Tokens. Embeddings. Dimensions. Weights. Logits. Softmax. Loss. Backpropagation. Attention heads. Epochs. Feed-forward. Not all new to me, but I love the early phases of digging into some big new thing and teasing out all of the new language into concepts that you already understand. My favorite thing about learning in general is that you’re often learning concepts that transcend the thing you’re learning about.
Went for lunch with a friend and wondered by I don’t do it more. It’s such a great feeling to add more chapters to a day. I can get obsessed enough with whatever I’m doing that the hours disappear. The real joy though, of course, was simply spending time with a friend. We talked about work, life, family, parenting. I’m convinced she has a time turner, because she packs so much of it all into the same 24 hours each of us has.
One thing that we talked about is the need to be unreasonably optimistic when you’re getting something new and ambitious off the ground—or, in fact, doing anything that requires real perseverance. It’s the optimism that makes us keep going, through the parts that feel like swimming in treacle. We talked about how manifesting is real; how self-fulfilling prophecies work. Assume it will work, and it might just.
I think that brings me right back to the beginning: I’m not a machine learning engineer, but does that matter? Truly, you can just do things. You can just start playing and assume you’ll figure it out. That a little effort today, and the next, will build into something worthwhile and rewarding. I have to work hard at this, but: there aren’t many feelings greater than believing in yourself. Evidence helps, so I’ll be back tomorrow.