lowpass: where computational methods and philosophy intersect
Equal parts existential and practical. These essays loosely circle around themes of meaning, philosophy, and action seen through the eyes of a signal processing and machine learning expert.
Organic, non GMO, and LLM-free writing
Rest assured, I use AI and machine learning for all sorts of things, except my writing. In the words of Adam Grant, “It's a mistake to outsource most writing to Al… writing is where we do our best thinking.”
As such, when you see imperfections in my writing, just know they’re evidence that I actually wrote it.
Do I use LLMs for writing?
I do a lot of writing, so naturally LLMs would become my best friend and a miraculous force multiplier, right?
Maybe, if it weren’t for the dead coal-mine canary, and (shudders) all that strawberry Jell-o.
Yuck.
Is it Really a Test Set?
We’ve followed best practice, stratifying, splitting, and holding out datasets. We should be good, right?
Well…
Bored is the New Fit: Part II
Demogorgons, radio towers, and regulatory stickers. Just a typical Tuesday afternoon in the lowpass blog.
Part two of this trilogy of essays discusses research around the “distracted mind”. Our solution? Read on.
"While from some perspectives this may be considered a more enlightened time, our behavior in this domain seems to be completely incongruent with the very nature of our pursuit of our goals—something that is fundamental to our very humanity." - The Distracted Mind
Bored is the New Fit: Part 1
Is the “eternal stimulus” really our friend? In part one of this trilogy of essays, we discuss the environment behind our peculiar attention-destroying behavior, and lay the foundation for the solution to our “distracted minds”.
Drowning in Information: The Solution
Useless information is harmful and limits our agency. What now? The solution increases our ability to influence the world around us while also freeing us from needing to watch every season of whatever mediocre TV show is popular now.
Drowning in Information: The Famine
Yes, there is such a thing as “too much information”. Similar to “too much food”, information overload impairs our ability to act, but in ways we aren’t even aware.
The Data Gauge R&R
The most useful mental model I learned from working in medical device manufacturing? The Gauge R&R.
The Four Horsemen of Dark Design Patterns
We all have a sense that social media is dragging us down, why is that? We go into detail about the most prominent, recognizable, and harmful tactics used by internet companies to harvest our attention.
The Whole Message
Why the name “Holos Gramma”? Sure, having a website based on my name would be easy, but where’s the fun in that?