vmilner

I remember the uk papers being full of the Last One ads in 1981.

I’m curious as to how many high schools around the world teach complex numbers. In England in the late 80s when I did A level maths (age 17-18) it was part of the syllabus, but now it is only available in the harder A-level further maths, which is often not taught in the standard non-selective non-private schools, making entry to university STEM courses more difficult.

Yes - you are right, 70% for a correct answer is what the talk says. Id misremembered the higher (~99%) numbers because for my purpose (simulating many random deals compatible with known cards to get probability distributions on hidden card positions and trick taking possibilities in each suit/notrumps ) a one trick error is quite acceptable. I agree a more straightforward architecture is a promising approach. Once I have generated weights in a form usable in C, I am also curious as to whether they can direct DDS's tree search as a kind of probabilistic oracle.

(There was some Ben code to use a neural net double dummy evaluator, because Ive used it, but it was removed. Ill try and find the git point it was removed.)

I think computer bridge will take off soon. LLMs have allowed double-dummy solvers to move from ~0.1sec to microseconds (if you allow 99.9% accuracy) and parsing human bidding system descriptions must either be possible or v close.

Formalisation of the classification of finite simple groups must be on someone’s ‘moonshot’ list.

'Gandalf himself never uses the palantiri that Thiel named his company after, not just due to how incredibly dangerous and powerful they are, but also their corrupting nature.'

Seems a bit harsh. It's chatting to Sauron with them that's the problem.

There's a depressing number who dismiss the benefits of things like learning times tables as 'rote learning' rather than force-multipliers that free your brain for other things.

"There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravel the thousand and first."

  Sherlock Holmes, 'A Study in Scarlet'