [...]

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I’ve come a long way, baby

It has been a few months since I posted here, and surprisingly much water has gone under the bridge. For most of my enlightenment, I owe Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is much smarter than me and something of a hero. (He’s also an autodidact. I will catch up to you!)
The two largest changes: I have come [...]

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A rule for creating rules for organizing a Libertarian society

I’m reading Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”. I haven’t got very far in yet, but I’m at the part where he describes the early shift from economic liberalism (at its most successful peak) to socialist hubris. He explains that 19th century economic liberal “rules of thumb” were crude and overbroad, and their manifest problems caused [...]

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Making decisions on the basis of technology that hasn’t happened yet

Nick Szabo over at Unenumerated proposes a means to differentiate science fiction from imminent technology. In essence: require that if the exact form of the technology can’t be defined, then at least the experiments needed to resolve its unknowns can be defined. (For example, SENS meets this criterion.)
Personally I’d say this is a start, but [...]

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An idea for age prediction markets

Suppose I want to raise money for anti-aging research. A good tool would a prediction market for longevity. But how to achieve it?
I have an idea: the one-living-person-only repayment contract.
How it works: you sell a promise to pay one named living person ONLY, a fixed sum at a fixed gap into the future (eg: £10 [...]

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