Playing a murder mystery game: the coolest part was to actually see extended cognition in action. Different friends solving different pieces using different skills (OCD is useful), my husband the prosecutor coordinating ("This is just like my day job"), a shared distributed model taking form.

(From ToF to 4IR) Wearing my ugly xmas sweater, chatting with friends in knitwear onesies at our cozy winter retreat, we hatch the concept: the Tom of Finland onesie. Leaving the leather additions from NanoBanana aside, where can one get a black cable-knit onesie? Seems to be a market lacuna here!

Interesting dive into how an important complex technological system works when stuff fails. Centralization (which may be needed for quality) is always in tension with robustness. youtu.be/ZRB7pjRVVkI?...

I wonder if the plethora of LLM-induced crackpottery and sloppy paper writing in science over the next year will act as an inhibitor for the rising AI-supported science by making it socially embarrassing.

Happy solstice!

Interesting feeling waking up because of fire-truck sirens and a smoke smell, and finding that there is was an actual fire in the building... below me. Amazingly effective for waking up quickly. (No, no danger to me, and situation is now under control).

The Foresight Institute Existential Hope Meme Prize has been unveiled. www.existentialhope.com/existential-...

Love this. This is a great idea!

This is an excellent think piece on the threat of AI-enabled techno-authoritarianism. 80000hours.org/problem-prof...

Cool new paper out in Nature on AI-designed proteins that survive 150 °C and nanonewton forces! www.nature.com/articles/s41... It's very interesting work - but I see people saying it is also directly worrying. I disagree - to explain, here's a short 🧵

How have I not noticed the National Gallery mosaics before? Science! Rutherford! Sea monsters! Amazing stuff

The space data centre feasibility issue is getting a lot of people - on both sides - to very confidently say falsifiable things that will be disproven relatively soon. Great! (The falsifiable part, not the overconfident part.)

How can research cut through today’s noise? I wrapped up the @futures-studies.bsky.social project "New Ways to Communicate Research Results" with a full-room talk on formats that strengthen researchers’ voices. What communication and public engagement tools work best for you? #SciComm 🧪

If you can join us in Paris next June, I'll be speaking at this. Don't forget to register before midnight: www.csb.eu.com/conference/r...

"The picture of AI offered by the AI ethics community is one-sided and negatively biased. We should be skeptical about the negative narrative promoted by AI ethics and explore ways of reforming the system." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day! laneless.substack.com/p/500-millio...

Cool, EM connectomics was named "method of the year" in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am increasingly annoyed by people using "eugenics" to label every disliked or stupid policy. It makes it harder to discuss the actual moral issues if I want to crispr-enhance my kids. Or maybe it is better to let the term die of over-broadening into mere "badness", and invent specific new terms?

Nice write up of my talk for the U of Colorado's Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute on the ethics of wearable health devices. "The potential harm from these devices remains minimal compared to their benefits." news.cuanschutz.edu/cctsi/when-t...

Läs min nya bloggpost "Those who welcome the end of the human race"! Oblygt törs jag påstå att detta är bland det bästa jag skrivit på sistone. Och budskapet är viktigt. I vanlig ordning har jag sparat några pärlor till fotnotsapparaten, så missa inte den!

Anders Sandberg on the Dangers of Persuasive AI youtu.be/UMni0lo3XoU?... #AI #persuasion #manipulation @arenamontanus.bsky.social

Researchers have used Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer to build a virtual mouse cortex. The model lets scientists run “virtual experiments” on diseases such as epilepsy or Alzheimer’s, tracing how disruptions spread, and testing interventions. buff.ly/JqiLr9q #ShareGoodNewsToo

"...under viss hjälp av det nya avmagringsmedlet Ritalina, som ordinerats av tjänsteläkaren"

#SquircleSaturday I recently came across a post stating that "pi is optimal", and it got me to explore circumferences of the relatives of circles in different distance norms.

I brush off a piece of dandruff, and immediately start wondering about how the atoms will distribute in the environment. Detritivore mites presumably separate them into small concentrations, that then either get eaten by something or diffuse. Fungal hyphae create linear or network patterns.

Taiwanese ambassador to Finland performs with his metal band at Taiwan-Finland cultural event! 🤘✊️ That's what I call great ambassador

I am involved with a fair number of non-profits, but ALLFED stands out by doing something unique to safeguard the world: food security in response to global catastrophic risks. Right now (Nov 25-Dec 9), all gifts matched 1:1 up to $20K, which is much needed! t.co/3n2VJmYfrY

Vi har testat nya sätt att nå ut med forskning. Nu börjar projektet på @futures-studies.bsky.social sky.social runda av. Resultaten pekar på att några gamla sanningar håller. Andra gör det inte. Vad funkar faktiskt för dig när forskning ska nå ut. 👀💬 www.iffs.se/forskning/fo...

#AICopeBubble: @boingboing.net is crowing about how clocks.brianmoore.com shows how bad AI is and how far away the singularity is. I open a browser tab and get a perfectly good clock from a current model (some debate about which timezone I am in and somewhat bad number placement).

This is a really insightful and optimistic take on how AI may affect time by Nicklas Lundblad. Time design is important. open.substack.com/pub/aipolicy...

Research seminar with Natuschka Lee: Mars and the Earthlings – A Realistic View on Mars Exploration and Settlement. Natuschka Lee is a microbiologist and astrobiologist, with a PhD degree in Biotechnology. Tomorrow, participation possible both on-site or online: www.iffs.se/kalendarium/...

A fun website. As somebody working on existential risk for real it is a fun complement to prediction markets. Maybe we should look into using LLMs to automate detection of predictions and help comment on their performance. However, most doomsday talk is non-specific enough to be hard to test.

This is pretty scandalous. And, given the content of the lecture, extra ironic. Let's hope this decision gets Streisanded into eternity.

OK, color me officially impressed: Nano Banana Pro can make good diagrams based on papers. This one can go almost straight into my presentations.

If ever you find yourself visiting Oxford, why not take a walk round, & see if you can spot any of these "famous cats of Oxford." I wonder if anyone will spot the cat puns in the story too. oxfordclarion.uk/college-cats...

When people talk about mental enhancement, people often bring up mental techniques such as mindfulness as alternatives to biomedical interventions, claiming that they are cheaper, more proven and safer. I think this is overconfident.

Jag dyker up i podden Vox Populi där jag diskuterar transhumanism, existentiell risk, livsförlängning, religion och teknik. youtu.be/Y88MbzkC3_c?...

Dubai is as always exorbitantly absurd. A bit like a Las Vegas without the alcohol and gambling, with some eclectic cyberpunk touches.

V.G.E, le futur en marche! youtu.be/KKhnDzRgsW8?...

I suffer from digital scar tissue. Over a long digital life we acquire identities in multiple identity ecosystems. Over time many become obsolete, rendering references erroneous and blocking access even for new links. aleph.se/andart2/comp...

Another good concept to use. There isn't a fixed amount of thinking to do, and whether outsourcing thinking is good or bad depends on the use, rather than it being outsourced. I see many similarities to the cognitive enhancement debate. andymasley.substack.com/p/the-lump-o...

Oxford in autumn can be nice. Especially indoors.

I am worried that people converge to general "AI hating" instead of being against particular reasons (e.g. IP, xrisk, slop, competition, power concentration etc.) AI is not going to go away - it is too useful - so general rejection will not work other than as social posing.

Lovely visualisation of CMEs. helioforecast.space/cme

When @fermatslibrary.bsky.social brought up this 1940 article about why we have nothing to worry about from nuclear chain reactions, I checked that it was real and not a modern forgery. Because it seems almost too good to be true in light of current AI safety talk.

"Think of the children!" responses commonly hurt children and young people, often by creating rigid systems motivated more by institutional self-protection than achieving the actual aim. www.dailycal.org/news/campus/...

All Saints' Day is one of those holidays that has grown on me. To me it is all about acknowledging the network of lives across the human project, past, present and future.

One of the major fruits of research is delight. Think of how often you’ve read about a discovery and really enjoyed it. Often the most pleasurable kind of news. Public delight isn’t discussed enough as one of the major outputs of funding research.

Projektet “Nya sätt att sprida forskningsresultat till samhället” testar nu policy briefs förmåga att nå ut med forskning till beslutsfattare. Kan vi förutse opinionsförändringar? Hur når experter fram i kriser? Har vi koll på våra fördomar? Läs och tyck till om formatet: www.iffs.se/ovriga-sidor...