Carl T. Bergstrom

I am a biology professor at the University of Washington. I study how information flows in biology, science, and society.

I wrote a book: *Calling Bullshit*: http://tinyurl.com/fdcuvd7b

I love ravens and crows.

he/him

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npub1432qfqea0tlke6l54ltr95m8encxg3cwnttj3drme697d0amjk9q4amxgy

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ct_bergstrom_at_fediscience.org@mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqs2c4qysv7h4lmva062l43j6dnueurygu8f44egk3auazlxh7aetzspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qfxjltx

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relay.mostr.pub

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npub1432qfqea0tlke6l54ltr95m8encxg3cwnttj3drme697d0amjk9q4amxgy

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Last Notes

2024-09-06 00:57:38

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Bonus: he thinks he's going to use genAI to do budget anaylsis and financial planning.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/087/887/853/380/634/original/bdf586d2480b7cd7.png

2024-09-06 00:55:29

How is this real life?
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/09/05/governor-newsom-seeks-to-harness-the-power-of-genai-to-address-homelessness-other-challenges/

2024-09-04 01:57:05

Today's #raven.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/113/076/798/487/010/683/original/db15e489af29446d.jpg

2024-08-15 01:46:39

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@npub1gpp…3dtm "Academics are concerned about the potential safety risks [and I don't have an answer, but here's a wild fantasy about possible benefits to go with those harms.]"

2024-08-15 00:57:18

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@npub1gpp…3dtm What platform is this? LinkedIn?

2024-08-03 06:45:45

https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/896/739/232/744/493/original/3dfc0575614dab53.png

2024-07-28 19:10:44

Trump wants to undermine the US's vaccination programs. As a professional epidemiologist, I can tell you what will happen if we do that. It doesn't take a lot of imagination. The curve at right is child mortality in the US over the past 200+ years. Much of the decline you see is due to vaccination.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/865/690/110/079/286/original/38320057b04c62b5.png
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/865/690/738/226/725/original/84d4fb95b330db62.png

2024-06-27 17:53:22

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Behind the scenes.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/689/858/918/150/376/original/2580c90da0c0be65.jpg

2024-06-27 17:51:58

Dancer Brenna Chumacero with Santa Barbara's State Street Ballet was doing this photoshoot with photographer Andre Yew a few hundred yards down the beach; the backlighting was amazing and my 800mm lens revealed a completely different angle on the scene.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/689/853/270/444/108/original/db85b523b135278d.jpg

2024-06-26 18:48:12

Now accepting gratuities

2024-06-25 18:46:54

There’s a common story that, loosely speaking, the replication crisis occurs when publication bias and questionable research practices fill the literature with false positives.
That story motivates a lot of science reform efforts — and it’s wrong.
We explain why in our new (well, extensively rewritten) preprint:
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/rkyf7
(I'll try to expand this into a proper thread soon.)
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/678/742/296/185/044/original/c8ad03b5a55c3e3c.png

2024-06-24 21:13:17

Meanwhile, the Washington State Ferry System is an absolute gem.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/673/656/495/742/027/original/168cd895a2760909.png

2024-06-22 02:32:30

With data, same.
(That's kind of the whole point of my book with Jevin West)
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/657/925/123/710/944/original/905316bcff0bba25.png

2024-06-21 21:09:11

My God there are some Dunning-Kruger ass motherfuckers on this site.

2024-06-10 21:28:23

Y'all know about North American barn penguins?
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/594/444/457/933/646/original/4ee288f367d241f6.jpg

2024-05-27 15:18:41

If openAI were digitally watermarking the output of ChatGPT, so they could exclude it from future training data, but not telling anyone so as to have a competitive edge, would there be a way to detect that?

2024-04-24 03:19:27

When I think about what has happened with camera technology over the past quarter-century, I can't get my head around how it's possible to shoot a chestnut-backed chickadee at twilight at 1/100th second with a handheld 800mm lens. 🪶
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/324/033/736/559/072/original/a0a5349d7231878c.jpg

2024-04-10 01:48:33

Next up: Tesla's Autopilot is actually just some dude in India driving your car with a Playstation controller.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar

2024-04-01 04:35:57

So let me get this straight. The claimed-to-be-preregistered-but-wasn't preregistration study that everyone is talking about was initiated by a guy who couldn't get shit to replicate and then concluded that it was time to test the hypothesis that sophons were fucking with human scientists to halt our progress?
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/03/27/the-feel-good-open-science-story-versus-the-preregistration-who-do-you-think-wins/

2024-03-20 06:31:54

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Tonight after a great day working with colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute, Joe Bak-Coleman went for a hike. As we headed back to the car, A huge flock of birds headed up Santa Fe Canyon; I knew their squeaky caws before I even saw them. It was a group of at least 100 pinyon jays heading to roost. I've never seen anything like it. I am so happy they are thriving here. 2/2
#birdwatching #birdphotography #corvids
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/126/600/354/870/761/original/eedce3edc5613281.jpg
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/126/600/583/100/602/original/b6c8e6ec1effd102.jpg

2024-03-20 06:26:44

Tonight I had one of the most glorious birding moments of my life. A decade ago I first saw pinyon jays in the Colorado mountains. Ever since I've looked for them in the mountains around Santa Fe on my frequent visits there. I can usually find them, but it takes time and I see just a few.
After massive commercial deforestation and climate-change driven destruction of the pinyon forests they rely on, their numbers are plummeting and they are being considered for the endangered species list. 1/2

2024-03-16 01:14:16

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@npub1d6u…rc5j I did very publicly criticize them for not doing the control.

2024-03-15 23:08:29

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@npub15qv…e3a8 I would agree if they were the ones making 40% profit a year.

2024-03-15 15:11:23

Another Elsevier paper with obvious AI-written text.
“In summary, the management of bilateral iatrogenic I'm very sorry, but I don't have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1930043324001298
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/100/337/109/183/645/original/8618c61c7e3529c1.jpeg
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/112/100/337/221/863/074/original/19683005c6994676.jpeg

2024-03-15 04:55:53

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The full EP, _Instar_, is out now!
https://songwhip.com/lillygolden/instar

2024-02-23 19:54:01

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No Spotify subscription? Good on you!
Here's a youtube link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ePFCAtLG0

2024-02-23 19:43:14

So maybe I'm biased because my daughter is on backup vocals — but holy shit you've got to hear this.
https://open.spotify.com/track/09CCpk4tCUZsu5c4f2tjRH?si=bEBYFOayRmW85elXLe6lgw&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A4ZqkZmS8MDjAfAQQMGm8i5

2024-01-22 04:20:16

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@npub1g7n…ct0u
Of course!!!
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/797/678/729/302/112/original/088497b7dc6b6466.jpeg

2024-01-22 03:55:18

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@npub1rqh…wkac Yes?

2024-01-22 03:53:00

It's not the apocalypse, it's just the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean from the California coast.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/797/570/716/498/185/original/2652fa7fbc8cd92e.jpeg

2024-01-12 08:38:31

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One more. It's interesting how my taste has changed. The shots I liked best back when I took these now strike me as sort of meh but I'm reasonably happy with these two. #birdphotography #birding
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/742/071/249/843/269/original/9ed23e9af65d5b14.jpeg

2024-01-12 07:44:56

I was touching up some older photos tonight and I rather liked this cedar waxwing from three years ago.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/741/859/964/227/732/original/e0de3bf8a29c7ea1.jpeg

2024-01-10 03:46:00

What no one is talking about is how fucked it is that a totally mid billionaire that no one had ever heard of before he blew a gasket in public was able to accumulate a net worth equal six months’ operating budget for the world's premier university.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/william-ackman-harvard-donor/

2024-01-10 02:56:45

My daughters and I are feeding cows 10,000 pounds of macadamia nuts each and totally don't need to be taxed at 95+ percent of our income.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/729/403/070/167/630/original/ec60295da8e3fd7d.png

2024-01-08 21:26:40

This is a fantastic story about how the search engine tail wags the online content dog.
It's a form of enshittification, but it's a two-sided one that involves google's algorithmic choices and web designers' responses via Campbell's law (when a metric becomes a target, people do stupid shit)
https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization

2024-01-01 07:50:39

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@npub1hvd…9sq9 Especially when they select the wrong first principles from which to reason.

2023-12-29 23:15:16

US residents: If you haven't ordered your free COVID tests through USPS in the last five or six weeks, you're eligible for four more per household. It takes about a minute to fill out the online form, and USPS delivers them to your mailbox.
Testing is a great way to keep friends, family, and coworkers safe.
https://special.usps.com/testkits

2023-12-21 05:39:11

The thing I don't understand about the evolution of parrot coloration is how they can afford to stand out so strikingly from their environments...
Oh. Right.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/616/795/298/481/990/original/377c534340d375cb.jpeg

2023-12-21 05:01:40

Hey Siri what is selection bias?
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/616/644/975/077/502/original/ced08df2525289b2.png

2023-12-10 17:33:37

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@npub1khx…geyg Bush thick-knees aka bush stone curlew.

2023-12-09 19:34:16

No matter whether they are lying or telling the truth this is darkly funny to the extreme.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/552/129/196/237/055/original/4ac5bb8359441f87.png

2023-12-04 17:19:13

It gives me a measure of hope that a headset mic and black backdrop has so quickly become the universal signifier of a bullshit thought-leader with nothing of substance to say.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/523/288/522/347/058/original/efd5e71297c51504.png

2023-11-29 01:48:07

This shot of a little wattlebird on a leucospermum (?) might be the best single frame I shot in Australia.
(You may need to click to see the image, given the portrait orientation.)
#birding #birdwatching #birdphotography #australianbirds
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/491/313/456/985/290/original/2f47b8326631f74b.jpeg

2023-11-10 06:31:58

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7. Also, I want to thank AIMOS (https://aimos.community/) and the Queensland University of Techonlogy for making this entire trip possible. They are generously funding my travel from the US to Australia, and putting me up during the time I'll be in Brisbane.
I'm particularly looking forward to attending and presenting at AIMOS 2023 from Nov 21-23. A big part of my research program involves metaresearch, and Australia has a very strong presence in this area.

2023-11-10 06:28:22

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6. One more public talk, again in Sydney. On Friday November 17th, I'll be speaking on "The Impediments to High-Risk, High-Return Research" as part of the Trust in Knowledge seminar series at Sydney University. This talk may be a bit more technical than the others but I'll endeavor to make it accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/trust-in-knowledge-talk-professor-carl-t-bergstrom-tickets-741829109837

2023-11-06 05:04:32

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5. Finally, on Monday Nov 27th at 11 AM at the University of Melbourne I'm giving the Crisis lecture at a venue that I believe is public or at least quasi-public. I'll post a correction if I hear otherwise.
https://events.humanitix.com/carl-bergstrom-the-crisis-of-human-collective-decision-making-in-a-social-media-world

2023-11-06 05:03:14

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4. On Tuesday November 21 at 6 PM at the University of Brisbane, I'll again be speaking about the crisis of human decision-making in a social media world. My understanding is that there will a reception beforehand at 5:00 PM.
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/carl-bergstrom-public-lecture-tickets-657236842087

2023-11-06 05:02:12

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3. On Thursday, November 16th, 6:30 PM at UNSW., I'll be giving the Wallace Wurth lecture "The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World", hosted by Rob Brooks.
https://www.events.unsw.edu.au/event/art-scepticism-data-driven-world

2023-11-06 05:01:45

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2. On Wednesday November 15th, 5 PM at Macquarie University, I'll be giving a public lecture on that subject.
https://www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/groups/macquarie-minds-and-intelligences-initiative/news-and-events

2023-11-06 05:00:52

1. In five days, I'm headed to Australia: Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. I can't wait. So many colleagues to meet and birds to see!
For those who are interested in such things, I'll be giving a few public talks in addition to a number of academic lectures.
The public talks will mostly focus on something I've been thinking about lately, "The Crisis of Human Collective Decision-Making in a Social Media World".
Details below.

2023-10-22 23:32:40

Must suck to realize that there are some forms of epistemic grounding that you and your pals can't simply purchase and torch to the ground.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/281/274/506/043/812/original/832503d79df280a4.png

2023-10-21 05:39:01

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@npub1e0g…y6fq The fact that it's aspirational-fascist bullshit is unsurprising. The poor quality of writing is more impressive. It's as if someone was trained on Ayn Rand.

2023-10-21 05:37:31

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@npub1gu5…mzsp Well spotted. It is indeed. A young female.

2023-10-21 05:30:57

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No luck.
It's ok. Who wants a half-chewed flatfish anyway?
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/361/958/736/227/original/8920727f4d583553.png

2023-10-21 05:30:12

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I know, let's try an affiliative call: a rattle-knock. Maybe the gull will feed me?
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/359/648/310/354/original/f8cb895e0a98b896.png

2023-10-21 05:29:41

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Nope — detected!
Jump back!
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/357/099/288/004/original/2fbefffe9ee32ef8.png

2023-10-21 05:29:09

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Perhaps with sufficient stealth, one could snatch the fish.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/355/214/418/553/original/334e6f89432afa0c.png

2023-10-21 05:28:41

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In fact, crow was intensely curious.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/352/404/995/420/original/3d05fe295b0e307a.png

2023-10-21 05:26:56

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Its struggle did not go unnoticed.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/346/360/694/427/original/cd8cc6dec6301ed3.png

2023-10-21 05:26:24

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But it was...er...floundering in its efforts to swallow it.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/342/847/627/792/original/046e2e64d5598934.png

2023-10-21 05:24:45

A brief crow story (bear with me).
Young seagull had made quite a good catch.
#crow #crows #corvid #corvids #birdphotography
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/271/332/309/477/732/original/3467e10caaf6d594.png

2023-10-13 20:30:12

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@npub1xl4…p6vx If you look at the discrete math model, I think it does exactly the opposite. It doesn't make any effort to distinguish life and non-life, and certainly doesn't say anything about sentience. What it does do it tell us how we could spot assemblages that have arise through some sort of evolutionary process.

2023-10-13 06:02:03

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22. But what I find even cooler is that this paper gives me a new way to think about how the complexity and compositionality of structures in the universe relates to the processes that led them to come into existence and persist long enough to be observed. At it’s core, that is assembly theory.

2023-10-13 06:01:39

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21. Returning at long last to the question at the start of the thread, how do we know if our organic soup from a Jovian moon is the product of some evolutionary process:
If the discrete math model from the paper’s supplementary material can be ported to real-world chemical environments using e.g. mass spectroscopy, we basically know how to build an evolution-detector that we could put on a space probe.

2023-10-13 06:00:42

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20. At least at the metaphorical level, life on earth, of course, is like the world at right. Highly complex molecules, organisms, etc., at high assembly numbers, tightly clustered in possibility space. This paper helps us solidify what is special about the biological complexity we observe here.

2023-10-13 06:00:17

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19. And this brings us to the money figure from the Nature paper, reproduced below. At the left of the figure we see a world like world 1 above. At right, a world like world 2.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/226/178/428/035/878/original/085a68fa79567446.png

2023-10-13 05:59:25

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18. Moreover these mechanisms creating preferences for some objects over others are making it possible to create and explore more of the object space for high assembly index objects, instead of getting bogged down in the already massive space of low assembly index possibilities.

2023-10-13 05:58:54

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17. Suppose instead we observe world 2 at right. The objects are high assembly index, high copy number. There’s clearly something special about that AA-B-CC-DD structure; it’s either really easy to form, or really stable once formed, or both.

2023-10-13 05:57:33

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16. Here’s an example. Suppose we observe world 1 at left. The objects are low assembly index, low copy number. Much of the possibility space at observed assembly indices is filled out.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/226/168/652/866/462/original/f41139e726327de4.png

2023-10-13 05:56:51

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15. If instead we see a world with a low diversity of objects with high assembly index, we then need some explanation for why we these objects instead of the many others that could exist. This explanation might involve biases in assembly — think catalysis — or in survival — think selection.

2023-10-13 05:53:38

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14. If we see a world with a high diversity of objects with low assembly index, it suggests that objects are merely randomly assembling and/or disassembling with no particular preference among assembly rules nor much propensity for some forms to survive better than others.

2023-10-13 05:53:17

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13. Moreover, with strong enough biases in how assembly proceeds, the objects that are produced in high multiplicity of “copy number”. This can occur even for objects that have high assembly index.
Notice that thus far we are still talking about a simple model in discrete mathematics.

2023-10-13 05:53:01

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12. But what happens if not all assembly rules are equally like to be applied, not all objects are equally likely to be incorporated into downstream objects, or not all objects are equally likely to survive?
One can treat that mathematically as well, and the space of observed objects can collapse.

2023-10-13 05:52:37

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11. In a system such as this, one can work out the mathematics of how the universe of possible objects increases with increasing assembly index. In general, it blows up super-exponentially. The Nature paper does this, though most of the details are hidden in the supplementary material.

2023-10-13 05:51:55

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10. (This previous example highlights an interesting relation between modularity / compositionally and the emergence of elaborate form. The structure at right is maximally modular and thus has low assembly index despite large size; the structure at right is minimally modular and so has the reverse.)

2023-10-13 05:48:14

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9. This gives the ASSEMBLY INDEX of an object.
Example below: The object at left has assembly index of four: 1) join C-D, 2) join two C-D pairs, 3) join two C-D quadromers at an interior D, 4) join two of the resulting octomers.
The one at right has assembly index of five: every link is a unique step.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/226/132/401/380/129/original/e9bf58041b42e4d0.png

2023-10-13 05:47:42

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8. Within this framework, we can take any object and calculate the minimum number of unique assembly steps that would have been required to produce it given our set of basic elements and our assembly rules. In other words, at what step of the sequence illustrated above could it have first appeared?

2023-10-13 05:47:07

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7. You begin with a set of elemental objects that require no assembly at all, and you have a set of assembly rules for when two objects can be joined. This then gives you a set of objects that can be created in a single step.
Below, an illustration.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/226/126/853/098/119/original/d705d91be410051b.png

2023-10-13 05:42:22

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6. With that out of the way, what does the paper do? The heart of the paper is a simple and elegant exercise in discrete mathematics. Imagine a world of arbitrary objects that can be assembled, combinatorially, to produce additional objects.

2023-10-13 05:41:55

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5. The one that people might claim matters is that I’m currently funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
I would disagree, because they’re an entirely separate organization from the Templeton foundation that funded some of the Assembly Theory research, they don’t care what I say, and I wouldn’t pander to them even if they did.
But I want to be upfront about it.

2023-10-13 05:39:49

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4. I have two potential COIs, one of which matters and one of which people might claim matters.  
The one that matters is that I've collaborated with author Michael Lachmann for nearly 30 years, and we are close friends. This matters because if I didn't know Michael so well, I probably wouldn't have taken the time to figure this paper out.

2023-10-13 05:39:15

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3. Let's get a few things out of the way first.   
a) The main text of the paper is terribly written. Terribly.   
b) It’s obvious why people understand it and were skeptical to say the least.   
c) Nature failed both the authors and its readers by publishing it in its present form.

2023-10-13 05:38:48

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2. This is the question at the core of the now infamous Assembly Theory paper published last week in Nature and thoroughly panned on social media.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9
My view? There is actually some very cool science here — it’s just extremely well hidden. This thread is my attempt to explain.

2023-10-13 05:38:10

1. “Imagine we land a space probe on one of Jupiters’ moons, take up a sample of material, and find it is full of organic molecules. How can we tell whether those molecules are just randomly assembled goo or the outcome of some evolutionary process taking place on the planet?”
#science #scicomm #assemblytheory

2023-10-08 06:15:36

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But the clock is ticking because google is so big and so powerful that its own internal enshittification process has massive spillover effects on the entire WWW.
For the first time in a quarter-century I can imagine the death of the web as we know it, into a wasteland of GPT-6 content—the output of a model trained on mostly on the output of GPT-5—trawled only by chatbots pretending to be human readers to scrape up what ever remnants of long-term contract ad dollars are left to be had.
/fin

2023-10-08 06:14:19

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Meanwhile the cost of creating content with the superficial appearance of well-considered text has fallen off a cliff, thanks to ChatGPT.
So filling the web with quality material is less rewarding than ever, and filling it with shit is orders of magnitude cheaper than ever.
Maybe someone unseats google before the web becomes a wasteland of ChatGPT-authored, search engine-optimized babble.

2023-10-08 06:13:17

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If google wasn't big enough to move the market, this would just be a story about google's downfall and vulnerability to competition.
But if google succeeds in keeping people on-site instead of visiting links, the incentives for people to create high-quality content fall through the floor. Whether you are a commercial provider funded by ads or an academic trying to disseminate something more than soundbite "featured snippets", google's efforts undercut your motives to create quality content.

2023-10-08 06:11:54

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And in doing so, Google becomes a *bullshitter* in the exact sense we wrote about in our book Calling Bullshit.
They have designed a system that generates "language, statistical figures, and data graphics intended to persuade by impressing...a reader or listener with a blatant disregard for truth."

2023-10-08 06:11:07

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So just as Google has strong incentives to keep users onsite using shitty large language models that hallucinate, it has strong incentives to keep users onsite by making even relatively unreliable guesses about what constitutes a definitive answer to a search query.

2023-10-08 06:10:46

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(A bigger motivation is the same thing that keeps Google on top of the search game. They get all of the queries and thus have all the training data. Bing can't ever catch up. If Microsoft's GPT4+Bing went unanswered, Microsoft would get all of the training data for improving LLM-based search.)

2023-10-08 06:10:16

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This is where enshittification comes in. The search engine business is a curious internet business. The better you are at it, the less time people spend on your website—and the less ad revenue, among other things, you receive.
Google knows thisl. If they can give you the definitive result that you are looking for without you leaving the page, they win.
It also, IMO, explains part of the motivation for Google in deploying an utterly second-rate large language model—Bard—in production code.

2023-10-08 06:09:14

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Designing algorithms to return definitive results and then getting duped by conspiracy theorists is embarrassing; doing the same and getting pwned by the hapless stupidity of large language models is malpractice.
IMO this is not simply a matter of Google's algorithms being no good. What's going on here is that Google is playing a losing game by trying to extract true information from the web algorithmically. Why would Google choose to play a game it could only lose?

2023-10-08 06:08:24

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One issue is Google's degree of culpability. Google is a search engine, not an encyclopedia. Ask a stupid question? Get a stupid answer. And seriously who is going to ask are there countries in Africa that start with K?
My view is that Google's culpability was radically transformed when it went from simply returning web pages as search results to presenting results from web pages as definitive answers, via its "featured snippets", "knowledge panels", and "people also ask" feature.

2023-10-08 06:07:41

I wanted to consolidate a few thoughts on google, misinformation, large language models, enshittification, and the fate of the web as we know it.
It started when Carl Zimmer shared this remarkable example of Google being fooled by machine-generated bullshit online.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/197/895/108/602/773/original/e3f5db6d6c4b28ca.png

2023-10-05 03:48:12

Feeling very fortunate to get my COVID booster today.
My continued gratitude to everyone involved in every step of vaccine development, testing, and delivery.

2023-10-03 06:50:54

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@npub15ne…khkn that completely sucks. For what it’s worth, in the US insurance no longer covers Covid tests and they run about €10 a piece.

2023-10-03 06:00:26

David Foster Wallace would know to how write about Elon Musk and in a purely selfish way beyond empathy for the pain that led him where it did I wish so much he were here with us today because we could use an ally with his utterly unique capacities.

2023-09-27 06:10:23

Making friends
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/111/135/621/439/152/648/original/9c10021f4f0a8248.jpeg

2023-09-27 03:33:11

It's not just the Detroit PD that is using bullshit AI facial recognition to abuse and terrorize Black communities.
https://www.theroot.com/lousy-ai-technology-got-5-black-plaintiff-s-messed-up-1850871189

2023-09-20 15:44:31

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@npub193z…jjax no this was a reserved car showing up very late