Uzay @uzpg_ Twitter profile

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Uzay

2 years

Hi! Here's some information about who I am, what I'm interested in, and some of my "values" — building on my personal wiki, website and general digital presence.

Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I plan on doing a big "who am i? what do i like? what am I interested in?" pinned tweet tomorrow, sort of as a tree of tweets instead of just a linked list. Very excited because I can't really express much about myself in my bio, nor have I really worked on it.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

It's weird to be a student studying math / phys / CS right now and at the same time like following AI stuff. The content is beautiful and I like learning it, but at the same time there's this underlying sense of something urgent and insistent looming?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

One solution here is to just ignore it and live the life you'd live anyway, which is appealing on an aesthetic level. On the other hand if you believe this is one of the most important times you'll live and you want to be a part of what's going on... I don't know. Thoughts.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

10 months

I have a lot of notes on a lot of stuff. @gwern has this post on why you should do spaced repetition, but I've always been to lazy to generate flashcards. I automatically ran GPT-4 to generate flashcards on my notes, getting me 1.4k useful Anki flashcards on stuff like (1/n)

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Uzay

@uzpg_

4 months

the amount of good classes at MIT is scary. this is prob why students focus a lot on academics It's the first week and me and all my friends are shopping ie visiting and picking which classes we want. What I'm looking at:

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

EA folks, how do you cope / process the idea of existential doom?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Moving into MIT today! Scary but exciting :)

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

currently alternating between preparing for a math exam and opening reactions to this tweet

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Imagine you had powerful semantic search on your history, which could be linked to what you're currently reading — making your knowledge come alive. This is my POC for a personal and general purpose AI-powered search engine. Link to waitlist below 👇

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Uzay

@uzpg_

11 months

Finished my internship at @dust4ai today! was a great experience, really enjoyed working with everyone and being mentored by @spolu , and am excited about where they're going. I worked on Gens (see image), a writing interface that does a deep search on your data, where (1/n)

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I got in... in shock rn omg

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

GPT-4 does some pretty good hallucinated quote generations, cherry picked here for asking for quotes related to technology, the future, and change: (these are hallucinated)

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

What are some blog posts or essays where reading them increased your agency? Thinking about a new project.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Given that my first class starts tomorrow, here are some thoughts on my experiences at MIT so far, with orientation / dorm discovery and other various pre-actual work things.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

10 months

econ, mechanics, abstract algebra, philosophy, books I've read, etc... This is nice! I can flirt between subjects and am forced to remember/preserve understanding of what I've learned. Here's the script: Gwern post: (2/n)

Spaced Repetition for Efficient Learning

Efficient memorization using the spacing effect: literature review of widespread applicability, tips on use & what it’s good for.

gwern.net

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

Taught a class on abstract algebra with a friend this weekend for MIT Splash, a program where a bunch of highschoolers come to MIT to take classes by students for a weekend. We covered groups, symmetry, subgroups, homorphisms, quotients, group actions, etc...

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

What are your foundational authors? People whose writing in general has brought you an abundance of interesting perspective/insight and changed how you think about the world.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I'm getting my MIT decision in ~2 hours. Don't ask me what the decision was after those two hours, but right now how can I distract myself?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

4 months

18.821 Project Lab in math (math research in a class), 21W.735 essay writing, and then, 2 of {secure hardware design, distributed systems, inference and information, quantum}

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

@samcraigjohnson intelligence is not the same though?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Any good advice for someone turning 18 👀

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I need to get better at *actually publishing writing/finishing posts*. I have these ideas and I write a few notes on a topic but I haven't been publishing anything recently. How do you all do it?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

10 months

Been learning some info theory! It's quite cool stuff and also provides an interesting frame on randomness, with relationships I think to the stuff going around re compression and intelligence/information. Do let me know if you know of cool articles/videos/books on this stuff :)

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Uzay

@uzpg_

11 months

Interning @dust4ai this summer and working with great people like @spolu has been fun, am learning a lot, and am excited about the progress made towards helping people create and learn with models that can help them make more of their data —

TechCrunch

@TechCrunch

11 months

Dust uses large language models on internal data to improve team productivity by @romaindillet

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Coming back home after my second semester in college. It's been intense, but also learned a lot (also about myself). Excited for summer's freedom, and probably will be sharing more content/ideas/projects here.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

7 months

So many cool people around me. Am very grateful.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

An update on the project I've been talking about — Espial = discovery = improving knowledge base organization with Natural Language Processing. Here's a demo of some of the features of the unpolished UI I made this weekend.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

10 months

imo the whole builder/ @paulg thing of having an "alarm bell" when you're not working creates a breeding ground for insecurities about "working enough" or accomplishing things, killing the ability to take breaks, enjoy life/have other values eg aesthetics and becomes monopolizing

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

What would you like to learn/read this summer? I'd like to learn/read the following: - keep reading lots of good lit and get more into philosophy - read some more ml/safety stuff - rust - read some bio (maybe molecular bio of the cell) - random math things!

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Today, a few friends and I organized a blogathon at MIT! We talked about why writing can be cool and then everyone brainstormed and wrote N blog posts in 30N minutes (here, N=4). It was pretty awesome. You can check out some of the posts at .

A learning community to build and learn cool shit outside of your classes

firelight-mit.github.io

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I hate the fact time speeds up as you grow older

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

The feeling of happiness when something you've been coding finally works at midnight is just indescribable.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

I think 1.5 years ago I started going on a math journey, and felt like I wanted to understand the world, which I still will continue to be on. But within that there was also some kernel of insecurity and feeling that I need to get better and am not good enough...

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Uzay

@uzpg_

7 months

Not enough people are talking about this? Something weird is going on.

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

7 months

@DrKnowItAll16 I am very worried. Ilya has a good moral compass and does not seek power. He would not take such drastic action unless he felt it was absolutely necessary.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I think there are unintended / negative consequences of the productivity mindset @paulg suggests in "How to work hard". 1/

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

will be at neurips next week! keen to meet people and talk about research

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

One thing I'm really happy my college courses are forcing me to really think about how to deeply learn things esp for math and physics

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Advice on getting past regret?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

11 months

I wanna learn some bio! Do you have any recs for books/videos/blogs/etc... to get a good picture / general understanding? I have some knowledge from a solid HS education in bio in france, but wanna go deeper.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

9 months

Coming back to college and people are already talking about applying for summer internships and stuff...

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Wrote something! On college and choice: About how college makes people grow and on slowly figuring out what to become

College and choice

For some context before I get into it, my first year of college has passed… and with it, a lot has happened. I definitely became more adult; getting into my first big relationship, coping with the...

www.uzpg.me

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

@PradyuPrasad I definitely agree to this. Not sure if I'm one of these, but having school from 8 to 5 everyday makes me do a lot less of the cool things I want to do.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

4 months

why do you work hard

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

public todo for april: (1) apply to emergent ventures (2) apply to atlas fellowship () (3) submit writing for the eon essay contest (4) figure out how my self-worth works and precisely define how my brain compares myself to others 1/

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Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

I would like hiring if I could just request a real world problem a company is having with what solving it would entail in terms of me working with them. Mostly because I wanna learn a lot and work on hard problems. This is good 2-way selection, and would make search less 1-way.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

Will be in the bay sometime from 15-25 january, keen on meeting people!

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Working on a light pytorch library from scratch in Rust, to learn more Rust and get stronger ML foundations. Excited!

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Some brain dumps on questions/issues that are on my mind. This semester has been mostly me doing academics. I had some good classes, but also I spent tons of time doing shitty busywork, and I think it happens too often that problems given aren't actually super efficient to learn.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

7 months

I'm so confused right now

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I was recently exposed to lots of ideas / thought about the real possibility of this, esp. with AI, and I'm not sure how exactly to process it.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

7 months

Hmm I'm learning a lot in college but it's just not a model where you can really focus on a smaller set of things to do really well. I like learning all these things but I also wanna work and really spend lots of time focusing on hard problems.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

i feel so back 👀

Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

I think 1.5 years ago I started going on a math journey, and felt like I wanted to understand the world, which I still will continue to be on. But within that there was also some kernel of insecurity and feeling that I need to get better and am not good enough...

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Transitioning to university has been somewhat confusing. The problem is finding the right compromise between legibility and independence.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

7 months

WHOA?

Joe Weisenthal

@TheStalwart

7 months

Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I'm gonna be learning more math on the side this summer, and am trying to find a tutor to help me work through higher math stuff and really go deep on problem-solving skills. Do any of y'all know good ones? +++ if they're in paris, because I'll be there, but that's not a barrier

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

"Tsundoku" (): japanese word for "acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them."

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Hypothesis: we're entering a period where, due to the growing power of AI tools, the ability to found new successful projects will depend more heavily than it did on ideation and creativity as opposed to execution.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

@awlego by @utotranslucence , otherwise i have a list at

Becoming a magician

When I was a teenager I often used fantasy as a vehicle for escapism. Some people, when they fantasise, think about sex or dragons or wildly unlikely events like winning the lottery. I fantasised a…

autotranslucence.wordpress.com

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Uzay

@uzpg_

8 months

Wrote up something about moving to the US/my experience with climbing recently:

Climbing and becoming

Note: this post provides more context on me coming to the US and how that journey has been for me. It’s part of the posts I submitted in my application that lead to me becoming an MIT blogger.

www.uzpg.me

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

Yearly review time! I am very interested if people are learning/interested in similar things, or have thoughts. This is mostly a personal exercise I do to plan my year, but it can be rewarding to post :)

2022 in Review

Skip table of contents Table of Contents

www.uzpg.me

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

SPARC was a great experience, would recommend!

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

Particularly interested in discussing: - safe exploration and representations - interpretability - theory of deep learning Arriving tomorrow ~noon.

Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

will be at neurips next week! keen to meet people and talk about research

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

What do you think you'd do in a post-scarcity world? I have no idea.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Lots of very talented people, who have gone above and beyond, even more so in the international student body. This fact is never evoked or alluded to but it's wild what some of the people here have accomplished, and it still strikes me.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I do extensive yearly reviews every year, posted online (last one @ ). I include the things I've learned/done or want to and also compare to last year's goals. I also document cool things I've discovered. What is most interesting to you/what to add?

2021 into 2022 - A Year in Review

Skip table of contents Table of Contents

www.uzpg.me

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Spent 5 hours working on algebra 1 problem set today. Stimulating, but I have to make sure I end up having time to keep building.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

based

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Uzay

@uzpg_

7 months

Created a goodreads:

Uzay - Cambridge, MA (348 books)

Uzay has 348 books on Goodreads, and is currently reading Talking at the Boundaries by David Antin

www.goodreads.com

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I often have this feeling of excitement / sadness when I think of all the projects I want to work on *right now* but can't because I have other, often less interesting stuff I have to take care of.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Should I do a gap year to work on an idea I think has high potential or go do the intense uni experience or juggle uni and building?

gap

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uni (hard)

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uni + build

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Uzay

@uzpg_

8 months

I think I'm going to make something

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Spending lots of time in the US this summer. Many things here are big/extravagant/etc... in a way that is somewhat impressive but feels very excessive regarding my European perspective and particularly the way my family brought me up. Not sure how I feel about this.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

6 months

@thesephist Fun fact: Conjectured, but we don't know if every number is contained in the digits of pi 👀

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

@PradyuPrasad Am thinking a lot about this rn ("Advice for the agentic high-schooler" ) and

Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I *really* care about helping young people (middle/high-school) who are interested in STEM stuff but don't know where to start, and an easy way to do that is expanding their exposure to the opportunity space that surrounds them. 1/

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Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

It's Jan 1st! Year review time I mostly do these for myself to look backwards/ forwards, and the public facing version is more serious than personal. I look at what I said I'd do, what I did, and what I want to do in {projects, learning, reading, writing, etc}, and recap (1/n)

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Uzay

@uzpg_

3 months

@dwarkesh_sp

Home

www.uzpg.me

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I want to learn lots of stuff but Im sometimes unsure how to balance that with like uni courses? Like right now I want to do some math but I need to do some scuffed picking process to figure out what to learn on my own versus at uni

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Have there been actually viable / scalable plans to reinvent how education works? I don't mean incremental improvements but big changes. Imo education has tons of problems but I haven't discovered many solutions yet that scale to lots of people and not just a select few.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I have too many tabs open, including lots of stuff I plan on reading but don't have time yet. I'll save those links here for y'all. 1/

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I think doing lots of programming stuff / absorbing lots of content quickly has kind of lowered my bar for what "understanding things deeply means". I need to have several layers beyond "why is this true" when I read math, and it's very different from software.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I'm going to lots of places and just doing stuff alone a lot this month, which is empowering but also scary. It's hard to think about leaving home, especially as I realize that I'm entering an undergrad culture that doesn't really spare that much time for family. 1/

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I think I'm going to apply to Emergent Ventures

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

What advice do you wish you had been given in high-school? Brainstorming what's most useful to put in the wiki I'm writing with advice about going out in the world and building/learning cool shit. It's for people around high-school age.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

DM me if you're on Firefox and want to beta-test this. I've been working on this more recently and it's getting good — excited to start sharing it with the world.

Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Imagine you had powerful semantic search on your history, which could be linked to what you're currently reading — making your knowledge come alive. This is my POC for a personal and general purpose AI-powered search engine. Link to waitlist below 👇

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

What are some cool startups for the summer? Or cool things to do in general?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I just got my The Precipice copy through the amazing @80000Hours free EA book process. I've been exploring EA since this summer, but it's time to make this official.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

11 months

Reading this now, and wanted to shout out the authors for their effort with this really nice resource to get a bird's eye view of mainstream interpretability methods. Am really enjoying reading this.

Cas (Stephen Casper)

@StephenLCasper

2 years

1/ New paper – Toward Transparent AI: A Survey on Interpreting the Inner Structures of Deep Neural Networks. We surveyed over 300 papers on interpretable deep learning. @ansonwhho @TilmanRa @dhadfieldmenell

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Trip to Boston was pretty epic. MIT has its stuff down on the "getting smart people to all want to go there" thing, and this trip is a prime example of how they do that. There were incredible events (700 total) (fire show, epic clubs, tons of free food, underground CTF) 1/

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Would be cool if we had mechanisms for serendipitous interaction during public chilling. Like u know when you have a t-shirt related to a specific niche you're in and someone walks up to u about it? would be cool if we could make that sort of interaction more common

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

People who tell kids "just don't define your feelings of self-worth by your grades" to comfort them aren't always aiming at the right thing. I care about these anxiety-inducing heuristics because they impact whether I accomplish my short-term goals like getting to a good uni

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Only in the bay area do the high ways have ads for dev tools

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I also want to look into which clubs I want to join, eg AI, outing club, hackmit, etc... I also need to plan out cooking for myself and figure out the routines / strategies that will help me through that. Looking forward to an exciting first semester!

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Uzay

@uzpg_

8 months

Wrote something up about time and noise at college:

Noise and time | MIT Admissions

chaos and peace in a silver package

mitadmissions.org

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I feel like my uni courses don't really give me good feedback loops on how I'm improving? Problem sets don't feel like they tell me much about my growth, and then exams are rare and often finicky. Not sure how to solve this.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

1 year

I'm getting into Rust and it is just lovely. Once my code compiles, my tests just work! Huge change from building stuff in Python...

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Uzay

@uzpg_

5 months

i need to remove this math insecurity and go forward as someone who hacks while trying to understand what's going on out here on this lumpy planet. It's too easy to hide myself in a bundle of intellectualism and forget a whole part of who I am.

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

I have a weird feeling of this being like an infohazard for me

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

Any advice on making complex decisions? I know about decision matrices, but still struggle. Examples of hard decisions rn: what student housing? should i self-study the rest of multivar to skip it in college? should i do a hard math seminar on top of my fall courses? gap year?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

What does humanity's roadmap for fast sustainable trans-oceanic travel look like (instead of current planes)?

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Uzay

@uzpg_

2 years

If you're interested in Programming Languages / compilers / awesome takes & tech people in general, please check out @slightknack 's underrated account!! He's a good friend building a cool new programming language and is planning on using twitter more !

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