Alex Campolo

Revisiting Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow’s “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology” (1943) - Biological Theory Biological Theory - This article examines Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow’s 1943 article “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology”, which is widely remembered both as the foundational...

➡️ New Classics in Biological Theory article out! ⬅️

Revisiting Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow’s “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology” (1943)

by Auguste Nahas (@augustenahas.bsky.social)

Open access, also to Rosenblueth et al. (1943) (supplementary material) on: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Opinion | Trump’s Fantasy Is Crashing Down

"Other places and other people are real, possessing their own agendas and agency — and America’s actions have consequences it cannot control." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/o...

Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Under Fire, NLR 157, January–February 2026 One of modern Iran’s leading historians provides a critical anatomy of the power structures of the Islamic Republic, on the eve of war—and a scathing denunciation of the long-incubated American-Israel...

A superb, sobering interview: newleftreview.org/issues/ii157...

Words Without Consequence What does it mean to have speech without a speaker?

"When language that sounds intentional, personal, and binding can be produced at scale by a speaker who bears no consequence, the expectations listeners are entitled to hold of a speaker begin to erode." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Simultaneously pure evil - a cult of violence and death - and a ridiculous cable news rant.

Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...

I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines".
www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...

The persona selection model A theory of why AI models act like humans

Totally agree that this literary or dramaturgical, dimension is crucial - as do scientists at the very frontier, evidently www.anthropic.com/research/per...

Leadership from Pedro Sánchez - so striking and inspiring in its contrast with abject European counterparts. www.lamoncloa.gob.es/presidente/i...

WHAT a result. A totally depleted squad goes to Elland Road, digs in, and comes back with 3 points. Alderete absolutely immense…and 40 POINTS #SAFC

😱 this squad is stretched to the breaking point.

Surprisingly relevant in a world of “neo-royalism…”

Just wild that this is how very influential constructs have developed in psychology.

China’s Great Transformation Part II: A review of Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian's latest book.

"For Westad and Chen, by contrast, it is the use of power to pursue visions of development that is the essence of modernity." weltinnenpolitik.substack.com/p/chinas-gre...

This adds to my belief that the central limit theorem is genuinely one of the most exciting things any young person can learn about...

TIL Alan Turing's fellowship dissertation, written at the age of 22 was titled, "On the Gaussian Error Function" turingarchive.kings.cam.ac.uk/unpublished-...

More evidence (here directly from frontier labs) in favor of a fundamentally literary approach to AI. alignment.anthropic.com/2026/psm/

Why SWE-bench Verified no longer measures frontier coding capabilities SWE-bench Verified is increasingly contaminated and mismeasures frontier coding progress. Our analysis shows flawed tests and training leakage. We recommend SWE-bench Pro.

Pretty amazing the amount of resources the big labs devote to analyzing (to put it somewhat charitably) influential benchmarks. Contamination still seems to be an issue... openai.com/index/why-we...

Frédéric Mégret: “Ukraine has done itself and international law a service” After four years of war in Ukraine, international law seems more threatened than ever, and its role in peace negotiations is being challenged. But the example of Ukraine also shows us "a space for sur...

excellent interview with Fred Mégret - "Ukraine has done itself and int law a service by arguing almost every possible angle in its favour[, and] its successes paint a picture of what happened, one that will be more difficult to deny in the future."

www.justiceinfo.net/en/155609-uk...

These new wingers must be on fire in training #SAFC

This article really illustrated a more abstract question I have been thinking about. Purposiveness/intentionality figure prominently in standard philosophical accounts of agency. What is this world of AI-enabled agency without purpose? E.g. fundamental uselessness of vibe-coded projects etc.

The Next Great Transformation - The Ideas Letter AI is widely framed as a geopolitical arms race, but Shapiro argues that the real contest is social, not technological. Drawing on Karl Polanyi, he contends that states will gain…

A Polanyi-an argument on AI: "The central question, then, is not only who builds the most powerful AI systems, but who can integrate them into society without triggering a societal backlash or an institutional breakdown." www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-ne...

harpers.org/archive/2026...

Adam Curtis B-roll

Why organisms are more than machines Sixty years ago, a little-known philosopher challenged how science understands life. His perspective is finding new relevance in the age of AI.

“For Jonas, no momentary state of a body could contain the secret of being alive, no matter how detailed that state was described.” bigthink.com/13-8/nature-...

After my ICE arrest, I learned one crucial way to treat trauma. We can all take part | Rümeysa Öztürk

"I was detained for writing a op-ed about Gaza as a student at Tufts," writes Rümeysa Öztürk. "My experience has only made me feel more connected to others facing oppression."

Devezer's Urn LLMs make metascience easier, but that doesn't increase metascientific validity.

"What is the stochastic process that generates pseudorandom numbers and produces arXiv PDFs? What are the sufficient statistics for this distribution?" www.argmin.net/p/devezers-urn

Rearview Mirror In the Shadow of Feudalism

Charles Maier on the opposed viewpoints of Marc Bloch and Otto Brunner on feudalism—and the ethics of historiography: csmaier.substack.com/p/rearview-m...

Frederick Wiseman’s portals of possibility - Chicago Reader The Gene Siskel Film Center’s Worlds of Wiseman series shows us our world. The question is whether or not we can change it.

In light of the news that unparalleled documentarian Frederick Wiseman has died, I’m revisiting @joeengleman.bsky.social’s 2025 @chicagoreader.com cover story on Wiseman hooked to the Siskel Center’s retrospective.

Sandra Hüller Gets Her Greatest Role Yet Already a master of submerged heartbreak in so many previous parts, Hüller is mesmerizing in Rose.

You had me at, "The setting is an isolated 17th century farming community in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War..." www.vulture.com/article/rose...

Who Gains and Who Loses when Rates Change? The US witnessed an enormous decline in real rates between the early 1980s and 2020s.

Last time, it was different: "As real rates declined between 1980 and 2020, the share of wealth owned by the top 10% increased. Prior to 1980, as real rates increased, the reverse happened." thetwocents.substack.com/p/who-gains-...