Thore Husfeldt > Recent Status Updates

Surprisingly useful. Very nice.

The typeface of the DVA hardcover is Adobe Jenson—very nice, and thematically consistent with the book’s humanist values. Unfortunately binding is shoddy, cut-and-glued and adds to the gloomy decline-of-the-occident feeling.

So far, a pretty good distillate of E.O. Wilson, Pinker, Cochran–Harpending, Popper, Wade, Acemoglu–Robinson, Max Weber, Landes, etc.

I hate myself.

Mind = blown. Again. “Hence, paradoxically, it requires creativity to thrive in a static society – creativity that enables one to be less innovative than other people. And that is how primitive, static societies […] constituted environments that strongly favoured the evolution of an ever-greater ability to innovate.”

Deutsch continues to blow my mind. Chapter XIII, on social choice, contains nothing less than a principled and lucid rejection of political compromise (!). (There is also the Popperian rejection of representative election systems, which of course makes complete sense from Deutsch’s perspectives.) Good policies are hard to vary and mix, and therefore incompatible with coalition governments. Bam-wham-slam!

Deutsch continues to blow my mind. Chapter XIII, on social choice, contains nothing less than a principled and lucid rejection of political compromise (!). (There is also the Popperian rejection of representative election systems, which of course makes complete sense from Deutsch’s perspectives.) Good policies are hard to vary and mix, and therefore incompatible with compromise. Bam-wham-slam!

Ah, Deutsch on mathematics: “[F]inding proofs is not the nature of mathematics: it is merely one of the methods of mathematics.” Exactly. And he even goes on to mention the P vs. NP question. I think that’s exactly correct. We should view “P is not NP” not as an open problem, but as an explanation. Science is about explanations. Very nice.

Ah, Deutsch on mathematics: “[F]inding proofs is not the nature of mathematics: it is merely one of the methods of mathematics.” Exactly. And he even goes on to mention the P vs. NP question. I think that’s exactly correct. We should view “P is not NP” not as an open problem, but as an explanation. Science is about explanations. Very nice.

Ah, Deutsch on mathematics: “[F]inding proofs is not the nature of mathematics”: it is merely one of the methods of mathematics.” Exactly. And he even goes on to mention the P vs. NP question. I think that’s exactly correct. We should view “P is not NP” not as an open problem, but as an explanation. Science is about explanations. Very nice.

What just happened? Really? Totes amazeballs lame-O, if true.

This is how much success the quest for ‘machines that think’ had achieved in the fifty-eight years following Turing’s paper: nil.

Disappointing so far. It’s just words. In Graeber’s own words, “This book is not, precisely an outline for [a left critique of bureaucracy]. Neither is it in any sense an attempt to develop a general theory of bureaucracy, a history of bureaucracy, or even of the current age of total bureaucracy. It is a collection of essays[…]”. More like a collection of rants.

Dawkins reminisces about New Year at 1 Jan 1980, scolding himself for misremembering the date: It was actually 1 Jan 1981: “So detailed and full were my recollections of ‘seeing the new decade in,’ it took multiple documentary evidence […] to finally convince me […] that my memory was faulty.” [p.45]

I can solve that for you. The decade did begin 1981, which he knew back then, but terminology has changed since.