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I've read "Debt" and responded more fully here [1].

But I'm curious: given your reading of "Debt", what ordering would you change in my post besides the myth of barter? My sense is that people are reacting to the first couple sentences and missing the entire rest of the post. I don't really see how Graeber is related to the Fed funds rate or currency pegs, e.g. Of course money is political, and I could have framed everything in terms of state violence and control, but that's essentially a different blog post. I don't think that adds a lot of clarity for what mechanically happens at Jackson Hole. Happy to hear how I'm wrong.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49785213

gwgundersenon The Hierarchy of Money

This is a fair point, and rhymes with other commentators’ feedback. I could have started with `Obligation -> Debt -> Money`, for example, and that strikes me as a better beginning. People need money to pay their debts, and this theme would re-appear at various levels of the hierarchy: the villager needs stones to pay taxes, the village needs black money to pay tribute, and so forth. I think this would add meaningful nuance to the "just so" motivations; money isn't solely motivated by trade but also by social obligations and political power.

That said, I would not find a full Graeber-ization helpful. It wouldn't change the structure of the post, and I don't think Graeber's framework is useful for understanding much of the content, such as the Fed funds rate, the intra-bank clearinghouse, or correspondent banking.

gwgundersenon The Hierarchy of Money

I’m happy to hear criticism and to learn from that, but I wrote this myself. Took quite a while.

Re: why, I don’t think most people understand the very basics of the global economy in mechanical terms, and this was my attempt to explain those mechanics. I wanted the various pieces of the system to be motivated by understandable problems, hence the fable-like story.

I now see some folks were triggered by this stylized approach. Which is a pity. I think the simple setup is worth the payoff. My explanation of money creation, for example, matches the Bank of England’s whitepaper, and I am especially pleased with how the idea of a reserve currency both develops naturally and rhymes with earlier ideas lower in the hierarchy.

gwgundersenon An Intuitive Explanation of Black–Scholes

2) Thanks for pointing this out. I've fixed.

gwgundersenon An Intuitive Explanation of Black–Scholes

Thanks! I'll fix this.

gwgundersenon Proof of the Singular Value Decomposition

I have a theory that whatever popularity my blog has comes from writing to the level of the reader. My favorite example of the opposite behavior is how every blog post on a topic involving Bayesian inference seemingly must start with Bayes’ formula.

gwgundersenon The fastest math typesetting library for the web

I really like Katex. I used to use MathJax for my blog, but the page reflow was annoying. Now I use Katex with server-side rendering, and even pages with a lot of math load quickly and without reflow.

gwgundersenon Seven sins of numerical linear algebra

There are many good resources! A few, depending on your inclination:

- For intuition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNk_zzaMoSs

- For rigor: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010...

- For code: https://codingthematrix.com/

- For numerical/algorithmic details: https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/text.html

gwgundersenon Seven sins of numerical linear algebra

Re: the first sin, I was told to not invert matrices but never given a satisfying reason. So I wrote a blog post about it:

http://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2020/12/09/matrix-inversion...

gwgundersenon Ask HN: Share your personal site

Thank you!

gwgundersenon Ask HN: Share your personal site

https://gregorygundersen.com/blog/

Simple research blog on ML, stats, etc.

gwgundersenon Introduction to Convolutional Neural Networks

I didn't implement a CNN from scratch, but a few years ago, I wrote a blog post on CNNs [1] because, like the other commenters, I could find almost no decent blog content on what exactly a CNN was. Maybe it will help in your efforts.

[1] http://gregorygundersen.com/blog/2017/02/24/cnns/

gwgundersenon Doing something is better than doing nothing for most people: study (2014)

Ever since reading Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness", I've thought a lot about the importance of being able to sit inside my own head. One quote that I wrote down:

> A life too full of excitement is an exhausting life, in which continually stronger stimuli are needed to give the thrill that has come to be thought an essential part of pleasure. A person accustomed to too much excitement is like a person with a morbid craving for pepper, who comes at last to be unable even to taste a quantity of pepper which would cause anyone else to choke. There is an element of boredom which is inseparable from the avoidance of too much excitement, and too much excitement not only undermines the health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty... A certain power of enduring boredom is therefore essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young.

gwgundersenon Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

I like this framing.

In graduate school, I worked for 2+ years before my first paper was published. In that time, I passed my PhD qualifying exam, took classes, wrote code, read papers, learned math, and so forth. Yet when I applied for internships, I received no interest from employers. I suspect this was because I had no concrete signal that I knew anything in my field.

While working on my second paper, I started blogging. In the language of this article, I started generating public intellectual capital for myself. I have definitely experienced the effects of this capital on subsequent job hunts. Now I can point people to my blog to demonstrate knowledge, technical skills, and communication skills beyond the scope of my peer-reviewed work. Furthermore, there is no question about who contributed to my blog, and when I learn something new, I can externalize that quickly.

gwgundersenon It's Time to Start Writing (2019)

This is great. I've written previously about why I write as a researcher [1], but none of my reasons were this author's reason: that narrative structure clarifies understanding. This resonates with me because I've noticed that I remember blog posts better, that I understand the topic deeper, if I really flesh it out with narrative writing: why this model, who developed it, what are the alternatives, etc. It often feels like a waste of time initially, but I almost always find that the process makes me realize there are details I initially missed.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792

gwgundersenon Ask HN: How can I pick a side project and stick with it?

This is good advice, and both parts rely on being aware of your own mind and even tricking it a bit. This reminded me of a Moxie story about nearly dying while sailing [1]:

> Strangely, I could feel myself drawn towards the temptation of giving up, even though I knew failure meant certain death. In hindsight, I think it's because the act of giving up feels so similar to the sensation of success, at least in a superficially immediate way.

Over the years, the mantra that "giving up feels like success" has really helped me not give up simply to access that feeling.

[1] https://moxie.org/stories/brink-of-death/

gwgundersenon Building personal search infrastructure for your knowledge and code

This sounds a lot like a tool I built for myself [1], sans the database. I agree that Markdown + Katex with a local server seems like the right move for most technical people. Lots of things like encryption, backups, and basic text search can be done via other Unix tools. I also agree that the big win is owning your data long-term, even if you get tired of maintaining the software.

[1] https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno

gwgundersenon Why I Keep a Research Blog

I didn't want to make the post overly long by adding a section on "failure modes," but certainly one of them is: spend a long time building and tweaking a blog rather than writing. I've done this too and work to avoid it.

gwgundersenon Why I Keep a Research Blog

Thanks Chris!

gwgundersenon Why I Keep a Research Blog

I write drafts in Markdown + MathJax and then build everything into a static site using Jekyll. I didn't use a theme or template, since I found most were too noisy. It's just custom HTML/CSS.

gwgundersenon Why I Keep a Research Blog

I just use Jekyll to build a static site (Markdown + MathJax). I wrote the HTML/CSS myself, but maybe I can put the "theme" on GitHub later today.

gwgundersenon Why I Keep a Research Blog

Hey, it sounds like you're still programming. Glad to hear it's going well!