Tessera
Folgen

Yohan J John

@dryohanjohn.bsky.social

🧠 computational neuroscientist 🤖 Research Staff Scientist, Neuroblox (views here are my own)

736 Posts1646 Follower1143 Folgt
Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 2d ago

"I've met a little bit of who I am Backpacking upon the fingers of the real" It's not going to convert the naysayers, but 'Cameron Winter - Live at Carnegie Hall' is a left-field masterpiece.

Earl K. Miller@earlkmiller.bsky.social · 4d ago

The brain's "who's in charge?" depends on the dynamics of the moment, not on a fixed org chart. #neurosience

PessoaBrain@pessoabrain.bsky.social · 5d ago

𝗛𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 New preprint with Andrea Gambarotto. Neuroscience often treats control as a hierarchy: the structures behind a behavior hold a stable rank. We argue this mistakes a configuration for an architecture. 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2610.04643 #neuroskyence

Gilles Louppe@glouppe.bsky.social · 4d ago

uh oh "We show that the formalised Lean proof does not correspond to the NL proof of blow-up of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations."

Pedro Monkey Puppet Meme

ALT: Pedro Monkey Puppet Meme

static.klipy.com

arXiv math.AP Analysis of PDEs@mathap-bot.bsky.social · 5d ago

Alexander Bastounis, Fabian Circelli, Anders C. Hansen: Navier-Stokes lost in translation: Why Lean verification of AI autoformalisation does not guarantee correct natural language proofs https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08144 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.08144 https://arxiv.org/html/2610.08144

Maxim Raginsky@mraginsky.bsky.social · last wk.

Ricoeur on reading, very relevant for LLMs that act via the interface of language: "reading ... is at its best a struggle between two strategies, the _strategy of seduction_ pursued by the author in the guise of a more or less trustworthy narrator ... , and the _strategy of suspicion_ pursued ...

Hannah Vardit@hannahvardit.bsky.social · 2w ago

i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward

Carl Zimmer@carlzimmer.com · 2w ago

Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc

Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)

An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.

nyti.ms

Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 2w ago

This looks pretty cool.

PessoaBrain@pessoabrain.bsky.social · 3w ago

𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻’𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀? We find evidence of both smooth and sharp transitions; latter sharply altered brain dynamics in as few as 1 time step. Link below -->

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com · 2w ago

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce @itsannpierce 20h I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology. I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again. This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc. Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!) Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun! I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great! Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky. Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone. And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity. I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?
Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 3w ago

"Our findings motivate a shift from asking whether a model has a world model to mechanistically studying its world modeling: the interacting capacities through which it represents its environment and uses those representations to guide behavior." Wittgenstein's meaning-as-usage, #AI edition. :P

Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 3w ago

"... cingulate theta power was equally and non-specifically predictive of outcome with either an antidepressant or placebo." Perhaps one day there will be biomarkers for susceptibility (receptivity?) to different types of placebo. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Brain regulation of emotional conflict predicts antidepressant treatment response for depression - Nature Human Behaviour

Fonzo et al. found that brain activity during a form of emotional regulation predicted how well individuals with depression would respond to a common antidepressant. Brain function assays may herald a...

nature.com

Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 4w ago

"We found strong evidence that pupil diameters were larger when the depth illusion was that of a hole (funnel) than of a bump (cone)." This sort of finding aligns nicely with an 'embodied perception' framing*. __ * sans the irrelevant anti-representation verbiage, of course. :P

Perception / i-Perception@pec-ipe.bsky.social · 4w ago

👁️ Can your eyes respond to an illusion as if it were real? Researchers found that pupil size and eye movements changed on if people saw a hole or a bump. The eyes responded to the perceived 3D shape — even though the stimulus was completely flat. 🌀 Read more: doi.org/10.1177/0301...

Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · 4w ago

Recent news items about AI remind me of "kayfabe"... which led here. "The territory, real AI research with genuine but limited capabilities, has been almost entirely obscured by the map, a hyperreal landscape of predictions, narratives, and branded futures." www.stephendiehl.com/posts/ai_kay...

AGI Discourse as Kayfabe - Stephen Diehl

Personal blog of Stephen Diehl - Software engineer writing about technology, programming, and the future

stephendiehl.com

Yohan J John@dryohanjohn.bsky.social · last mo.

"With AI music, however, it’s this constant hustle, a never-ending “can you tell this was made by a machine?” shell game. By design, it has no character or animating ethos, except for subterfuge." This point by @stevenhyden.bsky.social really nails it. stevenhyden.substack.com/p/im-obligat...

I’m Obligated To Have An Opinion On AI Music So Here It Is (It Bores Me To Tears)

Also: Reviews of new music by Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country and The Bures Band

stevenhyden.substack.com

Dun Jun@clustertuck.bsky.social · 2mo ago

RIP Dolly Parton ❤️ Here's a lovely Dolly story: We worked together on "Transamerica." She told me that the bible passage that used to puzzle her the most was, "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." She said, "How the heck do you sin against the Holy Ghost, and-