Category Archives: Ideas

Physical Key Encryption

Leave a reply

It is possible to define a mapping between the bits in a digital key and the shape of a physical key. Further, it is possible to physically etch a digital key onto a physical one below the resolution at which said data could be easily copied. Consequently, it is possible to design an intelligent lock which possesses a public key and which generates a cryptographic challenge, which is then decrypted using the private (physical) key. A key which could physically open the lock but which does not possess the appropriate private key could trigger an alarm.

Certainly digital keys exist, but this key would require no power source. The lock, on the other hand, would require both power and enough logic to implement the PKI approach of choice. Nevertheless, this strikes me as a practical approach for car or office locks.

Idea: An Intuitive Role For Sleep

Leave a reply

Here’s my hypothesis: Similar to illness behavior, it prevents you from hunting when conditions are unfavorable to you. Dreams allow simulations of threatening events instead. Fasting long enough overrides the clock (it does; you can change your circadian rhythm by hours at a time by selectively fasting); eventually the need for energy outweighs the risk of hunting at night.

Social identity is built on insecurity

Leave a reply

“Strength in numbers” indeed: I had posted an observation in the past that a key component of social identity was finding a “scapegoat” group which was in some way similar to one’s own and trying one’s best to put that group down or set it as the “lesser” group. (As an aside, because this sort of similarity is kind of like a Hamming distance – number of things that need to change to transform one into the other – which is a symmetric measure, such things tend to be reciprocal: “A thinks B is less and B thinks A is less”. Who is right? Probably neither; both are equally petty).

Well, that would imply that social identity is built on top of a deep-rooted sense of insecurity, which is countered by gathering many people with the same characteristics. Having others who think like us makes us feel Secure. Confident. Right.

An interesting corollary of this is that people who tend to feel confident/secure/right enough on their own have no need for social identity. This would seem to link self-confidence to traits ranging from individuality to creativity or an entrepreneurial mindset.

A more (super) rational categorical imperative

Leave a reply

Superrationality does a nice job of coupling universal morality with utilitarianism, providing a much more appealing alternative to the categorical imperative (if equally impractical). Do whatever will maximize the overall utility of the system if universally performed and assume others will do the same. It’s just as logically compact, just as intuitively appealing, and just as utterly detached from reality 🙂

“Yucky” is an immune precaution.

Leave a reply

The brain actually works in tandem with the body to ward away diseases, with such protections ranging from a sense of smell to sympathetic nausea. Chief among these is the “eww factor”. “Gross” objects, behaviors, and sensations are ones which signal conditions for potential disease transmission.

Certain chronic disorders such as cyclic vomiting syndrome can result when these systems are engaged to an abnormal extent.

The Mathematics of Recurrent Saving

Leave a reply

This may give you a good idea of just how much you can expect out of that 401(k) contribution:

If you invest a recurring principal p on a yearly basis into an account with an (r-1)*100% APY (e.g. r=1.05 for a 5% APY), your return after y years is: p * (r^(y+1) – r) / (r – 1).

(For y >= 1, since we’re starting at the first compounding).

So if you put $5k a year into a 401(k) with 3% interest, you’ll have $59038 by the end of the 10th year, vs. the $50000 you’d have without interest.

After 20 years, you’d have $138,382, vs $100,000.

If you contributed $10,000 per year for 20 years, you’d end up with $276,764, vs. $200,000.

Worth it? You decide. But that shocking “you’ll have a $500k nest egg after 30 years” claim, while true, is only true because it’s counting the principal you’re investing.

Granted, locking it away does remove the temptation to spend it.

Data Classification Based on the Immune System

Leave a reply

Idea: a data classification metamodel based on the immune system: train a small bag of classifiers and clone the ones that perform well, but with a small chance of random mutations to the hyperparameters. Weight classifiers created in this manner exponentially based on iterations since last correct classification. Keep a “memory threshold” below which the weight will not fall in case that pattern is encountered again.

k-nearest neighbors and the separation of powers

Leave a reply

Decisions using the kNN framework are arrived at through a majority vote of an observation’s k nearest neighbors (given some distance metric). When aggregating many kNN decisions and weighing them against one much more important kNN decision, one strategy I’ve found to work well is to copy congress:

The critical neighbor is “the President” and can’t “pass” the vote, but can “veto” it.
A decision is made to “pass” either on the vote of a majority of the neighbors in the absence of a veto, or given a 2/3 majority in its presence.

One example of this is aggregating decisions over a market index. Each individual asset in the index has an impact in its overall movement, but the index itself (the President) can also be analyzed directly.