Jelle Zuidema 🟥

The debate used to be whether or not neural language models could model the competence of an ordinary language user -- the central topic for linguists. Has the debate now shifted to whether or not language models can model competent linguists?

My Norwegian is a little rusty, so can't give 100% guarantees, but it looks legit!

Four buses is Oslo on a roundabout blocking each-other's exit

This situation on a roundabout in Oslo last week, causing major traffic jams, must be a metaphor for something... but I have figured out for what yet. Any suggestions?

Photo Endre Helgeland, via www.vg.no/nyheter/i/3p...

Ik zie op het etiketje "zeekoe" staan. Of is dat een afleidingsmanoeuvre?

Congrats, Scotland, for qualifying for the world cup football! Kudos to this small nation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (population 5.5M)!

Congrats, Curaçao, for qualifying too! Kudos to this small nation in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (population 160,000😱😱😱⛈️🤸🏾‍♂️⛹🏾‍♂️🤩❤️...

Funny that there are separate Wikipedia pages on 'supernormal stimulus' and 'supernormal stimuli'!

I dont know the 'stimuli' book, but its author, Deirdre Barrett, in any case deserves credit for making Brendborg's points well before Brendborg!

(I hope he cites her; I've only heard his podcast).

Thanks; corrected thread reposted!

Tinbergen revisited: a replication and extension of experiments on the beak colour preferences of herring gull chicks Young herring gull, Larus argentatus, chicks peck at the red patch on the lower mandible of their parent's yellow beak. In a famous study on the ‘inst…

Fortunately, a 2009 replication by my former colleagues Carel ten Cate, Michelle Spierings and team showed his conclusions mostly stand!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

There is, by the way, an interesting twist to the seagull study, which made both the 'supernormal stimulus' and Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen famous (Nobel 1973). In it, he made a methodological error. Later, he realized this and (dubiously) back-corrected his data.

Super Stimulated A better place to buy your books. Support independent journalism with everything you buy. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25

Supernormal stimuli achieve this by exploiting shortcuts in the behavioral response mechanisms, which of course evolved to deal only with 'normal' stimuli. Describing the appeal of junk food and likes in these terms in not new, but Brendborg's popularization ("Super Stimulated") looks very useful.

Supernormal stimulus - Wikipedia

A supernormal stimulus is an exaggerated stimulus that evokes stronger responses than natural stimuli do. Unnatural red spots that make seagull chicks peck more. Added sugar that makes humans eat too much. Super-engaging videos that hijack our attention.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superno...

Tinbergen's original datasheet from 1947, showing how often seagull chicks peck on 6 different artificial beaks with different colored spots. The data shows most responses to a model with a black color.

What do our addictions to sugar, social media, doom scrolling and more have in common? Nicklas Brendborg, in this podcast* and in his book, nicely captures the mechanisms behind them using the concept of 'supernormal stimulus', known from a famous 1947 seagull study

*: megaphone.link/NSR7522957702

No LLM-assisted writing in this household! Just good old sleep deprivation induced human hallucinations. 😱

Ouch, yes! Will delete and post again

Waag | Marleen Stikker Marleen Stikker is founder of Waag.

Marleen Stikker. If you don't know: she's Dutch, internet pioneer, author of "The internet is broken (but we can fix it"), and advocate of citizen science.
waag.org/en/marleen-s...

"The man who co-discovered the double helix, perhaps not surprisingly, regarded DNA as the ultimate puppet master, immeasurably more powerful than the social and other forces that lesser (much lesser) scientists studied. Then his hubris painted him into a corner."

Ah, too bad, but still looking forward to it. Great stuff (I discovered your substack [and your career change] only recently, but am enjoying it). I hope it'll resonate with many others as well!

Identifying and Adapting Transformer-Components Responsible for Gender Bias in an English Language Model Abhijith Chintam, Rahel Beloch, Willem Zuidema, Michael Hanna, Oskar van der Wal. Proceedings of the 6th BlackboxNLP Workshop: Analyzing and Interpreting Neural Networks for NLP. 2023.

@mikexcohen.bsky.social Nice first post on gender bias in LLMs!
mikexcohen.substack.com/p/gender-bia...

Now nervously waiting for part 2, to see whether you'll talk your readers through our "adapting Transformer components" work. Or is there something even better?
aclanthology.org/2023.blackbo...

Dit Klavertje (dat mijn zoekmachine toont in een zoektocht naar iets heel anders), leest als een halve roman in één zin. Ik ben nu wel benieuwd naar de tweede helft, maar de link is dood (net als de ouders).

Helping people spot misinformation And the greatest gift psychology gave the world

Nice post on 'inoculation theory', the idea that we can fight misinformation by training/nudging people ahead of the wave of misinformation. Tom Stafford discusses the current evidence for and against this theory (cf. @profsanderlinden.bsky.social).

tomstafford.substack.com/p/helping-pe...

The Majority AI View - Anil Dash A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

The Majority AI View - Anil Dash

Even though AI has been the most-talked-about topic in tech for a few years, we’re in an unusual situation where the most common opinion about AI within the tech industry is barely ever mentioned.

What's this about?

Image shows the first two printed pages of the paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” by Cecilia Lai and colleagues, published in Nature in 2001 (volume 413, pages 519-523). The abstract reads as follows: Individuals affected with developmental disorders of speech and language have substantial difficulty acquiring expressive and/or receptive language in the absence of any profound sensory or neurological impairment and despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although studies of twins consistently indicate that a significant genetic component is involved, most families segregating speech and language deficits show complex patterns of inheritance, and a gene that predisposes individuals to such disorders has not been identified. We have studied a unique three-generation pedigree, KE, in which a severe speech and language disorder is transmitted as an autosomal-dominant monogenic trait. Our previous work mapped the locus responsible, SPCH1, to a 5.6-cM interval of region 7q31 on chromosome 7. We also identified an unrelated individual, CS, in whom speech and language impairment is associated with a chromosomal translocation involving the SPCH1 interval. Here we show that the gene FOXP2, which encodes a putative transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead DNA-binding domain, is directly disrupted by the translocation breakpoint in CS. In addition, we identify a point mutation in affected members of the KE family that alters an invariant amino-acid residue in the forkhead domain. Our findings suggest that FOXP2 is involved in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.

Twenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350....
A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n
🗣️🧬🧪

Announcing the first (and perhaps only) Multilingual Minds and Machines Meeting! Come join us in Nijmegen, June 22-23, 2026, if you are interested in computational models of human multilingualism: mmmm2026.github.io

I look forward to listening to it! Critical reflection on journalism by journalists is much appreciated.

Looks like the audio is here: dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3...

Honest question: why do you say he has no mandate? What would a mandate be? Given how difficult it is to change an existing system (and yet how important), I'm wondering if there ever is a practical route to transitioning to PR, if a supermajority like Labour's is not enough.

Let's seek shelter under those trees over there! 😱

This is embarrassing reporting, where AI-is-almost-sentient is the "nuanced view", and @mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social the radical.

One of @robert-booth.bsky.social's sources: Ufair "a small, undeniably fringe organisation, led by three humans and seven AIs with names such as Aether & Buzz."😱

New blog post: AI Allergy.

On my increasing disgust with the AI discourse, even though I still like the technical and philosophical. And how I wish I could be excited about AI again.

togelius.blogspot.com/2025/08/ai-a...