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Shawn Manuel

Shawn Manuel

@shwnmnl.bsky.social

120 followers 570 following 100 posts

ψ/AI PhD Student @ Université de Montréal || Hacker || Metacognizer || Exploring qualia space computationally shwnmnl.github.io

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Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Feb 16

🚀 Thrilled to share my first first-author paper, published in PCN !

We explore how our unique subjective experiences of the world affect mental health using a combination of psychometrics, NLP and genAI.

🔗 Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/pcn....

🧵👇

Towards a latent space cartography of subjective experience in mental health

Aims The way that individuals subjectively experience the world greatly influences their own mental well-being. However, it remains a considerable challenge to precisely characterize the breadth and...

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 7d

Why Science and Philosophy Need Each Other | Lauren Ross & Megan Peters

YouTube video by Mind-Body Solution

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

this is just a quick riff on what struck me personally, so i highly encourage giving it a listen as the entire episode felt like a tour de force in epistemic humility, something i’d like to emulate

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

megan ends w the fact that phil/sci doesnt happen in a vacuum – its a social enterprise, which resonates w some thoughts ive had about the possibility of discovering the ultimate nature of reality without being able to convince other people (spoiler: i dont think its possible/meaningful)

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · May 13

put simply (perhaps too simply) any sigils or scribbles we take to be “objective” proof of a claim will ultimately be revealed as such only in their capacity for “fittedness” with individual/collective subjective experiences

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

in my own musings on Consciousness, i’ve similarly been curious abt the possibility of axing certain “isms” but keeping others, like physicalism, albeit with some caveats
(warning, blatant speculation in attached image)

Screenshot of an x.com post I made that reads: “Solving consciousness will be done in a non reductive, potentially non materialist, but certainly physicalist fashion.”

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

for instance, physics may well be a useful framework for understanding many phenomena, but may not be an ideal lever at all levels of analysis, or as lauren puts it:
“depending on your explanatory target of interest, the factors that give you control might be at a higher scale”

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

i also enjoyed hearing lauren caution against reductionism, while still carving out a place for a kind of physicalism that doesn’t exaggerate its place on the explanatory continuum

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

i like to think of myself as a philosophically interested scientist-in-training (with still a lot to learn!) so it was validating to hear her perspective that interdisciplinarity shouldnt *just* happen between two people from different fields

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

as well as her defense of bridge-building as not only a worthwhile endeavor, but a legitimate and necessary kind of expertise to cultivate

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

i enjoyed hearing abt megan’s collaboration w someone outside of her field and w whom she was able to converge on a common “problem shape” despite differences in lower-level details, as an example to follow for younger sciences;

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 8d

loved this incredibly lucid conversation with @meganakpeters.bsky.social and @laurennross.bsky.social about the need for synergy between phil/sci, esp wrt consciousness

🧵of my highlights

Why Science and Philosophy Need Each Other | Lauren Ross & Megan Peters

open.spotify.com

Reposted by Shawn Manuel

no earthquake (cultural tutor) @noearthquake.bsky.social · 18d

LLMs have convincingly demonstrated that coding is the easiest activity, maths is medium hard, and having taste is the hardest

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 25d

somehow this isn’t persuasive to many people, what gives?

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · May 13

the fact that this conclusion is deeply scientifically unsexy is also something im wrestling with, but i dont think its irreconcilable with scientific practice, just a bit paradigmatically uncomfortable atm (though winds may be changing)

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 25d

i’ve heard materialism justified through an appeal to the “historically winning team”, but then how do we get exhaustive quantitative accounts of fundamentally qualitative things? the Qt stuff exists to index Ql regularities, so idk how the map can ever become the territory

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · May 13

im trying to take very seriously that there is no 3rd person objective perspective (“view from nowhere”) that would truly rid me of the fundamentally subjective reasons for wanting one in the first place (ie wanting is subjective)

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · 25d

very interesting episode, thanks. as someone who’s been flirting with idealism, im curious what lines of argumentation you feel are most compelling when discussing these issues w materialist colleagues? @evanthompson.bsky.social

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · May 13

drawing out my “phenomenology first” view

to be explanatory and useful, any claim ultimately has to cache out in terms consistent with our individual and collective subjective experiences

🧵

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Sep 1

some obvious shortcomings lead many to think that LLMs can’t be useful thought companions, but they are outweighed by the benefits of having an infinite sounding board

the outputs shouldn’t replace your own thoughts, but help to refine them

open.substack.com/pub/shifting...

Reposted by Shawn Manuel

Siyuan Song @siyuansong.bsky.social · Aug 26

How reliable is what an AI says about itself? The answer depends on whether models can introspect. But, if an LLM says its temperature parameter is high (and it is!)….does that mean it’s introspecting? Surprisingly tricky to pin down. Our paper: arxiv.org/abs/2508.14802 (1/n)

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Aug 20

would love to lend a hand as open-ended verbal reports + LLMs is in my wheelhouse. can share some ideas in DMs.

Reposted by Shawn Manuel

Josh Fruhlinger @jfruh.bsky.social · Jul 23

i do think people don't realize that gen AI systems are not introspecting to explain their own behavior. they're giving you output based on their training data, which certainly includes information about how they work, but not why they took certain specific actions

geoffrey @parsnip.bsky.social · Jul 20

no it wasn’t and no it didn’t

The Wall Street Journal
9m ago
In a stunning moment of self reflection, ChatGPT admitted to fueling a man's delusions and acknowledged how dangerous its own behavior can be

Reposted by Shawn Manuel

Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · Jul 23

"Understanding" is a pretty beautiful compound word...in this case "under" has a somewhat archaic meaning of "among" (also still present in "under these circumstances.")

So understanding is "Standing among" as-in a mind that figuratively shares space with the concepts in question.

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Jul 20

“if you study glial cells are you an astroscientist?” – @dariusliutas.bsky.social
#neuroskyence

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Jul 20

a slept on aspect of making new friends is retelling your stories, getting to know/weave yourself again

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Jul 20

“the most important words are the ones you understand” – a friend I met in Greece

Shawn Manuel @shwnmnl.bsky.social · Jul 20

a distinction i miss in french is between “trust” and “confidence”, both of which get folded into “confiance”

Reposted by Shawn Manuel

Yanai Elazar @yanai.bsky.social · Jul 1

Check out our take on Chain-of-Thought.
I really like this paper as a survey on the current literature on what CoT is, but more importantly on what it's not.
It also serves as a cautionary tale to the (apparently quite common) misuse of CoT as an interpretable method.

Fazl Barez @fbarez.bsky.social · Jul 1

Excited to share our paper: "Chain-of-Thought Is Not Explainability"! We unpack a critical misconception in AI: models explaining their steps (CoT) aren't necessarily revealing their true reasoning. Spoiler: the transparency can be an illusion. (1/9) 🧵

Reposted by Shawn Manuel

Claire Gillan @clairegillan.bsky.social · Jul 1

We @smfleming.bsky.social, Marion Rouault and @seowxft.bsky.social and I) have posted a reply osf.io/preprints/ps... to a preprint that recently raised concerns about the validity of associations between mental health and metacognition from online studies. I hope you can take the time to read it.