Sanmay Das

Robynn Cox and I have a new paper! It's about the history of predictive algorithms in criminal justice, back in the 1920s-1950s. This paper is the result of five years of research and we're so happy to see it out. 🧵 1/

My 2 cents about The Atlantic’s Mellon Foundation polemic and humanities funding:

Beyond its specious content, the article illustrates something truly dangerous: the normalization of conspiratorial tropes about externally funded research in universities originally seen in extremist propaganda. 1/5

It’s worth reading the op-ed Zoë Hitzig wrote about the AI advertising landscape. Very thoughtful and informative

YouTube video by Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing On Machine Learning for Prediction and Prioritization in the Allocation of Scarce Societal Resources

Prediction and prioritization for allocating societal resources - @sanmayd.bsky.social - highly recommend www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwXu...

Impact of capacity constraints on RCT evaluation - @hannahli.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuwB... (3/9)

Basically for all the same reasons that arXiv is moderated at all. If it weren't, it would be unusable / unmaintainable. info.arxiv.org/help/moderat...

They also spend a lot of time trying to find the best category / make sure a submission is looked at by the right people!

Completely agreed that norms differ! There are often judgment calls made. I should note, though, that mods are typically experienced / senior people in their communities and should have a good understanding of such norms!

Hmm, OK, I mean there's always some subjectivity in making that decision. I don't know what this particular case was, but I'll make a more general point w.r.t. the other FAccT paper you mentioned. Anything that could reasonably be accepted to FAccT, AIES, etc as a research paper *should* be fine

It could just have been a mistake! You should appeal if you feel it meets the standard of being research.

My opinion -- it makes a novel contribution to knowledge in a way that many of the position papers that are being submitted to the position paper tracks at major conferences do not. In this case the contribution is through a different kind of analysis than most cs, but clearly research.

A “position paper” is fundamentally different from one that uses methods of research that are standard (in other disciplines). As long as there’s a clear enough connection to cs, it should have a home! I think cs.CY would be completely on target for something like this

This paper on its own is not at all what I would consider a position paper and would fit into cs.CY just fine, though? Although I certainly don’t have any issues with a cs.DH category.

8675309 is prime, and so is 8675311, so if you ever need a middlin'-large pair of adjacent primes to test your cryptographic suite, all you need is a 1980s earworm and a +2 and you're all set.

Happy 40th birthday to Bill Waterson’s ‘Calvin and Hobbes’. A work of consummate, stubborn, human, and more-than-human art.

After having more than one SPC at AAAI produce AI-generated “metareviews” (that were actually “reviews” in the first place) my only remaining faith is that by continuing to layer the hierarchy of reviews further the law of large numbers will kick in in some fashion…

I think many people are misreading this as being about all cs arxiv papers, not just review/position papers!

Yup, this. And on the second question, I think it’s when ICML and NeurIPS introduced position paper tracks.

And in that pause between pitch and contact - longer than logic, shorter than hope - we remembered why baseball existed long before we judged a sport's value by viral moments and betting apps. It is the romance of failure. The mortal beauty of trying and missing seven times out of 10 and still being considered great. It is the only sport where patience is a weapon, and panic the surest death. You cannot simply run out the clock in baseball; you must face it, pitch by terrifying pitch, until it finally releases you.

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper

www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

If you’ve had issues of this kind with cs.CY, you should always feel free to appeal. Mods for the categories are, from my experience, both well-trained and read widely in their areas, and understand the norms of relevant disciplines pretty well!

This is also a big part of why there’s suddenly a preponderance of “multiagent systems” — they need modularity for individual tasks within a larger project because otherwise they get muddled by the context window.

Sadly, it will likely be more important than the famous Conservapedia

The New York Times’ “Moderation Advantage” Is a Statistical Illusion After accounting for money and incumbency the supposed electoral bonus for moderate candidates vanishes entirely.

NYT pushed its “Dems must go moderate” take again yesterday. In a new piece out today, @adambonica.bsky.social shows even more clearly why the data don’t support it. It also shows what a skilled empiricist and teacher Adam is.

Very proud of my pal’s public work.

open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education.

We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.

Thanks for an excellent talk! Great work

Friday night: the time when parents across this nation check to make sure that the correct color of jersey is clean and nobody lost a shin guard

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers We align the aligners

This is good satire: alignmentalignment.ai

Lol, will take your word for it!

Also they do all this bio and chemistry stuff, but no math! Monotonic! Affine!

holy shit this is a helluva ad from the Democrat running against Joni Ernst in Iowa. worth every second

All the Apps You Need to Keep Up with Your Child’s Youth Baseball Team This Summer Dear parents, We are thrilled to have your child on our summer baseball team. We have a few apps we use to help keep things organized around here, ...

"You’ll also want to download SportsYouth to communicate with the parents of team members. Many of the games require your child to arrive at 4:30 p.m., even though you need to work until 5 p.m."