Solomon's Cairn

“And on the pedestal these words appear Time Now: 10:10 End Time: 10:25 Look upon thy work ye students And despair”

While waiting to have lunch with my local Effective Altruism chapter today, I had a run-in with a close friend, a mathematician, with whom I speak frankly and openly (hi Aaron!).  We scarcely had time to talk, but he breathlessly encouraged me to check out the NYT piece 'Bad Art Friend' which he summarized as a writer donating her kidney as an Effective Altruist cause, while actually wanting attention.  I don't read articles from the octopus as a rule, but I made an exception for a friend. I won't link the article here. If you're the terminally-online sort who's followed the story, you don't need me telling you about it, and if you aren't, you won't get anything from the Times coverage.  (I would, however, pay good money for a linguist to explain why 'bad art friend' and similar terms have such a distinct woke/coastal American sense to them) In summary: An author named Dorland donated her kidney and made sure everyone knew about it. She wa...

Last night I had an extremely strange, mystic dream, which I shall now relate. I now have some sympathy for people in premodern times who had strange and vivd visions in their sleep, and used them as the basis for some decision or action. It's a lot weirder being on the receiving end than expected. Perhaps it has something to do with the vaccine, which I got a dose of just that morning. Maybe my 5G is finally working. ----------- In the afterlife, one's life is judged and classified not by good or evil, by law or chaos, but by Tragedy or Comedy. They are color-coded for your convenience. I was ferried into the underworld aboard an airborne Higgins boat (there was no sign of any ferryman or conductor) which brought us to a floating island. I say us, for I was not alone; I was accompanied by a nameless woman. We looked at each other, as if for reassurance, and stepped into the otherworld. The landing of the afterlife is bathed in the blue shadows of tragedy, and we were greeted b...

After the winners of the ACX Book Review Contest were announced, I took a closer look at the gold medalist, Lars Doucet's review of Henry George's Progress and Poverty . Reading it, I was surprised to find the outline of a birds-eye political philosophy which didn't make me want to tear my hair out. I brought this up with family, and immediately got stuck on whether or not Bitcoin counted as Wealth in the Georgist framework, as expected.  So before I read the text itself, I wanted to jot down some early thoughts. Much of this post is taken directly from Doucet's review.  First, I'll need to examine George's definition of Wealth, why money doesn't fit the bill, and what it means for money to be a claim on wealth, and whether digital currencies are closer to dollars or gold bars. This has less to do with Georgism and more with settling a personal argument. Second, before Georgism, the high-level political philosophy which made the most sense to me was David F...

In the odd moments I peek out of my bubble and into the battlefield of the Culture War, I find myself fascinated by the turns of phrase, standard arguments and stylistic choices common to each army. Then the shells come flying my way and I jump back in the trench. But between those moments, I wonder at those cultural tics. Birds on a wire in Cataluña One such phrase, which I primarily see used by Blue forces, is, 'my truth.' Besides being in the title of an upbeat 2004 single and a 2020 sexual abuse documentary, it's fairly common to hear as an affirmation, especially in the context of 'living my truth', or as an exhortation to 'speak your truth.' It looks to have been given a boost in 2018 by  Oprah , although it's much older, and Google Ngram tells me that we're at a local maximum for its use in texts, so I can say with some confidence that the phrase is in the ascendant.  It took me a little while to notice I had an emotional reaction to the phra...

Below I reproduce a short exchange I had with frequent LessWrong commenter Viliam last week on this thread .  Some thoughts on the thread in retrospect: I come from a position in stark opposition to 'intersectionality' and similar notions arising from critical theory, and would ordinarily be content to dismiss it out of hand. However, in the recent past I've had to reconsider a similar position regarding the whole body of postmodern philosophy and related studies, owing to the writings of David Chapman (see this article and this comment ), which find part of their base in postmodern and critical figures, most prominently Heidegger and Foucault, and make the case that those thinkers were, in fact, very careful and profound, but that their insights were diluted both by the fashionable nonsense styles they wrote in and by their successors, who were not trained in the Western rational corpus before attempting to reform (or destroy) it.  This by no means invalidates criticisms ...

The current draft of the new California Mathematics Framework emphasizes the importance of word problems which maintain and reproduce equitable structures and represent real-life uses of mathematics. Seeing that previously available mathematics textbooks entirely exclude the lived experiences of marginalized people and do not address the daily needs of Californians, I humbly submit the following word problems for consideration.  Word problems! My favorite! 1. During their 5-year-old child Ostrich's gender reveal party, Theo, Lennie and Dash light an out of control fire. If 50 folx attended, 12% are killed, 34% are non-fatally injured, and 54% escape, how many Hallmark cards will the throuple have to send? 2. Lori weighs herself on several different scales, with different units, including lbs, kgs, stones, and carats. Discuss how dimensional quantities allow people of size to take control of their identities and effect change in the world.  3. 20 undocumented prospective resi...