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Alex Weber boosted

Very readable paper on the partially overlapping phenomenologies of meditation and psychedelic experience.

Millière, Carhart-Harris, Roseman, Trautwein, and Berkovich-Ohana. "Psychedelics, meditation, and self-consciousness."

doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.014

Alex Weber boosted

« #AaronSwartz planned to publish millions of scientific articles, financed by public money and on which the authors received nothing. Prosecuted before he had published anything, he risked 35 years in prison. Facing this prospect, he committed suicide on 11 January 2013. 11 years ago.

In 2024, #OpenAI will apply its algorithms to any document, online or offline, without the consent of the authors. No one is likely to be prosecuted.

#IntellectualProperty is just a tool of oppression. »

@ploum

Alex Weber boosted

"Substack’s argument in response to the Atlantic article was a masterclass in how not to do it: the best way to defeat these ideas, it claimed, was through scrutiny. Frankly, if scrutiny was going to defeat neo-Nazis or the idea that the Cultural Revolution had some upsides, it would have done so already."

ft.com/content/648ec2c0-d71b-4

Alex Weber boosted

"Scientists found the thickly contextualised, sharply focused histories of now-discarded science irrelevant and indigestible. Historians bridled at the scientists’ demands for a mythologised and anachronistic version of the past. We think it’s time to restart the conversation, for the benefit of both scientists and historians."

aeon.co/essays/science-and-his

Alex Weber boosted

It's been well over a year, but I still haven't fully processed that I am co-author of a theory paper suggesting that "psychedelics are analogous to cognitive laxatives."

And this happened in part via a question I asked during a journal club!

academic.oup.com/brain/advance

Alex Weber boosted

Every time I open up Octave, a little part of me dies inside.

Alex Weber boosted

I saw the best job talk today! Not one that leaves you thinking just “this person is so smart” but “ I would really like to have this person as a colleague and collaborator”

Alex Weber boosted

@weberam2 Follow people who people you follow follow. Follow people who seem vaguely interesting.

Without the algorithm, follows should be *much* cheaper (you can always unfollow later).

If you don't build up a good base of people to follow, this place will seem barren. But once you get that good list, it's just as lively and fun as anywhere else.

Also, consider setting up Lists based on hashtags you find interesting; that'll also help you to find new people to follow.

As for servers, QOTO is a good one. The only reason I'd seriously consider switching is if I someday launch my own instance.

This substack post about how our understanding of the has been so wrong for so long (or at least those of us not paying attention)

I'm probably making a cardinal mistake, but my takeaway simplified understanding is that the cerebrum is more distributed/ slow learning, while the cerebellum is for super fast execution of heuristics it has learned. Kind of like CPU vs GPU?

Did you know the cerebellum has 80% of all neurons in the brain? Or that it essentially maps almost every part of the cerebrum, even down to language being localized on the left? Get out of here...

sarahconstantin.substack.com/p

Last toot about (for now)

Learning the basic vim motions can seriously help in other domains.
I've installed a plugin so that I can navigate better with my keyboard.

I'm also using a (my current shell) plugin that allows me to use vim motions to edit commands etc. That may sound strange but I find it incredibly useful.

Finally, my terminal emulator has some basic visual vim options for scrolling and copy/yanking text.

I almost feel like learning vim motions should become more standard... am I crazy?

I really want to stay with
Threads and Bluesky I feel will all just eventually go the way of

What are some tips on improving my experience?
Should I change my server from qoto.org?
Should I use a third party app? Currently I'm rocking the official app (I think)
Any other tips?

My toot about being my got some traction.
I'm curious why others are using it over something more popular like .
Especially as VSCode has a vim plugin.
Personally I don't trust Microsoft to not eventually it. Plus there was that whole thing with . And I won't pretend to fully understand, but it seems like a sneaky version of .
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Neovim, and I believe most if not all the plugins, appear to be more truly open source... if that makes sebse. Again, there are complexities there I'm only beginning to figure out.

Anyone else trying to use as their ?
It's both fun and frustrating (steep learning curve)
I'm using the config after trying a lot of the other ones.
Also, obligatory shout out to and

Great read. Hard to summarize.

But basically: people have been buying bigger cars/trucks. Which has creates a positive feedback of people feeling unsafe unless they also drive bigger vehicles. Which means with electric, people want big. But big EVs are super heavy and expensive. Which is bad for many reasons.

All of that is to say: the future needs us to majorly rethink transport. How can we both: improve public transport and infrastructure to make people drive less; and how can we get people to drive smaller cars when they do.

businessinsider.com/electric-c

Alex Weber boosted

I love this quote about complexity

jstor.org/stable/2459579

Robert May and George Oster, circa 1976 at the time of the introduction of one of the niftiest equations, the logistic map.

(It has a single parameter (R), and tweaking it moves the system from collapse to a set point attractor to an oscillator to chaos)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic

Alex Weber boosted

@NicoleCRust
When I was first starting being a scientist I read Steve strogatz "Sync" as a pop science primer to nonlinear dynamics and chaos and this idea of simple systems being far more complex than they have any right to be has stuck with me as one of my main meta-interests in this world. Love this quote

Alex Weber boosted
Alex Weber boosted

"Psychologists in particular wanted a statistical skeleton key to unlock true experimental insights. It was an unrealistic burden to place on statistics, but the longing for a mathematical seal of approval burned hot."

sciencenews.org/article/statis

My MSc student Allison (graduated this summer) has had her first manuscript published as a preprint. biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/
Next step is to get it peer-reviewed and published in a reputable journal (suggestions?)
We looked at the Hurst Exponent in preterm babies shortly after birth and at term age, and compared to healthy terms. We found the HE started below 0.5 and then crossed the 0.5 line sometime around 39 weeks. Sensory and motor networks developed fastest. And finally, the younger you are born, the slower HE increases

Let me know what you think!

Alex Weber boosted

"Where Did the Open Access Movement Go Wrong?" This is a really interesting interview. While I strongly support the #OA movement, it's also clear that OA has been coopted by many traditional journals to make money, entrenching barriers to academic publishing for unfunded, nontraditional and marginalised scholars. Leaving many of us unable to afford to publish. (Not forgetting the fantastic mainly-online journals that have no APCs on principle, which I know there are more and more of.)

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/20

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