Associate Professor, @IULuddy · Core Developer, @racketlang · Member, @TC39 · Handler, @gravemaker_ulti · @samth@types.pl
Bloomington, IN
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt retweeted
Is there a mathematician group chat I could join for discussing this brave new world we're in?
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I'm all in favor of dunking on Clegg but extracting accurate information from large PDFs is still quite challenging in my experience.
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The idea that the "far left" is the primary force stopping the regulation of frontier AI is so ridiculous that I almost can't believe he wrote it.
Me, in a time machine, to Eliezer in 2006: The year is 2026. You stand back to back with Bernie Sanders. Peter Thiel has named you the Antichrist.
EY-2006: Oh no. Did somebody invent pharmacological mind control and use it on me, or-
Me: Nvidia was on the verge of destroying all things. You had no choice.
EY-2006: Are we talking about the computer graphics card manufacturer, or an unrelated supervillian named "Invidia"?
Me: The former. It turned out that computer graphics cards contained a surprising amount of world-destroying potential. All attempts at hindering the reckless exploitation of the Graphic Card Force for corporate profit were stymied by the far left, which feared that any attempts to regulate them might lead to regulatory capture. Other attempts were made to prevent Nvidia from selling to foreign companies that resold to communist China, but those attempts were blocked by the far right. Nvidia is now a $5.5 trillion company.
EY-2006: ...What are politics like in 2026, exactly?
Me: In other news that is mostly unrelated, the decision theory paper you're currently working on will accidentally spark off a transgender vegan murder cult.
EY-2006: A WHAT? Why? How? Why?
Me: Millions know your name as the greatest of heroes, millions more as the greatest of villains, and other millions know you solely as the greatest author of Harry Potter fanfiction.
EY-2006: This is beginning to strain credulity.
Me: The New York Post will probably soon publish a story claiming that you keep a harem of submissive mathematicians. Sadly, they will be lying.
EY-2006: I'm going to stop believing you now.
Me: All of this is taking place under the ominous shadow of Donald Trump.
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I guess now that LLMs make formal verification possible on a wide scale we get to do the Demillo, Lipton & Perlis debate, but on Twitter instead of CACM.
btw, this is literally why I never found any interest in lean 4 because what are you even fixing?
let's say you formally verify the Ethereum consensus layer in lean 4. what do you do next? that just tell you that your lean spec has some properties but it does not tell you whether production implemented it properly. it also does not even tell you that python spec is correct either. its just an intellectual exercise at best.
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International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) 2026 coverage released:
piped.video/@acmsigplan/play…
Over 139 talks and presentations across ICFP, SRC, PLMW, HOPE, miniKanren, FARM, Haskell, LOPSTR+PPDP, Erlang, ML, FUNARCH, and Scheme!
H/T: mastodon.acm.org/@sigplanav/….
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This is just so dumb. The people who created social security, the green revolution, and mrna vaccines were all motivated by a desire to help people far away from them. And it worked!
The simple fact is: the effective way of improving the world is to help those close to you. Attempts at abstracting away, at helping “everyone” are doomed. Leftism is doomed because it redirects your care from those with whom you are enmeshed to abstractions.
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt retweeted
Back in July, there was a report that got a lot of attention online that Waymo was more dangerous than NYC for-hire vehicles. The analysis turned out to be wrong and the updated report finds they are much safer. Good that they updated with new data, though openplans.org/how-for-hire-a…
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt retweeted
If Pangram says your paper is mostly AI-written, it should be rejected. Papers are for humans to read, and if you didn't have time to write it, I am not interested in reading it.
The NeurIPS 2026 Position Paper Track's policy is good:
blog.neurips.cc/2026/06/02/a…
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I'm excited to announce `waterfall`, a new Lean tactic for ACL2-style automated proof search.
It can automatically find proofs of the kind we do a lot in formal PL and software verification: lots of induction over data structures, case analysis, etc.
samth.github.io/waterfall/
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The whole idea is that you just write `waterfall` and then it proves the goal. Many PL proofs involve lots of annoying cases, none of which say that much that's interesting. I hope waterfall can make these proofs easier to write.
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt retweeted
I'm looking for my next role, in Montreal or remote! My background spans compilers, systems, and AI research.
I'd welcome introductions, leads, or a repost to help spread the word ❤️
More details about my experience and what I'm looking for: pointersgonewild.com/2026-09…
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Sam Tobin-Hochstadt retweeted
We're hiring developers to work on Hegel (property-based testing for ~every language) in London with me, and are struggling a bit to source candidates, so I wrote a less professional post about why this is the coolest job ever and you should apply.
drmaciver.com/2026/09/come-w…
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