amandagefter
@amandagefter.bsky.social
Writer (physics, cognitive science, philosophy), reader, author of Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn
Can machines actually want things? Can they crave power, or scariest of all: Can they acquire the will to survive? In our latest Qualia column, writer Amanda Gefter explores some of the deeper questions behind our fear of total AI domination. www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we-te...
Why three "demons" still keep physicists up at night. (Spoiler: they're associated with Maxwell, Laplace, and Loschmidt.) My latest for @newscientist.com: www.newscientist.com/article/2502... #physics
How 3 imaginary physics demons tore up the laws of nature
Three thought experiments involving “demons” have haunted physics for centuries. What should we make of them today?
newscientist.com
It's not just bad--it's painful. Honestly? This piece on AI's writing nails it. That overwrought, manic voice that echoes between man and machine. Delve in...if you dare. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m...
Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?
nytimes.com
Quantum interpretations may be empirically equivalent, but that doesn't mean their die hard fans don't enjoy trash talking the other teams. My own take on the spectator sport, for @nautil.us nautil.us/reality-exis...
Reality Exists Without Observers? Boooo!
Why I don’t root for the Many Worlds team
nautil.us
What happens when you take a handful of scientists and philosophers, stick them in a 500-year-old church in the middle of Tuscany, and ask them to redefine "intelligence"? I had the transformative experience of finding out. nautil.us/what-is-inte...
What Is Intelligence?
What Is Intelligence? At a church in Italy, we sought to shed an old definition for one that could save us.
nautil.us
Just a first quick little graphite sketch of Peter Putnam (@nautil.us knows who I’m talking about 🤩) #sketch #portrait #sketchbook #peterputnam #graphite #drawing #fanart #philosophy
📹 Philosopher Ezquiel Di Paolo discusses the idea that individuality is formed through, not against, the collective. #loveandphilosophy #philosophy #power youtube.com/shorts/LViHD...
How the Collective Shapes Individuality
YouTube video by Love & Philosophy
youtube.com
In the summer of 1925, Werner Heisenberg retreated to Helgoland in the North Sea and reemerged with the first full-fledged version of quantum mechanics. A century later, physicists returned to Helgoland to take stock. @walkingthedot.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/its-a-mess-a...
‘It’s a Mess’: A Brain-Bending Trip to Quantum Theory’s 100th Birthday Party | Quanta Magazine
Hundreds of physicists (and a few journalists) journeyed to Helgoland, the birthplace of quantum mechanics, and grappled with what they have and haven’t learned about reality.
quantamagazine.org
The LGBTQ+ Archives Project of Louisiana has just placed a historic marker near Peter Putnam's former home on East Main St. in Houma. From dying anonymously on that stretch of road 4 decades ago to being publicly honored there for his radical life and brilliant work...what a beautiful thing.
I think a lot these days about the ways in which we are the keepers of other people's stories - the weight of that, the privilege, the responsibility. Which is why I want to tell you about Bob Fuller. 🧵
You have never read a science book like The Body Has a Head by Gustav Eckstein. His descriptions of biological mechanisms take flight on metaphoric reveries that compare what’s going on inside our bodies to the carnival of life outside them. 🧪
The Body Has a Head
You have never read a science book like this
nautil.us
Look, speaking as a physicist, it is hard for me to put into words how batshit crazy this is.
Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · last yr."I’ll go down this thread with GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” said Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber. gizmodo.com/billionaires...
A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything
Wonderful interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo on the enactive approach to cognition, tracing the line from single cells all the way to language.
Dialectical Systems @dialecticalsys.bsky.social · last yr.Since its beginnings, the enactive approach has shown how autonomy is scaffolded across biological, sensorimotor, and social dimensions. This new video interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo tells the story in an accessible way: youtube.com/watch?v=y4Dz...
Tech gurus talk about colonizing Mars, building space stations, eradicating aging and death, and uploading minds. Not so fast, says @adambecker.bsky.social. In Ep 39 of BookLab, @amandagefter.bsky.social and I dive into Adam's new book, "More Everything Forever": booklabpodcast.com/booklab-039-...
Importantly, he seems to have recognized very early on that, unlike Turing's model of computation that was meant to model deductive procedures, induction can only be implemented by an open system whose axioms, rules of inference, and rules of interpretation are revisable based on experience.
He modeled the logic of induction; traced the contours of the embodied mind; hung out with Einstein, Wheeler, and Bohr; gave away millions for art and conservation; fought for civil and gay rights; and lived as a janitor. My new story in @nautil.us nautil.us/finding-pete...
Finding Peter Putnam
The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind
nautil.us
What a gorgeous piece of writing by A. Kendra Greene in @nautil.us nautil.us/i-can-feel-y...
I Can Feel Your Human Fingers
On seeing and believing
nautil.us
Today, a reporter from the Russian state news agency TASS gained unauthorized access to the Oval Office. How does one gain unauthorized access to the Oval Office? Meanwhile, AP and Reuters were blocked.
Episode 36 of BookLab is up! You know Galileo, Newton, and Einstein -- but what about the many women scientists who helped shape our understanding of the cosmos? In this episode, we look at 2 #books give those overlooked women the recognition they deserve. #science booklabpodcast.com/booklab-036-...
Nice conversation on implications of extended Wigner's friend scenarios with Časlav Brukner, Renato Renner, and Eric Cavalcanti youtu.be/NnAj66Z1kNQ
The End Of Physics As We Know It? | Award Winning Physicists Make Quantum Mechanics Even More Weird
YouTube video by Essentia Foundation
youtu.be
If you've been wondering how the Qbist interpretation of quantum mechanics and the enactive approach in cognitive science naturally complement each other, then this impressive paper by @amandagefter.bsky.social is for you. arxiv.org/abs/2411.042...
Enaction for QBists
This paper began as a set of notes introducing quantum physicists of the QBist persuasion to enactive theory. Unlike mainstream cognitive science, which views cognition as computations on internal rep...
arxiv.org
So much ice is melting from the poles that the water is redistributing Earth's mass and slowing its rotation 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/glob...
Global Warming Is Slowing the Earth’s Rotation
Drastic polar ice melt is slowing Earth’s rotation, counteracting a speedup from the planet’s liquid outer core. The upshot is that we might need to subtract a leap second for the first time ever with...
scientificamerican.com
"Cognitively speaking, we metabolize mistakes." I've been reading William Wimsatt and he expresses a core component of my teaching philosophy better than I ever managed.
Evidence from studies tracking pea plant movements “may shed light on the cognitive principles guiding movement…. The intention is not to reclassify plants as animals but to adopt effective analogies to compare cognitive abilities underlying the organization of behavior in plants and animals.” 🌱🐋🧪
Motor cognition in plants: from thought to real experiments - Theoretical and Experimental Plant Phy...
Motor cognition involves the process of planning and executing goal–directed movements and recognizing, anticipating, and interpreting others’ actions. Motor cognitive functions are generally asso...
link.springer.com
1/2 I can't remember all the good books I read in 2023, but lemme mention one really cool one: my friend George Musser wrote "Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe."
It’s one of the oldest and most vexing questions in science and philosophy: Do we have free will? In Episode 34 of BookLab, we take a close look at two books by scientists who have considered the question at length -- and reached very different conclusions. 📕⚖️📗 booklabpodcast.com/booklab-034-...
By Tony Chemero www.nature.com/articles/s41...
LLMs differ from human cognition because they are not embodied - Nature Human Behaviour
Large language models (LLMs) are impressive technological creations but they cannot replace all scientific theories of cognition. A science of cognition must focus on humans as embodied, social animal...
nature.com
