Matt Austern / is on Nostr

Computer programmer, ex-physicist, husband and father, reader. I'm originally from Pittsburgh but I've now lived in the Bay Area for more than half my life. I live in Palo Alto and work at Google, where my focus is large scale data processing.

I'm interested in various things, including food and wine, math and science, politics, hiking, history, science fiction, philosophy, opera, and cute cat videos.

Last Notes

2024-06-15 05:52:10

We waited for this for a very long time, but it was worth the wait. It's a beautiful edition.
We have copy 101 of 300.
#books #JohnCrowley #LittleBig
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/619/056/787/519/628/original/81f895acad1813b1.jpg

2024-06-15 05:52:10

2023-08-31 05:22:44

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@npub1asa…n9sr @npub1ftj…v3qt @npub1rhr…gh5p @npub1psd…9sr7 FWIW, I don't think Yudkowsky is assuming that a hundred thousand people are enough to maintain industrial civilization. I read him as meaning literally what he said: he's talking about homo sapiens going extinct or not, period. That is, he'd count it as success if civilization collapses, 99.999% of people die, a few survivors manage to learn how to live like their paleolithic ancestors, and seventy thousand years from now the descendants of the lucky(?) survivors build their own civilization, have their own industrial revolution, and fulfill their manifest destiny of colonizing the galaxy.
You can decide for yourself whether this seems better or worse than the other interpretation.

2023-08-06 16:10:39

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@npub1sys…ckr3 That's very reminiscent of C. A. R. Hoare's famous quip about ALGOL 60: "Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors." I wonder which of those quotes came first, and whether one is a deliberate reference to the other.

2023-08-06 16:10:39

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2023-05-06 21:16:07

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 "[Clarence] believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and “Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace of God King,” would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on."
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

2023-05-06 21:16:07

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