What is the nature of meaning? This is one of the core questions on which the Vienna Circle, a group of early 20th century philosophers, took a stance. The kind of bumper sticker version of their answer is that a sentence only has meaning if it can be empirically verified (or tested, or confirmed, or… Continue reading Paper Review: The Regression of the Unstructural
Paper Review: Contribution to discussion on Probability
Probability can seem like a slippery notion. Indeed, though we have an intuitive notion of various aspects of probability, it took a long time for humanity to develop a rigorous formal theory. And even with the mathematics of probability on surer footing, the interpretation of probability -- what does it mean -- is still plagued… Continue reading Paper Review: Contribution to discussion on Probability
Paper Review: Essence and “Appearance”
Regardless of how one feels about Kant, it is undeniable that he had a profound influence on philosophy. I've recently been looking a little into the Vienna Circle, and it has been fun to explore how much the early thought of the Vienna Circle was driven by direct criticism of Kant's philosophy. In particular, one… Continue reading Paper Review: Essence and “Appearance”
Paper Review: Slowdown in Antarctic mass loss from solid Earth and sea-level feedbacks
One of the main concerns related to climate change is the rise of the sea level. Rising sea levels would affect coastal cities, which host a large proportion of the Earth's population. Thus, having a good handle on the time frame for rising sea levels is important for humanity to successfully adapt to climate change.… Continue reading Paper Review: Slowdown in Antarctic mass loss from solid Earth and sea-level feedbacks
Paper Review: Human-level performance in 3D multiplayer games with population-based reinforcement learning
I remember watching AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol in Go back in 2016 with my roommates and thinking that I was feeling how people must have felt when they watched the moon landing live. This is monumental. Since then, progress has not slowed down. Back in April OpenAI Five secured a decisive win against world champions… Continue reading Paper Review: Human-level performance in 3D multiplayer games with population-based reinforcement learning
Paper Review: The Semantics Latent in Shannon Entropy
One joke about philosophers is that we walk around all day just going, "what does it all mean?" Though it is a joke, some philosophers are concerned with meaning. I don't mean meaning in a kind of ethical, "why are we here?" sense (although some philosophers are concerned with that), but rather what we mean… Continue reading Paper Review: The Semantics Latent in Shannon Entropy
Paper Review: Asymmetric Population Games and the Legacy of Maynard Smith: From Evolution to Game Theory and Back?
One day you are walking along the street, and someone in front of you drops a $50 bill. Even though no one around is really paying attention, most of us will pick it up and give it back to the person. Why is that? Maybe it has something to do with morals in this case… Continue reading Paper Review: Asymmetric Population Games and the Legacy of Maynard Smith: From Evolution to Game Theory and Back?
Paper Review: Decision Theory Without Representation Theorems
Decision theory seeks to understand how rational agents should act. More specifically, I am talking about normative decision theory. There is also descriptive decision theory which tries to characterize how people in fact act. For this post (and most of my posts) I will focus on normative decision theory. Importantly, the "should" here is not… Continue reading Paper Review: Decision Theory Without Representation Theorems
Paper Review: Measurement Scales on the Continuum
Often we begin exploring a topic because we find it interesting, perhaps even mysterious. For example quantum mechanics gets a lot of play in the media these days -- probably because it is seen as puzzling, mysterious, even ineffable. There are perfectly coherent ways to understand quantum mechanics without sliding into mysticism, but that is… Continue reading Paper Review: Measurement Scales on the Continuum
Paper Review: Agreeing to Disagree
Can two rational people agree to disagree? This question seems really important to me. When having a conversation with a friend, for example, if we are both good-faith rational actors who are engaged in a collective truth-seeking endeavor (as is my hope!), is it possible that we can agree to disagree? Of course, in the… Continue reading Paper Review: Agreeing to Disagree
The Crow's Nest 