zfnmxt · HackerTrans

I always think about reading a proof in a book vs. doing the proof yourself. No one learns mathematics by reading. You must spend the attention cycles and struggle cycles and do it yourself---even though there's a perfectly good proof in the book right there! A lot of comments in this post talk about code quality; the quality of the proof in the book is also probably better than the proof you wrote but it is only so because its author wrote a whole lot of shittier proofs before that. The content of that book is the result of many, many years of deep attention and development & refinement of expertise.

I have this pernicious tendency to be extremely task focused: I need to get this done via any means. The objective becomes the artifact at the end. A lot of this stems from issues I have revolving around self-perception, inadequacy, and feelings of obligations to others. (For context, I work as a researcher in academia.) Working like this is very unenjoyable. You feel guilt and shame and humiliation and a lot of pressure and there's this big (self-imposed) push for speed and results. [1]

Worse still is that it produces worse outcomes. Maybe in a very local window it is indeed the fastest way to produce something that works. But, long term, by not enjoying and engaging with the process and being completely fixated on the result means that you are not cultivating deeper understanding and expertise, which, of course, would be really helpful for future tasks!

You can imagine that (the promises of) AI is (are) very seductive for someone who works like this. What a quick way to get things done and absolve my inner turmoil! (Although it has limited efficacy in my domain---compilers (what I work on) are complex beasts with many open problems.)

I didn't really engage with AI until this year and doing so (and also re-evaluating other aspects of my life) has surfaced a lot of issues with my approach to work and life. I realized that I was working for the sake of the result and would kill myself to (try to) satisfy others. But that's no way to live (let alone enjoy) life.

There of course are the pragmatics that I pointed out---that actual expertise (as a person and of the codebase) is only developed by spending actual attention (the linked blog post gets at this) which is really only effectively spent through active creation (whether that's programming or whiteboarding or scribbling or whatever). But more important to me now is that I enjoy the process and the puddle-deep engagement that AI encourages (at least for me)---seductive as it may be---is not the way to do that.

So, I'm shifting. Rather than ask how I can get this task done quickly, I ask what I can get out of doing the task. [2] Self-cultivation like this is what produces experts. An overreliance on AI will result in personal stagnation and decay. And it's just way more enjoyable. I want to create, not have some stochastic thing create for me, even if any given artifact it creates might be better than what I can create (and in a much shorter amount of time).

[1] It's extra stupid because I actually really enjoy deep, focused work. Historically, when I've had longer breaks from university/research and have time to let some of my burnout dissipate, I find that I'll pick up a math book or something else and just start going through it for fun. I really enjoy the slowness and the puzzles and not having the (partly imagined) pressure of others to get something done.

[2] Obviously I recognize that there are many shitty tasks that must get done and aren't particularly redeeming/rewarding.

zfnmxt

mês passadodiscuss

Internet vibes---basically making conclusions based on feelings you get from participating in online communities. (E.g., Europeans concluding that America is a medical wasteland where most people do not have reasonable access to care because they read some horror stories on Reddit.)

zfnmxt

mês passadodiscuss

[flagged]

zfnmxt

mês passadodiscuss

From my experience in both systems, I think some of the students of course would (the best students in Scandinavia are just as good as the best students anywhere else), but certainly not all of them. And the degree of grade inflation as well as the level of courses and course difficulty is not only highly variable by school but also by individual instances of courses, so it's pretty hard to make broad claims regardless.

I should also note I've taken courses in Europe where the failure rate was like 60%, but I've also taken courses where just about every student got (the equivalent of) an A. Easy grading occurs in Euroland as well. Or other phenomenona, like niche courses that tend to only attract talented, interested students.

P.S. The "common" in "common knowledge" is not some claim of accuracy/correctness and does not lend credence to your point---a lot of things that are common knowledge are false! (I bet most things that fall under that description are false to a degree, or at least in terms of each individuals' average understanding.)

P.P.S. Failure in the US system and the European systems are very different things. In most US schools, failing is permanently recorded on your transcript and cannot be erased. You also cannot retake an exam you've failed. You just get the one shot. So the cost of failure in the US is much higher than in Europe, where it's absolutely routine. The US system also samples students more often, with course grades consisting of many homeworks, multiple exams, etc---this gives an early signal to students doing poorly they need to get their shit together and also prevents students from falling behind. In Europe it's often just a single final exam, which may be a whole of 10-15 minutes if it's an oral exam, and you may be permitted to take the exam even if you haven't really been doing the work (often you need some perfunctory thing like 50% of the points from the homework to qualify). All these factors are also responsible for high European failure rates---it's definitely not just the Americans going easy.

zfnmxt

mês passadodiscuss

This is not a good comparison.

All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable.

The students at Scandinavian universities are selected to a degree, but represent a far broader range of the distribution and correspondingly there's a broader range of exam results.

Of course, other things are at play here (there is grade inflation at Harvard, the schools obviously operate differently, student disposition is (very) different (e.g., Scandinavian students are far less likely to care a lot about their grades), etc) but students from Harvard would do well at your university in Sweden. Also, the level of the material at Harvard is likely higher.

This is my experience from attending an Ivy undergrad and then doing graduate school in Scandinavia. I actually left my MSc program in Scandinavia because I thought the level of the courses was too low. (I ultimately returned for the PhD---I found the profs and researchers in Scandinavia to be first class/excellent. Much better than I ever will be.)

zfnmxt

há 2 mesesdiscuss

I have like 20 brands of foam earplugs in my drawer, 5 different pairs of custom silicone airplugs, unusual earplugs from Kickstarter like [1], and so on. What I'm saying is I know my way around the earplug block. Here's what I'd write for your categories:

Foam: The most effective, by far. I suspect many people wear them incorrectly and do not insert them far enough. You can use lube (they make special ear lube for stuff like hearing aids, although I think anything medical grade will do) if you have difficulty doing so. I have unusually small ear canals; the most comfortable and best I've found by a mile are Mack's Ultra Soft Foam Earplugs. These are much more comfortable than slim fit alternatives and also have very high attenuation.

Silicone: expensive (but they're reusable and last years), but the least fussy once you get them. They are moulded to your goddamn ear---it's a perfect, pressure-free fit every time and they go right in. Drawbacks include lesser attenuation and attenuation that isn't immediately at 100%---it takes a while for it to "seal". I abadoned these once moisture started to accumulate between my ear canal and the plug and I'd hear it as I moved and it became very annoying.

Wax: joke attenuations compared to foam, and bad compared to silicone. The most expensive long-term unless you're serious about reuse. Somewhat fussy and may fall out. Very comfortable (little insertion).

Foam + wax: this is what you really want if you care about maximum attenuation. My ear canals are slightly too short to comfortably insert an entire Mack's earplug, so I snip the ends off mine, lube them up, and insert them completely flush into my ear canal. Then, I take a wax plug and mould it on top. It's perfectly comfortable and it performs better than any other option I'm aware of. I tend to also wear a Bluetooth sleep mask and play rain sounds on 100% volume and it just comes through the double earplug situation to mask any very loud/spurious noise. To remove the flush-inserted earplugs, I use a pair of blunt tweezers.

When I used slim fit foam earplugs I'd routinely get ear infections. Switching to silicone fixed that, but suffered from the aforementioned issues. With the ultra soft earplugs + wax method I never get ear infections. I make sure to always insert a fresh pair (but I reuse the wax ones for a few days) and to always do so with clean hands. I think the infections are due to friction between the plug and the canal during insertion as well as plugs that are too large/exert too much pressure once expanded---the lube and very soft plug addresses those issues.

[1] https://paxauris.com/

zfnmxt

há 8 mesesdiscuss

They aren't that rare. And AI is expanding the niche because making parallel linear algebra go zoom zoom is compiler work. There's also a lot of quantum compiler work.

zfnmxt

ano passadodiscuss

Location: US & Europe

Remote: No preference

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Functional programming, type systems, language design, compilers, parallel programming languages, verification, Haskell.

Résumé/CV: https://rschenck.com/docs/cv.pdf

Email: See CV above.

I recently finished my PhD at the University of Copenhagen, where I worked on the functional array programming language Futhark (https://futhark-lang.org/). My research focused on Futhark’s type system---including sum types and rank polymorphism---and on adding support for parallel automatic differentiation. Right now, I’m a postdoc at VU Amsterdam, working on hardware verification. Specifically, proving leakage properties of functional hardware descriptions (functional in the Haskell sense) in a composable way.

See my CV or https://rschenck.com for a list of publications.

I'm open to both academic and industry positions. I'm broadly interested in all things type systems/functional programming/compilers/language design. I can work in both the US and the EU without a visa.

zfnmxt

há 6 anosdiscuss

I had unlimited data from O2 in Germany earlier this year. It was something like 55 euros/month without a contract.

In Denmark, I get unlimited data for 18 euros/month. I don't have a wired connection; I just use my phone as a hotspot.

(Both were really 1TB/month before throttling and not truly unlimited.)