vankessel

7 ms·

1.
by vankessel 2y ago
Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to see this on Hacker News again! This remains my most popular post. I'm very glad about the interest in mathematics it continues to generate! --- To that one criticism, yes, there is no real "why&q
2.
by vankessel 5y ago
Yeah, I can't confirm it, but the weirdest I think I've seen is in r/science about research that was funded by the meat industry saying that a diet with meat is healthier than vegetarianism or veganism. The study was poorly d
3.
by vankessel 5y ago
I don't disagree with you, but Occam's razor is a principle; a guideline. Not a hard law. From the panpsychic perspective all matter is conscious making everything a "subjective observer," which solves the same problem o
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by vankessel 7y ago
Well, yes. Those examples were chosen to be cartoonish stereotypes. Extremely statistically unlikely events would look... strange, to say the least. Sort of like the flapping of a butterfly's wings resulting in a hurricane. Also there
5.
by vankessel 7y ago
Thank you. I really like the point you are making, but I am unsure about a lack of cause and effect. When I think of cause and effect, I think of it as taking the state of the universe from state t+0 to t+1 using the laws of physics. All of
6.
by vankessel 7y ago
But there must be a mechanism for the immortality shouldn't there be? Let's go back to the gun example quickly. (assuming a perfect gun, no misfires, or lucky non-fatal shots) If quantum immortality holds and the experiment is run
7.
by vankessel 7y ago
True, the doctor example is really just supposed to be segue into thinking about how a direct message could work. Although, perhaps facing death and recovering turns you into the kind of fellow who will live their life in a vastly different
8.
by vankessel 7y ago
My reasoning behind this was that there can be multiple futures where you could exist and experience, but some of them shorter than others. E.g. A------B \ --------C If you are travelling towards B, once you reach it, you die. But you can&
9.
Disprove quantum immortality without risking your life (2019)(vankessel.io)
53 points by vankessel 7y ago|61 comments
10.
by vankessel 7y ago
This is something I very recently was wondering existed. I was thinking of creating a vector logo for a project, and was curious if vector software was capable of defining relationships like you have done here. It would allow for easily det
11.
by vankessel 7y ago
Only because you have chosen for the learning rate to decrease over time so the model converges. You could reset it. I would even argue the LR is not relevant to plasticity, it's a meta-variable for training the model and not to do wit
12.
by vankessel 7y ago
That sounds like it would be very interesting. And while we can't extend our senses just yet, we may be able to swap them. I'm very curious if anyone has tried to use a space-filling Hilbert curve to transform vision into audio an
13.
by vankessel 7y ago
Use non spatial dimensions as well, like color, size, and shape. You can also use clever projections like t-sne to reduce the number of dimensions while retaining some of the structure of the data ( https://www.youtube.com/wa
14.
by vankessel 7y ago
Ah yeah I remember that from a while back, too bad it isn't out yet.
15.
by vankessel 7y ago
Tangential but I've always thought it may be possible for a human brain to experience higher spatial dimensions, it's just that all it ever experiences is 3. Imagine a video game is designed in 4 spatial dimensions and is fed dire
16.
How to Disprove Quantum Immortality (Without Risking Your Life)(vankessel.io)
1 points by vankessel 7y ago|0 comments
17.
by vankessel 7y ago
I personally think that the split-octonions[1] hold promise for physics. The subset of the split-octonions where the i, j, k, and l components are 0 have a metric that is similar to that of Minkowski space[2]. (t + xli + ylj + zlk) * (t
18.
by vankessel 7y ago
On the surface I like the idea of the knowledgeable and intelligent having more say, but I do not think it would work in practice. It is misleading to frame it as there being a "correct" weighing out there and that we just need to
19.
by vankessel 7y ago
Are you serious? That's a terrible idea. Every vote should counted equally as everyone should get to represent their own interests. This is the point of democracy. Taking rights away from those you view as "undesirables" is w
20.
by vankessel 7y ago
I'll expand my own take on this thought, borrowing a mathematical analogy I read recently. Take the real and complex numbers. The real numbers have the nice property that they are easy to order since they form a line. Given any two you
21.
How to Disprove Quantum Immortality (Without Risking Your Life)(vankessel.io)
1 points by vankessel 7y ago|1 comments
22.
by vankessel 8y ago
Thank you for the feedback. That is a very valid complaint and one that is hard to avoid because the complex numbers are basically derived by trying to solve equations like x^2 + 1 = 0. It may be a bit more geometrically intuitive to descri
23.
Visualizing Complex Functions(vankessel.io)
87 points by vankessel 8y ago|26 comments
24.
by vankessel 8y ago
Shameless self promotion https://vankessel.io Still have work to do on it, but I would love to hear feedback.
25.
by vankessel 8y ago
I am curious if this has any relation to saccades. It feels to me like it would be easier to retain attention on a moving object than a stationary one. Not substantial but found this in a quick search of any support for this conjecture: ht
26.
by vankessel 8y ago
It's not necessarily a waste of time. The poster says they're from Hong Kong, English could be their second language. They may not realize the mistake and if no one points it out they may never have the chance to learn.
27.
by vankessel 8y ago
Fantastic paper, glad to see it is so powerful! I'm just graduating as a computer scientist and independently came up with a very similar idea. Nice to see it validated, especially with it solving previously unsolved problems. Called t