Status Update — 2022
Plans for the nearest future and beyond
Exactly one year ago, I wrote my first essay here. It was one of those turning points in life that take a solid part of your worldview and shake it up well. I had been told that writing would have taught me to think differently but… it sure takes one to know one. This is how it has begun. I want to thank all the people who read my newsletter, who have given their feedback, and certainly those who we have become friends with.
Let’s go on with the recap of some plans and aspirations.
High on the list
It’s tempting to fit as much as possible into this category. I’ve always had the tendency to overestimate my time management skills, as well as objective time limits. Today, I will make a colossal effort and stop at four basic activities.
A job in ML
Last week I started to work at Polyn Technology. At last, my job is in actual machine learning research, not some finance-related divination. I’m sure it will consume most of my time but I believe I’m content with it — first, because the scope of work per se looks interesting and rich in detail, and second, because I think that NASP (simply put, analog neural networks engineering) is quite a promising field.
Mentalics ascension
My second priority is Architect of Thought — something I previously called “a mind magic framework”. It’s been a while since I’ve started developing the curriculum, and several posts about the fundamentals have been already published. In the next few weeks, I’m about to resume posting regularly, twice a month.
Self-education in AI
A solid chunk of the remaining time will be spent on reading ML and AI papers from outside the scope of what I read at work. I’m very much interested in computer vision, Transformer-like models, reinforcement learning, and interpretability. If you know a great paper you think everyone should read, please send!
Writing words
At last, this newsletter. I will surely continue to publish but more rarely than I initially wanted to. I’ve got several half-written essays so I will try to work on those during the New Year holidays (actually, during any extra holidays).
Books
I repeatedly trim my reading list but to no avail. Oh, and don’t mind the reading order, it’s purely arbitrary. I try to read a lot, I read much less than that, and there are some books I’m long overdue with. Here are they:
Rationality: A-Z aka The Sequences. You might think I’ve read it but no, it’s definitely not so. The next year, I’m committed to redeeming myself.
Thinking Physics. Another promising book I want to learn from. Hopefully, I will read at least a third of it throughout 2022.
Probably, just probably… Worm. An often-recommended reading for those who liked HPMOR or Mother of Learning. I liked both. Worm is also longer than both. It’s huge. But they say it’s fun to read so I will probably do that. On a long vacation, no less.
Press F
There’s something I gave up for good this year. For a brief period of time, I got excited about regaining one of my performance skills. I bought an expensive digital piano and spent several weeks rehearsing music sheets. Alas, shortly thereafter I realized that it posed no significant challenge for me anymore, aside from the fact that I must have spent a lot of time and routine effort on learning yet another piece.
It is truly great learning to play an instrument in the first place but it may be a chore getting back to playing one, especially if all you do is perform.
Yay! One section about getting rid of rather than embarking on something.
So much for my attempts to keep the plans humble. It gets swollen like this every time which I think is an aspect of my nature that is very hard to escape from. It’s not even a bad thing. At least I hope so.