Youth corruptor. Mathematician. Father. The Fool. Player of Games.
Jul 17, 2020 • 41 tweets • 8 min read
Thread: Chinese government blockchain blue paper
Literally what it says: what seems like a real attempt for the Chinese government to "blockchain" governance. This looks super fun and intriguing, so I'm going to read it and make live comments / translations as I read.
p1: wow. "Blockchain, due to its system of trust, is going to be the foundation of digital finance and society.. and become key in new integrated information technology... accelerating "programmable society." So... futuristic!
2/
Jul 7, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Thread: We Already Have a Social Credit Score
tl;dr: (in the same way we have utility functions - by backsolving)
Unpopular opinion that I actually believe: it’s dumb to make fun of China’s social credit score system since we (the United States) already has one. 1/
Premise:
1. We have different types of “records” that can be checked at different costs. 2. We disallow / allow people to do certain things if certain items are on-record.
Proposition: 1 + 2 means I can probably solve for numbers to back out an actual social credit score(s). 2/
Jun 9, 2020 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
Thread re: @TheOtherHaider to untangle a very personal traumatic experience that I am still working to overcome.
tl;dr: I have no regrets, except this single experience that represents a force in the world that is powerful, destructive, and unnerving.
Nearly 100% of people w/ my background (elite-level math BA and PhD degrees) either went to high-tier (R1) research universities or exitted into finance, tech, or startups. I work at a state school and barely pay the bills. I am fulfilled by my job and side projects.
2/
May 26, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Thread on Youtube censorship.
Grabbed ex-YT friend (anonymized) to discuss today. They disclaimed that they do not work directly on this, but their hypothesis makes more sense to me than Conspiracy Twitter (Original convo QTed, where I make some guesses that I still stand by) 1/
We (friend + me) currently model the anti-spam anti-bot stuff at Twitter as an interlocking system, which lots of different levers that inform each other. We do not think there's just some monolithic dude that just sits and censors words, since that doesn't scale. 2/
Apr 20, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Thread to explain why Conway gets no recognition.
Thesis: what is considered "important" in pure mathematics is purely a social construct. Corollary: why Conway doesn't get recognition from mathematicians.
First, pure mathematicians are not (usually) conspiring to make pyramid schemes -- in fact, most of them are good-hearted people earnestly trying to ask themselves fundamental questions. However, this does not mean they're immune to groupthink and idea-incest. 2/
