Problems of Philosophy

Book by Bertrand Russell. “The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the …

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Astronomical Algorithms

[WIP] People who write their own computer programs often wonder why the machine gives inaccurate planet positions, an unreal eclipse track, or a faulty Moon phase. Sometimes they insist, bewildered, …

On the Heights of Despair

Madness For the normal man, life is an undisputed reality; only the sick man is delighted by life and praises it so that he won’t collapse. We generally find it hard to understand that some …

Negotiation notes for Never Split the Difference

links cheatsheet Aim for “That’s right” (on board), not “You’re right” (defensive), not “I’ll try, you’re right” (I plan to fail). Mirror …

Albert Camus

What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a …

Reading notes for Java Concurrency in Practice

Perhaps surprisingly, concurrent programming isn’t so much about threads or locks, any more than civil engineering is about rivets and I-beams. Of course, building bridges that don’t fall …

Curious by Ian Leslie

Book: Curious by Ian Leslie Children are most willing to learn when they display curiosity (point and ask questions). If you respond, you are encouraging their curiosity. If you don’t respond, …

Physics Needs Philosophy, Philosophy Needs Physics

links article Those who deny the utility of philosophy, are doing philosophy. The origins of this idea arises from the background of logical positivism. The process of science: data -> …

Shut Up and Calculate

links arxiv, alternate arxiv-vanity link The main thesis is that the universe is a mathematical universe, i.e. mathematics does not describe a universe, they are the universe (a possible answer to …

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

links paper, wiki The opening quote is by Bertrand Russell: Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any …

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

From Hofstadter’s preface to the book’s 20th-anniversary edition: GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and …

Beyond Good and Evil reading notes

In the introduction about Nietzche: Thus we often find him praising lightheartedness: urging us not to burrow but to remain at the surfaces of things, practising a kind of ideal frivolity. But no …

The Critique of Pure Reason reading notes

Categorization of knowledge But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience. Kant categorized knowledge as follows: empirical knowledge has …