Blog by Amittai Siavava
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Amittai
precarious writer

archive

2024
    07/27/24
    existential threats

    If life transcends death
    Then I will seek for you there.

    If not, then there too.

    05/01/24
    the wild iris

    Whatever returns from oblivion
    returns to find a voice.

    04/11/24
    on showing up

    So much fear of missing out...
    Rather embrace the joy of missing out.
    Life’s better when you’re missing the stuff that doesn’t matter anyway.

    04/03/24
    to dream

    The future isn't just someething we wait for.

    03/01/24
    toward sustainable AI?

    Artificial intelligence (AI) promises revolutionary advancements across various sectors, such as healthcare, finance, and environmental science. AI's capacity to analyze complex datasets and perform early cancer detection in healthcare, predict stock market trends in high-frequency trading, or optimize energy consumption in large data centers showcases this transformative potential.

    01/18/24
    on being at home

    The past is always tense, the future perfect.

    01/14/24
    gamma derivation

    There are few creatures in mathematics as interesting yet, somehow, useful as the Gamma function,

    An interesting result about this function is that for positive integers . But why is that so? Better yet, why is the gamma function defined so, how is it related to factorials, and what does its values at non-integers mean?

    01/05/24
    real world logic

    Sometimes when you're lost, you're found.

    01/03/24
    exercise to the reader

    One day Shizuo Kakutani was teaching a class at Yale. He wrote down a lemma on the blackboard and announced that the proof was obvious. One student timidly raised his hand and said that it wasn't obvious to him.
    Could Kakutani explain?

2023
    12/30/23
    the riemann hypothesis

    The Riemann hypothesis is considered one of the most important unsolved problems in pure mathematics, with wide-ranging applications across quantum physics, cryptography, number theory, and other fields. It is one of the millenium prize problems by the Clay Mathematics Institute.

    At the heart of the hypothesis is the Riemann zeta function;

    What makes this function so interesting and consequential across scientific fields?

    12/29/23
    the gamma extensions

    The Gamma function, , is at the heart of important results in mathematics including the Riemann hypothesis.

    It is defined as follows:

    What does it represent, and why is it touted as an analytic continuation of the factorial function?

    12/17/23
    on doing and erring

    The tendency to put off, push away, or otherwise delay is strong. Yet, it is best to act and move on, or act again, if you have to.

    11/23/23
    derivatives

    When I experience a creative block, I sometimes try to force my mind back into a productive state, to think ever so hard about the problem, and squeeze out a new idea. The physicist Richard Feynman speaks of a similar period of "burn-out" in his work, where he felt he was not making progress. Except he decided to stop trying to do research entirely, instead playing with interesting ideas in his field without regard to where they would go.

    10/21/23
    imagined existence

    Does our perceived reality have merit in itself?
    Our perceptions are marred by psychosis, delusion, and an otherwise dysfunct mental model that cannot fully emulate human experience. Is our reality any less real, then, or is it just as valid?
    Westworld, "The Bicameral Mind".

    09/24/23
    not knowing

    Knowing nothing is the first step to knowing anything. Yet, it is often frowned upon to admit that you know nothing. In the Socratic Dialogues, Socrates posits that it is worse of oneself to think they know that which they do not know than to admit that they do not know.

    09/19/23
    nothingness

    When I was a child, I used to ask my mother endless questions.

    What happens after we die?
    Where does our energy go?
    And what about the universe?
    Can it die?
    Where did it come from?

    How could there be nothing.
    And then, suddenly, something?

    09/14/23
    apocalyptic curve

    How do we motivate the purpose in the things we do?

    09/09/23
    darkness

    Is a god who presides over killers truly a god?

    09/06/23
    git erase

    If you write software, then you should be using version control tools such as git. However, following git best practices frequently leaves you with a messy commit history. How can one clean it up?

    09/05/23
    doing things

    I've got to ask—
    What made you pick this line of work?

    I read a lot of biographies about successful people.
    Do you know what they all have in common?

    They do what they love.

    I figured I should too.

    09/02/23
    abstract numbers

    I sometimes think about the inner workings of who I am and the transparency of my truth, the regressions and progressions I've learned to grow within and from, the ever changing ebb and flow of experiences I've had and I'm yet to have. I'm grateful that I have taken in so much by naturally being an observer, but it all feels so overwhelming, especially lately.

    08/25/23
    slow thinking

    The world champions the quick-witted.
    That does not mean taking your time to formulate considered and nuanced views is a bad thing.

    08/04/23
    ghost town

    Human relationships are complicated, and so are the things we do to maintain them.

    07/26/23
    indirection

    Indirection is the cause of complexity. It is also the solution to complexity. When, where, and how do we draw a line?

    07/17/23
    imposting

    Do you feel you just aren't "good enough"?
    This is for you.

    07/15/23
    maniac

    We often underestimate the stories that live in our hearts. Stories that square our truth to feelings unchanged by time. We may reject them in fear of their pain — denying, rather than holding, and concealing, rather than revealing — hoping that they fade or vanish entirely. But such artifacts do not easily faint; instead, they grow in perpetual search for a shadow to call home.

    06/21/23
    fmultiply

    If we list all the natural numbers below that are multiples of or , we get , , and . The sum of these multiples is . Find the sum of all the multiples of and below .

2021
    03/14/21
    data-driven behavior change

    ChatGPT, AlphaFold, AlphaGo, the list of recent developments in Machine Learning and AI are endless. Still, AI solutions are causing bigger ripples in existing industries as existing norms and relevant human roles and relationships between humans and machines are re-imagined.

2020
    12/15/20
    space race

    With developments in technology and the realization of the harsh reality that human life might someday need to relocate from a dying earth, space exploration is becoming an increasingly important endeavor for humanity.

    12/15/20
    tech inroads

    Technology is one of the primary drivers of accelerated development in developing nations. This paper explores the role of technology in the developing world, looking at the possibilities and challenges, and addressing how the technology disparity between developing and developed nations arose in the first place.

    08/13/20
    teardrop

    A haiku about emotional contradictions and the absence of "collectedness."

    05/17/20
    passion

    A haiku about human passion.

    05/17/20
    audacity

    A speech about having arrogant conviction in our ability to change the world.

    04/03/20
    ascendant

    We often have to wear facades to survive.
    But how much longer?

    04/03/20
    containing multitudes

    Self-contradiction is a human condition.

    02/28/20
    seeking

    The older we get, the harder we seek meaning, yet the harder it is to find.

2019
    08/03/19
    possibilities

    Putting your all into everything you commit to also means some big disappointments.

    06/05/19
    dissonance theory

    Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

    06/05/19
    suffering

    On realness and suffering.

    02/11/19
    nowhere people

    A short poem on the human condition and how our determined-ness eventually digs us into our own disasters.

    02/06/19
    structure

    A haiku about yearning for structure in a chaotic world.