Erik Hoel
@erikphoel
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Placeholder for the scientist and author. Mostly on Substack not Twitter. https://t.co/CKyLzw5bHK
Joined November 2013
1. It took ~6 months to teach my 2-year-old toddler to read using phonics. More parents should try this! Here's why:
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Our Overfitted Century, by @erikphoel
theintrinsicperspective.com
Cultural stagnation is because we're stuck in-distribution
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@erikphoel published a great essay yesterday making the case something similar is happening in the realm of culture: https://t.co/pUO7ITHz8V Think he's right, but also that the Goodharting / overfitting problem is much broader. Scratch almost any part of contemporary America
theintrinsicperspective.com
Cultural stagnation is because we're stuck in-distribution
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Rough hypothesis: everyone is Goodharting themselves. People only care about "tangible" metrics, rewards, outcomes, and so on, failing to understand how easy it is to overfit. The result is loads of otherwise smart, hardworking people draining themselves of both unmeasurable
it’s honestly incredible to see software decline in real time these last couple of years i think there are different factors contributing to this nobody cares about the actual craft anymore, which is the consequence from: 1. leetcode interviews and faang interview style
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Fascinating piece by the always insightful @erikphoel
theintrinsicperspective.com
Cultural stagnation is because we're stuck in-distribution
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You’ve asked, and now you shall receive. Kingdom is now in the Shonen Jump app! https://t.co/az4bQsPrXu
polygon.com
Kingdom finally lands on the Shonen Jump app
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Our elite creative class can't seem to come up with any new I.P. because our culture is "overfitted"—we're recycling old ideas because the social process that once generated new ideas has, in our mass-culture era, become too restrictive, and AI is accelerating this.
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You made culture algorithmic and then were surprised you got culturally stuck in-distribution?
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@erikphoel also, to whatever degree reliance on algorithms reinforces overfitting, AI isn't the cause of this malaise. also from hoel:
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once again, i implore you to understand that overfitting is the present default state. the environment for original thinking must be painstakingly cultivated now. your job is to find a way to dream while awake from @erikphoel's latest newsletter:
this @palladiummag article made me think of @erikphoel's OBH. he focuses on dreams, but there's a wider evolutionary advantage to outlier data: novel experiences, heretical ideas, delusions. the difference between AI narrowing and expanding your horizons is intention
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@hassytee @erikphoel Hauntingly beautiful. Thank you for writing this.
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People worry about kids being over-challenged. There is no symmetric concern about children (who have "endless appetites for new info") being understimulated. Ex: LA Times says teaching phonics too early risks harm, but waiting does not. 3/ https://t.co/23zdkiBal5
@erikphoel
theintrinsicperspective.com
Teaching (Very) Early Reading: Part 5
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“But with the sudden advent of LLMs we have a whole other dimension: the loss of our free will itself, because we are simply served so well. And the quality of the service may not matter, for it is still always easier to allow yourself to be served; thinking and acting and
How Pluribus may act like a modern TV version of Infinite Jest (although we're only 3 episodes in, we'll see if it holds up quality wise) https://t.co/aLyl01AKIC
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while @vladtenev opening statement may be true, it's not because of this story alone. we do see the beginning of something, but it's not enough per se TLDR what happened (and will happen!) is: people found an open problem that wasn't actually hard. these are bound to exist the
We are on the cusp of a profound change in the field of mathematics. Vibe proving is here. Aristotle from @HarmonicMath just proved Erdos Problem #124 in @leanprover, all by itself. This problem has been open for nearly 30 years since conjectured in the paper “Complete sequences
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In the UK, the academic year runs from September to August. A child born in September is, on their first day of school, nearly a full year older than a classmate born the following August. At age 4 or 5, that's a 20% difference in life experience and development.
3. Small advantages compound. This is why UK Nobel Prize winners are 2x as likely to be born in September. It's not the genes - just the small headstart of being developmentally a bit ahead is very potent academically.
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@campedicord @guyvardi start w/ our Alphabet Sounds book now (free pdf on our website or hardcover at cost on Amazon) if your 2yo is super advanced but you're financially constrained, reach out to us to see how we can help also plenty of examples of success without Mentava
1. It took ~6 months to teach my 2-year-old toddler to read using phonics. More parents should try this! Here's why:
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.@erikphoel’s book is great on this
I think people have generally grown more conscious as time goes on. I think if you went back 4500 years and talked to ancient Egyptians they would mostly seem terrifically dull without much to say. But I can’t test that theory sadly
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@PAHoyeck @No5mallf3at @drmichaellevin Don't know - I think Aristotle and Hume can be reconciled computationally 😉 You should check out @erikphoel recent papers on macro / formal / top down causation empirically - you might find it interesting
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I'm still angry about this
How can someone believe that it's developmentally inappropriate to teach a 3-year-old what an "A" is? (this person once helped implement No Child Left Behind, btw)
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Well that struck a nerve! Spaced repetition has a lot of fans! I think spaced repetition = flashcards. And flashcards stink! Consider that if your brain keeps forgetting something, maybe there's a good reason it doesn't want to remember it Brains are really good at remembering
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Time to rinse this @erikphoel banger again: [Thank you!] https://t.co/F8NakJuIk8
theintrinsicperspective.com
A trip to the hospital is more real than your politics
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