Would we be as successful as we are now? I’d say no.
What are Semantic Vectors
But first, what does it even mean to communicate with vectors? Communication can be defined as the transfer of an idea from one person to another, and a semantic vector essentially tries to capture an idea in a numerical representation. Vectors have grown vastly in popularity in Natural Language Processing in the past decade, and now virtually all research in the field revolves around a basic assumption that vectors can effectively convey ideas.
The first commonly used semantic vector model, generally known as word embedding (as in embedding…
When you look across cultures with long recorded histories, one thing that you’ll almost always see is a timeless, dualistic conflict between certain strands of thought.
Material-Immaterial Dualities
In China, there’s Daoism which emphasizes the natural Way things proceed, competing with Confucianism which is a human attempt to organize socioeconomic and political structures. In India, there’s Sramana which manifests as Buddhism, Jainism, and other heavily metaphysical doctrines, competing with Brahmana which descends from the materialist Vedic school of thought. …
I’ve recently been fascinated by the axioms that underly various political ideologies, that people never address because it’s near impossible to change someone’s axioms in any form of debate.
One of them that I was just thinking about is a disagreement over the equivalence of action and inaction (and therefore linguistic negation) that is often core to disputes between anarchists and anarcho-capitalists.
On the one hand, anarchists believe that inaction can be an act of aggression. …
Note: this piece was originally written for an Asian Art History course
The Bhagavad Gita is widely hailed as one of the greatest works of philosophy that Indian civilization has produced. Many see its widespread fame as a direct result of the quality of its ideas, but could this instead be a case of cum hoc ergo propter hoc? The present work will make the argument that the Indian philosophical school of Vedanta was propelled into popularity due primarily to the emotional tools employed by its brainchild, the Bhagavad Gita. These tools, specifically of striking literary imagery that could be…
Note: this piece was originally written for a Journalistic Writing course
You’ve just finished plowing the fields for the day. The tedious, exhausting work took a toll on you and now it’s starting to get dark. You take a seat on the porch of your hut and light a fire, looking up to the sky as the stars come out, an expansive barren field laid out in front of you. Your son brings out a wide, flat palm leaf which he places on the ground as you draw a small stone knife out of your belt. Hunched over the leaf…
