Wow, Joanna, I am humbled! Re effects of color labels on color perception, it's a bit complicated, but here's an example of a large effect: sapir.psych.wisc.edu/papers/lupya... & here are some thoughts on LLM & the role of language in human cognition: arxiv.org/abs/2509.15560
People have been colloquially talking about their computers “thinking” for a long time though. in some cases even as a synonym for a program loading. I think the bar is sometimes as low as thinking=a delay before something task-relevant happens.
Somehow people are finding plenty of time to game though ~2hrs/day though! (And that was back in 2022). There isn't one answer, but it sure does seem like all the other entertainment options (most of which are >$ than books) have more to do with the decline?
jfc.. I get that LLMs are being used by millions with no background in cogsci/cog neuro/machine learning.. But if they are using LLMs to have meaningful conversations and they think we truly understand how they work (i.e., mech interp is solved), what must they think this understanding looks like?!?
putting ”inteligence” on an ordinal scale in this way is problematic. chatGPT does a great job writing code for complex ggplot graphs from data and my descriptions of what I need. the usefulness hinges on my ability to check the code for the occasional errors but does that make me more intelligent?
As if irony isn’t already dead, the Hatch Act violation on the DOJ website, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, appears on the page advising DOJ employees they are subject to the Hatch Act. joycevance.substack.com/p/a-note-abo...
...it went into crisis mode... This is just an excerpt of a much longer bout of hand-wringing. It then proceeded to forfeit the game and apologized for a "flawed experience".
Problem: The hashes it then spit out do NOT match SHA256! After a few more exchanges where it tried to self debug and offered reasonable possibilities (invisible characters), it kept assuring me that its hashes were correct. I then accused it of cheating. And then...
A wild exchange with Gemini Pro 2.5. In preparing some examples for my seminar (cogsci-llms.netlify.app) I remembered @randomwalker.bsky.social old tweet about playing Rock paper scissors with LLMs. Decided to see what it's like now ....
