Do you remember the story about a man who removed the thorn from the lion’s paw? (It saved his life later.) The story is called Androcles and the Lion, and you can easily read it to your kids before bedtime tonight.
The Cliff Notes version of the story is: escaped slave Androcles finds a lion who is in great pain because there is a thorn lodged in his paw. Androcles removes the thorn, and the lion is grateful. The lion is SO grateful that later, when Androcles is recaptured, and the lion is also captured – so that the lion can kill escaped slaves in the arena (for the entertainment of the masses) – the lion rubs up against Androcles instead of tearing him apart and eating him. The emperor pardons Androcles and frees the lion. Everyone is happy, except maybe the masses gathered to watch, who were looking for blood and gore.
Have you ever felt that you’re like that lion?
Truly, those of us doing AI, either as our work or course of study, need a fairly high pain tolerance.
In fact, there are ALL SORTS of pains associated with learning AI.
We’d love to hear about YOUR “pain points.”
Tell us:
- Reply in the Comments (below post),
- Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themesis/
- Email us: themesisinc1@gmail.com
What We’re Doing to Help
We’re putting the final touches on our first product; an introduction to the Top Ten Terms in Statistical Mechanics. Our deep desire and hope is that this will ease the pain for people attempting to read the classic AI literature. (For example, Hinton and Salakhutinov, either 2006 or 2012, and see links in prior blogposts.)
To your health, well-being, and outstanding success!
Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.
Founder and Chief Scientist, Themesis, Inc.
References
No long reference list this week. We’re regrouping.
BUT … would it help you if we started to “black diamond” label our references, and organize/sort them according to difficulty?
Again – let us know via comments, a LinkedIn message, or email – you’ll help us as we put together the next round of materials.
If a Resource Summary Would Help …
By now, we have a LOT of materials out there. Blogs and YouTubes, published under both Themesis as well as prior work under Alianna Maren.
This material covers a lot of what we’re discussing – free energy, enthalpy, entropy, the connection between statistical mechanics and neural networks; just a lot of topics.
Would a resource summary help? A sort of “start here” type of guided tour?
Let us know.
“I Like Pleasure Spiced with Pain”
It’s that “pain tolerance” thing … we wouldn’t be into this JUST for the pain, would we? (Unless … of course … you’re just a bit kinkier than you’re letting on.)
So, for something completely different: