🎉The XP team is so glad to present a symposium at #ESCAN2026 in Roma on the need to consider affect to understand the function of consciousness! Inès Mentec and Gabriel Brandolini will be joined by @ashenhav.bsky.social and Benedetto De Martino. 😁See you there!😁https://escan2026.eu/
Very happy to see this come out 😃
🤦♂️ #GenAI #Academia
✨What is the relationship between aesthetic preferences and consciousness?✨
We are so very excited to welcome Richard Prum to discuss this question with us in Brussels.
Do not miss this event!
📅 18 of March, 2026
🕒 16h-18h
📍 Brussels, ULB campus Solbosch, Solvay
Out in PNAS:
Repetitions trigger illusory awareness in implicit statistical learning
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
We find that the presence of repetitions in sequences that follow a hidden, complex regularity makes participants think they consciously figured out the real regularity... 1/n
« [AI systems] delegitimize knowledge, inhibit cognitive development, short-circuit decision making processes, and isolate humans by displacing or degrading human connection. »
A tree cut down and felled next to its fellow trees but this tree's rings have an oddity to them and the shape and texture and color it makes it look like a fish drawing
Sometimes if you cut it down correctly, you can still see the last meal a tree had in its stomach when it died
I laughed out loud when I saw
“AI use statement
The author used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 for research purposes and for editorial feedback after the drafting process.”
#neuroskyence
Yes I get your point and it’s an interesting one. It’s a credit assignment problem, and here either you take undue credit or you devaluate the product because it was co-created. Likewise the receiver will assign completely different meaning to something that they know AI wrote rather than you.
Why should I just write « I agree »? 😃 It is indeed OK to use the words of someone else, but then typically you would quote the person you are citing. Here, it would be very difficult (it seems to me) to say « As chatGPT wrote, … ». So you wouldn’t. But then we’re back where we started.
Precisely - responsibility rests with you. So would you rather take credit for something you did not write, or show how coldly utilararian you are by admitting you used AI to write something meant to be so deeply personal?
Consider this: You ask chatGPT to compose the eulogy for a deceased friend. After you speak at the funeral, someone tells you how moved she was. Do you reveal chatGPT wrote the speech? If you don’t, you are cheating. But if you do, the words lose their meaning and you are a fraud. What would you do?
outsourcing thinking itself is unquestionably a catastrophic way forward for humanity
US higher education was a crown jewel, generating knowledge, wealth, prestige, and power unrivaled by anyone.
And the US is throwing it away, because Americans elected a govt ideologically opposed to truth, science, merit, and racial/gender equality, preferring to weaken the country to reduce that.
wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” —George Orwell (1984)
spotted in Brussels; not sure yet of the intent
real-life Necker cubes - can you see them?
1976/81; hard to find but looking forward to reading it. And that gorgeous cover! Anyone knows the font?
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 years in the making, great to see this important new study (actually many studies) now preprinted. 👏🏼👏🏼 @peterlush.bsky.social
Thank you for all the energy and passion you have invested in launching the Association - I am almost jealous that this will now benefit the council, but convinced that your presence there will help us all!
It is a great honor to join the Scientific Council of the @erc.europa.eu. The ERC is precisely the kind of organisation I am proud to champion. Science is what binds Europe together and sustains its resilience
if christmas could be captured in one single photo...
#CIFAR -- winter school on the neuroscience of consciousness, by the Brain Mind Consciousness program (with generous support from @templetonworld.bsky.social -- thank you!!)
apply to come next year!
$600 million dollar bet by Astera Foundation to solve consciousness via reading and writing of neural activity led by Doris Tsao.
astera.org/neuroscienti...
Edward O. Wilson in 2009: “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” (thank you @kottke.org)
Indeed, terrific beginning
It's a real honour to be chairing next year's @mesec-community.bsky.social winter school on consciousness science, March 22-28👇🏽
« The real tragedy isn’t that students use ChatGPT to do their course work. It’s that universities are teaching everyone—students, faculty, administrators—to stop thinking. »
