Andreas

You bet I'm fun at parties.

[Andreas @andreaja]

Empirical observation is a cheat code for knowing things

[Andreas @andreaja]

Counting is hard, Github edition

[Andreas @andreaja]

Take a shot every time Claude says you're absolutely right

[Andreas @andreaja]

@Flagdoku Sucre, not La Paz, is the capital of today’s flag, threw me off the trail 😅

[Andreas @andreaja]

@GroupMe @GroupMeSupport What's up with the web signin just redirecting to download the app? Not being able to use the web client is pretty awful UX.

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

1/@EpochAIResearch doubles down on preiction AI will drive 20%+ annual GDP growth. Economists remain skeptical.
This is the defining debate of today: AI builders see infinite prosperity ahead. Economists see the same limits that constrained every technological revolution.🧵 1/13

[Andreas @andreaja]

Piano burning has its own wikipedia page: https://t.co/MAXlWc1vNS

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

@TommyGriffith I think I am feeling what the first professor to discover grad students felt.

[Tanishq Mathew Abraham, Ph.D. @iScienceLuvr]

Language Models Use Trigonometry to Do Addition

"We first discover that numbers are represented in these LLMs as a generalized helix, which is strongly causally implicated for the tasks of addition and subtraction, and is also causally relevant for integer division, multiplication, and modular arithmetic. We
then propose that LLMs compute addition by manipulating this generalized helix using the “Clock” algorithm: to solve a + b, the helices for a and b are manipulated to produce the a + b answer helix which is then read out to model logits. "

[Andreas @andreaja]

Dwarkesh on China: https://t.co/a4yDzk1Rzm

Interesting throughout. Given the Hearts and Minds section, should we update in favor of John Cena?

[Katherine Dee 🐬/acc @default_friend]

Social media basically brought us to something like an oral culture:

- We're not illiterate in the sense that we can't read, our writing approximates our speaking
- Our writing isn't as complex because it doesn't function like text used to
- We both archive everything and trust our collective memory -- everything is saved, bookmarked, etc. but never revisited (when was the last time you bookmarked a website or even checked your own likes?)
- For information to be remembered it has to be recirculated, repeated, or go viral or we forget because time moves so fast (similar to storytelling?)
- You can't look things up easily because we live in a perpetual now -- if you don't understand the context of the discourse, you need to ask someone to catch you up
- This also makes society very participatory
- This has weird knock-on effects like needing to *always* be online to know what's going on in the world - you can't just hermit away and study, at a minimum you're lurking
- Because of the way the Internet treats time, when we do revisit the past, it's marked by events vs. actual moments in time - do you remember 2017 or what was meme-worthy then?
- There's always a current thing
- Language evolves quickly; things feel dated quickly
- We determine if things are truthfulness through vibes/tribal consensus - there are authorities but they're cults of personality vs. institutions
- You can't "just learn" things, you need to be in the right networks
- Memes, copypastas, etc. are very similar to oral cultures
- I actually don't know if any of this is right so feel free to correct me

[Andreas @andreaja]

If your site has endless scroll and important links in the footer, you're getting a lump of coal for Christmas.

[Andreas @andreaja]

@TrondEndrestol @ChristinGorman It totally is for efficiency. Saved around 100 mnok per year.

[Andreas @andreaja]

@ChristinGorman Som DHIS2? 🤔

[Andreas @andreaja]

@Flagdoku Doh, I got so focused on the first band red I completely forget the two color rule 🤦

[Andreas @andreaja]

@Flagdoku 🤨

[Spencer Greenberg 🔍 @SpencrGreenberg]

Does astrology work? We tested the ability of 152 astrologers to see if they could demonstrate genuine astrological skill.

Here is how the study was designed and what we found (including a result that really surprised me):

🧵

[Andreas @andreaja]

@Flagdoku Yeah, that worked 👍

[Andreas @andreaja]

@Flagdoku was there a change in today's rules at some point? I had Sierra Leone as today's flag this morning.

[Rob Knight @rob_knight]

What these things always seem to miss is that there's a difference between being well-read, reflective, and valuing historically and culturally-diverse knowledge, and taking some random humanities courses.