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anecdote

4 captures, most recent first.

QC @QiaochuYuan

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QC [verified] @QiaochuYuan · 4h
when i was at cambridge a professor was teaching algebraic geometry and offhandedly made some claim that was not clear to me

i asked "is that obvious?" he says "yes"

i asked "is it obvious that it's obvious?" he pauses for a few seconds and goes "...no"

[quoted tweet:]
Kevin Lacker [verified] @lacker · Aug 10
A mathematician is giving a lecture and says, "It is obvious that...."

Then he stops, stares at the board, and thinks silently for ten minutes....
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Tweet by Qiaochu Yuan telling an anecdote from a Cambridge algebraic geometry lecture about pressing a professor on whether a claim of 'obviousness' was itself obvious, quote-tweeting a joke by Kevin Lacker about mathematicians pausing to silently verify something they just called 'obvious.'

mathematicstwitteranecdotehumor

Danielle Fong @DanielleFong

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Danielle Fong 🐦... ✔ @DanielleFo... · 28m
i met neal stephenson at a party i dj'd; he was grooving and he's like i remember you from somewhere. i was like at the island in canada with peter thiel. and the bears. 🐻

i should have told him about the young lady's primer progress i had made, but we talked about lightsaber engineering. then he had to dash to the bathroom. he was teaching sword fighting and had to be ready [cut off]
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Tweet from Danielle Fong recounting meeting author Neal Stephenson at a party she DJ'd, where he recognized her from an island in Canada with Peter Thiel and bears; they discussed lightsaber engineering instead of her progress on a 'young lady's primer' (a reference to Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age). Text cuts off mid-sentence.

danielle fongneal stephensonanecdote

Danielle Fong @DanielleFong

Danielle Fong 🐦☀️✓ @DanielleFong · 2h danielle: "what about this crazy idea" richard swanson: "as the japanese say, very difficult!" danielle: "i see" richard: "it means impossible" danielle: "i got that"
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Short anecdotal/humorous dialogue post, text-only, no images.

twitteranecdotehumordanielle fong

pamela mishkin @manlikemishap

pamela mishkin ✔️ @manlikemishap — 2h i've told this story a lot but when i first joined openai, i didn't know what effective altruism was and thought cryonics was only the purview of disney channel original movies. i had an intro call with a tenured colleague. it seemed we agreed on many of the same tenets. me: inequality bad! him: yes! and people should have health care me: amen!! and i was like wow, love agreeing! and then, because we were so aligned, we decided to finish each other's sentences. me: and that's why tax the ai companies him: and that's why we need to upload all our brains onto hard drives and here's my research on freeze options anyway, the other guy was josh achiam.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Text-only anecdote tweet, no embedded images.

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