NaClhv

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The unstated job requirements of being a data scientist

This is the Triforce. In the Legend of Zelda franchise, these three triangular artifacts represent the virtues of courage, wisdom, and power. They are the ultimate force in their in-game universe, as they represent the essence of the creator goddesses and can grant any wish to those who wield it. This is the threefold office: […]

A record of the total solar eclipse on 2024-04-08

Everyone who has actually seen totality is unanimous in how awesome it was. None of them even use any kind of reserved or qualifying language: nobody says that it was "kinda nice", or "pretty cool", or "quite pretty". No, their descriptions are always in the superlative form: "incredible phenomenon", "so beautiful", "10/10", "absolutely amazing". One man actually described today's eclipse in such terms to me, then only afterwards mentioned - almost in passing - that he had proposed to his girlfriend during totality.

What do we want? Reflections on AI and morality

Essentially, these AIs solve all kinds of "how" problems for us. We now know how to play a good game of chess or go, how to reply to any text prompt, and how to create an image from just a text description. This leaves us with the "what" problem. What do we want? What do we value? This is a hard question. Can an AI answer it for us? No, I don't think so. At least not any of the AIs as we have them today. Remember, the fundamental function of all the AIs we've discussed is to take in data, and give us what we said we wanted. So it seems that there's some kind of bootstrapping step missing, in that we have to give the AI "what we want" as an input, but expect "what we REALLY want" as an output.

A record of the total solar eclipse on 2023-04-20

I chose to observe this eclipse from Australia. I'd considered Indonesia and East Timor, but eventually decided against them: Australia had better weather for the eclipse, I could cross it off from the list of continents, and I wanted to keep the trip in English. So my plan was to observe it in Exmouth - a small town in the northwest corner of Australia. Then I threw in the Philippines as another English-speaking country in the area that I had heard good things about.

From my job: technical career storyline

I've mentioned before that I work as a data scientist. I've been at it for a long while now. Long enough, in fact, that they interviewed me at my job about what it was like to be me, and published the interview internally as part of their "technical career storyline" feature. The following are the contents of that interview, reproduced with permission and some minor editing.

A record of the total solar eclipse on 2021-12-04, in Antarctica

Unfortunately, the best pictures I have of totality are poorly lit and out of focus, and of course we couldn't see the eclipse itself. This isn't what I wanted. It's not what I would have chosen. But it was still beautiful and magical in its own way, in its darkness and flaws. I've always held that reality, compared to any alternate possibility, has a goodness all its own - simply because it's real.

How to handle the Delta variant

The vaccine may be only 39% effective against infections by the Delta variant.

Granted, this is just in one study from Israel, for just certain kinds of vaccines. But still, I've spent a great deal of time over the last week thinking about this number. Why is this such a big deal? Because, if this is true, and if that 39% holds constants across a variety of circumstances, then we're in a lot of trouble. This would mean that the Delta variant would be unstoppable, EVEN WITH THE VACCINE.

2021-06-21

How to insert a Jupyter Notebook into your WordPress post

I do a lot of work in Jupyter Notebooks, and I often find it useful to post them in their entirety in a blog post. The following method is what I use. It requires no additional plugins or programs, and allows you to post the notebook as a non-interactive html element, as a Gutenberg block in your post.

Evidence for a historical Adam and Eve

Here is my claim: the scientific contents of my interpretation is a major piece of evidence for the veracity of the biblical account of Adam and Eve, and for Christianity as a whole. In other words, I’m not settling for mere “compatibility” with the known sciences; what we have here is actual, strong, positive evidence, and everyone needs to adjust their beliefs accordingly.

Is evolutionary science in conflict with Adam and Eve?

I have contributed to a white paper mapping out the different ways to understand Adam and Eve alongside evolution. You can find it here. It turns out that there are a multitude of ways holding both at the same time - far larger than what is popularly conceived! The paper mainly points out this expansive […]
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