lana

lana, 6 months ago to random

When we found out that deodorants were destroying the ozone layer, did we stay telling people to use less toilet spray and buy less Axe? No, we legislated big corps and the problem was completely solved after a few years. What's with the cult of personal responsibility, why are we still here telling people that if they don't take the plane and use paper straws maybe grandma won't lose her house to the rising tides before she dies in an 'unprecedented' heatwave?

lana, 5 months ago to random

Wow, Duolingo fired their translators to replace them by AI generated content. I thought they cared about language and communication! A lot of their courses are irreplaceable, the languages are not available in any other app and some real native people have made content for some of the endangered languages.

lana, 1 month ago to random

Exceedingly cool results.
Somehow, wherever this small bat thrives, its presence also creates a niche for a bigger bat, which evolves from... the small bat. You get a string of islands with the simultaneous presence of the small bat and the big bat that re-evolves from it every time....

The phenomenon is so weird that people thought it was just 2 different species that colonized the islands in parallel. It's just one species with a recurring sub-branch.

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-species-sizes-rare-evolution-action.html

lana, 7 months ago to random

This is just unacceptable. Mike has been fired for expressing distress at the treatment of civilians in Pal-stine. He's Jewish and has been fired after harassment by a lot of non Jewish people and one Jewish guy who posts memes. The ECAG fought for him as much as we could. He has the support of many ECRs all across the world. He is an example of leadership, innovation, and listening to the disenfranchised for many of us. I am so sorry.

https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1716556747710574931?t=HM8sNVyKaSRLIKusb_nRuw&s=19

lana, 15 days ago to random

Overleaf, primarily used to write scientific papers, encouraging its users to use AI text. What could go wrong! I am even less open to reviewing papers now. Waiting for Evilsevier to release its "AI for peer reviewers" tool so that we can live in the most boring world ever for a few years. Just until the next generation, with better BS detectors than us, start doing real science again

lana, 7 months ago to random

This was even more interesting than I expected
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/#

lana, 4 months ago to random

Remember when software companies made their product to try to help you do what you wanted, instead of trying to get you to do what they want

lana, 5 months ago to random

I can't stand the fact that we could lose duolingo to AI. They have a monopoly on many endangered languages. Now I'm thinking every product should have a built in 'tax' that takes a % of any profit they make and automatically redistribute it to the next 2 competitors. Huge monopolies shouldn’t exist.

lana, 3 months ago to random

Winner of Dance Your PhD 2024

And also coolest person on earth

https://youtu.be/RoSYO3fApEc?si=dBgE-OezNwoji4lZ

lana, 7 months ago to random

I'm looking for bright orange or golden azuki beans. It's supposedly a common mutation of red azuki, and I need it for a project. If you find one in your bag of red azuki please send it my way...

lana, 5 months ago to random

The giant hornets are everywhere. That's what happens when it's 20C all of December and November. No wasps was the only good thing about winter, now what? Last year was probably the last livable summer we had, from now on it's just going to be worse. Maybe the hornets can summerate instead of hibernate.

lana, 5 months ago to random

What are your favorite hyperedited podcasts? I only like when each word has a purpose and they need your full attention. No stream of consciousness or repetitions.
Examples: This American Life, Stuff the British stole, Serial. Counter example: occasionally 99% invisible has interviews that become inane banter - i don't like that.

lana, 2 months ago to random

Here it is! Our paper about a new way to detect life in the universe. I'll make a fediprint thread later!

"An Agnostic Biosignature Based on Modeling Panspermia and Terraformation"
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.14195
html: https://arxiv.org/html/2403.14195v1

#DarkForest #Fediprint #Arxiv

lana, 30 days ago to random

I am still looking for a student (PhD or Master) in Japan who would like a side job in web development. ~8 hours per week, ~1500 to 1800 y/hour depending on your current university grade.

Contact me lana.sinapayen@gmail.com

lana, 6 months ago to random

Every time I discusss with someone new, it quickly becomes clear that they have no idea how good we have it here at Sony CSL. It's not perfect, I'm sure I complain on here sometimes; but if you want to do research, really do research, then it's better than any University position (many applicants are profs fleeing academia). If you value freedom and want to do your own thing, it's better than 90% of positions in tech.

lana, 2 months ago to random

Something came in the mail the other day 👀
In pandemic conscious academia days, in 2022, I couldn't receive it in person

lana, 2 months ago to random

The whole thread is very informative but the most important thing I learned is that in this day and age even IT companies believe chatbots will understand and obey instructions if you just say please 🙄
People who should know better have gaslighted themselves into believing they have truly built Artificial Intelligence.

https://eldritch.cafe/@Lugrim/112258207338842046

lana, 17 days ago to random

Among all the things LLMs taught me, one is that a sizeable portion of humanity only has the vaguest grasp of their own language. Inside their heads all might be very clear and sensible, but the means by which that gets transferred between them and other people is a big old cloud of vibes, carried by words and sentences that only need to look like they make sense. That's enough to communicate with people they see everyday so they just don't notice it breaks down outside the inner circle.

lana, 2 months ago to random

We're on phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-life-difficult-planet-obvious-worlds.html

And in Spanish:
https://www.astrobitacora.com/la-vida-podria-ser-facil-de-detectar-si-se-observan-muchos-mundos/

lana, 3 months ago to random

About the genocide in Palestine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xottY-7m3k&ab_channel=Shaun

neuralreckoning, 1 month ago to science

Thought about hypothesis testing as an approach to doing science. Not sure if new, would be interested if it's already been discussed. Basically, hypothesis testing is inefficient because you can only get 1 bit of information per experiment at most.

In practice, much less on average. If the hypothesis is not rejected you get close to 0 bits, and if it is rejected it's not even 1 bit because there's a chance the experiment is wrong.

One way to think about this is error signals. In machine learning we do much better if we can have a gradient than just a correct/false signal. How do you design science to maximise the information content of the error signal?

In modelling I think you can partly do that by conducting detailed parameters sweeps and model comparisons. More generally, I think you want to maximise the gain in "understanding" the model behaviour, in some sense.

This is very different to using a model to fit existing data (0 bits per study) or make a prediction (at most 1 bit per model+experiment). I think it might be more compatible with thinking of modelling as conceptual play.

I feel like both experimentalists and modellers do this when given the freedom to do so, but when they impose a particular philosophy of hypothesis testing on each other (grant and publication review), this gets lost.

Incidentally this is also exactly the problem with our traditional publication system that only gives you 1 bit of information about a paper (that it was accepted), rather than giving a richer, open system of peer feedback.

#science #philosophy

lana, 1 month ago to random

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)00836-8

I really thought this was from the Levin lab!

lana, 3 months ago to random

Paper purporting to have fascinating results.
Paywalled. It's 2024 people! How is this still a thing! Can you downvote a website??

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01815-w