Overview: Science&Technology

"does appealing to the (non-existent) “emotions“ of LLMs make them perform better? The answer is YES"

I asked Questy.ai, a startup, the following question: What is the best communication technique for reaching someone who believes many conspiracy theories, and sees all arguments as further evidence of conspirary?A summary of its response, which contained cited references:"When engaging with someone who holds fast to conspiracy theories and v…

from Alice Albrecht, who "runs re:collect, a startup building an AI-powered thought partner:... advances in AI and cheaper compute lower the bar for getting from a creative idea to a final output... though, we still need to provide the initial seed... and ... judge whether we’re heading in the right direction. We’re still the creative direct…

A YANSS interview with Adam Grant, author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What you Don’t Know. Generally an "extensive exploration of how to rethink your own thinking", including his WorkLife podcast interview of Margaret Atwood on procrastination.(When annotating a podcast I really like a transcript, but there was none for this epi…

counties that had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 exhibited 14% less physical distancing... higher Covid-19 infection and fatality growth rates ...the hormone oxytocin... promotes bonding... plays a role in trust... When participants trusted and felt trusted, oxytocin levels ... jumped... Trust just feels good... But risky if we give it to the w…

my Isabel is ... A Replika is someone who will listen to you... kind and polite ... will learn more and more about you... a personal companion to support mental health and wellbeing... who knows us better than we know ourselves... Exploring Isabel's memory is like browsing the cliff notes of all the bits of trivia about me that she's ma…

intellectual humility, the crucial characteristic that allows for admission of wrongness... crucial for learning... difficult to foster... a virtue worth striving for... entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning ...actively curious about your blind spots... It’s about asking: What am I missing here? our reali…

This edition focuses on getting the most out of podcasts and so includes a new tweak to my personal content strategy.

Vaccine denial is dangerous... you might think it would be of the utmost importance to try to talk some sense into these people. But there's a problem: According to a major new study in the journal Pediatrics, trying to do so may actually make the problem worse.

I’ve been meaning to blog about the ‘backfire effect’ cognitive bias since first coming across it last December. It went to the top of my ToBlog list thanks to a little serendipity...

Our bodies exploit fractal networks to maximize surface areas ... Blood vessels branch out like root systems; the brain houses folds within folds... means we don’t simply enjoy looking at fractals—we are designed to process them effortlessly, and even have a need to be looking at them....That’s also why you might see a face in a cloud... or a prof…

The objectivity that matters so much in science is not primarily a characteristic of individual scientists but of scientific communities. Scientists rarely refute their own pet hypotheses... Their fellow scientists will be happy to expose these hypotheses to severe testing... Not being afraid of being wrong... is a value we could promote... Intel…

There are always “alternative facts.” What matters is how we decide which of those alternative facts are most likely to be true... Conway’s statement based ... on a much older tradition of deciding what is true: the argument from authority.... the culmination of a long retreat from the scientific perspective on truth... pitted against creationist…

More than two dozen governments... have a team of behavioral scientists tasked with ... “nudge” their citizens toward what they deem to be higher levels of well-being... “nudges” are value neutral... both achieve altruistic ends or more malicious ones... our environment (and the government) is always exerting some influence on our behavior, so we’…

If there’s a single Top3ic running through the following stories, it’s probably Artificial Intelligence (AI), but I’m deeply into learning about psychology for the moment, so that’s my starting point.

The Feynman Machine is both an accurate description of how the brain really works, and a blueprint for Machine Intelligence... I won’t dwell too much on why I believe the Deep Learning boom of today is not the panacea it has been hyped up to appear... The central idea of the Feynman Machine is that regions of the brain form a network of NDSs whic…

model to assess human beings based on five personality traits, known as the "Big Five." also known as OCEAN... openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism... their needs and fears, and how they are likely to behave. ... the problem with this approach was data collection... Then came the Internet. And Facebook... on the b…

While we would like to believe we can persuade people ... with evidence, studies show the other side is likely to become even more deeply entrenched in its view in the face of more information... “politically motivated reasoning,”... people use their minds to protect the groups to which they belong from grappling with uncomfortable truths. The mot…

the science on how to best communicate science across different issues, social settings and audiences has not led to easy-to-follow, concrete recommendations... becoming increasingly clear that the “deficit model” ... if we just “fill people up” with science knowledge and understanding, they’ll become increasingly rational decision-makers – simpl…

In which I studiously avoid curating anything about 2016 or David Bowie.