Rami Luisto

Miscellaneous

Besides mathematics I enjoy programming/CS and I have more than a passing interest both in physics and economics. In particular I find information theory, cryptography and Turing completeness fascinating concepts. More recently I have also gotten more and more interested in the field of semiotics, especially as it relates to modern AI.

Here I have gathered various things that do not easily fall under other categories of my homepage. I often process my thoughts by either writing or complaining about them, some of my more technical texts are here, for less technical things see the blog.

Mathematical(-ish) writings

• I've recently given a few talks about (chat)GPT. I made a quick link page with GPT and DALLE-E to share some of my favorite links on the topic.
• A mathematical note in the form of a fantasy novellette.
• A guest post about self similarity on my favorite math blog.
• Co-author of the original manuscript of Cryptography Clarified. Educational comic, Clarified studios, 2017.
• Enigman matematiikasta. (Of the mathematics of the Enigma machine.) Essay for a cryptography course, (in finnish) University of Helsinki, 2014. PDF
• Ihmissuhteen yhtenäistäminen. (Human relationships and connectedness.) A playful essay (in finnish) University of Helsinki, 2012. PDF
• Laskutoimitusten operaattorinormeista. (Of the operator norms of binary calculation operations.) A playful essay (in finnish) University of Helsinki, 2012. PDF
• The Jordan Curve Theorem. Essay, University of Helsinki, 2011. PDF

Miscellaneous projects

• A small whoami -service. (I use this to make sure my VPN is working properly.)
• A blog post describing my transition from the academical world to the private sector.
• ...here's the second part.
• ...and the third.
• I recently gave a talk about chatGPT at the office, here are some links that I found interesting about the topic.

Book recommendations

Listed below are some books I have truly enjoyed. They are in no particular order besides the first one being most important.

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky is my go-to book for any book recommendation. From all the books in in this list, HPMOR has had the most profound effect on my world view. It is rare to have a book that both makes you laugh out loud in public and makes you understand better the philosophy of science.

• Our mathematical universe by Max Tegmark. While reading this the double slit experiment finally made some sense.
• Sapiens: a brief history of humankind by Yuvel Harari. A brilliant approach to the development of humans as a civilization.
• Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond. Somewhat related to the big ideas behind Brief history of mankind.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. While reading this I grew new appreciation to the term 'meta'.
• Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman. You don't have to be serious and/or introverted to be a brilliant scientist.
• Influence by Robert B. Cialdini. This caused a large shift in my view of the world and how I make decisions in it.
• Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. Related to the themes of Influence, but from a different angle. Strongly recommended to people who teach or train other people. My current conjecture is that many people pass high school by using mostly 'fast' thinking and this hinders them in later education.
• The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. Also related to the themes of Influence, but yet another perspective. Here we start by looking at how much better you might be able to convince people of facts if you truly believe them even when they are not actually true -- self-deception can be very useful for a person. Then we move on to study how the fact that we humans are really good at lying to ourselves can have secondary effects on our lives and society as a whole.
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin. Even though I felt that 85% of the advice in this book was built to be a personal insult to my coding habits, this book is the best thing related to programming that I have ever read.
• Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey B. West. If you like fractals and self-similarity, this is the book for you. Gives a general-audience answer (or at least an explanation) on why all mammals get about one billion heartbeats per lifetime and why most companies tend to go bankrupt in a century but cities go on for millenia.

Internet recommendations

Listed below are some internets I have enjoyed, in no particular order.

• Arxivist. My daily dose of new advances in mathematics. I recommend this as a daily reading instead of browsing your favorite subject(s) in arXiv.
• Slate star codex. Makes me think.
• Less wrong. Makes my thinking less stupid, I think.
• Shtetl-Optimized. I like the topics even when I can't follow the details of quantum computing.
• Data Genetics. Lots of good mathematical expositions on cool phenomenon, many of which can be explained to an audience with little formal mathematical education.
• Gravity and levity. Good reads on physics.