What I did During My Undergraduate Education

(I have not graduated yet, so this assumes my plans hold)

Mathematics

• MATH 350 Real Analysis
• MATH 355 Abstract Algebra
• MATH 383 Complex Analysis
• MATH 341 Probability
• MATH 361 Theory of Computation
• MATH 321 Knot Theory
• MATH 407 Dance of the Primes
• MATH10072 Combinatorics and Graph Theory
• MATH 413 Algebraic Geometry (Spring 2026)
• MATH 447 Linear Control System Theory (Spring 2026)

Cognitive Science

• COGS 222 Intro to Cognitive Science
• COGS 224 Intro to Formal Linguistics
• PSYL10176 Induction: Analogy, Learning, and Generalisation in Humans and Machines
• COGS 98 Ind Stdy: Cognitive Science Aesthetic Categorizations
• COGS 493T Topics in Mind & Cognition
• COGS 497 Ind Study: Cognitive Science
• COGS 31 Sr. Thesis: Cognitive Science
• COGS 317 Computational Neuroscience (Spring 2026)
• COGS 494 Sr. Thesis: Cognitive Science (Spring 2026)

Computer Science

• CSCI 134 Intro to Computer Science
• CSCI 136 Data Structures & Advanced Programming
• CSCI 256 Algorithm Design & Analysis
• CSCI 381 Deep Learning
• INFR10085 Introduction to Mobile Robotics

Philosophy

• PHIL 116 Perception and Reality
• PHIL 239 The Ethics of AI

Humanities & Literature

• COMP 230 Renaissance: Self and World
• ENGL 256T Absurdist Theatre
• ENGL 378 Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”
• GERM 12 Writing the Dreamwork

Other

• LASC08018 LEL2B: Phonetic Analysis and Empirical Methods (Linguistics)
• NSCI 201 Neuroscience
• BIOL 101 The Cell
• PSYC 101 Introductory Psychology
• ECON 19 Energy in Transition
• ECO202 Microeconomics
• ASTR 104 Milky Way Galaxy & Universe (Spring 2026)

I feel like Opus 4.5 is honestly a psychohazard at this point the EQ is so high

4o was always such a turn off for me but messed up a bunch of other people

But I don’t feel the instinctive turn off from Opus in the same way which scares me

Opus getting way cheaper means I now spend way more money on Opus 💀

An AI investment bubble could burst soon, but that wouldn’t really change my view on the core questions: How hard is it to build AGI? How close are we to AI that transforms the economy and creates serious risks?

I actually hope the bubble does burst, because it would likely slow down the competitive race between AI companies and give us more time to prepare. But whether the bubble bursts or not will probably come down to (in the grand scheme of things) fairly small differences in AI capabilities over the next couple of years.

I scored 58 on the AI purity test. https://aipuritytest.org

I was a little shocked to learn about the undecidable Post Correspondence Problem. But when phrased about the unrecognizability of the complement, it is a lot less shocking.

There is generally always a mismatch between our intuitive sense of what an idea means and any abstract formal way to define an intuitive concept.

I would like to clearly explain the reason for this mismatch and find a way forward by working to create a framework where intuitive human-native concepts can be discussed with appropriate degrees of precision.

There are two or three kinds of (related but distinct) intelligence: speed, and correctness.

Correctness might be divided into accuracy (how good ones predictions are) and precision (how many things one is able to predict).

It is possible to have a very fast intelligence which cannot understand many things but is very correct about the things it does understand; it is possible to have a very slow intelligence which understands most things well enough to make decent predictions but has lots of error, or any other combination of traits.

In practice, if you are slow and correct, you are often thought to be dumb, and if you are wrong and fast you are also thought to be dumb. These are different failure modes, however.

• Consciousness has causal properties
• It is compatible with functionalist accounts
• It is fully physical
• It is not an illusion