I got a grant to do independent research on the AI alignment problem and was able to quit my job.

Yeah Thinkpads are obviously a popular suggestion here. I’d check out System76 too (their cheapest stuff may or may not fit your definition of “cheap”).

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/142205/presentation-of-the-monster-group mentions a presentation of the monster with 12 generators.

Creating a physical rotation puzzle that implements the monster group would be quite a task!

I know exactly one party trick based on mathematical group theory, which I have actually used to impress non-mathematicians at a party.

There’s a concept called the “center” of a “group”, which is the set of operations that commute with every other operation in the group. The center always contains the identity operation of doing nothing. The group of scramblings of a Rubik’s cube happens to contain exactly two elements in its center: the identity, and a move called the “superflip” which takes a little bit of effort to memorize how to do, but it’s not so hard. Much easier than actually solving a scrambled Rubik’s cube. It’s like you do a simple move repeated 4x, and then you do that whole 4x set 3x with some rotations in between. Not terribly complicated. Importantly, once you memorize it it’s not difficult to do just by feel, since it’s a fixed sequence of mechanical motions.

So, the party trick goes like this:

You have a Rubik’s cube that is exactly a superflip away from the solved state. You hand it to an unsuspecting party guest and say “go ahead and make one or two turns” (it’s important to say something like “one or two” because if they do 3 the trick becomes challenging, and if they do 4 or more it might become impossibly difficult unless you’re actually good at solving Rubik’s cubes, which I am not). They take this obviously unsolved cube and make a couple more moves so now it appears even more scrambled.

You take the cube back and do the superflip behind your back, without looking at the cube.

Then you move the cube out from behind your back, and at the same time (trying to be slick about it) you undo the one or two moves remaining before it is solved. Everyone gasps and say “omg he solved it behind his back” (when really you did no such thing).

This works because if S is the superflip and X is the simple moves they did to it, S X S is equal to just X because S commutes with everything. (S is also its own inverse, so that S S = 1.)

So just like a citrus fruit intermediate between lemon and lime?

Explain more… do you mean, just something exactly intermediate between octopus and ice cream in every respect? Or like, octopus with the flavor of ice cream, or texture of ice cream inside?

I would guess that chemical effects would be diverse while “physical” effects would not be so diverse. Keep in mind that things like mesothelioma from asbestos are kinda sorta “physical” effects because it’s from jagged roughness of the particles at the nanoscale rather than any specific chemistry.

This may be true but I hate the practice of referring to “plastic” as if it’s a single substance. It’s a bunch of different materials that don’t really have that much in common with each other, especially from a health/toxicity standpoint.

For example, people treat it as common sense that “you shouldn’t burn plastic” because the smoke is “toxic”. For PVC this is totally true, it makes very nasty stuff like dioxin that will poison you. But on the other hand you can burn polyethylene (think milk jug) and it’s no more toxic than burning a candle. Definitely way healthier to breath than wood campfire smoke, for example.

There’s also such a silly pattern where people learn some chemical might have some effect on the body and suddenly everyone is up in arms about it. For example Bisphenol A in many applications was replaced by the very similar Bisphenol S just so things could be labeled “BPA Free”. BPS probably has similar estrogenic effects to BPA.

I’d say the moral of the story is be wary of received wisdom about chemical toxicity from people who aren’t chemists.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” - Hanlon’s Razor

Pro tip: if you call zoning out “meditating” (because that’s what it is) it makes you feel more put-together and successful. Congrats on your practice of hydrotherapy meditation.

I have a pattern which really works for me where I wake up, brush my night guard and brush my teeth with no toothpaste and then eat breakfast. That way I don’t have the horrible mint toothpaste / orange juice clash I’m sure many of you are familiar with.

Then at night I floss and brush with toothpaste, and put in the night guard.

I used to make myself floss only every other day (like if I didn’t floss last night I MUST floss tonight), which I highly recommend rather than sporadic or no flossing. But I recently upped my game to “every night except special occasions”.

lmao

Be the change you want to see in the Fediverse.

Running short distances for no particular reason. Like if I’m a short distance from the car and realize I forgot something in it, I’ll run there and then run back.

Sometimes people are like “what’s wrong?? why are you running??” and I’m just like why not? It’s fun.

My alphabet soup must be haunted. It says “oooOOOooo…”

I dropped out of physics grad school (got a master’s degree as consolation prize). I needed a job, and knew how to code. So I applied to some big tech company and I was like “you’re going to pay me HOW much??” I had no idea I could get paid so much for just writing code and fixing bugs and stuff.

But now I really want to throw away that money and stability to work on AI alignment research, because it’s the most important thing in the world.