Merry Christmas from Chicago!

I wrote about this a few weeks ago-- my take on slop. open.substack.com/pub/agencyof...

I've enjoyed reading various definitions of slop, the word of the year according to Merriam-Webster. But they all focus on its attributes, which misses the resignation to a cynical instrumentality that I think explains why many people find slop repulsive

Holiday open thread: Correct me! Point out all my mistakes. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/24/h...

I made a holiday playlist for people who don’t like holiday music. There are no official Christmas songs but it's classic and jangly with complicated feelings 🌲🕊️

Turns out we're all in the dictionary

Blog post for those too busy to read the paper: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/19/v...

I like this summary of how CS became heavily empirical, especially the bit about the introduction of human concerns leading to beliefs that the only way to understand is empirical (this was the bane of my existence for a couple years, actually 🙂)

Great thread about a very timely preprint. Couldn’t agree more with this point especially. When results from LLMs in “silicon samples” can vary substantially as a function of many analytic decisions, systematically making decisions erases much perceived efficiency. arxiv.org/abs/2509.133...

Many think LLM-simulated participants can transform behavioral science. But there's been a lack of accessible discussion of what it means to validate LLMs for behavioral scientists. Under what conditions can we trust LLMs to learn about human parameters? Our paper maps the validation landscape. 1/

Seven CEOs and one scientist (half cut out of the picture)

Someone should create a day for female statisticians. I'd observe it! Or just a day for celebrating statisticians, in this era of massive ML hype.

"Data-generating distribution" is often just a way of acknowledging conditioning. That we rarely have random samples has been pointed out often in empirical social science as well. We could say "non-probability sample" but then we need to change our methods too. 1/2

I would like to be able to take papers on LLM deception seriously, but the tip-toeing around problems caused by sycophancy makes me cringe. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/09/i...

I would like to be able to take papers on LLM deception seriously, but the tip-toeing around problems caused by sycophancy makes me cringe. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/09/i...

The IJCAI 2025 conference is attempting to combat the increase in low-quality paper submissions by charging $100 USD to submit a paper. The fee is waived for papers in which no author appears on any other paper. Will it work? We shall see. 2026.ijcai.org/primary-pape...

My 80s British synth pop playlist brings great start of winter drama. Named for the marzipan fortresses and jelly peacocks served between courses in medieval feasts 🏰 🦚

Roethke: At Woodlawn I Heard the dead cry I was lulled by the slamming of iron A slow drip over stones Toads brooding wells All the leaves stuck out their tongues I shook the softening chalk of my bones Saying Snail snail glister me forward Bird soft-sigh me home Worm be with me This is my hard time

My new NeurIPS routine might have to be 1 day of EurIPS + 3 days of art.

Anyone have recommendations for best ways to spend some free time in Copenhagen this week? It will be my first time there.

Deeply disappointed in my institution

Otoh frequentism is no use at all in a minefield, unless you have enough legs to approximate a normal distribution.

Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen THIS YEAR, so I can stop being reminded of how old we all are on here 😉 Little Simz JID FKA twigs Perfume Genius Mereba

Thanksgiving psychoanalysis of Epstein: Some ppl are really good at creating elite seeming intellectual vibe networks, even if the takes one gets access to are mostly vacuous. (I mean, just look at AI lately) I love Gelman’s refusal to let these things go. They really get to him.

Some thoughts on empirical distributions of z-scores statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/24/s...

As someone who has occasionally glimpsed this world, this article strikes me as very accurate. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...

This is art. jmail.world

I'm also very vulnerable to attack by beautiful poetry

Saw an old clip of Courtney Love and now having a moment with Hole. Something about her aggressive discontent feels just right for these times. And ”I want to be the girl with the most cake” remains a great line

Why AI writing is mid How the current way of training language models destroys any voice (and hope of good writing). www.interconnects.ai/p/why-ai-wri...

Is it just me, or are we hitting peak contrarian-eats-itself energy? Feels like everywhere I look…

If you work at the intersection of CS and economics (or think your work is of interest to those who do!) consider submitting to the ESIF Economics and AI+ML meeting this summer at Cornell: www.econometricsociety.org/regional-act...

ICE showed up to kidnap lawn workers and nannies today in my sleepy Chicago North Shore neighborhood. So disgusted

I’m recruiting students this upcoming cycle at UIUC! I’m excited about Qs on societal impact of AI, especially human-AI collaboration, multi-agent interactions, incentives in data sharing, and AI policy/regulation (all from both a theoretical and applied lens). Apply through CS & select my name!

Slides from my @mit.edu IDSS Distinguished Speaker seminar "Networks untangle gender differences in productivity and prominence among scientists" this week I argue that collaboration networks act like unequally distributed (and gendered) social capital aaronclauset.github.io/slides/Claus...

🧠⚙️ Interested in decision theory+cogsci meets AI? Want to create methods for rigorously designing & evaluating human-AI workflows? I'm recruiting PhDs to work on: 🎯 Stat foundations of multi-agent collaboration 🌫️ Model uncertainty & meta-cognition 🔎 Interpretability 💬 LLMs in behavioral science

A very reasonable take on AI in education

Tonight’s mood… No offense to John Denver but this version captures something the original missed

Two answers: - Anthropomorphization makes sense when dealing with written human-like characters, which is what LLMs generate - We aren’t very deep into interpretability yet x.com/pfau/status/...

When referring to an unspecified, imaginary person, why do some writers need to refer to them specifically as “she” or “he”? 🧠: are you proudly showing that your imagination is this specific or are you just really against using “they”? Either way, it’s a distraction.

Great post on various ways in which multiverse analysis can be misdirected as a solution

✨ SOTA in Probability Elicitation, 2025 ✨ Econ/stats/JDM: "We invoke Schervish (1989) to derive a task-aligned strictly proper scoring rule, and expose subjects to 50 calibration trials to verify comprehension. We provide proofs of LIC in ..." HCI: “We used a slider to promote carefulness.”

Why are there so many houses with bathrooms in basements? Especially bathrooms with showers in unfinished basements. Why on earth? Why does my own house have a bathroom in the basement? Who is going to use it?

I’m giving an IDE seminar at @mitsloan.bsky.social tomorrow at 11am, on optimizing AI as decision support. Joint work w/ @ziyang.bsky.social @yifanwu.bsky.social @jasonhartline.bsky.social @berkustun.bsky.social Come by if you’re around! www.eventbrite.com/e/fall-2025-...

And now might be a good time to mention, I’m on the faculty job market this year! I do work in human-AI collusion, collaboration and competition, with an eye towards building foundations for trustworthy AI. Check out more info on my website here! Nataliecollina.com

@abhsarma.bsky.social created a visualization tool for principled reasoning about whether analysis paths should be included in a multiverse Try it: abhsarma.github.io/milliways/ Paper: mucollective.northwestern.edu/project/2024... Code: github.com/abhsarma/mil...

So excited No one tells you that full professor really means full return to your high school self, but that’s basically what it is

"Wank is a speech act directed first and foremost at helping the speaker feel better about themselves, stated as an objective claim about the state of the world, that we are expected in discussion to treat with the epistemic authority of a claim about identity, but the content of the actual claim".

Since I'm about to head out to DC's No Kings protest, here's a quick look at America's ORIGINAL No Kings movement, and a review of how many of George III's crimes outlined in the Declaration have been repeated by Trump. juliansanchez.substack.com/p/trump-vs-g...

It’s become fashionable in some circles to reject decision theory (and other basic statistical ideas) for vaguely political reasons. There are valid critiques—but also some worth being wary of. Some thoughts: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/10/17/s...