Atanas Stankov
@neuronasko.bsky.social
CUNY neuroscience PhD candidate. Interested in comp neuroscience, comp social science, causality, and philosophy of science. Previously at UMich[as visiting student]/Stanford/ETH Zurich & UZH/UIUC. Opinions are my own.
Sabine’s 👏 bottom 👏 line 👏 is 👏 populist 👏 science 👏 enterntainment.
She’s LARPing hard and folks are still falling for it. Even if she belives her own stuff she gets the audience from a bottom-up take to get views.
If Mamdani can do it in politics from the left, it can be done for science.
😩
She’s LARPing hard and folks are still falling for it. Even if she belives her own stuff she gets the audience from a bottom-up take to get views.
If Mamdani can do it in politics from the left, it can be done for science.
😩
November 12, 2025 at 5:35 AM
Sabine’s 👏 bottom 👏 line 👏 is 👏 populist 👏 science 👏 enterntainment.
She’s LARPing hard and folks are still falling for it. Even if she belives her own stuff she gets the audience from a bottom-up take to get views.
If Mamdani can do it in politics from the left, it can be done for science.
😩
She’s LARPing hard and folks are still falling for it. Even if she belives her own stuff she gets the audience from a bottom-up take to get views.
If Mamdani can do it in politics from the left, it can be done for science.
😩
Yes, real-time emergence, like language evolution, becomes more perceptible with AI advancement because it’s always trailing behind. Aside from the negatives, AI is, inadvertently, forcing us to find knowledge niches faster, or how to think.
m.youtube.com/shorts/9hLZO...
m.youtube.com/shorts/9hLZO...
Why AI can't meme
YouTube video by Etymology Nerd
m.youtube.com
November 12, 2025 at 1:26 AM
Yes, real-time emergence, like language evolution, becomes more perceptible with AI advancement because it’s always trailing behind. Aside from the negatives, AI is, inadvertently, forcing us to find knowledge niches faster, or how to think.
m.youtube.com/shorts/9hLZO...
m.youtube.com/shorts/9hLZO...
I don’t understand the grade inflation complaints given students take mountains of debt to secure a job/career. They feel scammed if things don’t pan out given the life threatening risk that is taken: debt. It’s a consumer’s market, no? Over time, the process becomes bottom-up and not top-down.
November 10, 2025 at 5:43 PM
I don’t understand the grade inflation complaints given students take mountains of debt to secure a job/career. They feel scammed if things don’t pan out given the life threatening risk that is taken: debt. It’s a consumer’s market, no? Over time, the process becomes bottom-up and not top-down.
Nice. This is important for academic reform to bring to a communal level. Also the busy beaver challenge is an example of a power shift.
montananewsroom.com/montana-beco...
montananewsroom.com/montana-beco...
Montana Becomes First State to Enshrine ‘Right to Compute’ Into Law - Montana Newsroom
Montana has made history as the first state in the U.S. to legally protect its citizens’ right to access and use computational tools and artificial intelligence technologies. Governor Greg Gianforte s...
montananewsroom.com
November 9, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Nice. This is important for academic reform to bring to a communal level. Also the busy beaver challenge is an example of a power shift.
montananewsroom.com/montana-beco...
montananewsroom.com/montana-beco...
The rest of the world is pushing things forward while we argue over peer-review policies and grand application hierarchies in one of the biggest funding collapses.
climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarp...
climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarp...
Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa
Or: How Africa is building the future by skipping the past
climatedrift.substack.com
November 6, 2025 at 3:29 AM
The rest of the world is pushing things forward while we argue over peer-review policies and grand application hierarchies in one of the biggest funding collapses.
climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarp...
climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarp...
Reposted by Atanas Stankov
TRANSITION CO-CHAIR LINA KHAN!?!?!??!
November 5, 2025 at 4:38 PM
TRANSITION CO-CHAIR LINA KHAN!?!?!??!
Reposted by Atanas Stankov
To me, it's just a nothing "hypothesis" - it doesn't do any explanatory work, just dismisses the problem. And also is founded on a weird rejection of emergence that is obviously contradicted by all kinds of other evidence
November 1, 2025 at 12:16 PM
To me, it's just a nothing "hypothesis" - it doesn't do any explanatory work, just dismisses the problem. And also is founded on a weird rejection of emergence that is obviously contradicted by all kinds of other evidence
Conjecture: “representational sets” in the brain constantly fluctuate while still maintaining commonality across brains. Representational drift and qualia are anecdotes of this and commonalities across brains is another instance of mixed selectivity.
November 1, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Conjecture: “representational sets” in the brain constantly fluctuate while still maintaining commonality across brains. Representational drift and qualia are anecdotes of this and commonalities across brains is another instance of mixed selectivity.
No sh!t. Anti-science sentiment is a transitory organism-level event. It’s the crap economics around job placement for new graduates around the world that’s an issue.
Being a migrant scientist is a short-term bandage. We need us lab rats to be leaders for change.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/w...
Being a migrant scientist is a short-term bandage. We need us lab rats to be leaders for change.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/w...
China Wants Foreign Scientists. The Public Says No, Thanks.
www.nytimes.com
October 31, 2025 at 4:36 PM
No sh!t. Anti-science sentiment is a transitory organism-level event. It’s the crap economics around job placement for new graduates around the world that’s an issue.
Being a migrant scientist is a short-term bandage. We need us lab rats to be leaders for change.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/w...
Being a migrant scientist is a short-term bandage. We need us lab rats to be leaders for change.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/w...
Conjecture: the grant awards system and current university structure will collapse further US and other regions including Europe and Asia this and next year. The discovery process is too high dimensional and the current university structure too low dimensional to cope with the rate of change.
October 29, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Conjecture: the grant awards system and current university structure will collapse further US and other regions including Europe and Asia this and next year. The discovery process is too high dimensional and the current university structure too low dimensional to cope with the rate of change.
I can’t tell if this app facilitates a step social hierarchy or if the user base has a steep social hierarchy. Anyhow steep social hierarchies inhibit innovation and creativity.
October 29, 2025 at 1:40 PM
I can’t tell if this app facilitates a step social hierarchy or if the user base has a steep social hierarchy. Anyhow steep social hierarchies inhibit innovation and creativity.
People anthropomorphize AI all the time. Is it wrong to anthropomorphize neurons to get a different take? 🧪
October 28, 2025 at 11:25 PM
People anthropomorphize AI all the time. Is it wrong to anthropomorphize neurons to get a different take? 🧪
Hot take: Star Wars is fantasy but one sci-fi aspect I feel they got right is that their computer technology stayed rudimentary in some sense and each new tech was just another module.
October 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Hot take: Star Wars is fantasy but one sci-fi aspect I feel they got right is that their computer technology stayed rudimentary in some sense and each new tech was just another module.
What does agency have to do with randomization (how are counterfactual generated in the brain?)? Why do some people separate consciousness from intelligence?
October 27, 2025 at 10:12 AM
What does agency have to do with randomization (how are counterfactual generated in the brain?)? Why do some people separate consciousness from intelligence?
Back to cow reductionism (not spherical) and causality. 🧪
There was some weird fun causality study from 2010 showing that, for cows, the time spent standing doesn't predict when a cow will sit down but time spent sitting down predicts when the cow will stand up.
www.nature.com/articles/nph...
There was some weird fun causality study from 2010 showing that, for cows, the time spent standing doesn't predict when a cow will sit down but time spent sitting down predicts when the cow will stand up.
www.nature.com/articles/nph...
When cows lie down - Nature Physics
Nature Physics - When cows lie down
www.nature.com
October 27, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Back to cow reductionism (not spherical) and causality. 🧪
There was some weird fun causality study from 2010 showing that, for cows, the time spent standing doesn't predict when a cow will sit down but time spent sitting down predicts when the cow will stand up.
www.nature.com/articles/nph...
There was some weird fun causality study from 2010 showing that, for cows, the time spent standing doesn't predict when a cow will sit down but time spent sitting down predicts when the cow will stand up.
www.nature.com/articles/nph...
Reposted by Atanas Stankov
Brace for another wave of x refuges
October 26, 2025 at 4:37 AM
Brace for another wave of x refuges
From a biological angle this hypothesis doesn’t track. The US is a fundamentally different democratic architecture. It’s like comparing ants to termites. They have differently evolved complex strategies to social problems.
European leaders still treat Trump as an aberration - something to wait out until history returns to normal. That’s an illusion. By flattering Trump without a strategy of their own, they normalise a rising monarchist ideology coming to unseat them in Europe’s next elections.
October 25, 2025 at 4:15 PM
From a biological angle this hypothesis doesn’t track. The US is a fundamentally different democratic architecture. It’s like comparing ants to termites. They have differently evolved complex strategies to social problems.
Parallel to serial reasoning. Analog to digital computing. [???] to probability/statistics/causal inference.
October 25, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Parallel to serial reasoning. Analog to digital computing. [???] to probability/statistics/causal inference.
Hypothesis: Universally shared experiences are empirically tractable and evidence for universal qualia.
October 24, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Hypothesis: Universally shared experiences are empirically tractable and evidence for universal qualia.
Are theta cycles in the brain clocked bits or not?
October 24, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Are theta cycles in the brain clocked bits or not?
Someone is trying to link ephaptic coupling (à la Earl Miller) with Pearl's causal inference framework. Submitted last month apparently on OpenReview.
👀🧪
“A Causal Formulation of Spike-Wave Duality”
openreview.net/pdf/b32685ab...
👀🧪
“A Causal Formulation of Spike-Wave Duality”
openreview.net/pdf/b32685ab...
openreview.net
October 21, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Someone is trying to link ephaptic coupling (à la Earl Miller) with Pearl's causal inference framework. Submitted last month apparently on OpenReview.
👀🧪
“A Causal Formulation of Spike-Wave Duality”
openreview.net/pdf/b32685ab...
👀🧪
“A Causal Formulation of Spike-Wave Duality”
openreview.net/pdf/b32685ab...
😢
GM Daniel Naroditsky passed away. He was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator. FIDE extends its deepest condolences to Daniel’s family and loved ones.
October 20, 2025 at 11:16 PM
😢