Carl T. Bergstrom
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carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

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

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%
Pinned
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

Here you go!
It seems to me that the time is ripe for a Bluesky thread about how—and maybe even why—to befriend crows.

(1/n)

This was a very interesting rabbit hole to fall into!

I don’t know. It just helped me understand what was happening. I’m not sure if it gets into as much of specifics with respect to being helpful on social cues.

So very glad to hear that you liked it!

I'd be rolling fat blunts out of Franklins on my boat to the next birding location, not arguing 14 hours a day with plebs on X and complaining about how nobody appreciated my intellect, that's for sure.

In the US, for sure.

It's why I thought Woody Allen's films were brilliant when I was a kid. The people in those films talked the way the people our family knew talked.

Hard same.

While I am not Jewish myself, Tannen's book convinced me that it is no coincidence that my model of dinner conversation came from meals with the largely Jewish colleagues of my father, a University of Michigan professor.

This book changed my life.

It explains "high-involvement" conversational style and the notion of cooperative overlapping.

It explained why my former wife and her family thought I was exceptionally rude at the dinner table when I thought I was doing my damnedest to engage.
Conversational Style — Deborah Tannen
www.deborahtannen.com
The Māori word for the smallest and cutest of kiwis, the lesser spotted kiwi, is pukupuku.

In Japanese, pukupuku (ぷくぷく) is an onomatopoeic word describing something cute, chubby, pudgy, or puffed up.

The two languages are from divergent language families. So WTF?

(Photo not mine; credit in alt)

Here you go:
AI code suggestions sabotage software supply chain
: Hallucinated package names fuel 'slopsquatting'
www.theregister.com

Love that!

Reposted by Carl T. Bergstrom

“if you ask [LLMs] for factual information you don't have any guarantee it's going to be correct…not a good idea to rely on them for information you can't verify and that's somehow important” www.bbc.com/news/article...
Warning about using AI for festive swim tide time advice
The Coastguard warns about AI after two people are stranded after being given the wrong tide times.
www.bbc.com

What a glorious photograph!

Excellent beer. Love to get one of those every time I'm back on the East Coast.

iykyk

Season's greetings to all.

Here's Borges, interviewed by William F Buckley.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNxz...

I can't venture to compare the expressiveness of English and Spanish, but I love Jorge Luis Borges's observations about how a skilled writer will use English's two distinct registers — the Germanic and the Latinate — to convey shades of meaning.
Is English Better Than Spanish?
This article was originally published here: https://tribunamag.com/tribuna/2016/6/26/is-english-better-than-spanish
medium.com

Absolutely! Not in LinkedIn, so you're good.

I love this! Great pic too.

dudes all in my dm's like don't be coy tell us who

seriously you think imma let you steal them???
Best explanation of the liar's dividend that I've ever seen.
Anyone else have a coauthor who is so much fun to write with that you just find yourself grinning in some combination of satisfaction and pride as you edit a manuscript?

If not, get yourself one.

TIL the Fitzroy Lions went under in 1996. Horrified.

Bored Rat Yacht Club in 5-4-3....

Goddamn I'm going to need more than one more pie.

Here in the states, "youse" is standard south Boston dialect so I feel entitled to appropriate it.

I've been reading Helen Garner's _Monkey Grip_.

Oooh. Scotch ale is an interesting idea.