I just finished The Story of Civilization, Vol. 1 (1976) by Will Durant. It’s a fantastic read; Durant is eloquent, witty, and surprisingly relevant today. Below are some of my personal highlights of his writing, mixed with some quotes-of-quotes I found interesting.

Sections: Introduction | Communism | Government | Women | Morals | Language | Appearance | Sumeria Egypt | Babylon | Assyria | Judea | Persia | India | China | Japan | Conclusions

Introduction

“the provincialism of our traditional histories, which began with Greece and summed up Asia in a line, has become no merely academic error, but a possibly fatal failure of perspective and intelligence”

I don’t think r1 will get us to artificial super intelligence, but whatever comes next probably will.

We are reaching a familiar bottleneck in AI. Previously, humans had to manually hardcode the patterns that AI could recognize. With deep learning, machines began to learn patterns on their own, without human assistance. With (relatively) expensive humans out of the loop, we threw machines at the world’s data until they began to talk, code, and paint. Many people believed this would be sufficient to reach artificial super intelligence–but it wasn’t.

I’m doing an internship right now, and thankfully, I read a few books on software design before starting.

I had to design a database schema, data submission page, submission approval page, and dynamic dashboard for the project I was assigned to. This is one of those projects that AI can obviously do 90% of to work for if designed appropriately–if the right abstractions are used, performance trade-offs are made, and the right tools are chosen. I wanted to make sure that, throughout the project, AI could always easily with any part of the codebase.

Wikipedia translates the Greek philosophical concept of Eudaimonia as “Human Flourishing”, particularly on the spiritual level. It refers to genuine happiness and fulfillment over hedonism or GDP.

The modern world feels meaningless at times. Instead of hunting or farming to put food on the table, many of us sit at a computer or stand behind a counter, far removed from the fruits of our labor—if our labor even bears fruit. Our screens bombard us with videos of people more beautiful and successful than we could ever hope to be while we stay inside, alone.

It used to be good enough just to copy others. Now, with AI in the hands of billions, there’s little value in copying.

For instance, take programming. Five years ago, building apps, websites, or games required a non-trivial amount of skill, and getting your first project off the ground was an accomplishment. Now, AI can generate most starter projects in hours, if not minutes. I think this decimates the reward, both internal and external, of actually completing the first few projects.

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA - Apple today announced the release of the groundbreaking iPad Pro Max, the world’s first tablet powered by the all-new quantum Q1 processor. Capable of 30 octillion floating point operations per second, the Q1 makes the iPad Pro Max the most powerful streaming device ever made, over 2x faster than the M4 iPad Pro. Available in both 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, Apple says that the iPad Pro Max is the perfect device for generating TV shows, movies, and games in real-time on the go using the power of AI, no network connection needed.

I installed linux on a OnePlus6T. Setup took less than an hour, technical issues included.

Why

• $90 for 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, 2.8GHz 8-core CPU
• Linux on the OnePlus 6T is well documented
• Low power consumption
• Tiny footprint
• No additional cables
• Built-in battery backup
• WiFi, bluetooth, speaker, screen, etc
• Negligible environmental impact sans shipping
• I wanted to play with Linux on ARM

I don’t need a dedicated cable to power or connect it. Running on wifi, it only needs to be plugged into my phone’s charger. Whenever I need to charge my phone, I unplug the server and plug in my phone. It takes up so little space that I literally leave it on my night stand.

Contents: Introduction, Step away, come back later, Focus, but not too much, Generalization comes after specialization, Don’t bother if you don’t need to, Let Go

Introduction

I recently read Zen in the Art of Archery, which isn’t a book about archery as much as it is a book about zen. The book describes author’s journey learning archery from a zen master. I highly recommend it, the book is a short read–I finished it in a day.

I’ve been an author on a few papers before, but I recently published the first research project where I was responsible for most of the work and direction. It’s in the first 2024 issue of the journal Artificial Life, which you can find here. You can find a non-paywalled version here Below, I tell the chronology of the project and summarize our findings.

We explore the conditions under which trade can emerge between four deep reinforcement learning agents that pick up and put down resources in a 2D foraging environment. Agents are rewarded for having both resources once, but the resources are distributed far apart from each other. To maximize reward, agents need to split up the work - agent 1 goes to resource A, agent 2 goes to resource B, etc, and then they meet to exchange resources, since meeting halfway can get them the most of each resource in the shortest amount of time.

How great would it be if the solution to most errors you face were in the first place you looked? That’s what the Arch Wiki has been for me: a massive wealth of information and troubleshooting resources to help me navigate the various configuration and installation issues I’ve encountered. Some people claim Arch Linux is too difficult for new users, but for me it’s been the only distribution I’ve been able to get consistently working, and it’s all thanks to the detailed documentation and known workarounds.