Welcome to Dan’s brain

The contents of my head are not useful if they stay in there, so I regularly copy-paste them onto the internet, into this very website. Here you can find most of the things I am thinking about, in the form of a higgledy heap of half-finished notebooks and occasional polished essays. Themes include whatever shiny thing distracted me into taking notes about it, including, but not limited to,

You might be after information about me generally, or what I am doing right now.

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Fractal dimension of loss landscapes and self similar behaviour in neural networks

AI safety
dynamical systems
machine learning
neural nets
physics
pseudorandomness
sciml
statistics
statmech
stochastic processes

Utopian governance

economics
extended self
incentive mechanisms
institutions
markets
money
wonk

Self-organization

agents
compsci
distributed
extended self
game theory
generative art
hidden variables
incentive mechanisms
life
photon choreography
self similar
spatial
statmech
swarm

“Generalized” Bayesian inference

Bayes
estimator distribution
functional analysis
Markov processes
Monte Carlo
neural nets
optimization
probabilistic algorithms
probability
SDEs
stochastic processes

Singular Learning Theory

AI safety
dynamical systems
machine learning
neural nets
physics
pseudorandomness
sciml
statistics
statmech
stochastic processes

Developmental interpretability

AI safety
Bayes
bounded compute
dynamical systems
feature construction
high d
language
machine learning
metrics
mind
NLP
sparser than thou
statmech
stochastic processes

AI Safety Australia

adversarial
AI safety
economics
faster pussycat
innovation
language
machine learning
mind
neural nets
NLP
security
Southeast Asia
tail risk
technology

Learning Schrödinger bridges

approximation
Bayes
generative
Lévy processes
Monte Carlo
neural nets
optimal transport
optimization
point processes
probabilistic algorithms
probability
score function
spatial
statistics
stochastic processes

Large sample theory

Gaussian
likelihood
optimization
probability
statistics

Neural denoising diffusion models

approximation
Bayes
generative
Monte Carlo
neural nets
optimization
probabilistic algorithms
probability
score function
statistics

Real estate economics

cooperation
culture
economics
housing
incentive mechanisms
institutions
insurgency
making things
policy
spatial
straya
the rather superior sort of city
wonk

Conditioning neural denoising diffusion models

approximation
Bayes
generative
Monte Carlo
neural nets
optimization
probabilistic algorithms
probability
score function
statistics

Queerness

culture
diy
gender
personality
sex
sociology
wonk

Economics of foundation models

agents
AI safety
bounded compute
collective knowledge
economics
edge computing
extended self
faster pussycat
incentive mechanisms
innovation
language
machine learning
neural nets
NLP
swarm
technology
UI
when to compute

Data sets for machine learning for partial differential equations

calculus
data sets
dynamical systems
geometry
machine learning
neural nets
PDEs
physics
regression
sciml
SDEs
signal processing
statistics
statmech
stochastic processes
surrogate
time series

Gradient descent at scale

functional analysis
machine learning
model selection
optimization
premature optimization
statmech

Curators of nice bits of internet

computers are awful together
making things
provenance

Static website editors

computers are awful together
diy
doing internet
faster pussycat
plain text
UI
workflow

Being stroppy

adaptive
collective knowledge
economics
evolution
game theory
networks
social graph
sociology

ML benchmarks and their pitfalls

economics
game theory
how do science
incentive mechanisms
institutions
machine learning
neural nets
statistics

Computational complexity results in neural nets

compsci
machine learning
making things
neural nets

Information storage and retrieval in NNs

economics
faster pussycat
innovation
language
machine learning
mind
neural nets
NLP
technology
UI

Singular Value Decomposition

feature construction
functional analysis
high d
linear algebra
networks
probability
signal processing
sparser than thou
statistics

Science; Institution design for

academe
agents
collective knowledge
economics
faster pussycat
game theory
how do science
incentive mechanisms
institutions
mind
networks
provenance
sociology
wonk

Orthonormal and unitary matrices

algebra
dynamical systems
functional analysis
geometry
high d
linear algebra
measure
signal processing
spheres
stochastic processes
time series

Neural vector embeddings

approximation
feature construction
geometry
high d
language
linear algebra
machine learning
metrics
neural nets
NLP

World models arising in foundation models.

approximation
Bayes
generative
language
machine learning
meta learning
Monte Carlo
neural nets
NLP
optimization
probabilistic algorithms
probability
statistics
stringology
time series

Disentangled representation learning

Bayes
bounded compute
dynamical systems
feature construction
high d
language
machine learning
metrics
mind
NLP
sparser than thou
statmech
stochastic processes

AI Zen Koans

AI safety
language
machine learning
mind
neural nets
writing

Snowmobile or bicycle?

economics
faster pussycat
innovation
language
machine learning
mind
neural nets
NLP
stringology
technology
UI

Quarto integrated website system

academe
faster pussycat
how do science
javascript
julia
language
making things
plain text
premature optimization
python
R
writing

Neural network activation functions

calculus
classification
dynamical systems
geometry
machine learning
neural nets
physics
regression
sciml
statistics

Mechanistic interpretability

AI safety
communicating
feature construction
high d
language
machine learning
metrics
mind
NLP
sparser than thou
statmech
stochastic processes

Commitment, contracts, cooperation

adaptive
agents
causal
cooperation
economics
evolution
extended self
game theory
graphical models
incentive mechanisms
learning
mind
networks
social graph
utility
wonk

Garbled highlights from ICLR 2025

neural nets
South East Asia
statistics

Bayesian epistemics

adaptive
agents
bounded compute
collective knowledge
control
cooperation
distributed
economics
evolution
extended self
game theory
how do science
incentive mechanisms
institutions
learning
machine learning
mind
networks
provenance
sociology
squad
standards
swarm
utility

Learning with theory of mind

adaptive
agents
bandit problems
bounded compute
collective knowledge
control
cooperation
distributed
economics
evolution
extended self
game theory
incentive mechanisms
learning
machine learning
mind
networks
swarm
utility

Science for policy

catastrophe
communicating
economics
ethics
how do science
mind
probability
statistics
tail risk
wonk

Design of multi-agent systems

agents
AI safety
bounded compute
collective knowledge
computers are awful together
concurrency hell
distributed
economics
edge computing
extended self
game theory
incentive mechanisms
machine learning
networks
swarm

Research discovery, synthesis planning

academe
collective knowledge
faster pussycat
how do science
institutions
mind
networks
provenance
sociology
wonk

Quarto

academe
faster pussycat
how do science
javascript
julia
language
making things
plain text
premature optimization
python
R
writing

Reinforcement learning

adaptive
agents
bandit problems
control
incentive mechanisms
learning
networks
stochastic processes
time series
utility

Particle variational message passing

approximation
Bayes
distributed
dynamical systems
generative
graphical models
machine learning
Monte Carlo
networks
optimization
particle
probabilistic algorithms
probability
sciml
signal processing
state space models
statistics
stochastic processes
swarm
time series
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