Chris Sutherland
@sutherlandphys
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cofounder @infntysci. former uni physics lecturer.
learn quantum 👉
Joined November 2018
The fundamentals never go out of style. Also your older self will thank you for studying something as cool as math, physics, probability/stats, or even classical literature imo These are some of humanities crowning achievements!
Maybe a hot take, but what about the following advice to the next gen: Don't get an AI degree; the curriculum will be outdated before you graduate. Instead, study math, stats, or physics as your foundation, and stay current with AI through code-focused books, blogs, and papers.
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RT @rasbt: Maybe a hot take, but what about the following advice to the next gen: Don't get an AI degree; the curriculum will be outdated…
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Can we do this in Canada @build_canada ? Send in a couple Waterloo students
BREAKING: Reportedly, 19-year-old DOGE staff are having 15-minute interviews with federal workers to "prove their value" before a decision is made on whether they will be let go or not, per Collin Rug.
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@colin_fraser It is not creative. It is not human. It is simply outputting roughly what is contained within its training set, never generating new knowledge or explanations like humans do.
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Still smiling but somehow you can tell the light was gone
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Does anyone in Montreal have an audio interface I can buy off them
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Stop fucking around with memecoins. At least try to do something valuable for your fellow humans.
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RT @maw501: All observation is theory-laden. We don’t passively receive information from the world; we interpret it through pre-existing i…
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Most students (especially grad students) I know can relate to this at some level. Also, with a bit more thought on experiences like this, it explains the physics/math prof that just doesn’t get why their test is so hard, or why the average is so low.
There's some interesting discussion about the experience of maxing out one's cognitive horsepower in this thread: Also, a firsthand account from Douglas Hofstadter (see screenshot attached). I ran into this myself too. Around grad-level pure math I got really frustrated feeling like there was too much waxing philosophical and too few repetitions on well-scoped problems chosen to hammer in well-defined skills. Seemed like most people I ran into at that level were feeling the friction due to unfavorable practice conditions at least as severely as me, but there were a couple people for whom the miniscule level of scaffolding seemed to be enough. It wasn't a "hard" threshold at which I was suddenly incapable of learning more advanced pure math, but rather a "soft" threshold at which the amount of time and effort required to learn it began to skyrocket until it was effectively no longer a productive use of my time (when you consider the opportunity cost). That's the moment I really switched over 100% to applied math and quant/algo CS. Basically, -- I realized that I had lost my "edge" in pure math compared to the other people I was competing with, -- I also realized I had a knack for quantitative programming and interest in a handful of applied domains, -- it turned out the problems that needed solving in those domains boiled down to interesting math / algorithm development (that most people in software don't have the math chops for) plus serious coding / large-system development (that most people in math don't have the coding chops for) -- so I pivoted in that direction where it felt like my ceiling was higher. Would be interesting to hear about @sutherlandphys's experience as well!
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RT @justinskycak: Almost everybody who pursues serious math eventually reaches a level at which there's just not enough scaffolding to just…
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RT @sutherlandphys: @justinskycak Basically, the same experience. It was during a graduate level differential geometry course I decided t…
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Basically, the same experience. It was during a graduate level differential geometry course I decided to take, despite being a physics major. I had already taken two undergrad, pure math, differential geometry courses! One called Smooth Manifolds, the other called Riemannian Manifolds. Both of which I got "A"s. And I still found the graduate level differential geometry course too difficult. I spent literally all my time trying to complete the first assignment instead of of my physics course assignments, TA work, (not to mention research work), and I remember going to office hours and getting a look from the prof like "you sure you should be here?", and I could tell from the couple math grad students that were there asking questions, it was clear they had a much stronger understanding of the material than me. This also happened in some of my physics grad courses too. I went from top of my high school, to near the top in my undergrad classes, to the bottom half in grad school, sometimes right at the bottom in certain classes. I really enjoyed the challenge, but I like this framing of realizing my effort was better spent elsewhere. I did pretty well in the graduate applied math and quantum courses, but quantum probably only because I had been drilling the stuff since first year uni, and did actually have a much better scaffolded experience than most. And then I also had this experience in super smash bros melee tournaments lol. Best in my group of friends, near the top in my city, probably top 10-20 in Canada for a little while, but when I moved to southern california, where many of the best players were, I couldn't even crack the top 25 SoCal rankings, and in THAT ranking the top 10 were just in a completely different league than everyone else, and only the very very top of that could compete with the best in the world, even though they were basically untouchable in the region. Hard pill to swallow for someone ambitious, but it is ultimately a big part of what brought me to education. Even though I think I definitely did find where I kinda topped out, I know I could have gone farther, and also alleviated a lot of the struggle associated with learning subjects that ultimately i find very fun and beautiful, if math and physics was simply taught better. And I think a lot of other people would too. Which is why I love Math Academy so much. Something I wish I had guiding me. I can't wait to see the results of human creativity being unlocked through more efficient and effective training.
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The only thing most Canadians I know seem to be able to rally behind is the fact we’re not Americans. Kinda pathetic, but honestly this recent news might be the only thing that gets Canadians fired up enough to actually start making our country the best it can be.
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