Posts from Adrián A. Davín’s website.https://adriandavin.com/https://adriandavin.com/writing/minor-genies/https://adriandavin.com/writing/minor-genies/One day you find yourself lost in the desert, with no food and no water. The scorching sun is burning your skin and you are just about one hour away from dying of dehydration. Suddenly, something shiny flickers among some rocks and you gather your last reserves of strength to…Sat, 24 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/presenting-zombi2/https://adriandavin.com/writing/presenting-zombi2/The story of Zombi (let's call it ZOMBI1 for clarity) is as follows: just after finishing my PhD, after working for many months on my thesis manuscript, I kind of missed writing code. It sounds strange and it probably is, but that's what I did almost right away after presenting…Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/a-personal-library/https://adriandavin.com/writing/a-personal-library/A few books I have around in physical format Title Author Genre/Topic --- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------- Title Author Genre/Topic ---…Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/pushing-your-own-understanding/https://adriandavin.com/writing/pushing-your-own-understanding/A couple of days ago I finished Timur Kuran's "Private truths, public lies". I found it interesting but also very dense, with a very detailed explanation of a mathematical model that underpins most of the argumentation. I was under the illusion that I had understood most of it,…Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies-or-not/https://adriandavin.com/writing/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies-or-not/A couple of days ago I finished "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies", by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. I bought the book when visiting New York City last year and I had the chance to get my hands on an edition signed by Nate Soares. I didn't start reading it right away,…Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/using-the-wrong-baselines/https://adriandavin.com/writing/using-the-wrong-baselines/When people say "there is a lot of ..." or "there is not enough of ..." they are implicitly comparing something with some specific baseline. Being aware of that baseline is important because otherwise it can lead you to make some silly mistakes. For example, when discussing the…Mon, 04 May 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/a-few-recommended-non-fiction-books/https://adriandavin.com/writing/a-few-recommended-non-fiction-books/A few books I would recommend, in no particular order. I hope this list grows to at least 1000 books one day. Note to my future self: categorize into topics!! 1. Gods, Graves and Scholars: An almost novelistic account of some of the most important archaeological discoveries of…Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/xy-and-the-monkeys-paw/https://adriandavin.com/writing/xy-and-the-monkeys-paw/1. You have a goal, call it G. 2. To attain G, you think of a proxy P. 3. You ask an agent to give you the instructions for P. 4. The agent gives you long complicated instructions to solve P. You implement them, with a lot of time and effort. 5. You totally fail to see an…Sat, 25 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/moving-the-goalposts/https://adriandavin.com/writing/moving-the-goalposts/When someone is moving the goalposts this creates a very good opportunity to really understand what this person really believes in. For example: "I think that machines will be intelligent once they pass the Turing test" A machine passes the Turing test "Well, I think that…Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/recording-memories/https://adriandavin.com/writing/recording-memories/For some reason I cannot quite explain, sometimes I feel the need to organize my thoughts about the past. On one occasion (in 2014) I recorded a summary of my life up to that point, not because I thought it was extraordinary and important to preserve, but because it gave me some…Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/being-productive-vs-feeling-productive/https://adriandavin.com/writing/being-productive-vs-feeling-productive/Last week I spent a surprising amount of time working on the Yongle Dadian Collection, which is a collection of booklets that I am curating, on a wide range of topics I am interested in, from the evolution of spiderwebs to the development of greenhouses in Almeria. These are…Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/the-yongle-dadian-collection/https://adriandavin.com/writing/the-yongle-dadian-collection/- 000 KOWLOON WALLED CITY — Self-Government Without a State - 001 THE KULA RING — A Melanesian Trade Network Built on Reputation - 002 ZURICH'S GUILDS — How Trade Cartels Became a Constitution - 003 MADRID'S GRAN VÍA — Urban Renewal and Forced Displacement - 004 KYOTO'S STREET…Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/generating-my-own-books/https://adriandavin.com/writing/generating-my-own-books/I have not been lucky this year with books. The last few I read were not especially revealing. I read mostly to understand the world better, and lately the books I find are either too dense or too shallow for what I am looking for. For example, I recently read a short book…Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/painting-with-acrylic/https://adriandavin.com/writing/painting-with-acrylic/Today I have been painting a whale on a small wooden canvas. It is the first time I have really painted something in a long time and my first time ever using acrylic. I found the experience relaxing and very pleasant. I will repeat it! The result is not totally bad, but I can do…Sat, 21 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/new-years-resolutions/https://adriandavin.com/writing/new-years-resolutions/Since I turned 16, every single year on the 1st of January I have sat down and written a list of the things I would like to accomplish during the year. Normally, I like to include categories, with a long list of movies and books, places to visit, people I want to meet and things…Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/the-unfinished-houses-of-peru/https://adriandavin.com/writing/the-unfinished-houses-of-peru/I wrote this article in 2024 in Peru when traveling there I arrived in Peru. Once you leave the center of Cusco, which boasts extraordinary colonial architecture, the rest of the city looks like a nuclear bomb hit it. Around 80% or 90% of the buildings are unfinished. Many are…Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/a-map-of-ideologies/https://adriandavin.com/writing/a-map-of-ideologies/Why do people tend to cluster into well-defined ideological groups? My hypothesis is that people share "fundamental beliefs" that condition their political thought. I initially proposed a list of 9 such beliefs, which I have expanded to 14 for this analysis. However, these…Tue, 10 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/fundamental-beliefs/https://adriandavin.com/writing/fundamental-beliefs/Like most people, I have been part of many discussions over completely different topics. Normally, speaker A states a position, and B disagrees. Then there is an exchange about which reasons are good and which are not (this is if the conversation does not devolve into an…Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/youtube-videos-i-like/https://adriandavin.com/writing/youtube-videos-i-like/How did the world get so ugly? I Wish I Knew this when I Started Acrylic Painting Six things I would fix about Music Theory - I would implement every single modification proposed here Mariló Montero puede decir lo que quiera en TVE How does the Spanish state manipulate the news…Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/books-read-in-2026/https://adriandavin.com/writing/books-read-in-2026/Books I have been reading this year La Guerra Civil (graphic novel) by Paul Preston and José Pablo García. (3.5). Very readable introduction to a very complex topic. The graphic novel format makes it more digestible. This book is a very good exposition of the many agents and…Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/a-few-recommended-movies/https://adriandavin.com/writing/a-few-recommended-movies/A few movies that I love, in no order whatsoever! 1. The Godfather 2. A Clockwork Orange 3. The Matrix 4. The Truman Show 5. Sleuth 6. Harold and Maude 7. Little Big Man 8. Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo 9. The man who shot Liberty Valance 10. Paths of Glory 11. Witness for…Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/science-is-less-deterministic-than-you-might-think/https://adriandavin.com/writing/science-is-less-deterministic-than-you-might-think/This is a comment on the paper Same data, different analysts Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that we are in the midst of what historians may one day call "The Replication Crisis Era". Long story short, starting in the 2000s, some scientists started sounding…Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/a-comic-of-polyphemus/https://adriandavin.com/writing/a-comic-of-polyphemus/Today I have been doing something I had been waiting to do for a long time: a comic using AI. A few weeks ago I did my first tests and realized that the new advances in AI image generation we have seen in the last months already allow the user to create quite consistent…Wed, 07 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/things-i-want-to-watch/https://adriandavin.com/writing/things-i-want-to-watch/A collection of documentaries, movies, YouTube videos, etc. that I would like to watch at some point. I update this regularly when I get new recommendations. Things that I have watched since I started compiling this list go at the end of the file. Documentaries Turning point:…Wed, 07 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/are-species-natural-kinds/https://adriandavin.com/writing/are-species-natural-kinds/I have always considered that species are natural kinds and organisms merely instances of a general class. However, I recently learned about the Ghiselin-Hull thesis and now I am not so certain. First I had to overcome some initial skepticism about their argument due to what I…Tue, 06 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/things-i-want-to-read/https://adriandavin.com/writing/things-i-want-to-read/A (non-exhaustive) collection of books and articles that I would like to read at some point. I update this regularly when I get new recommendations. Papers Real Patterns by Daniel C. Dennett - The paper that introduced the concept of Real Patterns, probably a fundamental idea in…Tue, 06 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/simulating-an-alien-fauna/https://adriandavin.com/writing/simulating-an-alien-fauna/For the past few days, I have been simulating a population of "aliens" to create original teaching materials for an upcoming phylogenetics workshop. While I initially considered using the classic Caminalcules (a group of imaginary creatures created by the evolutionary biologist…Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMThttps://adriandavin.com/writing/risks-of-cultural-abundance/https://adriandavin.com/writing/risks-of-cultural-abundance/We live in a time with endless opportunities to consume all sorts of cultural products. Movies, series, documentaries, books, comics, blogs, you name it. With the advent of AI, I expect the cultural production of our world will only increase. In such a world, there are at least…Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT