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vansulon Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?

Michael Nielsen (one of the creators of quantum.country, often cited as a feedback-giver on PG's essays) has a short blog post introducing and exploring Lisp here:

https://michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells-equation...

Its on the more academic side and focuses on the Scheme dialect, but is well-written

vansulon Tips for Founders Doing Sales (From a Founder)

Most important realisation for me personally: keep emailing.

As an introverted dev trying to sell I often assume silence means they don't care and they hate me. I've learnt this is almost always wrong - the recipient is typically just busy or indecisive. Stay polite/respectful/human but keep at them and don't let the void kill you.

Still figuring out the details but getting over that was quite a profound feeling and has turned out pretty useful in life generally

vansulon Magic mushrooms are changing the lives of terminal cancer patients

Erowid is absolutely one of my favourite places on the web

vansulon Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

Great interview! Rebecca Goldstein never fails to kindle my interests in philosophy. Science really needs people like her, she pulls the rug out from under us but does it from a place of love. Her ability to communicate makes a huge difference also.

vansulon Dusk is a 90s style shooter from the mind of a teenager (2016)

David OReilly wrote a nice essay covering the 'less is more' philosophy in 3d art ('Basic Animation Aesthetics' -pdf can be found here: http://www.davidoreilly.com/downloads)

He's done a bunch of great animations (eg The External World, The Horse Raised by Spheres - youtube) and games (Mountain, EVERYTHING - steam/consoles) that epitomize it imo - very worth a watch/play

vansulon Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)

This[0] was posted up on here a while ago - has some good book recommendations for teaching yourself maths (assuming you remember some basics from school[1]).

I got a few of them and whilst they may have gathered some dust... They seem great! Also obliged to recommend Khan Academy and the 3Blue1Brown youtube channel - but they are probably best for fun/inspiration

[0] 'Mathematics for the adventurous self-learner' -https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner

[1] If I knew zero maths I'd probably check out the basics on Khan Academy or maybe get a tutor

vansulon Is the World Getting Safer?

The Doomsday clock idea has a lot of respectable people behind it but I've always been unclear how it isn't just a bias-o-meter.

Kahneman and others have done a lot of persuasive work examining how experts are often quite bad at judgement/prediction. How can we be sure the Doomsday Clock actually means anything substantive (as compared to data)?

vansulon Why books don't work (2019)

Thanks for the resources! I'll check them out, I find this area really fascinating

vansulon Why books don't work (2019)

Jonathan Blow recently streamed a talk called 'Video Games and the Future of Education'[0] that makes similar arguments.

He discusses various tools we have to transmit knowledge from teacher to student and argues that games really shine as away to trick people into 'learning by doing'. He's sharply critical of existing educational games and really lays into 'gamification' as a concept.

The talk certainly left me hearing that echo that the author alludes to.

Books are great.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFScmtiC44

vansulon I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

Apologies I spoke too soon, you're absolutely right that the volume is an impressive achievement.

vansulon I was excited for Neuralink, then I watched the demo

To me (neuro undergrad, comp sci masters), the demo seemed underwhelming but encouraging. As far as I can tell the tech was not doing anything particularly novel and the 'fitbit in your skull' analogy was personally uninspiring. [edit: the volume of reads /form factor is a step forward]

That said, the demo was mostly for attracting talent - lots of money and a great team will likely get them somewhere. In terms of their long term goals I expect the area that will give them the most trouble is reading/writing interesting stuff on the cortex. Neural coding is really hard and poorly understood.

vansulon Most common mistakes during interviews

How useful are interviews in general? I've been led to believe that an interview is a very poor indicator of future performance[0], and that an interview biases the hiring decision in typically negative ways.

[0] https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-moral...

vansulon College Notebook of Isaac Newton

I love this book. They currently have his 1659-61 notebook on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (scan available at [0])

Its opened on a page titled ‘Otiose et frustra expensa’ (Idle and vain expenses) where he lists his snack binges (including ‘cheries’, ‘Tarte’, ‘Marmolet’, ‘Custardes’, and ‘Cake bred).

[0] https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/uv/view.php?n=R.4...

vansulon How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

Overfishing aside I believe cephalopods (such as squid) are expected to thrive relative to other marine creatures - they seem to be well poised to adapt in response to rising ocean acidification/CO2 and decreasing fish stocks

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-squid-climate.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/23/octopuse...

vansulon Leveraging machine learning to fuel new discoveries with the ArXiv dataset

Very cool, I really look forward to seeing science move forward along these paths. All the same - have to post the obligatory (and recent) xkcd rebuttal- https://xkcd.com/2341/