impendia

There is a wonderful book, Japanese Pilgrimage by Oliver Statler. He goes into the history of the pilgrimage and of Kobo Daishi, the monk whose path the trail follows. He also discusses his own personal experience walking the trail.

Personally, in between jobs a long time ago, I chose to walk the Henro Trail, an approximately 800-mile Buddhist pilgrimage trail in Shikoku, Japan. To make a long story short, it was the experience of a lifetime.

I can't speak for ndriscoll, but I am a university math professor with extensive experience teaching these sorts of topics, and I agree with their comment in full.

You are right that some (other) statements are harder to formalize than they look. The Four Color Theorem from graph theory is an example. Generally speaking, discrete math, inequalities, for all/there exists, etc. are all easy to formalize. Anything involving geometry or topology is liable to be harder. For example, the Jordan curve theorem states that "any plane simple closed curve divides the plane into two regions, the interior and the exterior". As anyone who has slogged through an intro topology book knows, statements like this take more work to make precise (and still more to prove).

In other words, if I learn enough about nutrition to be able to critically evaluate the government's guidance, then is that guidance adding any additional signal? At that point, I should just rely on my sources about nutrition.

I've never been one to rely on official guidance blindly. For example I don't show up to the airport two hours early, and cheerfully laugh at advice that I should. But I'd like to believe that this guidance is better than total nonsense.

The point of guidance like this is to be trustworthy and authoritative. If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.

Of course, I might be mistaken to have ever trusted the government's nutrition guidance. It's not like undue influence from industry lobbying is unique to this administration.

Sort of like the infamous GameStop short squeeze of 2021:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStop_short_squeeze

The same is true if I imagined there would be misleading bullshit out there. In this case, it's hard to imagine that any nonexpert would bother writing about the topic. ("Universal torsor method" in case you're curious.)

I skimmed the AI summary in ten seconds, gained a rough idea of what the speaker was referring to, and then went back to following the lecture.

The AI summary at the top was surprisingly good! Of course, the AI isn't doing anything original; instead, it created a summary of whatever written material is already out there. Which is exactly what I wanted.

As a math professor who has taught calculus many times, I'd say there are many different things one could hope to learn from a calculus course. I don't think the subject distills well to a single point.

One unusual feature of calculus is that it's much easier to understand at a non-rigorous level than at a rigorous level. I wouldn't say this is true of all of math. For example, if you want to understand why the quadratic formula is true, an informal explanation and a rigorous proof would amount to approximately the same thing.

But, when teaching or learning calculus, if you're willing to say that "the derivative is the instantaneous rate of change of a function", treat dy/dx as the fraction which it looks like (the chain rule gets a lot easier to explain!), and so on, you can make a lot of progress.

In my opinion, the issue with most calculus books is that they don't commit to a rigorous or to a non-rigorous approach. They are usually organized around a rigorous approach to the subject, but then watered down a lot -- in anticipation that most of the audience won't care about the rigor.

I believe it's best to choose a lane and stick to it. Whether that's rigorous or non-rigorous depends on your tastes and interests as a learner. This book won't be for everybody, but I'd call that a strength rather than a weakness.

Do I have control over my data? I'm not sure I understand the question, but in this case the answer seems like a clear no, as my employer manages the email server.

I couldn't think of a reason why this would be necessary, but I haven't really kept up with how the technology has evolved in recent years. Is this behavior intrinsic to desktop clients?

A computer that can predict what I'm going to write next with perfect accuracy? This is the stuff of dystopian science fiction.

Indeed, along these lines I recommend the movie Minority Report, which shows a society that gained the ability to predict crimes before they happened, and therefore to arrest criminals in advance.

That said, compatibility may well be overrated, but what should you optimize for? I suspect most people are willing to make it work for someone they like or are attracted to enough.

Ideally, serendipity would settle the issue. But women have complained, and rightfully so, of getting hit on at the office, at the gym, etc. I don't blame them, but as a single man I do wonder what (if anything) I should be doing to scope out potential romantic partners without coming across as a creep. The apps aren't ideal, but at least I can use them with a clear conscience.

Is this really true? I agree they've changed some, but a lot?

In any case, I'll take a stab at your question. Not thinking about how to make money, just how to make something successful from the users' point of view.

I really enjoyed OKCupid in its heyday, circa 2010. I only got a few dates out of it, but the site was genuinely fun. Profiles were long, with multiple essays, and this was very much encouraged. The personality tests were also fun -- and the founders discovered that questions like "Do you enjoy horror movies?", "Have you ever been to another country by yourself?", and even "Do you like the taste of beer?" predicted compatibility much better than trite questions. There was no notion of a "match", messaging worked like email and you could write to anyone on the site.

As the founders said, "OKCupid does a fantastic job at matching you with people who claim to be what you claim to want." I loved the tongue-in-cheek humor and the site's awareness of its own limitations. And you had to put in a little bit of effort to use the site, which was very much a good thing.

OKCupid still exists, but it's a shadow of its former self nowadays.

How to improve? Maybe a slight barrier to engagement, such as a few tailored questions you have to answer for each person before messaging someone. (To prevent men from sending out messages to every women in sight. Or at least make it more difficult...)

Or, something like, if you look at a profile, then you can't navigate away for at least twenty seconds. Again, to prevent you from messaging too many people, or dismissing lots of people instantly.

I believe that the biggest issue with dating sites is that it's hard to align the incentives of the user with the incentive of the site owner. Not sure how you solve that one.

This might sound like a strange question, and maybe not one I can reasonably ask of anyone else. That said -- how can I determine what "rest" genuinely means for me? As opposed to what I would like it to mean?

I enjoy Civ, but that might be for the dopamine kick it delivers, so I'm not sure if it has the beneficial effects you describe. I also enjoy reading, but that feels more like lifting than recovery.

And I've indeed tried meditation, and indeed not found it easy!

I'm aware you can disable notifications for a single app at a time. Is there a way to disable them entirely?

If you have any notifications you actually do want, this isn't a viable solution. But personally I have yet to ever see a notification on my computer which I considered important.

It seems that part of the design philosophy of Typst is to make more assumptions about what the user is trying to do. For example, apparently if the user wants "dif" to appear in a math formula, typing "dif" would instead produce a differential -- although I presume there is some easy way to handle this.

Anyone who has used Typst -- did this potential disadvantage materialize in any way which was at all significant? Or did it turn out to be a nonissue?

That said, although starting a new organization may not take much money, it does take a lot of wisdom and social capital. I would say that you succeeded at something quite difficult.

When I've sought out volunteer activities in the past, it was usually when my social and personal life were on shaky grounds. In particular, when I was in no shape to start something new the way you did.

I've often heard volunteering recommended as an antidote for loneliness, but as grogenaut observed, this advice can sometimes be tricky to follow in practice.

For example, if you read Slate Star Codex, you can find all manner of posts discussing how psych meds are produced and brought to market, how they can behave in unpredictable fashion, and why claims made by the pharmaceutical industry should be regarded with a healthy dose of distrust. But its author is a trained psychiatrist, and he'd be the first to tell you that psych meds do indeed work.

Personally, I've dealt with sleep issues for years with reasonably consistent symptoms. I read various books and tried CBT, therapy, and a variety of meds. A lot of this seemed to either do nothing, or else have strange effects. Eventually I tried some med that got terrible reviews online, which to my surprise pretty much solved my problem overnight. Now I'm overseas for several months without access to this medication, and to my complete surprise my sleep has been fine. Why? Will things stay this way? I wish I could tell you!!

All this is to say, for your target market, suspicion and distrust will often be par for the course. Please don't take it personally :)

https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Blog posts from startups who get acquired by big companies, talking about what an incredible journey their startup has been, and thanking their customers and promising ongoing support for their products. And then breaking these promises soon after.

And no one aims to enshittify, but my understanding is that pressure from investors eventually becomes louder than that from customers. (Although perhaps less so in your case, as you say you're bootstrapping.)

If you have a subscription model, you're asking me to trust you over the long term. But, if I understand your product correctly, there's no technical reason why I need to have an ongoing relationship with you or even an internet connection to use your product. Those are apparently business decisions. And I'm afraid those are decisions which lead me to trust you less.

Like other readers, I saw the subscription business and got put off.

Especially since it seems that every company eventually either "enshittifies" or goes on an "incredible journey".

"Let's add your Microsoft account." No, let's not.

If medical facts can reliably be inferred from RFK's statements, by whatever algorithm (i.e. "believe the opposite of whatever he says"), then it follows that he understands what he is talking about. Which would contradict all the evidence I've seen.

I would have thought your lawyer would be salivating at the prospect of raking your HOA over the coals. Or at least of mailing a nastygram with all sorts of colorful threats. I suppose not?