Paul Smaldino

✊

Such a good book.

pan of cute biscuits decorated to look like faces

same pan baked, a horrific fucked up mass of evil

how it started/how it's going

Of all the analogies, this one about horses is the dumbest.

I got the USDA data and it turns out cars were indeed bad for horses.
bsky.app/profile/psma...

I grabbed this data from the USDA and made a graph.

I've changed my mind - I think 'population collapse with the survivors remaining enslaved to the whims of their owners' makes horses a brilliant analogy for what happens if fully capable human-like AI ever really did take over our jobs.

No no, clearly horses are like learning to snorkel and popping wheelies and trading sourdough starters and shit now that they don’t have to pull carriages anymore.

I also cannot get over the author of this article uncritically accepting this story about how horses “can do whatever they want now,” and instead just arguing “but humans aren’t horses.”

I cannot get over the author of this article uncritically accepting this story about how horses “can do whatever they want now,” and instead just arguing “but humans aren’t horses.”

Of all the analogies, this one about horses is the dumbest.

Wimsatt was my PhD advisor's advisor, and his work runs deep through much of my work. One of the greats.

An official letter from the Kansas Division of Vehicles dated February 23, 2026, with a redacted recipient address. The letter notifies the recipient that due to the enactment of Senate Bill 244, all Kansas driver's licenses and IDs must reflect the holder's sex at birth. It states that the recipient's current credential will become invalid immediately upon the law's publication on February 26, 2026, with no grace period. The recipient is directed to surrender their current ID to receive a new one matching their sex assigned at birth. The document concludes with instructions on how to appeal the notice if received in error, along with contact information for the department.

Kansas is sending letters to trans people telling them that their licenses will be revoked as of tomorrow and that they risk arrest for driving on a suspended license.

This is pure cruelty.

www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

GitHub - BenjaFried/modsoc_Julia: Modeling Social Behavior in Julia Modeling Social Behavior in Julia. Contribute to BenjaFried/modsoc_Julia development by creating an account on GitHub.

Interested in using my textbook, Modeling Social Behavior, but wishing code was in a more general programming language than NetLogo? The incomparable Ben Fried has translated all modeling code into JULIA, utilizing the excellent Agents.jl package. github.com/BenjaFried/m...

GitHub - BenjaFried/modsoc_Julia: Modeling Social Behavior in Julia Modeling Social Behavior in Julia. Contribute to BenjaFried/modsoc_Julia development by creating an account on GitHub.

Interested in using my textbook, Modeling Social Behavior, but wishing code was in a more general programming language than NetLogo? The incomparable Ben Fried has translated all modeling code into JULIA, utilizing the excellent Agents.jl package. github.com/BenjaFried/m...

New preprint with @psmaldino.bsky.social on the evolution of similarity-biased learning: osf.io/preprints/so...

This mathematical treatment both simplifies and extends our previous simulation treatment of the subject: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Great thread by @apvelilla.bsky.social about our new paper: "A Demographic Theory of Similarity-Biased Social Learning."

We use mathematical modeling to explore the functional role played by identity markers in how we learn from others, and in the evolution of social learning more generally.

The greatest risk of AI in higher education isn't cheating—it's the erosion of learning itself Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ba...

Short circuiting the learning process is the whole point of #AI. Users offload the "simple" or "mundane" thinking that nurtures growth. Students borrow its "understanding" and think that understanding is thiers.

Use at the risk of stupidity.

#academicsky

phys.org/news/2026-02...

I'm thrilled to be joining the External Faculty at @csh.ac.at! Looking forward to my visit there later this Spring.

But seriously this is fucking bonkers.

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of t...

Hey linguists -- chickens can distinguish bouba and kiki:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I’d be looking forward to Unit VII’s lecture on “mechanisms of social control and order.”

I’d be looking forward Unit VII’s lecture on “mechanisms of social control and order.”

Machine culture by Brinkmann et al. Large Ai models etc by Farrel et al

What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work? Stephen Wolfram explores the broader picture of what's going on inside ChatGPT and why it produces meaningful text. Discusses models, training neural nets, embeddings, tokens, transformers, language s...

Robots Should Be Slaves by @j2bryson.bsky.social , with optional Autonomous by @annaleen.bsky.social . I would also make sure they have a good grasp of the technology. This explainer by Wolfram is the best “short” explainer I know. writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what...

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be booksmaxxing

Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

I will not say "concept" when I mean "idea." I will not say "impacted" when I mean "affected." There will be no hands-on, state-of-the-art networking. We will not maximize, prioritize, or finalize, and we definitely will not interface.

George Carlin, 1990.

Replica of Turchin's (2003) Metaethnic Frontier model In his 2003 book, Historical Dynamics (ch. 4), Turchin describes and briefly analyzes a spatial ABM of his metaethnic frontier theory, which is essentially a formalization of a theory by Ibn Khaldun i...

Back in 2019, I coded up Turchin's (2003) "metaethnic frontier" model of empire cycles in NetLogo. Despite its limitations it's pretty fun to watch the little empires come and go. I was recently asked about the code, so I uploaded it to ComSES. Enjoy.
www.comses.net/codebases/15...

19 people.