The Pat Hayes

The Pat Hayes

@thepathayes.bsky.social

Visual artist. Retired AI researcher, SWeb, Luce Professor of cognitive science, AAAI President, W3C invited expert, philosopher, logician. Interested in time, consciousness, determinism, quantum theory. I used to flip houses, now I read books.

49 followers16 following33 posts

The Pat Hayes reposted

Christopher Webb
@cwebbonline.com

Have you ever heard someone go off, and their words are so perfectly chosen, so well said in that moment, that you’re in awe? You think, “There’s nothing to add here,” and you applaud in your head. That’s exactly this. Pure perfection. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

The Pat Hayes
@thepathayes.bsky.social

I used to regularly drive between the SF bay area and the Florida panhandle, but I havn't done it for a while. This week however: Crawfordville, FL at 1pm ET on Monday to Cherryland, CA at 8pm PT on Wednesday. 2,556 miles, 4 time zones in a 2011 Honda Odyssey.

The Pat Hayes reposted

Gen Michael Hayden
@genmhayden.bsky.social

Fellow NSA - National Security Agency veterans. Look at what’s happened at the National Cryptologic Museum. They covered up with brown paper the photos of Women in American Cryptology. All in response to President Trump’s anti-diversity executive order.

The Pat Hayes
@thepathayes.bsky.social

By way of introducing myself, an explanation of my handle. First, there are way too many 'Pat Hayes's (google it), so I needed something extra, and all the obvious ones have already been used. But long ago, while I was AAAI President, and hence something of a public figure in the AI world...

The Pat Hayes
@thepathayes.bsky.social

...at the time, I was wandering around a social evening at a giant AAAI conference looking for someone I knew, when another lost soul clutching a plastic plate of munchies and a plastic glass of wine saw me, smiled tentatively and leaned in to read my name badge. But when he did, ...

The Pat Hayes
@thepathayes.bsky.social

... he jumped backwards in shock, sloshing his wine, and said, "Are you THE Pat Hayes??". And I was obliged to say, almost apologetically, that yes, I was. So you see, I am just using the name I was given.

The Pat Hayes
@thepathayes.bsky.social

A right triangle has sides (a, b, c) where c is the hypotenuse. Scale up three copies by respectively a, b and c to get similar triangles with sides: (a|2, ab, ac) (ab, b|2, bc) (ac, bc, c|2) then the first two fit exactly inside the third, sides a|2 and b|2 fitting exactly into c|2. QED

The Pat Hayes
@thepathayes.bsky.social

Just read "Hidden Harmonies" by Robert & Ellen Kaplan, a history of Pythagoras' theorem woven into a kind of humanist hymn in praise of number theory and geometry, a great read. I learned two new (to me) proofs of Pythagoras, one of them stunningly simple, see next post.

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