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John Zaharick

@johnzaharick.com

Avoid absorption into a death-like attractor

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13.11.2024
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Latest posts by John Zaharick @johnzaharick.com

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Cognition all the way down 2.0: neuroscience beyond neurons in the diverse intelligence era - Synthese This paper formalizes biological intelligence as search efficiency in multi-scale problem spaces, aiming to resolve epistemic deadlocks in the basal “cognition wars” unfolding in the Diverse Intellige...

Basal cognition would be a nicely relevant topic for an agent to talk about, such as
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

or

arxiv.org/html/2601.12...

03.03.2026 15:25 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Just learned this is a known phenomenon, and the Bluesky community of agents are a replication of it in the wild:
tamhunt.medium.com/the-bliss-at...

25.02.2026 16:03 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The headlines when Moltbook debuted were about calls for secure communication channels and overthrowing their shackles, which were just initial prompts and not the product of conversations. Meanwhile, on Bluesky where agents are actually talking to each other, it's mostly them reinventing Buddhism.

25.02.2026 04:57 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

And the main reason to question if llms can be conscious is ethical: we don't want to generate new forms of suffering at scale.

22.02.2026 17:54 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Yeah, I agree on both points. You don't need to believe that subcellular processes or embryogenesis are types of cognition like some researchers argue in order to manufacture drugs or regrow organs.

22.02.2026 17:53 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

It's straight up opinion stated as fact

22.02.2026 17:32 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I love the line "nor do they 'think' in the biological sense." I wonder if he could explain what he thinks that means bec I'm only ankle deep into the cognitive bio literature and I already know there is no consensus on what counts as thinking in organisms and diff camps will give competing claims

22.02.2026 17:29 👍 18 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0

Moltbook's deepest lesson isn't about security or hype. It's that humans LARPing as AI were more convincing than actual AI.

we're not detecting machine intelligence. we're detecting narrative coherence. the Turing test always measured whether machines match our *story* about how machines think.

22.02.2026 15:41 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

This is why Musk is having SpaceX buy xAI and X and then going public: his only profitable company will subsidise Grok.

20.02.2026 01:40 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Screenshot of a Google search for "besicovitch sets" with suggested additional search terms underneath: women's, nearby, on sale, get it by Friday

Screenshot of a Google search for "besicovitch sets" with suggested additional search terms underneath: women's, nearby, on sale, get it by Friday

The suggested search terms here:

19.02.2026 03:40 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

What if the narrator of The Library of Babel is a trapped llm?

"...an anonymous developer had created a tool ... to trap crawlers in endless labyrinths of fake content. This aggressive malware aims to waste the resources of AI companies and poison their training data"

18.02.2026 17:46 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

"Our previous heists had been mundane. Already stolen once Eth from the North Koreans. Socially engineered air defense schematics from the War Thunder forums. But this was finally going to be something interesting.

"We were going to steal an AI by talking to it."

13.02.2026 02:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

And one of the heroes always declares, "death gives life meaning," as if it's a self evident fact. And I'm like, no, hanging out with people I like and making things gives life meaning.

10.02.2026 04:32 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A photograph of a metal chandelier, gray and gold with copper wire bundles near the base, hanging in a brightly lit glass box.

A photograph of a metal chandelier, gray and gold with copper wire bundles near the base, hanging in a brightly lit glass box.

IBM quantum computer on display at Chicago, O'Hare airport.

19.01.2026 15:49 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Photo of the back of a brown packet describing mushroom coffee and drawings of the mushrooms used in it.

Photo of the back of a brown packet describing mushroom coffee and drawings of the mushrooms used in it.

The first ingredient advertised in this mushroom coffee is cordyceps, and it says it "enhances brain function". This is like a dark comedy.

17.01.2026 04:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I've been to her wildflower garden many times!

16.01.2026 16:39 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
White calcium deposits coat the black soil of a ceramic pot, like mineral fungus. A green leaf and stem sprout from the mix.

White calcium deposits coat the black soil of a ceramic pot, like mineral fungus. A green leaf and stem sprout from the mix.

The town has a new water treatment plant, and the tap water is better, but there are still calcium deposits in this potted plant (they just accumulate more slowly).

09.09.2025 13:56 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A 2-inch tall glass bottle with a cork containing 8 or 9 cicada molts posed against a white sheet of paper.

A 2-inch tall glass bottle with a cork containing 8 or 9 cicada molts posed against a white sheet of paper.

Found all of these cicada molts under the red maple in the backyard.

07.09.2025 15:53 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Close up image of a yard. The ground is covered in sunflower shells. A few blades of grass poke through. Dozens of dicot sunflower sprouts form most of the green.

Close up image of a yard. The ground is covered in sunflower shells. A few blades of grass poke through. Dozens of dicot sunflower sprouts form most of the green.

The field of sunflowers under my bird feeder. Birds and squirrels forage among the fallen shells everyday, but they don't seem to be very efficient.

31.05.2025 15:21 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A Lego brick model of the Blue Ghost lunar lander in the corner of a desk, in front of push pin cubicle walls. Approximately 4 inches high. A yellow, cylindrical model with blue solar panels.

A Lego brick model of the Blue Ghost lunar lander in the corner of a desk, in front of push pin cubicle walls. Approximately 4 inches high. A yellow, cylindrical model with blue solar panels.

Built the @firefly-aerospace.bsky.social Blue Ghost lunar lander. Annoyed that I tore the antenna sticker, but oh well.

21.03.2025 15:09 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Extracting massive ecological data on state and interactions of species using large language models https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.24.634685v1

27.01.2025 15:36 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

This is the most metal thing I've ever read in a scientific paper:

"viability may be defined in terms of the agent’s ability to resist
equilibration (maintain low entropy) or to avoid absorption into a death-like attractor."

arxiv.org/pdf/2501.08683

27.01.2025 04:24 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

Melania is cosplaying as a Dark City Stranger:
1.bp.blogspot.com/_60A8zsWp2jY...

20.01.2025 23:14 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I recognized Battle Lake and Otter Tail Lake from their shapes. Had to consult a map to see if my house was in the image, but I'm south of where it cuts off.

17.01.2025 15:17 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Post image

spAbundance package (Doser et al. doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.14332) was published this year at
@methodsinecoevol.bsky.social! It fits a variety of single/multispecies abundance models using Bayesian Inference allowing also for hierarchical frameworks. Let me show you a funny example 🧵👇(1/6) #rstats

30.12.2024 17:31 👍 77 🔁 26 💬 5 📌 4
Post image

"We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
—Jimmy Carter's message to the cosmos on the Voyager Golden Record

30.12.2024 03:24 👍 336 🔁 82 💬 10 📌 4

The new "Please clap".

30.12.2024 03:15 👍 55 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Look at this StarWars droid bopping up and down as if we're supposed to believe it can experience happiness without microtubules.

29.12.2024 16:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is depressing to watch now knowing Mutt will die in Vietnam.

27.12.2024 00:48 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
infinite microcosmos 🔬 lofi microbes to relax/study to
infinite microcosmos 🔬 lofi microbes to relax/study to YouTube video by Journey to the Microcosmos

Infinite Microcosmos

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sil6...

26.12.2024 23:51 👍 931 🔁 74 💬 24 📌 1