It seems the wind is now blowing in the direction of community-building, in various small pockets of society.
I have been learning a lot, through such communities, over the past few days.
But, as an eccentric-yet-wise elder said, “I learnt a lot. But by the time I learnt a lot, I am dying. So I wrote a book to pass on what I have learnt.”
This is by way of passing it on.
P. S. I am grateful for no Covid lock-down today. shivers at the thought.
music
The young pianists – twenty-somethings, they looked like – were performing on either a Steinway or a Fazioli: grand pianos. Bach, and Liszt, and Mozart seemed to be popular choices. One of the pianists even nourished the audience with her own composition, a piece for a small ensemble: 1 harp, 2 cellos, 2 double basses, 1 percussion (drums), 1 horn, 1 flute, 1 clarinet.
That pianist-composer thanked God for holding her hand while walking through difficult times. She shared that her hands had suffered an injury while preparing for a performance.
Don't bother with what my fellow fisherman said. I thought he was my friend, but really, he's just an unpleasant boy who happens to be housed in the classroom as me.
I'm thoroughly embarrassed by his behaviour. I won't repeat the same words that he used to insult you.
I will remove him from my life once I have no further use for him.
Dear fish, tell me more about you.
Who are your parents? Did you always spend your life in this canal, or did you come from somewhere farther away?
It's so strange. The air that sustains me, out of water – it suffocates you. The water you swim in – that's your amniotic fluid – it drowns me.
O fish, you are my sibling, my cousin. We come from the same Father. Sorry that I put a hook into your lip. Will you forgive me? I didn't know any better.
It's nice to attend to one's biological needs in the privacy of a toilet. However, city-life does not always promise that a toilet will be nearby when one needs to defecate. Or, even if a toilet is nearby, it may be fully occupied.
What, then?
As things turned out, the call of nature has resulted in screaming outrage, reflected in news articles.
I love a challenging Final Boss
High difficulty means high reward
But all my strategies cease
When you, my beloved Final Boss, dies
I’ve killed you, yes —
And then, what am I left with?
What am I left with?
“Don’t die now,” I whisper, ”It’s been too fun”
“Thank you for playing,” they callously applaud
“What’s next?” my brain blindly gropes
Hi everyone! This Thursday 4-5pm, we have Elliott Thornley, a visiting Research Fellow from Oxford University, speaking on the topic of “Can incomplete preferences keep artificial agents shutdownable?”
In this event, Elliot will explain the shutdown problem: the problem of ensuring that advanced artificial agents never resist shutdown. Elliot will then propose a solution: we train agents to have incomplete preferences. He will suggest a method for training such agents using reinforcement learning, and present experimental evidence in favour of the method. He will explain how work on the shutdown problem fits into a larger project called ‘constructive decision theory’: using ideas from decision theory to design and train artificial agents.
