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Carl T. Bergstrom

@carlbergstrom.com

140K followers 2.5K following 9.8K posts

Professor, UW Biology / Santa Fe Institute I study how information flows in biology, science, and society. Book: *Calling Bullshit*, http://tinyurl.com/fdcuvd7b LLM course: https://thebullshitmachines.com Corvids: https://tinyurl.com/mr2n5ymk he/him .. more

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Carl Theodore Bergstrom is a theoretical and evolutionary biologist and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. Bergstrom is a critic of low-quality or misleading scientific research. He is the co-author of a book on misinformation called Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World and teaches a class by the same name at University of Washington. .. more

Biology 21%

Mathematics 20%

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Feb 4

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

thebullshitmachines.com

INTRODUCTION

thebullshitmachines.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 15h

This is so many levels of funny I've got nothing in response.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16h

Until they hand shit off to Gemini. Stay tuned....

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Reposted by John R. Hutchinson

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16h

Left: In a desperate effort to find reasonable use case, OpenAI is running ads during the baseball playoffs about how you can use ChatGPT to plan a road trip. www.youtube.com/watch?v=go4o...

Right: What happens if you actually do that. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Open AI commercial about using ChatGPT to plan a road trip

Hannah Read, 37, tried to use an AI chatbot to plan a trip to Norway with her partner and three children.

She wanted to drive from her home in Flintshire, north Wales and cross the North Sea by ferry.

"I thought it might make for a nice drive," Hannah says. "I asked ChatGPT if there was a ferry from the UK to Norway and it said there was one from Newcastle to Bergen."

She later checked a ferry travel website but found no such route exists.

A travel blog detailing how Brits can reach Norway says the last time the route operated was in 2008.

"I did feel a bit disappointed when I found out the information on ChatGPT was incorrect, as I'd got quite excited and had started planning the trip in my head," Hannah adds.

"My advice is don't rely on AI 100%, it's better to still do proper research."

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 18h

More context in this thread:

bsky.app/profile/mark...

Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 23h

Seeing a lot of celebration of this as a win.

But at NIH we have seen this exact play before.

It looks like it is the Vought strategy -and to stop the lawless firings we have to see the bigger picture.
A 🧵:

Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Meri Koivusalo

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 18h

Thankfully, some of yesterday's CDC firings have been rescinded.

But this should be a major scandal, not business as usual in this shitshow of an administration. It's either spectacular incompetence or an effort to make even politically untouchable positions feel precarious to those in them.

Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 @helenbranswell.bsky.social · 19h

100s of #CDC employees were notified Friday they were being fired — RIF'd. The firings cross multiple parts of the agency, endangering its core mission of keeping Americans safe.
Saturday, some were informed they were RIF'd in error.
Hard to imagine how this happens www.statnews.com/2025/10/11/c...

CDC battered by government shutdown firings, while some are rescinded

The White House’s mass firing of CDC staff on Friday has decimated offices related to injury prevention, respiratory disease surveillance, and chronic disease, according to four people familiar with t...

www.statnews.com

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Reposted by Carl T. Bergstrom, Robert C. Richards, Timothy D. McBride

Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 @helenbranswell.bsky.social · 19h

CDC battered by government shutdown firings, while some are rescinded

www.statnews.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23h

Time to hang up the gloves, @nytpitchbot.bsky.social

Michael Hirschorn in the New York Times:

Voting for Mamdani Taught Me Why Trump Won

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Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Carl T. Bergstrom, Karen Benjamin Guzzo , and 1 more Anne Applebaum, Carl T. Bergstrom, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Richard M. Carpiano

Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 23h

Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

www.nytimes.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23h

They fired the Ebola response team, dude.

Nutrition and natural immunity? Get a fucking clue.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

“For instance, it is much faster for me to tell Claude to give me some code for a simulation model for causal inference.”

I humbly submit that your colleagues and readers might deserve better than vibe science.

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Reposted by Prakash Kashwan

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

Fustiliarian Friday: Trump/Kennedy/GOP use the shutdown as an excuse to destroy the CDC’s elite field epidemiology team and one of the most important epidemiology journals in the world.

Gift link.

Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials

www.nytimes.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

I knew someone had to have video. Thank you!!!

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

I love it!

Reposted by Carl T. Bergstrom

Wynter Goodfox @wyntergoodfox.bsky.social · 1d

HUMPY OUT OF NOWHERE!! www.reddit.com/r/Mariners/s...

From the Mariners community on Reddit: HUMPY WINS THE SALMON RUN!!!

Explore this post and more from the Mariners community

www.reddit.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

In the 15th inning of tonight's ALDS, my beloved Humpy the salmon won his first ever victory in the Mariners' salmon race.

A half an inning later, the Mariners finished it all off. Coincidence?

www.mlb.com/mariners/fan...

Prior to tonight, Humpy the salmon had NEVER won a salmon race at T-Mobile park.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

I thought in cricket they score.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

This is really a lot.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

Yeah, this is an absolutely brilliant extra inning game.

I remember game 3 against the Astros three years ago. My son and I were in Barcelona and finally gave up and went to bed.

We woke up the next morning to check the score.

Goddamn game was still going.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Also true.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Of everything I thought would be gone by 2025, the selective service registration requirement is right at the top. Not because a draft is immoral, but because it seems politically untenable.

That's politics. A draft is political suicide, but I guess killing the apparatus to run a draft is as well.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

*unless you count sneaking off from fifth-grade recess to hang out at the massive U. Michigan protests after President Carter signed Proclamation 4771 reinstating the selective service administration in 1980.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Indubitably.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

My first public political commentary was a letter I wrote as a high school kid to the Ann Arbor News excoriating efforts by Reagan and a GOP congress to criminalize flag-burning.

Amazing that 35 years after after Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, we're still dealing with this bullshit.

Trump Baselessly Claims He ‘Took the Freedom of Speech Away’ From Flag Burners

www.nytimes.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 3d

👏👏👏

Reposted by Efrén O. Pérez

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 3d

Don’t you hate it when you think you’re DMing somebody your nudes or your illegal orders to prosecute a political opponent in violation of the US constitution and actually you are posting on main?