October 4th, 2024: Mechanisms by which the technological-capitalistic complex sustains itself — Technology is currently out of control, and even though some technologies such as AI are mainly destructive and will cause severe damage to human society, we have no safeguards in place to ensure that they are not invented. Technological development now....
October 3rd, 2024: Letter to the NSF — The NSF or National Science Foundations is one of the main sources of money for scientific research in the United States. A while ago, I wrote this general letter to the NSF: Dear NSF, My name is Dr. Jason Polak. I have a doctorate in mathematics from McGill....
September 30th, 2024: Boycott NaNoWriMo for its AI stance! — Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad term for a collection of computer algorithms that use learning-based techniques such as neural nets in order to solve problems. A subset of this is generative AI, which, in its current state, can synthesize....
September 30th, 2024: The law of illusory improvements — Consider an optimal society. If one could measure the health of this society over time, it would fluctuate about the optimum point, somewhat like a sinusoidal curve: This is the graph of $\sin(x) + 10$, an idealized version of this phenomenon. Of course, this....
September 30th, 2024: Life would be better without abundance — Many things in life would actually be better if we limited them. We are instinctual creatures and our instincts are designed to use resources. Since these instincts evolved in a time of scarcity, we are being overwhelmed by our instinctual use of resources....
September 30th, 2024: Book Review: The armchair economist — A good way to understand price theory in economics is by reading The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg. Although this book won’t give you facility for economic calculations, it will give you an intuitive idea about how prices work. I first read this....
September 30th, 2024: Technology changes us as much as we change technology — The human species is no doubt the world’s greatest toolmaker—but is that a good thing? We change physical matter into devices to do things we cannot do with our hands. But it would be a mistake to think that we are the only ones doing the changing. In....
September 30th, 2024: How to sleep in dry environments — I’ve written this because almost all “health” websites are very scanty on real information to help people like me. However, over the years I’ve developed a few techniques that go beyond simply using a humidifier, although of course that is useful. So,....
September 30th, 2024: The beauty of nature, a chance for peace — Natural places with plants and animals have a beauty cannot be replaced by anything that humans create. We need this beauty to move beyond survival and to experience true existence. The soft breeze from the mountain, the piercing look of the eagle, and the....
September 30th, 2024: What is connectionless art? — Let’s take one cup of YouTube, three teaspoons of Tiktok, a pound of big-tech and a sprinkle of global capitalism. Bake for ten years and what do you get? Connectionless art. Wait, what? Let me explain. Some years ago after getting into photography, I....
September 30th, 2024: O Detran.SP, uma jornada difícil… — Em 13 junho de 2023, eu terminei todos os passos e paguei todas as taxas para trocar minha habilitação estrangeira por uma habilitação brasileira. Eu não sabia naquele momento que essa seria uma das jornadas mais difíceis na minha vida. A parte do....
September 30th, 2024: Would I have opposed the industrial revolution? Yes — I frequently argue against unrestricted technological growth. In one recent argument, I was asked: would you have opposed the industrial revolution? Surely, you wouldn’t oppose the reduction in infant mortality! Frankly, this is one of the stupidest replies....
September 30th, 2024: The fraudulent nature of university research — Academia is said to have many problems. Having spent significant time there, and having published a few papers myself after getting my PhD in 2016, I know this all too well. But it has one incredible weakness: academia at its core is a big business dependent....
September 30th, 2024: Should you get a PhD? — A long time ago, I tried to write an article to answer the following question: should you get a PhD? I never finished it because I never figured out a clear way of answering this question. But I recently thought about it some more and now I have a good....
September 30th, 2024: Should you turn your hobby into a career? Maybe — I’ve heard time and again that turning a hobby into a career can be dangerous because it will make you lose passion for your hobby and your career. So in this article, I’m going to help you understand whether it’s a good idea to turn your hobby into a....
September 30th, 2024: Equality…but with respect to which variable? — Equality is a hot topic. Everyone is trying to be inclusive, and get more “groups” into more parts of society. But we cannot speak of increasing equality without specifying which variable of equality we are trying to optimize. For example, some talk of....
September 30th, 2024: The climate change problem is not an engineering problem — In typical climate activism, I often hear about solar power and how we just need X solar panels installations to offset Y gallons of fossil fuels. Or we have proposals to geoengineer the climate to compensate for the vast increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.....
September 30th, 2024: Grading with ChatGPT is wrong — If you are grading your students’ essays or homework with ChatGPT, then it is immoral and wrong. It does the students a disservice. Is such a strong statement justified? I think it is. Now of course, you might think that ChatGPT is just a tool and that....
September 30th, 2024: Artificial Intelligence: A diseased manifestation of monkey mind — The famous Buddhist Shunryu Suzuki wrote what is perhaps the best introduction to Zen Buddhism out there: the pair of books Not Always So and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. In them, he conceptualizes the two types of mind within all of us: Big Mind and monkey....
September 30th, 2024: Putting humans first is dangerous — In the realm of biological conservation and biodiversity, there are some who believe that we should not go out of our way to save species, and that since humans are natural, we should just live moderately but without regret if we cause the extinction of other....
September 30th, 2024: Why I hate passkeys — Passkeys are an alternative way to sign into stuff like your email or bank account. They are long strings of numbers generated on your phone or computer, and they are much more secure than passwords. Due to their technical nature, they can protect you against....
September 30th, 2024: Four things I wished high school had taught me — Looking back at my high school years, there are things I wish I had been taught back then because they definitely would have helped me as a human being. That’s not to say that I went to a bad high school in Canada. On the contrary, I had some really great....
September 30th, 2024: How to increase your productivity, guaranteed! — Do you want to read books faster and absorb more information? Do you long to produce more, work longer with less fatigue, and be a beast of a machine? Some say the secret is taking a cold shower in the morning, while others swear by to-do lists, pomodoros, or....
September 30th, 2024: Two secrets to a great compliment — A compliment is a great way to bring joy to another person’s life, but there are many ways to give a compliment, which has important implications in your life. For example, have you ever handed in a report at work just to have your boss say, “good....
September 30th, 2024: Why environmental action is so hard — Over the past decades, you may have heard of endless environmental movements: recycling, solar power, land and sea protection treaties, becoming more sustainable, and other such buzzwords. Yet, we see that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere just keeps....
September 30th, 2024: Is science a ritual? — We’ve got problems. Serious, global problems. In order to solve them, we have to develop new techniques outside the mainstream ones of using specialized knowledge and the mechanisms of capitalism. One of these techniques must be a shift to a more holistic....
September 28th, 2024: Career advice for the young — In modern times, getting a job seems equivalent to living. Most people can no longer live off the land, especially since most of it is expensive private property. Instead, most people focus on their career. However, if there is one piece of advice I’d give....
September 28th, 2024: We should not push students to like math — Mathematics education is the practice of trying to make mathematics more appealing for those that have trouble with mathematics. And the reason people have trouble with math could be because they had a bad experience, or because it’s presented poorly, or....
September 28th, 2024: Why I will never use Apple “Intelligence” — Apple Intelligence is a new feature that will be coming to MacOS in Sequoia version 15.1. It is a series of generative AI tools for writing and image generation. The writing tools in particular will have a rewriting feature that will rewrite your text in....
September 28th, 2024: Art is dead, and technology killed it — What does it mean to say that art is dead? It means simply that the human aspect of art has been stripped away so that the display and sharing of art no longer has anything to do with transmitting human experience. This observation is nothing new, and art is....