Paul Harland
@pabloredux.bsky.social
Evolution: it's nothing personal. (Sorry if I ask too many questions... Share nicely!)
I'm here because you're here.
http://pabloredux.wordpress.com/
(Profile photo: a faint shadow of me cast across a weathered lichen-marked stone wall by the sea.)
I'm here because you're here.
http://pabloredux.wordpress.com/
(Profile photo: a faint shadow of me cast across a weathered lichen-marked stone wall by the sea.)
Reposted by Paul Harland
I think it's a kind of category error to use social media as an opinion barometer.
People vent opinions on social media in large part *because* they are not getting enough support for that perspective IRL. So the signal is not just unrepresentative of offline life; it's sometimes inverted!
People vent opinions on social media in large part *because* they are not getting enough support for that perspective IRL. So the signal is not just unrepresentative of offline life; it's sometimes inverted!
Working for a SaaS company and then logging into bsky is a surreal experience because bsky is all "no one wants AI, ever" and in the meantime like 90% of real customer feedback I read at my real job is like "where the heck is your AI? I'll cancel if you don't add it by next week"
There’s a very surreal conversation I keep having on here where people seem unable to hold two ideas at the same time, and I’m not sure why. It’s simply true that the Big AI platforms like ChatGPT are:
1. Extremely bad for society, in many ways.
2. Very genuinely popular with lots of people.
1. Extremely bad for society, in many ways.
2. Very genuinely popular with lots of people.
November 18, 2025 at 6:43 PM
I think it's a kind of category error to use social media as an opinion barometer.
People vent opinions on social media in large part *because* they are not getting enough support for that perspective IRL. So the signal is not just unrepresentative of offline life; it's sometimes inverted!
People vent opinions on social media in large part *because* they are not getting enough support for that perspective IRL. So the signal is not just unrepresentative of offline life; it's sometimes inverted!
Happening threads.
November 18, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Happening threads.
Reposted by Paul Harland
Have there been any major new theoretical papers in cog sci and/or philosophy of mind about human conceptual structure inspired* by large language models?
__
* the inspiration could well be 'adversarial'. 😛
#AI #philosophy #cogsci
__
* the inspiration could well be 'adversarial'. 😛
#AI #philosophy #cogsci
November 14, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Have there been any major new theoretical papers in cog sci and/or philosophy of mind about human conceptual structure inspired* by large language models?
__
* the inspiration could well be 'adversarial'. 😛
#AI #philosophy #cogsci
__
* the inspiration could well be 'adversarial'. 😛
#AI #philosophy #cogsci
Reposted by Paul Harland
What is this ‘attention economy’? Is there really a market where people buy and sell human attention? If so, what’s wrong with that? New paper by Katharine Browne and me that argues: yes, there is an attention market and yes, there is something wrong with it. 🧵
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The attention market—and what is wrong with it - Philosophical Studies
Attention is described as a “scarce commodity” that is traded in “a marketplace.” This, it is further claimed, contributes to a “widespread sense of attentional crisis.” But is there really an attenti...
link.springer.com
November 14, 2025 at 5:40 PM
What is this ‘attention economy’? Is there really a market where people buy and sell human attention? If so, what’s wrong with that? New paper by Katharine Browne and me that argues: yes, there is an attention market and yes, there is something wrong with it. 🧵
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Oldham in crisis.
Is Cloudflare down? Thousands report issues with X and Canva reporting an outage
Is Cloudflare down? Thousands report issues with X and Canva reporting an outage
Thousands of customers are reporting they are unable to access Cloudflare, X, Canva and other services in what appears to be another internet outage.
dlvr.it
November 18, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Oldham in crisis.
I've only just realised you can simply swipe across your feeds. Am now going to practise for next time I'm sitting on the Tube.
November 18, 2025 at 12:10 PM
I've only just realised you can simply swipe across your feeds. Am now going to practise for next time I'm sitting on the Tube.
Reposted by Paul Harland
to fix a collar gap on a budget, stick a pin in the collar like this to prevent your head from dropping
November 18, 2025 at 8:45 AM
to fix a collar gap on a budget, stick a pin in the collar like this to prevent your head from dropping
Exponential growth in bubble stories?
Gosh. Story has gone from 0 to 60 in the UK. Is leading BBC News this morning.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
November 18, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Exponential growth in bubble stories?
Reposted by Paul Harland
Publish and perish www.nature.com/articles/d41... (archived at archive.ph/OBmXT) Pressure to publish is rising as research time shrinks, finds survey of scientists; via @smellosopher.bsky.social
Pressure to publish is rising as research time shrinks, finds survey of scientists
Researchers feel that pressures to publish are increasing, but the time and resources available to do research are decreasing, according to a survey by Elsevier.
www.nature.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:55 AM
Publish and perish www.nature.com/articles/d41... (archived at archive.ph/OBmXT) Pressure to publish is rising as research time shrinks, finds survey of scientists; via @smellosopher.bsky.social
Reposted by Paul Harland
✨ Now available in the US ✨
Intriguing and inspiring stories, an almost up-to-date state of the art of maintenance and repair studies, and a deep dive into the worries, diplomacy and ambivalences of the art of making things last.
All in one single book.
www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-care-o...
Intriguing and inspiring stories, an almost up-to-date state of the art of maintenance and repair studies, and a deep dive into the worries, diplomacy and ambivalences of the art of making things last.
All in one single book.
www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-care-o...
The Care of Things: Ethics and Politics of Maintenance|Hardcover
What does a coffee machine, a car, road signs, a smartphone, a cathedral, a work of art, a satellite, a bicycle, a washing machine, a bridge, a watch, a computer, the body of a prominent politician an...
www.barnesandnoble.com
April 15, 2025 at 9:00 PM
✨ Now available in the US ✨
Intriguing and inspiring stories, an almost up-to-date state of the art of maintenance and repair studies, and a deep dive into the worries, diplomacy and ambivalences of the art of making things last.
All in one single book.
www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-care-o...
Intriguing and inspiring stories, an almost up-to-date state of the art of maintenance and repair studies, and a deep dive into the worries, diplomacy and ambivalences of the art of making things last.
All in one single book.
www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-care-o...
Reposted by Paul Harland
I don’t want to seem out of touch but I don’t actually understand the economy anymore.
November 18, 2025 at 3:23 AM
I don’t want to seem out of touch but I don’t actually understand the economy anymore.
Reposted by Paul Harland
What AI doesn’t know: we could be creating a global ‘knowledge collapse’ - www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no... hugely important point: #AI is creating a flavourless, limited information monoculture
What AI doesn’t know: we could be creating a global ‘knowledge collapse’ | Deepak Varuvel Dennison
The long read: As GenAI becomes the primary way to find information, local and traditional wisdom is being lost. And we are only beginning to realise what we’re missing
www.theguardian.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:26 AM
What AI doesn’t know: we could be creating a global ‘knowledge collapse’ - www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no... hugely important point: #AI is creating a flavourless, limited information monoculture
Reposted by Paul Harland
So good to finally see this out 🙂
In the Nov-Dec issue of ACM-Interactions, I summarize ongoing discussions with @digitaldang.bsky.social and others working on the regional contours of electronics afterlives. interactions.acm.org/archive/view...
November 14, 2025 at 5:36 PM
So good to finally see this out 🙂
Reposted by Paul Harland
Surprisal is the ‘everything bagel/nothing burger’ of predictors—it has everything baked in, which is the problem.
November 17, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Surprisal is the ‘everything bagel/nothing burger’ of predictors—it has everything baked in, which is the problem.
Reposted by Paul Harland
Do bees see nothing? Primates with damage to the visual cortex have no conscious visual experience, but display adaptive visual behaviour (a phenomenon called blindsight). Here I team up with two primate researchers to ask if bee vision could be similar to blindsight. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
November 17, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Do bees see nothing? Primates with damage to the visual cortex have no conscious visual experience, but display adaptive visual behaviour (a phenomenon called blindsight). Here I team up with two primate researchers to ask if bee vision could be similar to blindsight. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Paul Harland
Often very useful reading of the state of play in English studies in the UK bsky.app/profile/them... - although isn't AI beginning to demonstrate increasing relevance to the field? "We’re people, not robots" - but aren't robots being developed, via Large Language Models, into readers and writers?
'What to Do for English Now' by Robert Eaglestone – Open access in the latest volume of the Yearbook of English Studies. A call to arms to defend a subject in crisis. Please read and share!
#EnglishStudies #EnglishCreates
muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/arti...
#EnglishStudies #EnglishCreates
muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/arti...
Project MUSE - What to Do for English Now
muse.jhu.edu
November 17, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Often very useful reading of the state of play in English studies in the UK bsky.app/profile/them... - although isn't AI beginning to demonstrate increasing relevance to the field? "We’re people, not robots" - but aren't robots being developed, via Large Language Models, into readers and writers?
Reposted by Paul Harland
It's highly doubtful that the sorts of people who have time and inclination to participate in phone-ins and vox pops are in any way representative of public opinion. Most of these people aren't at work on a Monday morning!
One way to take some of the heat out of politics, which is within the BBC's control, is to drop phone-ins and vox pops.
November 17, 2025 at 11:15 AM
It's highly doubtful that the sorts of people who have time and inclination to participate in phone-ins and vox pops are in any way representative of public opinion. Most of these people aren't at work on a Monday morning!
"I’d argue that superpositions of states are not real. If you look very carefully, things never superimpose... take my cat...!" www.scientificamerican.com/article/brea... Cap doff @wiringthebrain.bsky.social
Quantum Physics Is ‘Nonsense,’ Says Breakthrough Prize Winner Gerard ’t Hooft
After netting the world’s highest-paying science award, preeminent theoretical physicist Gerard ’t Hooft reflects on his legacy and the future of physics
www.scientificamerican.com
November 17, 2025 at 10:53 AM
"I’d argue that superpositions of states are not real. If you look very carefully, things never superimpose... take my cat...!" www.scientificamerican.com/article/brea... Cap doff @wiringthebrain.bsky.social
@booch.com You've been following 512 on Twitter/X for some years. What determines the number here?
November 16, 2025 at 10:28 PM
@booch.com You've been following 512 on Twitter/X for some years. What determines the number here?
Reposted by Paul Harland
@retractionwatch.com One for your Confabulated References archives.
These references were hallucinated by ChatGPT!
@elisabethbik.bsky.social
@elisabethbik.bsky.social
November 16, 2025 at 4:44 AM
@retractionwatch.com One for your Confabulated References archives.
Reposted by Paul Harland
Never thought of it! In games like Skyrim or Fallout, with dialogues and gender flexible main character design, you can't use past tense in Slavic languages! You have to translate dialogues avoiding first person past tense as it is configured by gender!
it's very hard to do in Polish but not impossible, I had to do it when I used to translate video games like Fallout 2, where you can choose the gender of player character but we had to match English lines 1:1.
November 16, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Never thought of it! In games like Skyrim or Fallout, with dialogues and gender flexible main character design, you can't use past tense in Slavic languages! You have to translate dialogues avoiding first person past tense as it is configured by gender!
Reposted by Paul Harland
Kind of feels like we should be able to bisect the training for form and training for function given enough time
Physics of Language Models: Part 3.1
If you show a fact to an LLM in pre-training once, it’ll memorize the form but not the fact itself.
but if you (synthetically) rephrase the text several times, it’ll memorize the fact
arxiv.org/abs/2309.14316
If you show a fact to an LLM in pre-training once, it’ll memorize the form but not the fact itself.
but if you (synthetically) rephrase the text several times, it’ll memorize the fact
arxiv.org/abs/2309.14316
Physics of Language Models: Part 3.1, Knowledge Storage and Extraction
Large language models (LLMs) can store a vast amount of world knowledge, often extractable via question-answering (e.g., "What is Abraham Lincoln's birthday?"). However, do they answer such questions ...
arxiv.org
November 16, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Kind of feels like we should be able to bisect the training for form and training for function given enough time
Reposted by Paul Harland
now earnestly reflecting on how much of my bsky posting is the equivalent of the dogs biting shadows
November 16, 2025 at 5:05 PM
now earnestly reflecting on how much of my bsky posting is the equivalent of the dogs biting shadows
Reposted by Paul Harland
A fun game is to go into the Epstein email docs and search for the names of people who have personally made policy decisions that hurt you or your loved ones.
November 16, 2025 at 2:17 PM
A fun game is to go into the Epstein email docs and search for the names of people who have personally made policy decisions that hurt you or your loved ones.
Reposted by Paul Harland
This is harrowing & happened in recent times!🫣😪
Even scarier though, in a number of countries we are seeing echoes of such control visibly creeping back into current political ideologies😔
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Even scarier though, in a number of countries we are seeing echoes of such control visibly creeping back into current political ideologies😔
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Patronato: My mum was a 17-year-old free spirit in Franco's Spain - so she was locked up and put in a coma
Marina's mother was held against her will in a convent in 1960s Spain under Franco's regime.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 16, 2025 at 11:12 AM
This is harrowing & happened in recent times!🫣😪
Even scarier though, in a number of countries we are seeing echoes of such control visibly creeping back into current political ideologies😔
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Even scarier though, in a number of countries we are seeing echoes of such control visibly creeping back into current political ideologies😔
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...