Excellent work by @n41c0.bsky.social together with @cjungerius.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social and @svangaal.bsky.social and yours truly finally published in @natcomms.nature.com!

Nicolás Sánchez-Fuenzalida@n41c0.bsky.social · 4w ago

well on time for my bi-yearly post I'm sharing the final version of this very cool work we started with @cjungerius.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social @svangaal.bsky.social @fahrenfort.bsky.social in 2021, when I was young and full of hope. Now out in @natcomms.nature.com 1/11

Our latest work indicates that when we have to choose how to act to reach our goals, we do not just select the correct motor commands; we select between integrated representations of goals, actions, and expected sensory outcomes. Our results invite us to rethink how the brain controls action!

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 3w ago

Goal-directed action selection relies on conjunctive representations that bind goals, actions and expected sensory outcomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.24.740508v1

well on time for my bi-yearly post I'm sharing the final version of this very cool work we started with @cjungerius.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social @svangaal.bsky.social @fahrenfort.bsky.social in 2021, when I was young and full of hope. Now out in @natcomms.nature.com 1/11

The act of detecting a stimulus contaminates measures of conscious experience with decision biases - Nature Communications

A central challenge in consciousness research is determining whether people truly experience a stimulus. Here, the authors show that context biases traditional detection measures, whereas continuous r...

nature.com

If p < 0.05, you "reject the null." That's what many stats courses teach you to do. This week's Experimentology chapter argues that this binary, dichotomous frame can sometimes be useful but is the wrong default for psych experiments — there is a broader toolkit available! 🧵 experimentology.io

AI knows how to solve the climate crisis. Very easy. Didn’t have to think long. One sentence solution:

😂

Why on earth would the @apastyle.bsky.social allow citing LLMs if there is no way to find out where the LLM got its information from and/or whether the information is factual? We don't cite Google searches either, we cite actual sources 🙄 pfff halfwhits apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-ge...

The Problem With Counterfeit People By Daniel C. Dennett archive.is/MqDsh

Johannes Fahrenfort@fahrenfort.bsky.social · 4mo ago

How is your day?

Excellent reminder from @garymarcus.bsky.social of all the arguments about why chatbots(a far better term than the misleading “AI”) are not conscious, using Dawkins’ daft infatuation as the starting point.

Richard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion

The great skeptic gets taken in

open.substack.com

Chinese researchers have created a bamboo-based plastic as strong as petroleum-based plastics, which can fully biodegrade in soil in just 2 months phys.org/news/2025-10...

Bamboo-based plastic can be made to biodegrade quickly, but still holds up in tough conditions

A new method to produce strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo is reported in Nature Communications this week. The bioplastic resembles oil-based plastics in strength, shapability, and thermal stab...

phys.org

@rutgerbregman.com please watch this interview with Tucker Carlson! For all his wrongs, he seems to somehow be decent (deugt 😂) and agree with you about the core problem of America (financial inequality and the power of capital). Bizarre and anthropologically fascinating! youtu.be/2tpMkUCvqrs

What Does Tucker Carlson Really Believe? I Went to Maine to Find Out. | The Interview

YouTube video by The Interview

youtu.be

Apparently, I think AI is more aware than most people do... Learn how you think about #consciousness compared to the crowd on awareometer.com

How is your day?

Skipped a week, sorry non-Dutch friends! But this week's newsletter is translated again! www.felienne.nl/2026-14/#eng... (Including a translation of my opening remarks in The Dutch Parliament this week on AI in schools)

AI in week 14

In de Tweede Kamer, een gebrek aan vibe coding en heel veel podcasts!

felienne.nl

The U.S. Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states under a reorganization plan announced this week, threatening science that looked at how wildfires, drought, pests and global warming are putting pressure on forests.

Forest Service Will Close Research Stations That Study Wildfire Risk

Scientists say their work on fires and climate change could be lost as the agency moves its headquarters to Utah from Washington and shuts 57 research stations.

nyti.ms

Best PhD job advert. Ever.

Will Harrison@willjharrison.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I'm looking for a skilled PhD student who doesn't want to work too hard but still do great science: unisc-cp.enquire.cloud/round/RND-00...

Interesting!

Brian Christian@brianchristian.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New Preprint with @matanmazor.bsky.social: Overcoming both bias and sycophancy requires LLMs to imagine not knowing something they know. Like humans, they struggle with this. But unlike humans, LLMs can do something remarkable: they can, quite simply, *ask their counterfactual selves*.

A timely reminder that social progress doesn’t come easy. The idea of half the population not being allowed to vote might sound bizarre now but was reality until embarrassingly recently.

I gave talk about subjective and objective approaches in the study of conscious perception last week in a BAMΞ workshop @uni-bamberg.de hosted by @johanneskleiner.bsky.social @jolienfrancken.bsky.social and @ronyhirsch.bsky.social. You can find the recording here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1zB...

Johannes Fahrenfort: Subjective and Objective Approaches in the Study of Conscious Perception

YouTube video by Mathematical Consciousness Science

youtube.com

Recently, van der Stigchel and colleagues posted a provocative commentary suggesting that we should be wary of bots in online behavioral data collection (🧵by @cstrauch.bsky.social here: bsky.app/profile/cstr...). But should we? Here is my response letter osf.io/preprints/ps.... 1/5

What is the brain for? Active inference is widely discussed as a unifying framework for understanding brain function, yet its empirical status remains debated. Our review identifies core predictions across the action-perception cycle and evaluates their empirical support: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Do goal-directed actions minimize prediction error? Together with @haslagter.bsky.social and @fahrenfort.bsky.social I identified falsifiable predictions of active inference and reviewed the extent to which they are supported by empirical results. Read the preprint here: tinyurl.com/2by8k3h6

WHY IS NOBODY PANICKING OVER HUGE DRONES ABOVE SENSITIVE MILITARY / NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS ACROSS NEW JERSEY, DENMARK, GERMANY, BELGIUM, THE NETHERLANDS ETC. SHOOT THEM DOWN FFS!

Most of you know @suryagayet.bsky.social as a successful visual-attention researcher. But he also had an active #music career as a #rap artist. And like Jay-Z before him, he has briefly come out of retirement with a new album. Check it out—it's very good! 🎤🎶 open.spotify.com/album/7HrnAB...

Drijfzand

open.spotify.com

it is time to make my biyearly post because I put a preprint out🎉🍾😀. we (w/ @svangaal.bsky.social, Z. van den Hurk, @timostein.bsky.social & @fahrenfort.bsky.social) attempted to replicate a classic unconscious priming study by Vorberg et al. (2003) using a single-subject Bayesian approach.

Great overview conceptualizing approaches for studying sensory conscious perception👏. I, myself, had research experience with both subjective and objective approaches, but it was nice to learn the great landscape and where I land. Table 1 is especially informative.

Johannes Fahrenfort@fahrenfort.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Pre-print 🎉 "Subjective and objective approaches in the study of conscious perception" will be a chapter in www.horizon-minds.com. We explain that subjective and objective are poorly defined constructs and provide a taxonomy. doi.org/10.31234/osf... with @svangaal.bsky.social @timostein.bsky.social

Pre-print 🎉 "Subjective and objective approaches in the study of conscious perception" will be a chapter in www.horizon-minds.com. We explain that subjective and objective are poorly defined constructs and provide a taxonomy. doi.org/10.31234/osf... with @svangaal.bsky.social @timostein.bsky.social

What could possibly go wrong?! nypost.com/2025/10/16/b...

Top US Army general says he’s using ChatGPT to help make key command decisions

Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor told reporters that he’s been using ChatGPT to refine how he makes choices affecting thousands of troops.

nypost.com

I feel seen...

Berna Devezer@devezer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I know we all collectively frown upon keeping browser tabs open. But I swear there are certain tasks that I regularly do just bec that tab is open and that wouldn't happen otherwise. Yes, that's only true for a few of them. But the remaining few hundred are there in supporting roles, cheering me on.

Pre-print 🎉 "Subjective and objective approaches in the study of conscious perception" will be a chapter in www.horizon-minds.com. We explain that subjective and objective are poorly defined constructs and provide a taxonomy. doi.org/10.31234/osf... with @svangaal.bsky.social @timostein.bsky.social