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All of Alex Mikhalev's Comments + Replies

Alex Mikhalev20

I am struggling with the same question, my current hypothesis:

  1. it’s “European Gas Wars” - new method of gas (mining??) from drilling in shell rocks see https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE puts Ukrain into top position as gas exporter in Europe and nullifies Russian position as gas exporter. It’s quite plausable and verifiable - Shell signed a multi-billion contract with Ukranian president in 2013 to build infrastructure.
  2. Russia does somebodies else bidding - Chineese to push US out of world dominance, i.e. this hypothesis assumes there are few more moves after U
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1superads91
1. I had watched that video too. Seems like a shallow motive. As some commenters pointed out, there must be a lot of undiscovered gas and oil reserves in Siberia yet. Could have some weight, but not a lot. 2. Seems quite plausible. The 3 world powers are undeniably NATO+allies, Russia and China. 2 going against one another heavily favors the 3rd (I also have some paranoid thoughts regarding the virus on this matter). However, the NATO+allies bloc is quite large. We have Australia, Japan, South Korea, and probably also most of South America. And indeed, I would be happy if Russia was part of NATO, considering the Chinese threat. On the other hand, on real matters we have much more to fear from Russia's behavior than China's. Russia has made way more wars, has a much worse human rights record, and has shown much more adversity towards us, with a much more unstable leadership. China seems peaceful, the question is with a dictatorship it can always change over night. 3. Doesn't seem too likely, takes much more than a Bay of Pigs to conquer Ukraine.
Why do people avoid vaccination?
Alex Mikhalev60

There are way more balanced discussion in EU compared to US, see https://world.hey.com/dhh/after-two-weeks-with-no-covid-restrictions-in-denmark-923dd9a2 or google “why norway does not recommend child vaccination”. Overall data demonstrate vaccination doesn’t slow spread and approx around ~40 years of age there is a flip in risks - you have higher chance of complications from vaccines than from COVID if you are younger. I believe it shall be personal choice which everyone weight for themselves and I am particularly concerned about “booster” philosophy - if... (read more)

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A decision tree for vaccinating children against Covid-19, or how to wisely make a monumental decision
Alex Mikhalev10

Thank you for this post. I will re-use and reference it - I have big plans for this topic. I want to explore/expand the decision tree on the effect of multiple vaccinations (boosters). I feel multiple vaccinations will work like this: single vaccination shall work, and it’s low risk. Two vaccinations - probability of vaccine effectiveness decreases because they are no longer independent, but they are not entirely dependent on each other either. I have the equation in mind, but I am too far from medical professionals. More importantly, I think while the pro... (read more)

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1methree
I finally got around to fixing the diagrams. It wasn't an iPad-specific problem, just the way diagrams are "pasted" into the editor when copied directly from PlantUML... apparently, it's not the image that gets pasted, but the URL to a diagram rendered server-side which has a limited lifetime.
1methree
The whole point of using a model is to explain and predict without the sometimes prohibitive costs of not modelling, but it comes at the price of losing "resolution of reality". That loss is what leads to uncertainty. Understanding enough about the immune system to know how current vaccines operate in the body and how risks add up differently in different bodies (ecosystems, really) could take several generations of dedicated research... we've collectively been at it since before Pasteur, keep making amazing discoveries, and still can't provide really good answers. So I feel you will only get half-baked guesses in this forum and slightly better ones if you ask COVID experts.
1Suhas Gundimeda
I think in order to quantify risk-vs-number-of-vaccinations, we need to understand the type of risk itself and how the vaccine might have unintended effects. If we assume all of the unintended effects are longer-than-expected presence of the mRNA (or otherwise vector) and its derivatives, then the risk of noticeable adverse consequences doesn't really sum up because any accumulation effects will be negligible. I.e. the amount of substance is low - 1 ng/kg body mass is same as 2 ng/kg body mass. Relatively it's a lot but it's not a lot if consider the body a "resilient/tolerant" system.
We've built Connected Papers - a visual tool for researchers to find and explore academic papers
Alex Mikhalev70

I build a very similar project - http://thepattern.digital/ ( full source code available https://github.com/applied-knowledge-systems/the-pattern ) and it won the platinum prize on RedisHackathon 2021. 

My differentiator from connected papers is that I turn "strings into things" using external UMLC methathesaurus, so my nodes are industry-wide "concepts" and edges in the graph are a list of papers connecting the same concepts. 

Shall we collaborate and take both projects further? 

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How To Get Into Independent Research On Alignment/Agency
Alex Mikhalev30

Thank you for this post very encouraging - I was thinking about applying to LTFF - I have all pre-requisites, now I feel it’s worth the try.

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What's So Bad About Ad-Hoc Mathematical Definitions?
Alex Mikhalev30

"partial credit" for getting close to the right answer" - this is where probability theory comes into play: "What is the likelihood of the enemy reading the message if it's intercepted in fullness".  

Also, the concept which helps me to think about how to bring abstract concepts into reality is the time or any notion of temporal dependencies, which probability theory missed at large for a while and now recovering: see nature article. 

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Rage Against The MOOChine
Alex Mikhalev10

 I would recommend structuring applied maths learning differently: start with Computational Beauty of Nature https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computational-beauty-nature and then go deep in relevant areas + graph theory + graph algebra. Also a deep understanding of multi-objective optimisation techniques: NSGA-3, Pareto front/Pareto surface. 

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Rage Against The MOOChine
Alex Mikhalev20

I agree that nothing bets practical projects, but in modern life, you need to learn a lot of background information before jumping into the real world. There are plenty of ML projects and examples that are equivalent to the ToDo (12-factor app) in complexity - single component, boundaries clearly defined. The next steps in the real world would be - here is a payment platform with 270+ services and components, how does your AI/ML component fit into it? Who do you talk to to figure out the business value of the AI/ML component (business analysis/domain drive... (read more)

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Rage Against The MOOChine
Alex Mikhalev70

I think the most important point of teaching maths for data science is to build mental models in the data scientists head. It takes time and part of the process of learning maths and usually takes 2 years (or two years course in university). Bypassing that process backfires - startups raising money for AI/ML normally take 2 years before shipping the product. 

I think the mental model part is the most difficult to teach, but obviously, we are paid for specialised skills - like coding in python, hence everyone wants to jump into coding python without put... (read more)

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