What examples can you give of books that contain discussions of advanced (graduate or research-level) mathematics, similar to what Greg Egan does in his novels (I suppose the majority of such books are hard sci-fi, though I'm not betting on it)? I'm trying to find out what has already been done in the area.

While I have to applaud Steven Moffat for his ambition in creating such a complicated time travel plot over 3 years, I can only be disappointed in the overall resolution to the Eleventh Doctor's story arc. Even though you can spend days listing the plot holes, I'd be okay with them if the interactions between the characters actually made much sense or if we were given reason to care about them. River is annoying and Clara is boring. That's not to say it was all bad - the Doctor is a consistently great character and the Amy/Rory arc was satisfying, and watching Tennant, Smith and Hurt's Doctor's play off each other in the 50th Anniversary episode was amazing.

If you didn't spend time drawing diagrams to figure out where exactly in each other's timelines everyone is, you'll be consistently confused from the beginning of Series 6 onwards. If you do spend the time to figure out what's going on, the payoff isn't worth it.

I would like to see a review after someone goes through this process.

Hmm, not sure why that's happening. I'll look into it.

I've noticed something: the MIRI blog RSS feed doesn't update as a new article appears on the blog, but rather at certain times (two or three times a month?) it updates with the articles that have been published since the last update.

Does anyone know why this happens?

LW meta (reposted, because a current open thread did not exist then): I have received a message from “admin”:

We were unable to determine if there is a Less Wrong wiki account registered to your account. If you do not have an account and would like one, please go to your preferences page.

I have seen, indeed, options to create a wiki account. But I already have one; how do I associate the existing accounts?

It's worth knowing that what Jaynes calls "probability" everyone else calls "statistics."

Generally, "probability theory" means studying well-specified random models. In some sense this is frequentist, but in another sense the distinction does not apply. Whereas "statistics" is about subjective ignorance.

Recently found this paper, entitled "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science" by Dijkstra (plaintext transcription here). It outlines ways in which computer programming had failed to (and still has) actually jump across the transformative-insight gap that led to the creation of the programmable computer. Probably relevant to many of this crowd, and very reminiscent of some common thoughts I've seen here related to AI design.

In the same place I found this paper discussed, there was mention of this site, which was recommended as teaching computer science in a way implementing Dijkstra's suggestions and this textbook, similarly. I can't vouch for them personally yet, but this might be an appropriate addition to the big list of textbooks.

van Dalen's Logic and Structure has a chapter on second order logic, but it's only 10 pages long.

Shapiro's Foundations without Foundationalism has as its main purpose to argue in favour of SOL, I've only read the first two chapters which give philosophical arguments for SOL, which were quite good, but a bit too chatty for my tastes. Chapters 3 to 5 is where the actual logic lives, and I can't say much about them.

Hopkins probably plays Methuselah. And I had always thought the Sodom story was antediluvian... How many times must the LORD cleans the world He so incompetently made? Clearly He has very sucky people-modeling skills.