Andrew Mueller

Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw.

The Sony ZV-E1 has animal eye autofocus. Same sensor as FX3 and A7SIII. So, good for video but low res for pics. Of those, only the a7SIII has a viewfinder

I used Figma, but just because I know it well. I think excalidraw or figjam would be great too

Hmm yes, I should learn more about UML. Though I can already tell its primarily focused on grouping stuff into boxes with lines between them

The important thing for me is understanding lifecycles and data flow. If it was just boxes representing classes or files, then I wouldn't find it nearly as useful

Does anyone else draw these silly architecture figures of codebases as you learn them? A mishmash of boxes representing files/classes. Circles for event/while loops. Lines and arrows for data flow and events. All of it kinda messy.

Is there a name for this sort of thing? #gamedev #rustlang #SciArt

I still firmly believe LLMs aren’t conscious and there’s no clear path toward artificial consciousness. But perfect simulation of consciousness seems…possible

The perspective that “this is all still curve-fitting” can still be applied to modern AI. I think.

But that begs the question: what happens when an artificial intelligence applies curve fitting to every facet of human existence?

I think it can happen to an academic field that you get multiple generations of bad work or shoddy standards enshrined, meaning that the gate-keepers and those training the next generation are kind of anti-selecting for quality and anti-nurturing in their pedagogy.

And so, I'm questioning if "science communicator" is the term to use. Science itself needs to be communicated in mostly niche circumstances (climate chance, conservation, etc). Otherwise, science will influence your life if and when it damn we'll feels like it

Her: What do you mean?

Me: It's about misunderstood incentives. I don't think society is healthier if more people know how black holes work. I do think society is healthier if more people are intrinsically interested in how black holes work.

Her: So what if somone says "What's the point in learning about black holes? They have no influence on my life"

Me: If someome says that, then I've already failed as a science communicator.🧪

Economist @joshgans.bsky.social uses o1-pro to generate a (minor, fun) paper in an hour based on an idea of his, and it gets published in an appropriate peer reviewed journal, with adequate disclosure.

He ends with the same sentiment I am increasingly seeing from fellow academics: what now?

I was suprised to see gpt 4 quote data from a paper as "between 1011 and 1014 photons per second". You'd think it would have realized the misrepresentation of scientific notation: 10^11 and 10^14. If it can't pick up on this, then what else?

Yes! I hope to explore this for the future of a academic publishing. It should all just be a graph-like datastructure, with figures at different levels of abstraction. Ready to be expressed through whatever ai-generated modality you wish to interact with (natural language, multimedia...)

Tantamount to: "You wouldn't expect an AI robot to fix a leaky sink if you only ever showed it shakespearean sonnets about plumbing"

JPL seems mostly unscathed following the fires. But many employees undoubobly lost their homes in Altadena, less than a kilometer away.

Img credit A Jefferson

I imagine a cultural line will develop between people deemed to be producing 'fake art' and people producing 'real art' (with generous helping of AI assistance). 'Fake art' peddlers become scapegoats.

Hard to imagine because the line becomes so murky

The book 'wanting' by Luke Burgis has a nice history and analysis of the scapegoat mechanism. Plenty of examples throughout history of people in power choosing and architecting a scapegoat

It's all micropipettes now, right? Show me an emogi for this bad boy

Thank you!

github.com/sansseriff/p...

It compiles to both a website and a Latex document. I've been meaning to post more about it, but I'm dragging my feet since once chapter hasn't been published yet

So, ironically, a lab or-intensive interactive figure makes most sense for content that's been relegated to the supplemental document. (the place for nitty gritty details)

It comes down to audience I guess. An interactive figure is most useful to the tiny fraction of your readers that really really understand your work. Because only they gain something by exploring your data in an unguided fashion

But if the toolset used for writing does not guide the scientist away from extraneous uses of the tech, then publications will use interactive figures like how word-art was used in PowerPoint in the early 2000s.

I don't think these web-first abilities are a problem per se. I acctually really like them!

I say this as somome who 'fell down the rabbit hole'. I wrote my thesis as a website with a number of interactive figures and diagrams. (including the one above) I'm 'proud' of it, but I see little evidence the tech made the content even a little more valuable.

Are all these web-tech features in new publishing formats consistently used to prioritize the reader's experience?

I worry that interactive figures in online-only publications can exist mainly to make the author feel sophisticated and good about themselves. 🧪

'write an original Encyclopedia Brown story' would be a perfect test, because those are short (5-10 page) stories with clues and red herrings leading right up to the final reveal.