Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from NeuroLogica Blog
Designing research studies to determine what is going on inside the minds of animals is extremely challenging. The literature is littered with past studies that failed to properly control for all variables and thereby overinterpreted the results. The challenge is that we cannot read the minds of animals, and they cannot communicate directly to us […] The post Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
Everything, apparently, has a second life on TikTok. At least this keeps us skeptics busy – we have to redebunk everything we have debunked over the last century because it is popping up again on social media, confusing and misinforming another generation. This video is a great example – a short video discussing the “incorruptibility’ […] The post Incorruptible Skepticism first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
On January 20th a Chinese tech company released the free version of their chatbot called DeepSeek. The AI chatbot, by all accounts, is about on par with existing widely available chatbots, like ChatGPT. It does not represent any new abilities or breakthrough in quality. And yet the release shocked the industry causing the tech-heavy stock […] The post The Skinny on DeepSeek first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
There really is a significant mystery in the world of cosmology. This, in my opinion, is a good thing. Such mysteries point in the direction of new physics, or at least a new understanding of the universe. Resolving this mystery – called the Hubble Tension – is a major goal of cosmology. This is a […] The post The Hubble Tension Hubbub first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
My recent article on social media has fostered good social media engagement, so I thought I would follow up with a discussion of the most urgent question regarding social media – should the US ban TikTok? The Biden administration signs into law legislation that would ban the social media app TikTok on January 19th (deliberately […] The post Should the US Ban TikTok? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
More in science
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
How fast AI is improving, and how that's impacting jobs today
The seven-note whistle of the Whimbrel is a classic sound, welcomed by Icelanders at the end of a long, dark winter. These wonderful waders are responding badly to recent changes to Iceland’s landscape, such as the ever-expanding areas of non-native forestry and power infrastructure. Conservation of the species may be supported by reserving areas for … Continue reading The call of the Whimbrel
By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design. The post The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine
According to this article at politico, there was an all-hands meeting at NSF today (at least for the engineering directorate) where they were told that there will be staff layoffs of 25-50% over the next two months. This is an absolute catastrophe if it is accurately reported and comes to pass. NSF is already understaffed. This goes far beyond anything involving DEI, and is essentially a declaration that the US is planning to abrogate the federal role in supporting science and engineering research. Moreover, I strongly suspect that if this conversation is being had at NSF, it is likely being had at DOE and NIH. I don't even know how to react to this, beyond encouraging my fellow US citizens to call their representatives and senators and make it clear that this would be an unmitigated disaster. Update: looks like the presidential budget request will be for a 2/3 cut to the NSF. Congress often goes against such recommendations, but this is certainly an indicator of what the executive branch seems to want.
