Life, death, and a squirrel

November 16, 2022

Cropped version of a photo by Rhododendrites ( Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Squirrel_in_CP_%2840494%29.jpg

One time when I was walking in Central Park, a branch fell from a really tall tree, perhaps a 50- to 60-foot drop. A squirrel was on that branch when it fell, and the branch hit the cement path with a loud thud. The squirrel lay there on its back, quivering. I knew it was totally screwed. Its back was probably broken, but it was clearly still alive. "Fuck," I thought to myself. "Look at how much it's suffering. Should I kill it to put it out of its misery?" I stood there pondering t...

Mistakes Made by Minds and Machines

May 3, 2021

Written: May 3, 2021 | Released: July 16, 2021 Fascinatingly, human minds and machine learning algorithms are subject to some of the same biases and prediction problems. This is probably not a coincidence - learning has fundamental challenges. Here is a list of some issues that afflict both minds and machines: 1. Recency Bias For both humans and machine learning algorithms, the most recently processed information tends to override what was learned from older data. This is sensibl...