“We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it.”

— Claude Shannon

About

I’m an engineer and researcher interested in subjects related to mathematics, computer science, economics, and complex systems. Professionally, I’ve worked on DARPA-funded AI research programs, built systems at large technology companies, and started a few ventures of my own.

Direction

I’m currently exploring a set of related questions about agency, games, and complex systems. In particular, I’m interested in how agent-like structures emerge from dynamics, selection, and information constraints, and how tools from variational mechanics, symmetry, and control theory can help identify and analyze them. Many of the posts here are attempts to directly or indirectly build pieces of that framework.

Intent

My intent is for this blog to be a compendium of:

• Writings about books, papers or small side projects I undertake for the purpose of learning, in the hope that my distillations will be useful to others (generally marked “Exposition”).

• Widgets that I build in the course of those investigations (code will generally be shared, but use it at your own risk).

• Writing about any insights or ideas that I may have related to my interests (generally marked “Research” or “Speculation”).

• Any other writings or projects that I think are interesting and worth sharing.

Subject Areas

I’ll try to keep everything roughly organized by subject, ideally in some sort of pedagogical ordering.

• Essays
  • Art and Information
    • The Paradox of Taste
    • Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?
    • Cultural Saturation
    • Functional Theories of Art
  • Technology and Society
    • Does AI Make Totalitarianism More Likely?
    • How Will Humans Generate Value In a Post-AI Society?
• Governance
  • Thoughts on Selectorate Theory
• Theory of Mind
  • Do We See the Same Colors?
• Machine Learning and Statistics
  • Inspection Bias
    • Inspection Bias
  • Dynamical Systems
    • Linear Methods
    • SINDy
    • SINDyC
• Games and Agents
  • Game Theory
    • Differentiable Game Canonicalization
    • Learning Equilibria
    • Differential Games and Stag Hunt
  • Controls
    • Geometric Controls
    • Noether’s Theorem
    • Noether’s Theorem with Time
    • Dynamical Similarity and Equivariant Symmetry
    • Reduction
• Symmetry and Structure
  • Survey of Classical Invariant Theory
• Reasoning
  • E-Graphs
    • E-Graph Basics
  • Proof Assistant
    • Calculus of Constructions
    • Conversion Rules
    • Typing Rules
    • Induction
    • Sort Hierarchy
    • Tactics Engine
    • Match Construct
    • Tactic Elaboration
    • Retrospective
• ML Engineering
  • Vector Search
    • Basic Vector Search Infra

Disclaimer

All code and information on this blog is subject to error. Use at your own risk.

Errors

Please let me know if you see any errors.

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