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Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Feb 28, 2019

Imagine a black box which, when you pressed a button, would generate a scientific hypothesis. 50% of its hypotheses are false; 50% are true hypotheses as game-changing and elegant as relativity. Even despite the error rate, it’s easy to see this box would quickly surpass space capsules, da Vinci paintings, and printer...


Feb 28, 2019

[Epistemic status: I am basing this on widely-accepted published research, but I can’t guarantee I’ve understood the research right or managed to emphasize/believe the right people. Some light editing to bring in important points people raised in the comments.]

You all know this graph:

 

 

Median wages tracked...


Feb 23, 2019

[This post is having major technical issues. Some comments may not be appearing. If you can’t comment, please say so on the subreddit.]

I. I Come To Praise Caesar, Not To Bury Him

Several years ago, an SSC reader made an r/slatestarcodex subreddit for discussion of blog posts here and related topics. As per the 


Feb 22, 2019

I was going back over yesterday’s post, and something sounded familiar about this paragraph:

A very careless plagiarist takes someone else’s work and copies it verbatim: “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”. A more careful plagiarist takes the work and changes a few words around: “The mitochondria...


Feb 21, 2019

A machine learning researcher writes me in response to yesterday’s post, saying:

I still think GPT-2 is a brute-force statistical pattern matcher which blends up the internet and gives you back a slightly unappetizing slurry of it when asked.

I resisted the urge to answer “Yeah, well, your mom is a brute-force...