Stephen Malina

Earlier today (on August 7th), I realized that I was about to miss a golden opportunity to quickly test how calibrated I was about AI progress by predicting some GPT-5 benchmark scores.

In September 2022, I wrote a post describing a set of “omens” that, if observed, would indicate faster-than-expected AI progress.

Introduction # In the spirit of writing for the LLMs, I thought I’d write up some of the software debugging heuristics and tacit knowledge I have gotten good mileage out of in my career so far.

A shortlist of my favorite posts, organized by topic.

I’m experimenting with writing some shorter, less polished posts.

What are continuous glucose monitors good for?

Summary # Gene editing has made a lot of progress over the past few decades.

Introduction # A few months ago, Elliot Hershberg, one of my favorite Substack writers, wrote a post laying out his personal mission.

2022 was another exciting, fun year.

This post was co-authored with Austin Vernon.

As a way to keep myself honest, I’m going to be recording GPT4 predictions here and archiving versions of the post so I can’t go back and change it without people knowing.

A friend recently asked me what my “AI timelines” were.

Since I’ve been going around telling everyone how Top Gun: Maverick (TG:M) is one of the best action movies of our generation, I’d figured I’d try and write down some of my thoughts while they’re still fresh.

Introduction # Generally when someone tells you they’ve invented an “art of mind-using” that involves lots of made-up words and comes packaged with a spiritual philosophy, you should tell them “no thanks” and walk away.

Introduction # Along with a few internet blogger friends, inspired by Erik Hoel’s post (parts of which I disagree with, including the headline), I’ve decided to make predictions for 2050.

At the beginning of last year, I made predictions for the year.

Note: This post was co-written with Uri Bram of The Browser, who deserves all credit for the good parts and no blame for the bad parts and inevitable mistakes (which things fall into which category is at your, the reader’s, discretion).

One thing I like about the synthetic biology community is that, from the early days, its participants have been willing to entertain “wild” ideas like building dragons.

Reading biographies and observing friends, family, and colleagues has led me to become interested in what factors drive the variance in cognitive stamina and observed levels of energy between individuals.

A World Without Email (AWWE) is Cal Newport’s new book arguing for an overhaul in our workplace communication and project management style.

I recently had someone ask me what I felt helped me grow the most in my first few years working as a software engineer.

Originally posted on Alexey’s blog.

I just went on a short nighttime mid-snow storm walk and it unexpectedly provoked three separate observations along with a desire to capture them.

As someone who has and continues to derive tremendous value from writing on the internet, I’ve recently felt an urge to share some of my favorite semi-esoteric internet writing in part so that I have a post to refer back to instead of resending the same a…

This is a review of The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence by Joshua Waitzkin.

For the past two years, my friends have had a tradition of making predictions and scoring them at the end of the year.

Previously: Upcoming Maniac Week.

Abstract # Guy on internet decides to follow lead of other people on internet and pre-commits to working much more than usual .

Note: Ignore the weird Markdown formatting, it’s because I copied this from the blog source code.

This semester, I had the pleasure of taking a course on Causal Inference with Professor Elias Bareinboim, one of Judea Pearl’s former students and author of some seminal results in Causal Inference.

Intro / Motivation # I know I’m a walking millenial trope, but I’m starting a deliberate experiment to dramatically reduce my internet engagement.

Attention conservation notice: Narrow target audience - will only make sense to people somewhat familiar with causal inference who don’t find the result entirely boring.

Abstract # I conducted a two-week blinded, randomized experiment to test whether drinking regular vs. decaf coffee had a detectable effect on my mood and alertness.

Selected Exercises # 1.

In which I record my thoughts on Network Mendelian Randomization by Burgess et al.

Causal Inference in Statistics # Questions # Why is the causal effect identifiable in an IV DAG when the dependencies are linear (from an SCM perspective)?

Summary # Detailed Notes # 3 IV Requirements # IV must have a direct influence on the treatment IV must not covary with the unmeasured confounding that impacts the outcome IV must not have a direct influence on the outcome Relevant considerations for deci…

Matrix Potpourri # As part of reviewing Linear Algebra for my Machine Learning class, I’ve noticed there’s a bunch of matrix terminology that I didn’t encounter during my proof-based self-study of LA from Linear Algebra Done Right.

In which I record my thoughts on DeepSEA.

In which I record my thoughts on Basset.

In which I record my thoughts on DeepBind.

Selected Exercises # 6.B # 1.

Meta: While I originally set out to write this essay about why I no longer “endorse” Stoicism as an operating framework, re-reading a bunch of Stoic stuff led me to realize that I still agree with ~90% of Stoic principles.

Selected Exercises # 5.A # 12.

Selected Exercises # 4.

Selected Exercises # 3.D # 7.

As I understand it, much of Coase’s work focuses on why companies’ internal structures don’t resemble markets all that much.

Intro # I’ve recently been making my way through Axler’s Linear Algebra Done Right and, as a way to motivate myself to continue, have decided to blog my notes and solutions for exercises as I go.

Babbling About Babble # In a series of posts on his blog (or LessWrong if you prefer), alkjash writes about “babble” and “prune”, the two components of an adversarial model of knowledge production in humans.

(Cross-posted from Facebook.)