Big Tech and AI companies have refined these prior industrial tactics into what I call 'algorithmic agnotology': the exploitation of technical complexity to obscure accountability and naturalize inscrutability as inherent to digital systems.
"For Hesse, metaphors were not passive representations of things but constituted conceptual tools actively shaping scientific thought." This is precisely why I've cited Hesse in my (much less profound) writing on scientific metaphor. aeon.co/essays/why-a...
aeon.co
I'd love to credit whoever wrote this. No idea. But I'm 100% with its message. When I think of how the '80s ethos, "Greed is Good" has metastasized, it surprises and depresses me. Imagine having so many millions, hundred of millions, even billions & caring about nothing except your own vanity.
Join us in Durham on 14 September for this free workshop on music and imagination, featuring @margulisa.bsky.social and lots of other brilliant speakers! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/workshop-h...
Workshop: How Does Music Listening Shape Inner Experience?
Interdisciplinary presentations and discussions on capturing inner experience during music listening and other forms of arts engagement
eventbrite.co.uk
Joseph Weizenbaum's 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason, has long been out of print - used copies sell for hundreds of dollars. It's wild that this is not more widely available given how much his ideas still apply to the world we're in now. 🧵/
Nice reminder and visual representation of the limitations of radar charts, by Flourish 📊 Source: flourish.studio/blog/create-...
As I'm attending a conference in Tübingen today, for #findsfriday an #IceAge masterpiece that is on display at the University museum: a tiny but most splendid figurine from the Swabian Jura - a #horse carved in mammoth ivory some 40,000 years ago - the oldest known sculpture of a horse. 📷me 🏺
A hand made of bronze and gold. It has been interpreted as the earliest proshetic hand for a casualty of conflict, a symbol for the status of the bearer. However, the solar symbols on the cuff suggest that it had also a cosmological significance. Found in Prêles, ...🧵1/2 #archaeology 🏺 📷 me
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
We Asked Critics From Authoritarian Regimes What They Wish They’d Known Sooner. “You cannot make authoritarian leaders the center of your narrative. You have to make the people the center of your narrative, and you have to be passionate about it.” [theguardian.com]
So love wobbegongs. Everything is good about the wobbegong. Its name. Its flattened Oscar the Grouch face. Its frondy bits. Its lazy life as a hungry rug. And it’s a shark. Outstanding animal 10/10
Jeff Youngblood@jeffyoungblood.bsky.social · 10mo agoThe Tasselled Wobbegong is a master of disguise that can eat a fish almost as big as itself in one gulp. It's classified as a shark, but when it lays on the sea floor it looks like a harmless rug if you manage to see it. But with powerful jaws and sharp teeth they are no fish to mess with.
TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".
who decided to call it Secret Santa when Nondisclosure Claus was right there
this is one of my favourite observations about sample size calculations. (afaik first articulated by Miettinen in 1985)
Maarten van Smeden@maartenvsmeden.bsky.social · 10mo agoFor some research studies the optimal sample size should be estimated at 0
This is not the worst book we've ever read but it is the meanest episode we've ever done.
If Books Could Kill@ifbookspod.bsky.social · 10mo agoEpisode 46: Sapiens It's an ambitious goal to write the entire history of humanity in just 400 pages. It's even more ambitious to do it without reading any research.
Bluesky has overtaken Twitter/X as the highest social engagement metric for the entire publication corpus of some universities. Here's all the attention for all research from Rhodes University, ZA. In October 2025 Bluesky mentioned their research more than X/Twitter. 1/2
Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning
Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when
academic.oup.com
There's so much being researched and published about GenAI that I update the 'Against Generative AI' resource list almost every day. Check it out catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...
Against Generative AI – Cate Denial
catherinedenial.org