Some basic terms you should know about war. “Area of Operations (AO), is a geographic command subdivision of an overall conflict or theater; each AO generally has its own subordinate commander, its own supply lines (see Communications, Lines Of), its… Read More »Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology
AI will stay but not as CEOs are selling it.
LLMs do not have conscience. “First, ML models are a giant pile of linear algebra. Unlike human brains, which are biologically predisposed to acquire prosocial behavior, there is nothing intrinsic in the mathematics or hardware that ensures models are nice.”… Read More »The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Safety
We aren’t the first or the last civilization. “Civilisations are material systems organised around energy. Their scale, complexity, and population reflect how much energy is available and how it is structured. When the energy available can no longer sustain that… Read More »The World Isn’t Ending. It’s Stopping Working.
I will start using this more. At home and work. “One of my children loves playing around cliffs and rocks. Initially he was very keen on promising me that he wouldn’t fall down. I explained the difference between accidents and… Read More »Hazardous States and Accidents
Institutions usually help the weakest the most. “Towns and villages turned inward (often to local strong men) to protect themselves from chaos. This isolation forced each small community to rely on its own resources and customs, most went back to… Read More »Civilization Is Not the Default. Violence Is.
Here is a pledge I gave when graduating from my alma mater “We, the graduates of engineering studies at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, ‘pledge’ that we will practice our profession as engineers in accordance with the principles… Read More »Engineering Ethic and Honor
This was like reading Slovak dissidents from before communism fell. “People get the government they deserve—this is the crux of China’s problems. Overthrowing the Communist dictatorship is only a technical issue. Though “ruling the country by law” has long been… Read More »Struggle Against the Gods – First Things
You can also cheat in life. “Most systems can be viewed at multiple levels. There is a superficial system which pretends to be made of one thing (walls, hens). But actually, it is really made of something else (bits, memory… Read More »How to walk through walls
LLMs aren’t compilers. “Some argue that formal languages will become a niche skill, like assembly today—almost all software will be written with natural language and “compiled” to code by LLMs. I don’t think this analogy holds. Compilers work because they… Read More »The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Work