Yuxi on the Wired
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Analytical mechanics
math
physics
philosophy
What every graduate student should know about analytical mechanics, delivered with economic style and many illustrations. Particular focus on particle-wave duality and old quantum theory. Prerequisite: multivariate calculus and mathematical maturity.
2024-05-04
111 min
2024-05-05
How to do renormalization
math
physics
scaling
Survival guide for renormalization (RN) theory. How to do it in real space and frequency space. What it all means. Should have something for everyone, from mathematicians to physicists to outsiders, from serious series to pretty pictures. Intended audience: those with two years of undergrad mathematics.
2024-04-11
75 min
2024-05-05
Mixture of Experts
AI
scaling
How MoE works, its history, and what it is good for.
2024-01-23
14 min
2024-01-23
Predicting AGI by the Turing Test
AI
scaling
math
Minimizing log-perplexity loss is equivalent to maximizing survival length in a Turing test. Assuming compute-loss scaling law, a scaled-up GPT that produces human-like science papers would cost ~200 years of global GDP.
2024-01-20
29 min
2024-02-19
The Perceptron Controversy
AI
history
Connectionism died in the 60s from technical limits to scaling, then resurrected in the 80s after backprop allowed scaling. The Minsky–Papert anti-scaling hypothesis explained, psychoanalyzed, and buried.
2024-01-01
108 min
2024-05-04
The Backstory of Backpropagation
AI
math
physics
history
Why backprop was resisted for 20 years: assumption of discretely spiking neurons, goal of synthesizing Boolean logic, fear of local optima, and bad luck. Werbos has the best claim for invention.
2023-12-26
54 min
2024-01-23
Cybernetic artificial intelligence
AI
cybernetics
math
history
Machine learning and self-reproduction according to Norbert Wiener.
2023-12-23
15 min
2024-01-21
Reading
Perceptrons
AI
math
A long, hard stare into the math of
Perceptrons
, the mythical neural network killer.
2023-12-21
25 min
2024-01-23
Fermi Estimation for Neural Networks
AI
economics
The bitter lesson in bite-sized packets.
2023-12-05
30 min
2024-01-21
Neural scaling law by data manifold dimensions
AI
scaling
Neural networks scale they way they do, purely because of data.
2023-11-01
8 min
2024-04-07
Grokking modular arithmetics
AI
interpretation
Toy model of grokking: tiny neural networks learn modular arithmetics after it has already reached full correctness on the training set.
2023-09-01
8 min
2024-05-05
Serial Experiments Lain
anime
fun
Lain is the collective subconscious as a neural network.
2022-11-01
13 min
2024-01-21
The Racial Algorithmic Bias Controversy
probability
statistics
The racial algorithmic bias controversy, as seen by a mathematician.
2019-07-13
14 min
2024-01-17
The Wigner Rotation in Special Relativity via Hyperbolic Geometry
physics
math
fun
The
other
special relativity paradox that you have never heard of.
2018-05-01
54 min
2024-01-22
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