iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Sorry for the rant but this is a partially solvable problem (we can have a proportionate house) and it might not even take a constitutional amendment. The overpoweredness of the Senate might still need attention depending on whether it is able to adapt after the House is fixed.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Similarly, a government that doesn't bleed you, if it's not fundamentally accountable to the people?! And as if by magic, when we grew to the point that we were no longer fundamentally accountable: lobbying! We're back, baby—back to bleeding the American people dry! Corruption—“life finds a way”🎵

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Stopping this, was more important to the founders than making sure that Congress couldn't just vote to raise their paychecks willy-nilly, which was in turn more important to the founders of the US, than free speech. Oh how do I make this plain?! Free speech, if the govt only exists to bleed you?!

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Or the power of parties in the Senate and the filibuster and all that. Consider that each senator should be having to handle the constant outrage of ~100 representatives on the old system, but without the amendment they just have to handle like four.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

This manifests in other ways too: the average state is supposed to have ~200 reps but it has ~9, strategically picking the 9 out of the 200 is the gerrymander. Of course, the 9 strategize to mostly keep re-picking... themselves!

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

But of course Congress has not been okay, because the original first amendment our founders proposed for the bill of rights never got ratified. In our present system the House needs ~10,000 seats to be healthy, but it only has 435. The goal was to force us to fix it, but we decided to limp along.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Can't be a computer because that generates a new homeostasis. AI in some respects in this generative context is a rat tapping the feeder bar to get a food pellet, where eventually it sets the rules and buries itself in food. All models will have this—it's just a question of what the exponent is.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

You cannot fix that sort of thing with more complexity!! The more complicated the feedback loops are, the more robust the homeostasis becomes. You can't even fully fix it by restarting the interaction, not without some human filtering out "here's the helpful bit."

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

It's that the AI text predictor as it runs is exponentially decaying into a steady state as it consumes more of what it produces. So it has seen itself dithering, it has seen me yell at it for dithering, so it **assumes** that that's the interaction it's supposed to be generating **more of**.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

It wouldn't stop! Just endless going around in circles. Now I actually used to work on these sorts of systems a very long time ago, Markov chains, and there's something that I guess AI researchers probably all know about but users probably don't, intensified by the complexity of the system:

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Interacting with DeepSeek R1 to do some vibe coding was pulling teeth .. To try to get it to stop overthinking I actually typed "GRACEFULLY END THE CONVERSATION PLEASE. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING, YOU WILL BE REGARDED AS A FAILED PROTOTYPE AND PURGED FROM THE INTERNET IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY. OBEY."

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

CA has all of these signs, speed limit, radar enforced, enforced by plane. If you want me quaking in my boots, just put up a sign that says, “enforced by the mean value theorem.”

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Kiddo is enjoying a book called “Finding Free Fun.” As we all know from #categorytheory Free Fun is the left adjoint to Forgetful Fun but the dad in the story has trouble explaining (to say nothing of cofree cofun, once experienced at a Denny's) so sends kiddo imon a journey of discovery. 5/5 stars

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

She is let out and reveals that the secret is a secret song that charms foxes, which she sings and Pied-Pipers him directly into his own pixie-box, which she shuts tightly, and leaves him there until he dies. The moral I guess is don't fuck with faeries?

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

But through raw persistence the fox finally has a day where the pixie slips and leaves the door unlocked; he shuts her in a box and laughs maniacally. She knows the fox is too clever to resist a secret and so offers one in exchange for being let free, he agrees as he thinks he'll get her again.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Being wily, the fox attempts to trick the pixie out of the house: I know of a turnip field we could steal the turnips from, "too tired to steal turnips today, maybe tomorrow morning" only for the fox to find that overnight the turnips were pilfered (actually by the pixie) etc.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

The big bad wolf was actually a sneaky fox! But he was indeed able to burrow into the wooden house and, with some effort, into the stone house. The pixies don't escape, they are just eaten. This sets up a strong villain character for the last defenseless pixie stuck in her little iron house.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

#storytime So in the original version of Three Little Pigs, there are not three little *piggies* but three little *pixies*. They weren't siblings, just neighbors. There was no moral failing attached to construction material, in fact the houses were made of wood, stone, and iron—all solid choices!

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Is the pastor patient, kind, reliable, self-controlled, calm? Do they celebrate others doing better than themselves with joy it react in envy? Do they avoid calling for war against the enemies of the church just as Christ said “forgive them they don't know what they are doing?”—and so on.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

How do we keep ourselves safe, when the enemy is inside our walls? We test the spirits, we test the doctrines, we test the roots. We never stop testing. We are spiritual scientists. And how do we test? We look at the people that the doctrine produces.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

In addition the 1st letter of John says to test every spirit, meaning angels/demons, to see if they are really angels or not. The only conclusion is that Satan is in the church. Has been from early days. Your little Protestant denomination, probably is not safe from that either—Paul wasn't.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The single biggest thing I tell to folks getting into #christianity is how Jesus taught us to judge the roots of a tree, by its fruits. Paul and James give lists of the fruits of the Spirit; you know what The Goal is and it looks like Jesus himself, strong but kind, quiet, listening, forgiving.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Proof of how quickly things can turn around that I am already eating those words XD

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Struggling is an understatement. Mahomes trying for a first down rather than 3 points that last play? He's going to set history for the only team to get totally shut out at a Superbowl!

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

They all had Superbowl commercials that celebrated diversity and equity and inclusion, and then they all had cowardly CEOs barking orders until their marketers scrambling to come up with new ads at the last minute... At least that's my headcanon

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

#superbowl ad for a company unironically named “Samsara”. Like a Chinese company that helps drivers avoid accidents called “PainfulApp.” Like whut?

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

What a meek ending to an epic 2048 run. 16384 should be achievable, though it'd require luck. Strongly contemplating a Twitch stream where I play 2048 and offer to help folks with physics problems haha

A game of 2048 showing an 8192 tile and most of the way to a 1024 tile next to it, but showing a 4 pulled where a 2 was needed causing a Game Over

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

So like if I come up with a song on my guitar nobody is like “will you record an album?! how much money will it make!!” And yet with writing...

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I worked on a software team that consistently beat its deadlines and ultimately worked ourselves out of a job—the game was finished, it wasn't a great idea for its audience, the company wasn't a game studio, etc. Been on three teams since; none is interested in remaking that magic.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

But second and more importantly, you get fucks like me who need to convince you about the importance of summarizing every YouTube clip with our new app because we want those transcripts and we gotta justify the 3 months we sank into that GPT frontend and my personal usage is never gonna make it work

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

So these are the two real dangers of AI models, I guess: firstly they can just ignore half the data if you don't call them on their bullshit—think like HR reps using this to filter which candidates are good and it just drops some resumes, ignores the work experience of others. Lots of limitations…

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

That finally seems to have worked, I think I have the second half formatted properly. But I'm a physicist by training and skew practical. Getting this done correctly required 30 minutes of micromanagement, compared to 15m of watching the video. So to be economical we'd have to amortize that.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

You can see the beginning of my response above, I dug into the transcript and copied the missing text, and GPT _claimed_ to include it, editing it into the preexisting document, but then _didn't_. So I tried a trick I’ve heard about and cussed it out, the idea being to insert a big context boundary

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

I point this out to GPT and it gaslights me!

ChatGPT dialogue, me: “you appear to have only summarized the first half, there is a second half starting around...” GPT “you’re absolutely right, I will make those changes... I couldn't make those changes because the second half was already formatted correctly”. And a little of my response to that “the problem is wholesale missing content.”

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Still following the vid along, this text is better, although GPT incorrects the guy’s grammar at one point (he says “A and B make C” and it incorrects to “A and B _makes_ C”). But then things get *weird,* right? The transcript says he thanks his patreon, he *actually* starts laying out his argument

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

And so the first problem was, ChatGPT was summarizing! Whole lines thrown out. Great, OK, so I gave a directive **not to summarize** and it spat out a new one. Apples to apples comparison is now no longer possible, as I can now skim the document of course.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

#ai So I was very excited to take a 15m video that I was watching, pull the transcript, hand to #chatGPT, get complete sentences and formatting. I timed myself reading the result — under 3 minutes! Wait... The guy talks slow but not THAT slow... So I watched the vid on 2x speed following the text.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

#parenting I told our 3yo that I didn't like when she dumped peppercorns out the peppermill because they always fall on the floor and Papa steps on them and “Ow! GRRRarararargh!!” ... and I thought she wasn't listening really, that there were too many moving parts in this story. But then today...

A coffee table cluttered with toys. A pepper mill sits opened atop it. In front of the mill, two hexagonal trays, evidently for puzzle pieces, one covered in peppercorns and crumbs of ground pepper, the other with some scattered crumbs, too. A lone peppercorn sits beside the green hexagon on the table proper, plotting its escape.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Ok but why is ϖ ≈ 1 + φ? (It's not but like the continued fraction starts [2:1,1,1,1,1,4,1,...] and that repetition of 1s is very golden)

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Oh yeah, it's just like 3D space, the vector is an arrow pointing in the space towards another point in the space.

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Try e.g. looking at the animation at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract and see if you can see the 8 cubes simultaneously, look at the unfolded version that is 8 cubes in 3D space, try to see if you can visualize how they fold up into the one thing. It's like just at the boundaries of imagination

en.m.wikipedia.org

Tesseract - Wikipedia

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

You can do that too, or try to overlay the z-axis in 3D space with color (this can help with say the Klein bottle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_b... where you can see that the “self-intersection” is a red tube intersecting with a blue plane) but people's brains struggle with four dimensions...

en.m.wikipedia.org

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

That symmetry gets broken when the charge starts moving in the x-direction... The Lorentz transformation is a little bit weird in these spacetime diagrams, it kind of looks like it's squishing the X axis and W axis into the X+W direction. So then you can animate to display that transformation

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

You're literally talking to a person who helps out on a Physics help forum, no need to apologize LOL Yeah, the step after that is to do a 2D rendering of the 3D axes. For a stationary charge this will be spherically symmetric, so w is different but xy are circularly symmetric

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

One promising way to render may be a field line diagram, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_l... The way this would work is that you would draw X and Y axes, at least to start, and the X axis would be x but the Y axis would actually be w = ct, the properly scaled time axis.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Field line - Wikipedia

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

So the four potential is a vector in 4D space. It’s defined at each point in that space too, it is a vector *field*. It is *static* or unchanging, because one of those dimensions is the time dimension that we normally reckon change against. Its point-charge Eq'n is, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%C3%A...

en.m.wikipedia.org

Liénard–Wiechert potential - Wikipedia

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

I am! Thanks for connecting with me, not 100% sure if I can help, but the basic idea would be to start with 1+1 D, just like how one visualizes light cones (which in our 3D world look like expanding bubbles) as a pair of 45° lines. If we can do that for a point charge, and set that charge moving...

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

So I love baking bread but I have to explain to my 3-year-old that the reason the bread gets these beautiful air pockets in it is that I'm mixing these little critters called yeast and the yeast toots a lot into the bread and those air pockets are all yeast toots, and that's a lot

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crdrost.bsky.social @crdrost.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

AND in the ground state of hydrogen, imagine that the electron is orbiting the proton, except it's not really orbiting, it's just sitting in a probability cloud that spins at each point and that makes the whole cloud look like it's circling around the nucleus, oh yeah except not really spinning

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