Maxim Raginsky
@mraginsky.bsky.social
📤 7134
📥 1052
📝 3290
web:
http://maxim.ece.illinois.edu
substack:
https://realizable.substack.com
One hilarious thing about Magnifica Humanitas is how hard it seems to have triggered the rationalists. "But the Pope doesn't talk about instrumental convergence!" "Has he even read the Sequences???"
1 day ago
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Good piece by Bertrand Meyer about AI for software engineering:
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Artificial Intelligence for Software Engineering: From Probable to Provable – Communications of the ACM
https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/artificial-intelligence-for-software-engineering-from-probable-to-provable/
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6 days ago
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I re-read Turing’s “Computing machinery and intelligence” recently, and it bears pointing out that Turing rejected the view that thinking *requires* phenomenal consciousness or emotion or subjective experience. Parts of the paper are loopy (eg the ESP bit), but he was correct on the above.
6 days ago
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reposted by
Maxim Raginsky
If it takes The Pope to point out the obvious idea that AI systems don’t undergo subjective experience or have emotions or moral conscience, then we have much bigger problems.
8 days ago
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Pope Leo on “AI alignment” — whose values will these systems be “aligned” with?
9 days ago
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visual analogies
13 days ago
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Maxim Raginsky
I've been on a Gian-Carlo Rota reading binge lately, and this resonated:
14 days ago
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Maxim Raginsky
More bangers by Rota: “It is well known that statistics is that branch of applied mathematics that is expressly designed to reinforce conclusions previously decided upon.”
15 days ago
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Happy Steely Dan Day!
youtu.be/TPCusTTV8PI?...
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Steely Dan ~ Hey Nineteen ~ Gaucho (Remastered) HQ Audio
YouTube video by steelyman08
https://youtu.be/TPCusTTV8PI?si=ptnGgeN4FSRxpk2L
15 days ago
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Emergency morning deep frying session: making patacones to go with the kiddo’s presentation on Ecuador in 6th grade Spanish.
15 days ago
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“When a philosopher writes well one can forgive him anything, even being an analytic philosopher.” (Gian-Carlo Rota)
16 days ago
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did I also drop by the Seminary Co-op Bookstore? yes
19 days ago
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$33 at Powell’s
20 days ago
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For those interested in things at the intersection of information theory and machine learning, here is some recent work done in collaboration with Abbas El Gamal from Stanford (a true Renaissance man of engineering). One is a chapter Abbas wrote on information theory and ML.
arxiv.org/abs/2605.02989
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Information Theory and Statistical Learning
This manuscript contains preprint of a chapter under consideration for inclusion in the forthcoming third edition of {\em Cover and Thomas's Elements of Information Theory}, posted with permission fro...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.02989
22 days ago
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Where I’ll be this week:
www.imsi.institute/activities/t...
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New Directions in Reinforcement Learning and Control • IMSI
https://www.imsi.institute/activities/theoretical-advances-in-reinforcement-learning-and-control/new-directions-in-reinforcement-learning-and-control/
24 days ago
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Topical, all of a sudden.
add a skeleton here at some point
27 days ago
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That was a deep cut. Apparently no one here has heard of the Port-Royal grammarians?
add a skeleton here at some point
27 days ago
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reposted by
Maxim Raginsky
Artemy Kolchinsky
about 1 month ago
Open postdoc with the amazing Sarah Marzen (Scripps College, Claremont, California). Intersection of information theory, biophysics, neuroscience, and machine learning. Please RT
theclaremontcolleges.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/SCR_C...
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Post-Doctoral Researcher
Claremont, CA Job Posting Title: Post-Doctoral Researcher Job Description: PRIMARY PURPOSE/GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Working with Professor Sarah Marzen, the Post-Doctoral Researcher will serve in an advanced professional research capacity to conduct original scholarly and scientific research relating to the engineering of hybrid adaptive networks. The Researcher will routinely need to apply advanced knowledge in physics, applied mathematics, biophysics, scientific computing, and related fields. DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: This information is intended to be descriptive of the key responsibilities of the position. The incumbent will primarily be engaged in advanced intellectual and creative professional work requiring specialized academic training and the exercise of discretion and independent judgment. Additional duties may be assigned; any such additional duties will primarily be consistent with the professional nature of the position. Independently des
https://theclaremontcolleges.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/SCR_Career_Staff/details/Post-Doctoral-Researcher_REQ-8079
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The cover of “Wichita Lineman” on Flea’s “Honora,” with Nick Cave doing the vocals, is a perfect 10/10.
28 days ago
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youtu.be/idcaRTg4-fM?...
add a skeleton here at some point
30 days ago
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Tonight feels like a 100 Year Old Cigar kind of night.
about 1 month ago
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Spent almost the entire day on revisions, the response to reviewers is almost as long as the paper. Time for some actual R&R:
about 1 month ago
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Caviar bumps might be one of the most déclassé things at the moment. Just sayin’.
about 1 month ago
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Advertise your account with a Simpsons image
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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New book by Volodine, which I somehow missed when it came out:
about 1 month ago
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Deep interpretation: what if Anthropic's Claude is named not after Claude Shannon but after Claude Lancelot?
about 1 month ago
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second tornado warning of the day, that’s Central Illinois for you
about 1 month ago
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about 1 month ago
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TIL that E.B. Dynkin had a paper in 1976 on the existence of general economic equilibria under stochastic uncertainty.
ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull...
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On Dynkin's model of economic equilibrium under uncertainty
The article analyzes the Dynkin (1975) stochastic model of economic equilibrium. We solve a question regarding this model that was open for a long time. We provide arguments yielding a complete proof
https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-01c00001.html
about 1 month ago
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malört negroni
about 1 month ago
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Mine was about quantum mechanics of lasers.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Maxim Raginsky
"The self as a narrative center of gravity" is, actually, a very Nietzschean take by Dennett -- per Nietzsche, all language is metaphorical and figurative.
about 1 month ago
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"Left to itself, the "I" of the cogito is Sisyphus condemned, from one instant to the next, to push up the rock of its certainty, fighting the slope of doubt." (Paul Ricoeur, _Oneself As Another_)
about 1 month ago
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Maxim Raginsky
The Quietus
about 1 month ago
Boards Of Canada have announced details of their much-anticipated new album Inferno
buff.ly/ClKdmJy
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After grumbling for years in our substacks about uses and abuses of probability in machine learning,
@beenwrekt.bsky.social
and I decided it's finally time to put down some concrete ideas in a manifesto with a DOI. Here it is, give us your best feedback. (1/4)
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Separating Geometry from Probability in the Analysis of Generalization
The goal of machine learning is to find models that minimize prediction error on data that has not yet been seen. Its operational paradigm assumes access to a dataset $S$ and articulates a scheme for ...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19560
about 1 month ago
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New post: history of ideas from control, decision theory, cybernetics, and psychology, with some Stalin-era academic politics in the USSR thrown in for good measure.
realizable.substack.com/p/feeding-ev...
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Feeding Ever Forward
Control theory, politics, and the Kierkegaardian double bind.
https://realizable.substack.com/p/feeding-ever-forward
about 1 month ago
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"I am free only when I feel that I am free; but I feel that I am free only when I imagine some restraint, when I begin to think of some state in contrast to my present state." (Paul Valéry, _The Outlook for Intelligence_)
about 1 month ago
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about 2 months ago
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archive.ph/2026.04.13-1...
about 2 months ago
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Ivan Krastev is always worth reading, and this is characteristically good:
www.equator.org/articles/the...
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The Mittel Man • EQUATOR
What was Viktor Orbán’s vision for Europe?
https://www.equator.org/articles/the-mittel-man?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
about 2 months ago
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about 2 months ago
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white negroni: Roku gin, Luxardo Bitter Bianco, Dolin Blanc vermouth
about 2 months ago
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Discussing important matters with students:
about 2 months ago
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I could go for a slice of Esterházy torte right about now.
about 2 months ago
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Expert systems are alive and well. In fact, since the expert systems in question are humans, we better keep them alive and well so we can keep mining them for automatable expertise.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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real patterns
about 2 months ago
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Tesla coil concert at the UIUC Engineering Open House last night:
about 2 months ago
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Attention to electrical transformers is all you need.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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about 2 months ago
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