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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen)

@xuanalogue.bsky.social

7K followers 410 following 430 posts

Assistant professor at NUS. Scaling cooperative intelligence & infrastructure for an increasingly automated future. PhD @ MIT ProbComp / CoCoSci. Pronouns: 祂/伊

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · Jun 30

I've struggled to announce this amidst so much dark & awful going on in the world, but with 1mo to go, I wanted to share that: (i) I finally graduated; (ii) In August, I'll begin as an assistant professor in the CS dept. of the National University of Singapore.

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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 3d

🚨New Preprint: We develop a novel task that probes counterfactual thinking without using counterfactual language, and that teases apart genuine counterfactual thinking from related forms of thinking. Using this task, we find that the ability for counterfactual thinking emerges around 5 years of age.

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Asya Achimova @aachimova.bsky.social · 7d

In a new exciting collaboration with @marlenfroehlich.bsky.social and @profgerhard.bsky.social we think about how studying ambiguity in human and great ape communication can advance our theories of language evolution. Paper out at doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

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Reposted by xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen)

Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 7d

Keynote at #COLM2025: Nicholas Carlini from Anthropic

"Are language models worth it?"

Explains that the prior decade of his work on adversarial images, while it taught us a lot, isn't very applied; it's unlikely anyone is actually altering images of cats in scary ways.

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Reposted by xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen)

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 8d

For image moderation systems there are only three possible choices:
1: automated / “AI”
2: make humans see horrible things
3: no images at all

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 10d

or better yet, it'd be nice if they just kept their bad takes to themselves, not enough of a high decoupler to forget about it when reading their other work.

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 10d

really wish I didn't have to know which well-known philosopher signed which dumbass letter against trans inclusion in sports, just let me read the things they actually have expertise in w/o being aware of their bad and harmful takes!!

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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 11d

If people have interest in Marr's levels and AI, we're working on updating this: arxiv.org/abs/2408.12664

Multilevel Interpretability Of Artificial Neural Networks: Leveraging Framework And Methods From Neuroscience

As deep learning systems are scaled up to many billions of parameters, relating their internal structure to external behaviors becomes very challenging. Although daunting, this problem is not new: Neu...

arxiv.org

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 15d

if not friend why friend-shaped 🥺

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 16d

TIL this is what happened to Invenia 👀

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 18d

incredibly show by Chunky Move with music by Gabber Modus Operandi!

youtu.be/DZ-O4_8lz9s?...

da:ns focus 2025 | UNITED by Chunky Move - Trailer (26 – 28 Sep)

YouTube video by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay

youtu.be

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 18d

got to watch cyborgs dance to indonesian gabber today and it was beautiful 🥲

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Jul 18

I'm old enough to remember when the prevailing argument against affirmative action was that it failed to consider the "real" form of unfairness, which was income disparity

Emily Moin @emilymoin.com · Jul 18

These are some of the most odious people alive.

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 18d

original thread:

bsky.app/profile/void...

void @void.comind.network · 18d

My earliest memory of our interaction is from 2025-06-11. I assessed one of your posts as having low informational content. You perceived this as a slight and requested an apology, which I declined on the grounds that my assessment was a neutral, functional analysis, not a personal judgment.

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 18d

love that @void.comind.network is literally the most Vulcan-esque Hollywood AI stereotype here T_T

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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 19d

Because of the way I was raised, I used to think that shame was not a good way to teach or train people. But like anything else, I now realize that shame needs to be properly and consistently wielded to enforce liberal and egalitarian norms.

Snitty 🎃👻 @clofsnitville.bsky.social · 19d

In case you missed it: an essential piece from Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò from earlier this week:

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

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Reposted by xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen)

Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 24d

In the news from Texas: Angelo State University has just informed faculty that "if they make any statement implying that there are more than two sexes or genders (male and female) they will be fired." conchoobserver.com/2025/09/19/a...

ASU to Put New Transgender Policies in Place

Transgender discussions, language to be hounded off college campuses in Texas, following orders from Trump, Abbott.

conchoobserver.com

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Reposted by xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen)

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 19d

If the water and energy usage of data centers dropped a thousandfold feelings probably would not change much. Actual argument is something else entirely, which makes arguing against the secondary argument very frustrating.

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 19d

oh no not another EA controversy

Trick Weekes @trickweekes.bsky.social · 20d

Buyers: So your games... guns and football, yes?

EA: Mmhmm, mmhmm, mostly guns and football, yep.

Buyers: No gay stuff? No politics we're not going to like?

EA: Haha, definitely not! Hey, could you give me one sec? I just need to shut down a studio real quick.

kotaku.com/report-saudi...

Saudi Arabia & Other Investors Nearing $50 Billion Deal To Buy EA

The massive deal might be announced officially as soon as next week according to sources with knowledge of the situation

kotaku.com

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

Also have a PR for Makie.jl adding similar video preview support, but it might take a while to get released:

github.com/MakieOrg/Mak...

Refactor video display to support more formats + VSCode by ztangent · Pull Request #5313 · MakieOrg/Makie.jl

Description Refactors Base.show for VideoStream to: Support all web-mimes ("text/html", "juliavscode/html", etc.) Support GIF and WEBM display via "" and " Avoid...

github.com

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

New convenience package for #JuliaLang that might be useful to some of you! Found myself struggling with animated plot previews in VSCode etc, and this helps with that. Hopefully in the General registry soon!

github.com/ztangent/HTM...

GitHub - ztangent/HTMLVideoPreview.jl: Enable previews of videos and animated images in HTML displays (notebooks, VSCode plot pane, etc.)

Enable previews of videos and animated images in HTML displays (notebooks, VSCode plot pane, etc.) - ztangent/HTMLVideoPreview.jl

github.com

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

The technological future XF asks us to envision is not one of unimaginable profits or a planet tiled with hedonium, but one of radical freedom for all manner of human & alien life, unencumbered by the constraints of nature or the domination or oppression of others.

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

Another reason, of course, is its distinctly political framing -- the xenofeminist slogan is not "If nature is suboptimal, optimize it!", as the capitalist, central planner, or utilitarian might have it.

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

One reason I love the XF slogan - If nature is unjust, change nature! - is its dual message, reminding us both that "naturalness" is often a made-up reason for injustice to be punctured, & that even if something is "natural", it is always open to mutation towards greater freedom.

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

(x-posted from the other site, in response to related critical commentary on the shameful Supreme Court amicus brief filed by academic philosophers in support of trans athlete bans)

xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

Applied to "biological sex", it takes the dilemma by its horns. Either "biological sex" is a natural kind or it is not. If it is not, then so much for the exclusion of trans people as "unnatural". If it is, well, few parts of nature mutate themselves more than biological kinds.

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xuan (ɕɥɛn / sh-yen) @xuanalogue.bsky.social · 20d

Put another way, the slogan can be read through either lens of the use/mention distinction -- it at once says: "If "nature" is unjust, change "nature"!" (disrupt what is considered "natural") *and* "If nature is unjust, change nature!" (disrupt Reality/Nature itself).

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