A new preprint, co-authored with @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social:
The Deliberation Taboo
Cognitive science is, nominally, the science of thinking. We argue that the field has no theory of what thinking is and, even worse, that the topic has largely dropped out of focus. 1/
osf.io/preprints/ps...
#hiring
Come work with us to better understand the neuronal mechanism underlying perceptual consciousness!
18 months postdoctoral position at INSERM in Grenoble, France.
โApplication deadline 10 March 2026.
euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/408445
I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.
I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users Iโm a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion
People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. Iโll explain how I did it
its amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time in things im an expert on. not going to think about this any further
The black hole appears to expand.
www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/akitaoka/Tha...
the cutoff scores for #MSCA postdoc fellowships are very high this year. has the score distribution shifted compared to previous years? I made a plot with scores from past years.
if scores are at ceiling level, the process becomes essentially a lottery, because minor issues can lead to deductions.
๐ง๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐ ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ป
"Cortical traveling waves in time and space: Physics, physiology, and psychology" is going to the top of the list!
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
#neuroskyence
But if this is to count as representation, do we need the concept 'representation' at all? (I would say not.) Light intensity has a causal effect on retinal cells whose firing subsequently affects the brain. This is how and why the brain senses light.
...and if "observations" may be taken offence at, also happy to replace it with "resonates with the structure of the excitations of its sense organ(elle)s".
I think I see your point. I think I would be happy to replace "track the probablistic structure of observations" with "resonates with the structure of its observations". This leaves intact the unification of predictive/prior effects that appear in perception, inducers of action, and DST.
I see your point in that *most* predictive processing approaches are representational, but this is not necessary. I wrote about this here: direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...
Key quote from the abstract: "...without recourse to hidden states".
Chatbots offer a magnificent bribe - a fast, frictionless route to information that bypasses the discomfort of learning. In this op-ed, we describe this as a Faustian bargain, in which we trade away what it means to be human & universities trade away their value
www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...
Over een 'open-alles-tentamen' en massaal gebruik van ChatGPT. 'Een dappere vriendin kan nu op maximaal een vier rekenen. Ik haal met gedachteloos gestrest overschrijven waarschijnlijk een acht binnen. Het had omgekeerd moeten zijn.'
Dank Iris!
"Daarom verzoek ik u mijn medestudenten en mij te beschermen tegen toekomstige varianten van deze zinloosheid. Kijk alstublieft samen met opleidingen waar dit soort โtoetsingโ plaatsvindt en grijp in. Inflatie voel ik al. Dat hoeft niet door te dringen in de waarde van mijn diploma."
Zie ook trouwens dit congres do/vr in Nijmegen (waar je wellicht al vanaf wist): www.horizondiamond.nl
Zeker een probleem, maar dit lijkt me niet een "nadeel van gratis toegankelijke wetenschappelijke resultaten". Eerder een nadeel van een for-profit publicatie-industrie (waar we dus vanaf moeten).
What is the brain for? Active inference is widely discussed as a unifying framework for understanding brain function, yet its empirical status remains debated. Our review identifies core predictions across the action-perception cycle and evaluates their empirical support: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Over 100 confirmed visitors to this conference, and there is still room to join for next week! Nijmegen, NL, 5-6 Feb
Do goal-directed actions minimize prediction error? Together with @haslagter.bsky.social and @fahrenfort.bsky.social I identified falsifiable predictions of active inference and reviewed the extent to which they are supported by empirical results. Read the preprint here: tinyurl.com/2by8k3h6
OPINIE - Heino Falcke, hoogleraar astrofysica, stuitte bij het boeken van een eenvoudig treinticket op het โbureaucratisch monsterโ van de universiteit. Waanzin, schrijft hij, die meer veroorzaakt dan persoonlijke frustratie. (1/2)
Does anyone know of any articles, etc that looks at how the various flavours of nonrepresentational cognitive science relate to one another? Shapiro wrote a useful book mapping out the flavours of embodiment, but thinking more mapping out eco psych, enactivism, dynamical systems...
Replying because I'd be interested in this, too.
University of Groningen: โญ no more big-tech by 2030 โญ Google Workplace ๐ซ Windows ๐ซ MS Office ๐ซ ChatGPT ๐ซ A huge challenge! Meeting culture won't get us there. Dedication and focus will. ๐ช๐ Let's get to work.
ukrant.nl/magazine/we-... @rug.nl @rug-gmw.bsky.social #science
Worrying indeed, but then again: the >50% claim was based on a survey among Frontiers reviewers. And who nowadays still reviews for Frontiers...?
Check out this short piece I wrote, based on my recent visit to the Critical AI Literacy symposium at Radboud University, organised by @irisvanrooij.bsky.social, @olivia.science and others: www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...
This is a very good letter, and I especially endorse and appreciate this succinct specification of the goal of academic training.
โThe goal of academic training is not to solve problems as efficiently and quickly as possible, but to develop skills for identifying and dealing with novel problems, which have never been solved before.โ
Open letter, consider signing ๐๏ธ if you havenโt yet ๐ openletter.earth/open-letter-...
Congrats Ryszard!
Fantastische column van hoogleraar natuurkunde Tjerk Oosterhuis over de staat van de universiteiten na decennia van onderfinanciering: www.mareonline.nl/opinie/ga-di...
