Assorted Links & Commentary #3
Andrej Karpathy's videos on neural networks, The Last Dance, Energy Superabundance, and Margaret Atwood
I'm David Gasca and this is Mystical Silicon, a weekly newsletter on mindfulness, how to make the world more alive, and a variety of other things I find interesting.
Hello! For this week, here’s another edition of Assorted Links & Commentary. Enjoy!
1. Andrej Karpathy videos on neural networks: I’ve spent the past few weeks working my way through Andrej’s videos on building neural networks step by step. Andrej was the Director of AI at Tesla, leading self-driving computer vision work until his recent departure. If you’re interested in learning more about neural nets by building your own (or seeing an expert work through everything from first principles), I recommend these videos! They are long and he goes through every step, piece by piece. Each video is ~2 hours and there are 5 videos so far… definitely not for everyone but if you know Python and calculus, you should be able to follow along.
2. “The Last Dance”- Chicago Bulls documentary on Netflix: This is my new show fixation. This video documentary follows the Chicago Bulls in 1998 and tells the story of their rise from the early 1980s when Michael Jordan first joined. I was aware of some of the details but most of it is new to me and it’s astounding. The personalities and drama involved make great television and I keep being wowed by the twists and turns. I’m more than half-way through and I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed it. I personally identify with the coach, Phil Jackson who is actually into Native American culture and Zen Buddhism and incorporates this into how he coaches… Recommend!
3. Eli Dourado & Austin Vernon on “Energy Superabundance”: I’ve been very interested recently on the topic of Energy Superabundance (vs. more common focus on energy savings). TLDR: “We are not close to an upper limit on energy consumption. As we have shown, although energy consumption per capita peaked in the late 1970s in the United States, there is plenty of room for growth. With superabundant energy, we would travel faster, experiencing more of the planet in our daily lives and over our lifetimes. Our goods would become cheaper. We could have more abundant building materials. And we would experience better health from more nutritious foods and cleaner water supplies.” Austin and Eli wrote a seminal white-paper on this topic (see “Energy Superabundance”) and if you’re interested, I recommend their podcasts as an introduction into their ideas - e.g., here they are on the Big Ideas podcast.
4. Margaret Atwood on Conversations with Tyler: I recently listened to this older podcast on Conversations with Tyler. I found Atwood to be a delightful thinker and her banter with Tyler was great. You can tell they’re having fun and that she has great retorts to so many of his questions… It makes me want to read more Atwood. Recommend!
5.How deep have humans dug?: I ran across this video on how far humans have dug - there are so many big tunnels, underground cities and large drill-holes (is that what you call them?) that I had no clue about… very curious to learn more and follow some of these rabbit holes…
Los Cabos & La Paz: I just came back from Los Cabos, Baja California Sur in Mexico. I was really surprised by how far Baja California goes: driving from the US border to Los Cabos is over 1,000 miles! It takes about 24 hours! 🤯. In my mind the Baja Peninsula was much smaller and not this gigantic piece of land… Next time I want to go to La Paz which all the locals raved about…
And with that, have a wonderful week!