Philosophy on Harshvardhan

Language Models and Multiverse

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was listening to a podcast by OpenAI where they tell us how they trained GPT-4.5, one of the largest models they have today. GPT-4.5 shows intelligence in unexpected ways, demonstrating common sense like other models totally miss. I haven’t used it much myself so cannot comment on that, but at 38:38 in the video, Sam Altman asks Daniel Selsam “why does supervised learning work?”. Without skipping a beat, he replies “compression”. Then he explains that “the ideal intelligence is Solomonoff Induction”. Unfamiliar with this term, I jumped on a conversation with GPT-4.5 and along the way, I learnt several interesting things that I want to share with you all.

Happiness: What makes us happy?

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Try the quiz

If you want to test your knowledge about happiness around the world, try this quiz I made based on World Happiness Report 2024.

Link to Quiz (10 questions, 5 mins activity): https://happiness-quiz.netlify.app/

What makes us happy?

One of the early realizations of my life was that happiness depends more on perspectives than circumstances. A wise person would strive for a perspective that brings them happiness. So, why isn’t everyone happy? To a large extent, it’s because we are told what should make us happy: job, marriage, kids, and so on.

Thoughts about Vipassana Meditation (and My Second Experience)

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Kaj Sotala writes:

Usually, most of us are - on some implicit level - operating off a belief that we need to experience pleasant feelings and need to avoid experiencing unpleasant feelings. In a sense, thinking about getting into an unpleasant or painful situation may feel almost like death: if we think that the experience would be unpleasant enough, then no matter how brief it might be, we might do almost anything to avoid ending up there.

Theory of Mind

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Four parts of our mind according to Buddha

What are you optimizing for?

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In a world driven by optimization, individuals are guided by nudges promoting beneficial choices and sludges creating barriers. Using examples from urban design, food choices, and media, I explore how these influences often prioritize convenience over genuine well-being, challenging you to critically assess what’s truly being optimized for in your lives.

Chitta-vritis: Exploring the Depths of Consciousness

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Through the chitta-vritis of pramana, smriti, nidra, vikalpa, and viparyaya, Patanjali offers insights into the workings of the mind and how we can cultivate greater awareness and understanding of our own mental processes.

How to Hack Your Own Mind?

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of relying solely on previously published psychological research, I suggest conducting personal experiments on oneself to test and develop new behaviors and attitudes. Experimentation is a cheap and effective way to determine what works best for you, and it allows for personalised results that can be applied directly to one’s life.

What happens when you meditate ten hours a day?

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Between Dec 15 and 25 of 2022 I attended a meditation course called Vipassana. Vipassana is a Pali word that means ‘seeing things as they are’. The course promised me to teach how to have a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. It is a form of mindfulness meditation.

Infallible Memory: The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

You rarely come across a story so powerful that you experience so many different feelings — at the same time. Ted Chiang’s ‘The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling’ does that. It evokes several strong feelings, one after another, that will leave you soul-searching.

Bullets of Wisdom

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Life is short for learning from your own mistakes; you need to play catch-up with people who tried new things. Most people do not document their learnings. The rare culturati group that notes their understandings in an essay easily trumps the large group, which keeps their learnings to themselves.

I have read many interesting essays. Some of them stuck with me — like fingers working with super glue. I revisit them often. When I reread them, I often see myself clinging to an awfully good section. In this live post, I will share some of those good nuggets.