Mike Anderson

This week @universitypress.cambridge.org has granted free access to all titles in the collection of Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Biology, edited by Grant Ramsey. There are many options to choose from! Happy reading! 📕👇 www.cambridge.org/core/publica... #philsci #HPbio #evosky #ISHPSSB2025

As a damn good singer and instrumentalist, it was exposure to talent like that that made me think, you know what? I’m happy to enjoy my place in a world of music I don’t need to contribute to.

“The behaviour of my measuring system I made malfunction” isn’t actually good evidence but fundamentally it’s the only argument indirect perception really has (see: illusions, studying perceptual cues in isolation, etc)

We punch way above our weight. On many metrics.

The Earth is wisely trying to shake us off.

Exactly the problem, right, if the executives in charge actually *admire* authoritarian regimes?

This proposed bill allocates $500M for replacing gov. IT systems with commercial AI (a bad idea given known problems with AI) but then preemptively bans all state AI regulation and enforcement for 10 years, making a bad idea much, much worse. d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/Subtitle_C_C...

Physical affordances beat digital simulations every time

Yet another reason why open science initiatives are better options for universities. Right @richardgold.bsky.social ?

ANNUAL MEETING | SPAN

The 1st Society for Philosophy & Neuroscience @socphilneuro.bsky.social meeting was outstanding! I'm so sorry I have to miss the last day. Thanks to the organizers for putting together such an amazing lineup - great to see so many folks working at the intersection.

All of them? Several professors in Philosophy of Chemistry, Art History, Psychology, an Anthropologist back from the field… how am I doing?

The time is fast approaching for the GOP to decide if it’s for or against dismantling significant government programs. It’ll take guts either way, so it’ll be interesting to see the creative ways they devise to kick the can down the road.

Affordances Constrain Motor Abundance: A Hypothesis and A Research Programme osf.io/preprints/ps...

This is a new preprint by me, where I have written down my affordance based approach to UCM and similar methods for the first time in one place. Feedback very much appreciated!

That’s some International Date Line you’ve got there!

In an alternative universe, cog. scientists *read* eco. psych. and find out that...
1. The foundational texts of eco. psych. (Gibson 1966, 1979) don't talk about representations.
2. Affordances aren't what they think they are.
3. The core is ecological information.
4. 50 years+ of experimental work.

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but
2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but
3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So
4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

I spent some time in Silicon Valley 10 years ago, and the obsession with IQ and SAT struck me as sad. Like people who cling to MENSA membership to substitute for actual accomplishments. But now they’ve added genes and the POTUS into the mix, and it’s suddenly dangerous again.

But I sincerely invite anyone else involved in the project to be in touch. There’s a reservoir of related theoretical and methodological expertise, of which you might be unaware (it’s a massive and diverse field), that could complement the aims of the collaboration.

I’m pretty sure this thread, taken as a whole, speaks for itself. Nobody questioned anybody’s expertise. I know these folks. Top notch sensory-motor neuroscience. Just surprising to see it called “Ecological Neuroscience”, which is a different thing. Good luck, man, with whatever it is you’re up to.

Hey now. That’s not very collegial.

Projects Ecological Neuroscience Ecological psychology emphasizes how we can only understand the brain by understanding how animals are physically situated in their environment. A central concept is that th…

Xaq’s group? Yes, great stuff. Other theoretical frames offer related avenues to explore under the affordances umbrella. xaqlab.com/projects/ vs. the things in that special issue linked above.

Probably reps.in Maybe when I first typed it I didn’t put a space.

Why is there an ad in my comment? Is bluesky doing that now?

Got it. Well, given the topic, it’d be great to see collaboration with folks doing Ecol. Neuro. in the Gibsonian tradition. There’s certainly been a lot of interest in the affordance concept lately, in neuroscience and AI in particular. Probably the theoretical frame would be beneficial as well.

Ecological Psychology Gibsonian Neuroscience. Volume 31, Issue 3 of Ecological Psychology

Must have missed that call. Really odd not to see Cisek, Culham, Goodale or Snow, never mind any of these folks: www.tandfonline.com/toc/heco20/3...

They could Obviously have gone with SCONE.

And how the heck did they identify that group of PIs?

Consider Western!

100%

One possible good to come out of this clown show is an honest assessment of what actually creates prosperity. (Hint: it’s targeted investment, honest equal-footing negotiation between otherwise conflicting constituencies, and reliable partnerships.)