Posts

Derivative AT a discontinuity 2024-10-24T02:48:24.573Z
Just because 2 things are opposites, doesn't mean they're just the same but flipped 2024-04-03T08:59:43.667Z
Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere 2024-04-03T02:24:55.016Z
When To Stop 2023-02-09T09:10:05.978Z
My biggest takeaway from Redwood Research REMIX 2023-01-29T11:00:07.499Z
finite, actual infinity, potential infinity 2023-01-20T11:00:09.466Z
Actions and Flows 2023-01-13T03:20:10.297Z
Nonstandard analysis in ethics 2023-01-12T05:58:54.892Z
Example of the nameless rationalist virtue 2023-01-12T05:45:58.408Z
internal in nonstandard analysis 2023-01-11T09:58:49.301Z
PSA: reward is part of the habit loop too 2023-01-05T11:00:07.996Z
A kernel of Lie theory 2023-01-02T09:20:06.098Z
0 and 1 aren't probabilities 2023-01-01T00:09:27.647Z
The hyperfinite timeline 2022-12-30T09:30:06.483Z
Infinite necklace: the line as a circle 2022-12-29T10:41:58.268Z
Hyperfinite graphs ~ manifolds 2022-12-25T12:24:11.910Z
Inconsistent math is great 2022-12-25T03:20:39.074Z
Slick hyperfinite Ramsey theory proof 2022-12-19T08:40:06.610Z
Why I like Zulip instead of Slack or Discord 2022-12-07T09:28:56.010Z
Alok Singh's Shortform 2022-11-29T09:47:40.752Z
Gaoxing Guy 2022-11-22T01:50:07.666Z
divine carrot 2022-11-10T20:50:09.110Z
What it's like to dissect a cadaver 2022-11-10T06:40:05.776Z
A Prince, a Pauper, Power, Panama 2022-09-27T07:10:16.545Z
Why do so many things break in a 2 element set? 2022-09-23T06:30:16.747Z

Comments

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Derivative AT a discontinuity · 2024-11-14T21:54:28.919Z · LW · GW

added some open circles

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Derivative AT a discontinuity · 2024-11-14T21:54:15.361Z · LW · GW

I adjusted H to use heaviside's 1/2 convention, good catch.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2024-06-05T09:01:20.238Z · LW · GW

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

 

log(infinite number) seems a promising avenue of investigation. also reminiscent of harmonic series--in euler's words-- its sum is the log of an infinite number. 

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2024-06-04T08:23:51.120Z · LW · GW

Skipping context sure saved me a lotta time, and plus you gave a nice elab

shoe thrifting is meh for me because foot size

What sort of boots?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2024-06-04T06:19:03.803Z · LW · GW

Where to get shoes: Meermin

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2024-05-31T18:07:58.466Z · LW · GW

Ivan Karamazov ranting to his brother Alyosha about basically a cabal watching over the world, thought of herenow

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on finite, actual infinity, potential infinity · 2024-05-13T07:13:16.780Z · LW · GW

From Goldblatt, since {0..H} is internal.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on finite, actual infinity, potential infinity · 2024-05-12T10:51:58.077Z · LW · GW

Gonna sleep bc 3 am but will respond later. Also the remark that hyperfinite can mean smaller than a nonstandard natural just seems false, where did you get that idea from?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on finite, actual infinity, potential infinity · 2024-05-12T09:44:10.396Z · LW · GW

I used compactness in recent comment reply. Hypernaturals are uncountable because they are bigger than all the nats and so can’t be counted. Whether cardinality of continuum is equivalent to continuum hypothesis

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on finite, actual infinity, potential infinity · 2024-05-12T09:12:19.640Z · LW · GW

I thought about this since. Bigger is not the right word. Complicated maybe? Like how the unit interval contains non-measurable sub intervals, or a compact set contains non-compact subsets.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on finite, actual infinity, potential infinity · 2024-05-12T09:11:01.756Z · LW · GW

Each number gets infinitesimal weight. Which infinitesimal is basically arbitrary.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Dalcy's Shortform · 2024-05-06T17:43:35.566Z · LW · GW

P v NP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic-case_complexity

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Slick hyperfinite Ramsey theory proof · 2024-05-01T00:27:00.113Z · LW · GW

iLate reply, but the slicker bit is going in more fully. The appeal of the NSA approach here is axiomatizing it which helps people understand because people already know what numbers are, so 'inf big' is much less of a stretch than going the usual crazy inference depth math has.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Standard and Nonstandard Numbers · 2024-04-13T21:08:40.010Z · LW · GW

This really benefits from a picture. Calling something “a nonstandard number” doesn’t really convey anything about them and a better name I’ll use is “infinitely big”, because they are.

< makes sense because the 2 chains are finite numbers and infinitely big numbers and an infinitely big number is bigger than any finite one because it’s , well, infinite. I can elaborate more technically, but I think trying to develop some numeracy for infinite numbers is a lot like learning about negatives and rationals and complex numbers. Just play with some expressions and get used to them. then look at the more technical treatment even if you have the ability to read it. Someone gave that example with a flat list but I think and feel that tapping into one’s existing NUMBER (and not list) sense is very powerful since it’s the first math we learn and the only one people use every single day.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Just because 2 things are opposites, doesn't mean they're just the same but flipped · 2024-04-03T19:31:04.424Z · LW · GW

"This" is the broken duality phenomenon?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Just because 2 things are opposites, doesn't mean they're just the same but flipped · 2024-04-03T18:12:46.514Z · LW · GW

Through stone duality. What about them in particular?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere · 2024-04-03T08:54:26.821Z · LW · GW

thanks, i think. how'd you find the content?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Toward a Broader Conception of Adverse Selection · 2024-03-14T23:53:52.138Z · LW · GW

I think there’s an implicit element of scale or one offness. For buying milk you have multiple samples as to good price. Even if any is contrived, the bulk still capture something real 

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Toward a Broader Conception of Adverse Selection · 2024-03-14T23:52:29.902Z · LW · GW

reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse

lol laffy taffy is too real banana sucks

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Dalcy's Shortform · 2023-07-18T04:17:00.976Z · LW · GW

Train skill of noticing tension and focus on it. Tends to dissolve. No that's not so satisfying but it works. Standing desk can help but it's just not that comfortable for most.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on When To Stop · 2023-05-23T19:48:00.007Z · LW · GW

that the functional analysis is mildly helpful for understanding the problem, but the focus of the field doesn't seem to be on anything helpful. VC dimension is the usual thing to poke fun at, but a lot of the work on regularization is also meh

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-04-07T18:53:47.434Z · LW · GW

Dissection tonight at Merritt College in Oakland, building S202. 5:30-9, you can pay by paypal. 

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on What it's like to dissect a cadaver · 2023-04-07T18:53:10.687Z · LW · GW

UCSF willed body program, on contract to Merritt College. 

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-03-28T00:35:26.578Z · LW · GW

(Something that came up yesterday, parens give the particular case.)

 

Have you spent a lot of time on a skill without a cap? (like math)?

Have you paid money for it? (math tutoring) 

 

How much?

 

How much have you paid towards a complementary unbounded skill (managing people, voice coaching). 

 

So yeah, between learning another hour of math and a voice coach, both at $~80/hour, is the marginal util of voice coach[1] way lower[2]?.

  1. ^

    Or whatever soft skill you would benefit from but don't do.

  2. ^

    way because estimates of utility are fuzzy. [don't lie to yourself.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/302239-above-all-do-not-lie-to-yourself-a-man-who)

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-02-12T03:28:08.436Z · LW · GW

L1 and L infinity norm in another way:

 

see infinity as an unlimited integer N. The max property of the infinity norm 

will still hold.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on When To Stop · 2023-02-09T18:19:51.665Z · LW · GW

I still wonder about the parity prediction these days. I feel like there's something there

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Why I like Zulip instead of Slack or Discord · 2023-01-30T22:11:03.805Z · LW · GW

Except that you can have a thread just for conversations. It subsumes the chat model.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on finite, actual infinity, potential infinity · 2023-01-22T01:38:33.147Z · LW · GW

The point is that such a distribution (uniform on countable infinite set like naturals), is not internal, and therefore external. it'll depend on the specific ultrafilter used under the hood.

for how to use it, see either alain roberts or sylvia wenmackers

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-19T23:26:00.569Z · LW · GW

fact: there is no set of all finite sets

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-18T05:59:30.432Z · LW · GW

One way size goes seems to be:

Limited/finite, actual infinity (countable), potential infinity (uncountable/hyperfinite/compact regions).

On limited and uncountable inputs, we can define a uniform distribution naturally.

A uniform distribution on a countable set, there's no natural way to do that. So in a way, they're "bigger".

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Example of the nameless rationalist virtue · 2023-01-12T07:58:38.942Z · LW · GW

the nameless rationalist virtue (void)

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-12T05:52:33.564Z · LW · GW

Extremely based.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-11T06:47:50.989Z · LW · GW

Related: Ends of groups: a nonstandard perspective, Journal of Logic and Analysis, Volume 3:7 (2011), 1-28.

Ends are havens in pursuit games

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-11T06:43:26.354Z · LW · GW

Differential games lend themselves to a hyperfinite description. You can even have turns. Each player takes an infinitesimal move, then the other goes. A hyperdiscrete approach.

Observing your opponent becomes really important, like in a fight, soccer, or a relationship 😶. I have the intuition that the OODA loop falls out of this.

There's a classic game here where you run from a lion, and the optimum is running along a harmonic spiral since it's infinitely long. What would that look like under this?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-10T09:37:10.404Z · LW · GW

A while ago, I saw Dan Savage's film festival. As an intense art student ate 1000 condoms, a thought flashed. Many gears, all ticking. Click. Click. Clock.

And it hit me: every finite commutative group is a product of cyclic groups of prime power order, just like a prime factorization.

I still have no idea how that came in that context.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on A kernel of Lie theory · 2023-01-05T10:30:50.432Z · LW · GW

I was thinking the one corresponding to a unit circle, just the ordinary dot product.

Canon is probably the wrong word in a mathy context.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on A kernel of Lie theory · 2023-01-02T21:59:25.443Z · LW · GW

Also yes the infinitesimal neighborhood of the identity.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on A kernel of Lie theory · 2023-01-02T21:58:55.921Z · LW · GW

Done 🙏

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on The hyperfinite timeline · 2023-01-02T21:58:09.544Z · LW · GW

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-33149-7

Also includes Feynman path integral and a few other things. Note that you don't even need the full nonstandard theory.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Infinite necklace: the line as a circle · 2023-01-02T21:56:19.037Z · LW · GW

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049237X08715507

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on A kernel of Lie theory · 2023-01-02T21:53:23.734Z · LW · GW

On any finite dim space we have a canon inner product by taking the positive definite one.

Monad is a synonym for infinitesimal neighborhood, common on the literature. Not the category theory monad.

Also hermeneutic lmfao

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-02T08:19:55.324Z · LW · GW

What can 20k USD buy, including projects?

Edit: I live in Berkeley.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on 0 and 1 aren't probabilities · 2023-01-01T02:35:19.666Z · LW · GW

I'll just say  for now. Basically wrapping up "is all this an elaborate simulation designed to convince me that pi = 12"

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-01T02:01:39.640Z · LW · GW

handy trick inspired by compactification: we can work with completed structures by adding endpoints and taking them away.

example: for a lattice, we can adjoin 0 and 1 as min/max elements by defining a structure where the sentences  and  are true for all  in the original structure, then do what we want, then delete 0 and 1.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2023-01-01T01:41:40.681Z · LW · GW

cool goldbring paper: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/19419/1/nonstandard_everett.pdf

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2022-12-31T23:26:06.826Z · LW · GW

handy hyperreal trick

 

take "the hilbert space" talked about in QFT. Set it to  where H is hyperfinite. Have fun. "Compact operators" fall out, and everything finitary is in there, but the whole thing isn't finite

.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Alok Singh's Shortform · 2022-12-31T23:24:28.871Z · LW · GW

reading https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/formal+disk convinced me that there's something to my feeling that nonstandard analysis is similar to algebraic geometry.

 

formal disk ~ infinitesimal neighborhood/halo of a point ~ formal spectrum of power series, which extends prime spectra, one of the main concepts of algebraic geometry. any help here appreciated

 

 

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on The hyperfinite timeline · 2022-12-30T22:30:20.391Z · LW · GW

Was being deliberately inaccurate here. Hard does mean more than a limited multiplier. Sudden means that there's an appreciable change over an infinitesimal variation aka discontinuous.

 

Lookup overflow, underflow, and "principle of permanence" in Goldblatt for why I'd do that. Also called overspill and underspill. The basic idea is "as above, so below" except this link is 2 way. Say some internal function has all infinitesimals in its range. Then it must have non infinitesimals too, since the set of all infinitesimals is known to be external, and images of internal functions over internal sets are internal. This is an example of overspill. Infinitesimal behavior has spilled over into the appreciable domain.

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Hyperfinite graphs ~ manifolds · 2022-12-27T02:45:55.848Z · LW · GW

Reread this and this is awesome: I didn't think of the case of multiple bars at all. As for the surreal stuff, I've read about them and while the lexicographic ordering is nice, the lack of transfer principle hurts. Are you in the bay?

Comment by Alok Singh (OldManNick) on Inconsistent math is great · 2022-12-27T02:41:54.841Z · LW · GW

The logic of paradox, or https://philarchive.org/archive/POSBTO-2