I’m Anthony. I found out about Less Wrong from Overcoming Bias, and I found out about Overcoming Bias about 2 years ago when Abnormal Returns, which is like a sampler of all kinds of posts on the econ-blogsphere, linked to Overcoming Bias.
I had previously decided that the singulatarians were crazily optimistic. I thought they were all about the future being unimaginable goodness all the time. I guess that was my interpretation of Kurzeil. I thought they were unrealistic about the nature of reality. I don’t believe that the singularity will hit in a few decades, at least I don’t understand the arguments enough to think that yet, but it is an interesting topic
I used to be part of an Objectivist campus club at the University of CU-Denver. And then an Objectivist magazine promoted the idea of nuking Afghanistitan in response to 9/11. And also I discovered Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Strange Things”, and specially the chapter calling out Objectivism as a cult. I fought against the idea of Objectivism being a cult for a long time, but then I started to be convinced, and I eventually abandoned Objectivism completely.
But reading HPMOR, the sequences and some of the other posts here has been really informative and fun. I especially liked the Quantum Mechanics sequence, it really cleared up some of my fogginess on the subject, and made me want to know more. I am now working through the “Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”. Just the linear algebra in the latter half of Chapter 1 goes way behind anything I learned in college, so it is still slow going, but I have learned a lot about Linear algebra (projection operators. How to take a norm of a complex-valued vector, etc.)
I live in the Northern Lower Penninsula of Michigan. Its pretty rural up here. There aren’t many jobs in IT around here, but I have one of them. Its a lot less specialized that I’m sure most IT jobs are. I do purchasing, PC support, in house app programming, printer support and on and on. I’m in the middle of a difficult programming project that’s taken 2 years, because I am the only programmer here, and I can’t spend full time on the project.
I see that there was recently a meetup in Detroit. I might have to make the drive south for the next one, if there is another one.
Anyway, I decided to it was time to get more involved and learn more actively. So I registered rather than continuing to lurk.
I am now working through the “Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”
Good for you. Checking multiple sources is very rational :) If you get stuck, the Freenode ##physics IRC channel often has physics undergrad and grad students around to help with the technical stuff, though discussing interpretations is generally not encouraged.
My other thought is to also get a linear algebra book that covers infinite dimensional vectors.
This is useful for, say, the hydrogen atom or the simple harmonic oscillator, but you can learn a lot just from the spin 1⁄2 quantum mechanics, which is quite finite-dimensional. It is sufficient for all of quantum information, EPR, Bell inequalities, etc. If you are interested in “quantum epistemology”, Scott Aaronson’s Quantum Computing since Democritus is an excellent read and would not overtax your math skills.
I’m Anthony. I found out about Less Wrong from Overcoming Bias, and I found out about Overcoming Bias about 2 years ago when Abnormal Returns, which is like a sampler of all kinds of posts on the econ-blogsphere, linked to Overcoming Bias.
I had previously decided that the singulatarians were crazily optimistic. I thought they were all about the future being unimaginable goodness all the time. I guess that was my interpretation of Kurzeil. I thought they were unrealistic about the nature of reality. I don’t believe that the singularity will hit in a few decades, at least I don’t understand the arguments enough to think that yet, but it is an interesting topic
I used to be part of an Objectivist campus club at the University of CU-Denver. And then an Objectivist magazine promoted the idea of nuking Afghanistitan in response to 9/11. And also I discovered Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Strange Things”, and specially the chapter calling out Objectivism as a cult. I fought against the idea of Objectivism being a cult for a long time, but then I started to be convinced, and I eventually abandoned Objectivism completely.
But reading HPMOR, the sequences and some of the other posts here has been really informative and fun. I especially liked the Quantum Mechanics sequence, it really cleared up some of my fogginess on the subject, and made me want to know more. I am now working through the “Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”. Just the linear algebra in the latter half of Chapter 1 goes way behind anything I learned in college, so it is still slow going, but I have learned a lot about Linear algebra (projection operators. How to take a norm of a complex-valued vector, etc.)
I live in the Northern Lower Penninsula of Michigan. Its pretty rural up here. There aren’t many jobs in IT around here, but I have one of them. Its a lot less specialized that I’m sure most IT jobs are. I do purchasing, PC support, in house app programming, printer support and on and on. I’m in the middle of a difficult programming project that’s taken 2 years, because I am the only programmer here, and I can’t spend full time on the project.
I see that there was recently a meetup in Detroit. I might have to make the drive south for the next one, if there is another one.
Anyway, I decided to it was time to get more involved and learn more actively. So I registered rather than continuing to lurk.
Good for you. Checking multiple sources is very rational :) If you get stuck, the Freenode ##physics IRC channel often has physics undergrad and grad students around to help with the technical stuff, though discussing interpretations is generally not encouraged.
I will definitely check that out. Thanks.
My other thought is to also get a linear algebra book that covers infinite dimensional vectors.
This is useful for, say, the hydrogen atom or the simple harmonic oscillator, but you can learn a lot just from the spin 1⁄2 quantum mechanics, which is quite finite-dimensional. It is sufficient for all of quantum information, EPR, Bell inequalities, etc. If you are interested in “quantum epistemology”, Scott Aaronson’s Quantum Computing since Democritus is an excellent read and would not overtax your math skills.