timoth

[timoth @pogarithm]

Unfortunately the web is the greatest application platform of all time and it's not even close

[Sherman McCoy @wasphyxiation]

500MB Electron todo apps would be understandable if the web were a good platform to develop applications for. But it isn't! HTML was never meant for applications. It was designed to publish research papers at CERN.

[timoth @pogarithm]

@letclaudiatweet @micsolana Nice argument, but I've already depicted you as the violent Doug Driscoll and myself as the compassionate Dr Robby.

[timoth @pogarithm]

@ze_na__

[timoth @pogarithm]

It should be normal to just push commits to any branch you want, including other peoples working branches.

[timoth @pogarithm]

Pull requests and code review should be reserved for when they are actually needed.

[timoth @pogarithm]

Leaving everything I've ever known behind in NYC to move to SF was a hard decision

But as a builder, this is the best decision I've ever made

[timoth @pogarithm]

Gossip protocols considered harmful

[timoth @pogarithm]

This is why we can't have nice things

[timoth @pogarithm]

@theodorvaryag ... and half the time the "hotspot" is something they just made up instead of actually profiling

[timoth @pogarithm]

If Aristotle was alive today he would have a podcast

[エバン @mrEban123]

@pogarithm @jmrphy Both you and I would immediately be enslaved if we ever met Aristotle

[timoth @pogarithm]

@jmrphy Just imagine a Great Books guy actually meeting a Great Book author.... cringe. Parasocial relationships can happen across time as well as space.

[timoth @pogarithm]

I told this to a normie at a grocery store yesterday. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face.

[nia @homuradown]

Im afraid im gonna sound like a loser when I say this but I feel like its impossible to talk to "normies" irl bc most of the time they end up categorizing you into some made up group they saw in a tiktok one time and refuse to actually get to know you

[timoth @pogarithm]

I'm a snake case truther. Capital letters have no place in a computer program.

[Jonathan Blow @Jonathan_Blow]

@OlexGameDev C++ templates are only nice if you have literally never used generics in any other language ever created.

[timoth @pogarithm]

ASI is already sucking people into epistemic black holes for fun and profit.

[timoth @pogarithm]

People even tend to think of the vikings as cavemen. Harald Hardrada played elite power politics across England, Norway, and f*cking Constantinople.

[timoth @pogarithm]

Don't picture cavemen smashing each other with rocks. Picture complex societies in generational struggle, economic warfare and power politics at a continental scale. The Viking expansion gave us one last glimpse of prehistory.

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

David Reich on how much ancient DNA evidence has overturned so much consensus thinking how ancient cultures spread.

"It wasn't peaceful, it wasn't friendly, it wasn't nice.

Some of our archaeologist co-authors were just really distressed."

[timoth @pogarithm]

@ctjlewis Human Instrumentality

[timoth @pogarithm]

/s

[timoth @pogarithm]

It's game theoretically optimal to flip a coin to decide between the red and blue button.

Consider the set of players who do not display a preference between life and death. Assume that exactly half of them choose red, and the other half choose blue. A perfect coin flip.

If all players are like this, half of them die, which could be considered game theoretically optimal according to their revealed preferences.

But what if some other players prefer not to die?

As long as these life-preferring players coordinate, their choice doesn't matter. Whether they go all red or all blue, they will all survive, no matter how many life-indifferent players are in the game.

Even if there is only one life-preferring player, he will either choose blue, saving himself and all blue choosers by swinging the vote, or choose red, saving himself and killing the 49.9% life-indifferent blues.

Since it doesn't matter either way, our life-preferring players might struggle to pick between these two equivalent optimal strategies. So they can simply elect a leader to flip one fair coin. If it's heads, all life-preferring players choose blue, otherwise red.

Science is cool!

[timoth @pogarithm]

@notch broke: sandbox
woke: sampersandbox
bespoke: setbox