Von Papen, von Hindenburg och von Schleicher annonserar sin strategi för att tygla nazisterna (1932, färgläggd från originalet i svartvit).
If you, as a social scientist, believe that AI is now a better social scientist than you, then (a) you’re probably right, and (b) sure sounds like a skill issue, y’know?
borrowing @anthonymoser.com's template. it actually doesn't matter whether "AI" is "useful".
Funny how tech buzzwords make their way into unexpected corners of our existence. Before AI there was blockchain and before that there were apps and before that everything was .com.
In sociology this would be that one generation where we went “we are educating sociologists, not statisticians, so let’s just teach them to press the right buttons on SPSS and it will be fine.”
For the ABM and networks enthusiasts: Special Issue of Social Networks on "Agent-based Modelling for Social Network Research" - co-ed by Andreas Flache, @squazzoni.bsky.social, Károly Takács and me
www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...
Deadlines
Extended abstracts: 1 April
Full papers: 15 November
“Within two hours of subscribing to NatSocToday for the purposes of this investigation, the Substack algorithm directed the Guardian’s account to 21 other profiles featuring similar content.”
substack continues to be a cesspool that should be abandoned just like x
Up next: some Mark Regnerus type writes a textbook based solely on Spencer’s social evolutionism and late Werner Sombart “blut und boden” geisteswissenschaft. I bet that one will clear censorship.
We don't sample from a distribution. Meanings are not random, and they are not individually determined. Nothing means what I say it means. Meanings are culturally determined. They are arbitrary because they are constructed, but not simply by individuals.
We would not look at such model and be like “wow, someone created artificial thermodynamics,” so we should probably not call whatever LLMs are doing “artificial intelligence.” There is no “understanding“ involved in these models.
People modelling intelligence out of embeddings, make me think of a model of heat transfer that is based solely on measured temperatures and their correlations, ignoring molecular behaviour. It might make plausible predictions, but is definitely not reproducing the underlying processes.
Also because co-occurrence and embeddings are trying to measure meanings in all their complexity and (pun unintended) embeddedness within physical and social contexts. Saying that embeddings are meaning is akin to looking at a termometer and saying “that is heat/cold.”
Vi alla kommer ihåg vad sossarna gjorde efter 2015, oavsett hur förvånade och förskräckta de låtsas vara nu när konsekvenserna börjar dyka upp. Det var S som bäddade för Tidö.
Men jag läser inlägg i sociala medier där socialdemokrater nu förvånas och förskräcks över att den strama migrationspolitiken är stram 😱
Decent people resist Gestapo.
Many thanks!
I’m sure that somebody is already making this argument, and I’d love to read about how the current turn to fascism is partly a response to the current crisis of social reproduction. Any pointers?
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.
I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
outra distinção importante é quem é de esquerda no mundo inteiro, e quem é só da fronteira pra dentro
If he carries on like this it's going to make the FIFA Peace Prize look ridiculous
Doctorow's enshittification closing 2025 with a strong play for Word of the Year
futurism.com/artificial-i...
'The fall of a prolific science journal [Science of the Total Environment] exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing'
english.elpais.com/science-tech...
'(It) has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin in 2024'
There is no ethical use of AI because the continued existence of the AI industry is directly harmful to (alongside everyone else) the interests of everyone whose labour makes books exist—writers of fiction & nonfiction, illustrators, translators, researchers, editors, everyone.
