We all know that the world’s problems can be solved if “all of us can come together and act as one….” you’ve probably dozed off by now. Of course this is true. And of course this never happens. But why not? What is the single most important reason that we cannot get together as aContinue reading “Capitalism and coordination problems”
Monthly Archives: November 2020
PTSD and Type II thinking
[Note: This article is highly speculative, and I will pull it down without warning if I find evidence to the contrary] Reading very many of Scott Alexander blogposts, which review basic neuroscience research, has given me the impression that PTSD and depression might be a fundamental neuroscience problem. Let me explain that below. What doesContinue reading “PTSD and Type II thinking”
IMO 2020, Problem 2
The following is a question from IMO 2020: The first time I tried to solve the problem, I thought I had a solution, but it turned out to be wrong. I wrongly assumed that would be maximized when , which is commonly true in Olympiad problems, but that needn’t be the case. I then lookedContinue reading “IMO 2020, Problem 2”
Quantum Computing
Today, I will be talking about quantum computing. I will be following Quantum Computing– Lecture Notes by Mark Osdin, who is a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. These lecture notes are roughly based on the book Quantum Computing and Quantum Information by Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang. So what exactly isContinue reading “Quantum Computing”
IMO 2019, Problem 1
The International Math Olympiad 2019 had the following question: Find all functions such that . The reason that I decided to record this is because I thought I’d made an interesting observation that allowed me to solve the problem in only a couple of steps. However, I later realized that at least one other personContinue reading “IMO 2019, Problem 1”
EA- November
Some of us also helped pay college fees for a COVID affected student in Tamil Nadu
Poverty, mental health and rhesus monkeys
Today I came across a very interesting paper titled “Values Encoded in orbitofrontal cortex are causally related to economic choices” by Ballesta, Shi, Conen and Padua-Schioppa. I haven’t read and analyzed the paper fully, partly because of the many statistical tools that I will have to learn to assess it carefully. However, I did manageContinue reading “Poverty, mental health and rhesus monkeys”
Fruits of procrastination 