Eric Zhao

Follow The Perturbed Blogger

A blog with research and random thoughts on learning, games, and scale.

March 6, 2025
Why calibration creates perverse incentives and how to fix it. In Twitter-speak: why even aligned AGI will lie about the weather.
Read more
Weather forecasting
March 3, 2025
I ran a large-scale study of why finetuning struggles more with knowledge injection than task customization (and broke a rate-limiter).
Read more
AI model finetuning
March 1, 2025
A gentle intro into the basics and history of multi-distribution learning. Also, some cool new results by the community.
Read more
Statistical distributions
February 28, 2025
Random sampling works better than you think: Gemini 1.5 = o1. The secret? Self-verification magically gets easier with scale.
Read more
Brute-force search
February 24, 2025
How do digital services balance between optimizing engagement and their other goals? A formal model, fun interest rates, and a cool paradox.
Read more
User engagement