Seventy-seven
Five rings
Five Most Productive Years: What Happened and What’s Next—Stephen Wolfram Writings
Five years ago, on my 60th birthday, I did a livestream where I talked about some of my plans. So… what happened? Well, what happened was great. And in fact I’ve just had the most productive five years of my life. Nine books. 3939 pages of writings (1,283,267 words). 499 hours of podcasts and 1369 hours of livestreams. 14 software product releases (with our great team). Oh, and a bunch of big—and beautiful—ideas and results.
I like older people who embody the growth mindset. This story should give us all hope to keep learning well into our senior years. We don’t have to produce masterpieces by 24.
And by 2020 my pattern was set and I would routinely write 50+ -page pieces, full of pictures (all with immediately runnable “click-to-copy” code) and intended for anyone who cared to read them. Finally I had a good channel again. And I started using it. As I’d found over the years—whether with language documentation or with A New Kind of Science—the very act of exposition was a critical part of organizing and developing my ideas.
The Real Reason Why Oranges Are Sold In Those Red Net Bags
Deception The Gollum effect significantly disrupted critical research stages, from planning to publication, with disproportionate impacts on marginalized groups and early-career researchers. An overwhelming two-thirds stated the Gollum effect impacted their career, with over 10% reporting a complete change in career path, including leaving academia altogether. Interestingly, 20% admitted to potentially exhibiting Gollum-like behavior themselves…
The citation black market: schemes selling fake references alarm scientists
Paper types ranked by likelihood of paper cuts (phys.org)
Someone had to do the hard research. Daylight | A More Caring Computer
The market for less obnoxious devices continues.
It’s been described as a very long umbilical cord
Consistent with prior work, our results show that access to GPT-4 significantly improves performance (48% improvement for GPT Base and 127% for GPT Tutor). However, we additionally find that when access is subsequently taken away, students actually perform worse than those who never had access (17% reduction for GPT Base). That is, access to GPT-4 can harm educational outcomes. These negative learning effects are largely mitigated by the safeguards included in GPT Tutor. Our results suggest that students attempt to use GPT-4 as a "crutch" during practice problem sessions, and when successful, perform worse on their own. Thus, to maintain long-term productivity, we must be cautious when deploying generative AI to ensure humans continue to learn critical skills.
Philippines' Call Centers Navigate AI Impact on Jobs - Bloomberg
Mayor Adams Launches Major Step to Put the "Park" Back in Park Avenue
Imagine that. People in cities want beautiful spaces to walk in. Reminds me of conservation work. Relatively cheap to maintain something in a nice state; so expensive to restore it back to a nice state once it has been paved over. But NYC seems committed to this. Hopefully it doesn’t take 20 years to actually happen.
