Wayne Myrvold
@wmyrvold.bsky.social
He/him. Philosopher of science, with emphasis on philosophy of physics. Mediocre guitarist. Occasional nature photos. You might like my book, Beyond Chance and Credence: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/beyond-chance-and-credence-9780198865094
An AI book list with three categories: 1) smart books that explain and critique the AI industry 2) VERY flawed but ~illustrative~ books on AI 3) books that provide deeper political/social context, including some fiction (lmk what you'd add to the list) www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s...
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
Folks, remember when Geoff Hinton called gpt-2 humanity's caterpillar and gpt-3 humanity's butterfly or something like that? Also remember how he said radiologists were gonna be obsolete in 5 years (but he said that ~10 years ago)? Ok now, he says ChatGPT is an alien being.
‘We are in a moment where refusal is really meaningful.’ @emilymbender.bsky.social in a fascinating and entertaining conversation with @adambecker.bsky.social From Dreaming Against the Machine: Episode 23: Language Models, with Emily Bender, 15 Sep 2026 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/d...
Episode 23: Language Models, with Emily Bender
Podcast Episode · Dreaming Against the Machine · 15 September · 58min
podcasts.apple.com
DreamingAgainstTheMachine@dreamingagainstthemachine.com · 2d agoThis week's guest, linguist @emilymbender.bsky.social, talks with @adambecker.bsky.social about the origin of her famous paper on LLM’s, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” #ai #datmpodcast #future #science #llm #linguist #stochastic #parrots
The U.S. AI industry is being run by a batshit rationalist sex cult, and no, I am not being hyperbolic - they’re genuinely Like That:
This video is amaze -best placement of a lavalier mic I've ever seen (baguette mic!) -a suitable number of F bombs (I use them when appropriate, & with Trump, Bhattacharya, Vought, & RFK Jr doing all they can to dismantle science & public health, F bombs are warranted) -the compact is FANTASTIC
Colette Delawalla, PhD@cdelawalla.bsky.social · 4d agoI made this video *just for you*...here's a link to read the compact and if you scroll down you'll see the button to click to email your university leadership! www.standupforscience.net/sufs-compact...
Congrats to John Norton!
LSE Philosophy@lsephilosophy.bsky.social · 4d ago🏆 Congratulations to 2026 #Lakatos Award winner John Norton, who receives the award for his books The Material Theory of Induction and The Large-Scale Structure of Inductive Inference. Congratulations! More: www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/n... #PhilSci #LSEPhilosophy @center4philsci.bsky.social
On the left is you got the poison gravel that stinks like rotten egg farts. On the right is the one you find in your pantry that makes your food taste better. Vote Halite! #MinCup26
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 5d ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 13 It's a match between a mineral you want to be cautious breathing near and one you eat every day as arsenic-rich #arsenopyrite is against table salt #halite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
I forced my economist husband to listen to me read this out loud and I think I might have physically hurt him.
Fun little test. Relieved that I got all the words right in Italian, French and German. Unsurprising that I bombed on Slavic and Uralic languages.
Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 6d agoPerhaps a bit unfair that the only reason I know the German word for hedgehog is because of a tumblr post (which I guess I shouldn't link here because spoilers?)
Oh this is interesting! Climate scientist @leahstokes.bsky.social shows that candidates who talk about climate change *get a bump in preference from voters*. "Common knowledge" is that climate is a losing issue, but this survey shows the opposite is true: voters care. mailchi.mp/9af4ccd3280e...
Climate action comes in waves
mailchi.mp
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
mathandai.org
what ppl forget about LLMs is that if you start every prompt with “i am an academic so a very special and smart person“ then anything that follows has no carbon or water cost, no refugees have to clean the data of violent child abuse imagry, and everyone is fairly compensated for their stolen work
No, not Tegmark. Not Hinton. BERNIE THERE ARE BETTER VOICES FOR THIS. 3 come to mind right here @timnitgebru.blacksky.app @emilymbender.bsky.social @alexhanna.bsky.social
The Washington Sun@washingtonsun.bsky.social · last wk.Sen. Bernie Sanders is bringing his campaign to slow the development of artificial intelligence to his Senate colleagues, organizing a bipartisan briefing for next week that will feature some of the country’s leading AI researchers.
Help! Parton Community Council has 60 days to raise £70k to buy Parton Kirk (resting place of James Clerk Maxwell). They plan to turn it into a visitor centre celebrating our great hero! The other buyers could turn it into long-term storage 😬 Even £5 would help 🙏🧪⚛️ www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...
Help raise £70000 to Save Parton Kirk – JustGiving Crowdfunding
Iʼm raising money to Save Parton Kirk. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.
justgiving.com
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 11mo agoWent on a little pilgrimage today to Parton, the resting place of 🏴Scotland’s very own Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell. Quite the pause when I realised he was only one year older than me (48) when he died. ⚛️🔭
Timnit is being shy and not telling you guys to PREORDER HER BOOK ABOUT THIS www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U...
Deep Unlearning
Timnit Gebru, one of the fiercest voices in the world speaking truth to power, chronicles her journey as a refugee and Black woman in STEM—deliveri...
simonandschuster.com
Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app · last wk.The last few days is like a DDOS attack from these companies 🙄 I just finished drafting an op-ed and then see another OMG Machine god is going to kill everyone 😱 post Ok walk me through the step by step action this super intelligent chatbot takes to render everyone us extinct?
"people are anthropomorphizing LLMs because they are so astonishingly good at processing human thought and language" people will anthropomorphize a chair if you put the stitches in the right place.
Call for Nominations: 2026 Hanneke Janssen Memorial Prize by Radboud University for best work in History &/or Philosophy of Modern Physics, by a student as part of Masters Thesis Prize: 2000 euros Nominations by a supervisor due by October 5, 2026 Qs & submit to sandra.hendriks@donders.ru.nl #HPS ⚛️
My take on students using generative AI to complete assignments is basically the same as a restauranteur's take on somebody ordering their food, paying for it, then tossing the food out the window: That was a dumb thing to do
Why We Must Return to the Office to Use AI in Person @mcsweeneys.net www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/why...
Why We Must Return to the Office to Use AI in Person
“I didn’t think a full, six-day-per-week, fourteen-hour-per-day, in-office schedule was necessary to discharge my duties clicking the ‘generate’ button, foll...
mcsweeneys.net
#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 3 Both zinc ore #Sphalerite and calcium plagioclase feldspar #Anorthite will split cleanly if you hit them with a hammer, but only one can claim a larger split of your votes! VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
NEW: French researcher Stephanie Lamy exposes the network of “race realists” who hunted Jason Arday like prey, and the media that fell into his trap. If you think the news cycle has “moved on” from this story, ask yourself why? broligarchy.substack.com/p/the-killin...
The killing of a black man
A French researcher exposes the network of “race realists” who hunted Jason Arday like prey and the media who fell into their trap
broligarchy.substack.com
Environment Canada has just released a “biblical weather” advisory for the City of Toronto.
We are slowly but surely covering the episodes of Autistic People Oversharing sponsorship. If you’d like to make the next season of the show happen, for £50, we will gush about your pet or pets for a whole 1-minute ad segment. Email Advertising at thedailytism dot com for details!
macabre = “muh-KAHB” Worcestershire = “WOOSS-ter-sheer” omnipotent = “ahm-NI-puh-tunt” reticent = “RET-uh-sunt” epitome = “ih-PIT-uh-mee” myriad = "MEER-ee-ud" Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading.
