How information theory saved my word game
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How information theory saved my word game
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Re: How information theory saved my word game
#2Information theory has been a really fascinating topic to get more acquainted with. Not really related to the crossword, but I highly recommend 3Blue1Brown's video "Compression is Intelligence", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#3Information theory has been a really fascinating topic to get more acquainted with. Not really related to the crossword, but I highly recommend 3Blue1Brown's video "Compression is Intelligence", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM
Compression is not intelligence.
While intelligence and compression both may have similar goals (to optimize paths of information), intelligence negotiates probability (allowing multiple divergent outcomes) while compression requires an idempotent symbolic translation.
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#4> Marshall McLuhan gets the credit for the medium is the message, but Claude Shannon had beaten him to a colder version of it years earlier: to a machine moving your words, the meaning doesn’t matter at all; only the medium does, and which of its signals can be told apart. Bravo and Delta survive a bad line; B and D don’t.
> I didn’t arrive there as a mathematician; I’m not one.
> This wasn’t a speed problem I could optimise away. It was a wall, and it asked a question I couldn’t answer
Very strong LLM whiff. A line of thought that constantly, constantly turns back on itself, negating and doubting and qualifying in one way or another, is the biggest tell (the classic "It's not X, it's Y," is only the baldest example).
Noticing that whiff instantly turns me off from reading on.
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#5> Marshall McLuhan gets the credit for the medium is the message, but Claude Shannon had beaten him to a colder version of it years earlier: to a machine moving your words, the meaning doesn’t matter at all; only the medium does, and which of its signals can be told apart. Bravo and Delta survive a bad line; B and D don’t. > I didn’t arrive there as a mathematician; I’m not one. > This wasn’t a speed problem I could…
> This wasn’t a speed problem I could optimise away. It was a wall
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#6Information theory has been a really fascinating topic to get more acquainted with. Not really related to the crossword, but I highly recommend 3Blue1Brown's video "Compression is Intelligence", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM
Compression is not intelligence. While intelligence and compression both may have similar goals (to optimize paths of information), intelligence negotiates probability (allowing multiple divergent outcomes) while compression requires an idempotent symbolic translation.
> intelligence negotiates probability (allowing multiple divergent outcomes) while compression requires an idempotent symbolic translation.
What does this mean?
Lossy, non-deterministic compression is a thing. Does that meet the "allowing multiple divergent outcomes" criteria?
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#7> Marshall McLuhan gets the credit for the medium is the message, but Claude Shannon had beaten him to a colder version of it years earlier: to a machine moving your words, the meaning doesn’t matter at all; only the medium does, and which of its signals can be told apart. Bravo and Delta survive a bad line; B and D don’t. > I didn’t arrive there as a mathematician; I’m not one. > This wasn’t a speed problem I could…
Sorry about the turn off ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I tried to put my best foot forward by reading about prose, engaging story telling, and did use an LLM to help me edit and reword parts of the post. Either way, I appreciate the feedback.
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#8> Marshall McLuhan gets the credit for the medium is the message, but Claude Shannon had beaten him to a colder version of it years earlier: to a machine moving your words, the meaning doesn’t matter at all; only the medium does, and which of its signals can be told apart. Bravo and Delta survive a bad line; B and D don’t. > I didn’t arrive there as a mathematician; I’m not one. > This wasn’t a speed problem I could…
> This wasn’t a speed problem I could optimise away. It was a wall
Well it certainly was a wall. That's how I kept describing it to my partner, I was hitting a wall.
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#9I have the feeling that this article was hurt rather than helped by being written using LLMs. It was really hard to follow, and even though I read it hoping to learn something new, I left feeling more confused than when I started. The feeling while reading was that the prose was trying to hold my hand but had absolutely no empathy for the build up of my understanding over the article. It’s a bit like when, as a child, you’d do homework with your parent and the parent would start saying “don’t you see how it’s obvious that 25/5=5” with no further explanation and a building tone of frustration.
Re: How information theory saved my word game
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This wasn’t a speed problem I could optimise away. It was a wall
Well it certainly was a wall. That's how I kept describing it to my partner, I was hitting a wall.
Yes but I'm fairly sure you didn't use the words "this isn't a speed problem. It is a wall" when talking to your partner.
I liked the post, I just don't like Claude writing every article I read, just like I didn't like every website I visited looking like Bootstrap.