January 2025 updates
Happy new year! Some general updates:
- I'm going to be visiting the fellas from the book club in New Zealand in late January/early February. If any of you legends are down there give me a shout!
- I made my statistics zettelkasten public, which is a kind of personal wiki for statistics and probability. I'm not convinced about its value for other people, but it's been helpful for me. Making it public is an experiment. You guys are the first people I'm sharing this with, so let me know if you find any bugs. My SEO rankings have plummeted in the last few days and I'm not sure why. Probably I'm being cancelled by Google because this is such a good idea.
- I made an end-of-the-world bet with Greg Colbourn. I gave him $1,000 USD in December 2024, and he'll give me $2,000 USD in January 2030. He thinks there's a substantial chance that AI kills us all before then, so he'd rather have $1,000 now. I'm happy to bet other people, so if you know any doomsters (or are one yourself) let me know!
Writing
Two short essays:
- Some thoughts on two different ways of doing math: Math as engineering vs math as discovery
- On moving and community. Thoughts on some of the hidden (maybe?) costs of moving a lot. I'm not entirely satisfied with how I explored this so I'll consider it a first attempt for now.
Math stuff
(Okay not much this time admittedly, but hopefully the zettelkasten makes up for it. And hey, it was Christmas.)
Recommendations
- Stewart Brand's open source book.
- Cam Peters on Polynesian genetics.
- Sasha Chapin on how to like everything more. I'm not actually sure what I think of all his answers, but I think the question is fascinating and weirdly under-discussed.
- I spend a lot of time (too much, almost certainly) reading Cosma Shalizi's online notebook. It's probably only of interest to math nerds like me, but who knows.
- Spencer Greenberg interviews a sociopath and it's fascinating.
Much love,
- ben
PS. I hope those of you in California are okay. Pittsburgh is far away but you can probably crash on my couch if you had to leave your home and need a free (small, textbook-ridden) place to crash for a week or two to sort things out.
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