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abarker

30 karma · joined August 24, 2017

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abarker··on [dead]
This is a paywall-free link the NYT Opinion account posted to Reddit: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/forei...
abarker··on The consensus on Havana Syndrome is cracking
The technology could also be used by oppressive governments to harass dissenters (and anyone else they might target). Essentially modern, high-tech COINTELPRO.
abarker··on Scott Fitzgerald's Last Act
Also he had been under FBI surveillance, which he was apparently aware of.
abarker··on Human neuroscience mustn't forget its human dimension
The Australian Human Rights Commission discussed many of these issues in its March report, "Protecting Cognition: Background Paper on Neurotechnology":

https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/technology-and-human-rig...

abarker··on Before he was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a mind-control test subject
It came to light because some financial records were sent to the CIA's Retired Records Center for some reason and escaped destruction. See page 5 of [1].

[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hear...

abarker··on Wittgenstein's Ladder
This reminds me of the Buddha's comparison of the Dhamma to a raft, which one does not carry around on his or her back after crossing over on it.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html

abarker··on US teens say they have new proof for 2k-year-old mathematical theorem
There's a little more information in this Reddit thread [1]. In it someone references an earlier work by Jason Zimba [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/11zptjo/an_impossible...

[2] https://forumgeom.fau.edu/FG2009volume9/FG200925.pdf

abarker··on Some Remarks on Large Language Models
Conversely, these models open up philosophical questions of "exactly what a human is" beyond language abilities. How much of what we think, do, and perceive comes from the use of language?
abarker··on Show HN: Whole Git repo was made with ChatGPT
I wonder how effective it would be at finding exploitable security holes in code.
abarker··on Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid
The relation is virtually always bidirectional, and often forms complex, dynamic feedback loops. Simple causal analysis can fail in such situations.
abarker··on Iranian official admits student protesters are taken to psychiatric institutions
This is reminiscent of Soviet psychiatry and the diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia" for dissidents.
abarker··on The Sayings of Old Man Tcheng
It's already an English translation of a French paraphrase of a text of unknown provenance.
abarker··on Music Theory is SIMPLE –(when it's presented like this)
He's using Euler's Tonnetz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnetz
abarker··on Two atomic clocks have been quantum entangled for the first time
It is a theory in the sense that it is epistemic. Bob's quantum state changes depending on Alice's measurement, essentially collapsing the probability distribution to the conditional probability distribution. As science it cannot be proven, but the empirical results match the model. The paper I cited defines precise protocols to define terms like "steerable states." This is standard quantum theory, so the no-communication theorem still applies.

Is the quantum state also ontic, and in what sense? Those are open questions of interpretation.

abarker··on Two atomic clocks have been quantum entangled for the first time
In quantum information theory the ability of Alice to instantaneously change Bob's quantum state (and hence measurement probabilities) is referred to as quantum steering. No information can be sent, but the influencing effect can be defined and observed. Steering is distinct from both Bell-nonlocality and nonseparability. See, e.g., [1] and later papers.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0612147

abarker··on Lofi Girl radio streams taken down due to copyright claim
They haven't uploaded to YouTube, but that's kind of the idea of this project: http://allthemusic.info/
abarker··on Astrofox – Turn Audio into Videos
Check out projectM, "an open-source project that reimplements the esteemed Winamp Milkdrop": https://github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm
abarker··on Python extension language using accelerators
Some other similar projects are Pythran, Transonic, and mypyc.
abarker··on Bash function names can be almost anything
Bash function names also have a different namespace than Bash variables, so you can define a function and a shell variable with the same name. I used that in a script which defines a function to be used like an alias to change to a specified directory, but where the name is also set as a shell variable that can be evaluated with $ to give the directory's pathname.
abarker··on The Zen Anti-Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Aaronson seems to be using the term Zen metaphorically, as a general path to some sort of "enlightenment" or "Zen state."
abarker··on The CIA's Deadly Deceits and the Vietnam War, with Ralph McGehee (1986)
In the '90s McGehee claimed that he was being harassed in Herdon, Va. where he lived, in part due to his CIABASE database.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_McGehee#Controversies

http://www.pinknoiz.com/covert/protect.html