Rachel Schneider

Hooo boy. There we go. It was about domestic surveillance after all.

Post See new posts Conversation Laura Rozen @lrozen · 2h From US admin official background briefing recording listening to, seriously question if US negotiators understood what Iranians were proposing. One official keeps saying acronym for “IAEA” wrong. They seem astonished Iran would not agree to the US supplying them nuclear fuel Laura Rozen @lrozen · 2h They took as suspicious proposals that Iran saw as concessionary. Laura Rozen @lrozen · 2h Explains why Oman FM tried to come to DC to explain what US negotiators may not have fully understood Laura Rozen @lrozen Am not saying what Iran proposed would have been enough, I dont know, but it seems US negotiators did not have the expert guidance to understand it correctly

On top of all the reporting that this war of aggression was planned well in advance, it seems that the reporting also indicates that the US political leadership are quite literally too stupid to understand basic diplomacy. I mean literally not smart enough.

As it always is throughout the month of March, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present is freed from its usual paywall and available for all to explore.

Strength is about doing the right thing, decisively, consistently, rather than checking to see how it plays with voters in Ohio first. There is an opportunity here for Dem candidates who offer decisive, CONSTANT radical defense of democracy and a full-throated fight against the tech-fash oligarchy.

Every stage of this process - his arrest, spending a year in jail, being dumped on the streets to die - would be deeply shameful in a society that actually valued human life.

You don’t hate this regime nearly enough.

Deuteronomy 27:18

[18] “‘Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Screenshot of a NYT article that says: 'Immigration Agents Arrest Student Inside Columbia Building, School Says Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said that the federal officials had misrepresented themselves to gain access.'

Federal agents misrepresenting themselves to enter a dorm at 6:30 a.m. is not routine enforcement. It’s a serious constitutional issue that demands answers. Fast.

I deleted the post below because Hoylman posted an updated version stating: "UPDATE: ICE used a phony missing persons bulletin for a 5 year old girl. It is unconfirmed at this time whether they impersonated an officer to do so."

x.com/bradhoylman/...

There’s been far too little focus on what the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act would do below the congressional level.

Republicans in several Southern states may be able to gerrymander quasi-permanent legislative supermajorities and wipe out Black representation across local governments

Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research - Nature The proliferation of artificial intelligence tools in scientific research risks creating illusions of understanding, where scientists believe they understand more about the world than they actual...

More broadly, the essay is a great example of the "illusion of understanding" that @lmesseri.bsky.social and I warned in 2024 would be a risk of using LLMs, especially as they become more capable

17/

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If the author had appropriately exercised epistemic vigilance here, he would have recognized that (a) Claude is not a credible source, that (b) he lacks the expertise to apply content-based epistemic vigilance on this topic, and so

15/

Because the core argument of the essay is that (content based) epistemic vigilance is enough to ensure the accuracy of co-writing with LLMs. But the essay is inaccurate because it fails to consider the importance of source credibility.

14/

Epistemic vigilance towards content alone is clearly not enough to guard against misinformation, as this essay demonstrates. The human author here is unfamiliar with cognitive science so misses that his definition of epistemic vigilance is incomplete, in a way that misleads readers

13/

Specifically, the idea of source credibility just doesn't apply straightforwardly to LLM interactions. When I get info from another person I can ask: how does the content relate to their expertise? Their lived experience? Their interests and biases?

8/

But even if it were disclosed that this essay was Claude-generated, we'd still have a problem with respect to epistemic vigilance. This was a concept developed to explain how we guard against misinformation *by other people*. LLMs (despite what Anthropic would have us believe) are *not people*.

7/

Perusing some of the other posts on Sam's blog, I see that he likes to use Claude when writing essays. So probably he used Claude to write this essay as well, even though this is not disclosed explicitly (a bit odd for an essay on epistemic vigilance)

sbgeoaiphd.github.io/rotating_the...

6/

Whenever I encounter a new piece of writing the first thing I look at is the source. In this case, Sam Barrett works in AI (so stands to benefit financially from pro-AI arguments). His background seems to be in geosciences (so not necessarily well informed about epistemic vigilance)

5/

The essay claims users can eliminate risk from LLMs as long as they exercise (content-based) epistemic vigilance + active participation.

But this argument misses half the story of epistemic vigilance - arguably the more important half. Let's take a look at source-based epistemic vigilance.

4/

The essay argues that, as a default, LLMs erode epistemic vigilance, which it defines exclusively with regards to content.

3/

Epistemic Vigilance Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remain...

Epistemic vigilance is a concept developed by Sperber et al. describing how we guard against the possibility that other people might misinform us.

Two key points in this literature:
1. We need to scrutinize the content of messages
2. We need to scrutinize the source of messages

2/

I'm a cognitive scientist with an interest in epistemic vigilance, and this essay that's been going around gave me pause.

I don't think it's straightforward to apply the concept of epistemic vigilance to interactions with LLMs, as this essay does.

🧵/

sbgeoaiphd.github.io/rotating_the...

Screenshot of GoFundMe page showing a $25 donation

Done!

Clarence Thomas Just Struck Another Blow to Black Power In his majority ruling in a sleeper case about mail delivery, Thomas opened the door to a new way for Republicans to suppress the Black vote.

In an overlooked decision this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the post office can refuse to deliver your mail, which is KIND OF SIGNIFICANT if you choose to mail your ballot.
To do this work, the anti-democracy wing turned to their favorite “black friend,” Clarence Thomas.

The 75 Elections to Watch This March - Bolts The 2026 midterms really are starting. Five states hold all of their primaries for federal and state offices in March, and voters there face high-profile choices. They’ll decide which Democrat... Read...

NEW: We're there. The midterms really are starting.

March has the year's 1st supreme court race. Primaries for Senate, AG, & legislature. Sheriff & DA races rocked by ICE. Special elections that may flip. Even a minimum wage measure!

My guide of the *75* elections to watch in March:

These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

the only campaign speech I want to hear from a Dem running for office

A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care. U.S. service members have long faced strict limits on abortions, even when used to resolve miscarriages. Under federal law, the military will only pay for abortions in cases of rape, incest or to save...

The morning that Cmdr. Elizabeth Nakagawa was scheduled to have a D&C to remove fetal tissue after losing a very wanted pregnancy, she learned the surgery had been canceled because the military’s health insurance plan refused to pay for it.

(Published Dec. 2024)

We really, really need a cataclysmic backlash against the GOP all over the country, if we're going to have a goddamn country at all.

These are totalitarian lunatics who will only be stopped by overwhelming opposition. The good news is I'm pretty damn sure we'll fucking get it.

But this'll be ugly.

This is what I need cis folks to understand.

It's been a decade.

Imagine living TEN FUCKING YEARS watching as a blatant, artificial campaign to erase your personhood, your identity and your safety chugs along, increasing in power every single day, and most people don't care or dismiss it