Karthik Srinivasan

I am a systems, and computational neuroscientist at MIT.

Primary research work is on the neurophysiology and computational modeling on visual attention, eye movements, and executive functions and the theory of neural networks.

Interests span math, science, history, politics, economics, and philosophy.

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npub160cfnc8ucrqhs3n85wtnhvje5v6sms4jtj0jeg9ltqxgq3meuftq776fkd

NIP-05 Address

skarthik_at_neuromatch.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsd8uyeur7vpstcgen689emkfv6xdgdc2e9e8ev5zl4sryqgau7y4sadxh5c

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npub160cfnc8ucrqhs3n85wtnhvje5v6sms4jtj0jeg9ltqxgq3meuftq776fkd

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Last Notes

2023-09-27 16:29:22

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@npub1skv…aky3
A lion (Leo Tolstoy)?

2023-09-20 02:59:36

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@npub1skv…aky3 @npub1gpe…aa0f @npub12ss…c7zf
Found it. Was a former toxic landfill (not gas plant, sorry my bad!) that was sold as a neighborhood... became cancer central and other major health issues for everyone living there!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/04/01/new-orleans-gordon-plaza-epa/

2023-09-20 01:43:26

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@npub1skv…aky3 @npub1gpe…aa0f @npub12ss…c7zf
I remember there was a similar study in the poorer neighborhoods of New Orleans and some industry (think it was a natural gas plant), and how it affected children's mental health, performance in school etc., Can't seem to find a link.

2023-09-19 20:47:44

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@npub14d7…dm4s
Aren't we all anti-realists? :)

2023-09-18 15:51:39

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@npub1rha…zzz7
Yup, that was a nasty episode!
I highly recommend the book on Luzin and his acolytes on their math worldview, it's called "Naming Infinity". For me personally, it was a little low in details on the math, and a bit more on their religiosity and their removal by Stalin. Nonetheless very moving.

2023-09-14 21:21:27

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@npub1skv…aky3
Related to the Kekule story, mostly hypnogogia:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj5866
Hypnopompia is even less understood/studied.
#Sleep #REM #Dreams #Neuroscience #N1

2023-09-08 02:41:26

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@npub15sw…x855
Did this happen before or after the Hegel whirlwind? ;)

2023-09-03 17:34:46

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@npub1ary…md4c
Hahaha...tell me about it. We both know and have experienced atleast one person like that 😉

2023-09-03 17:27:58

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@npub1ary…md4c @npub1del…shhr
wait... if I am understanding you correctly: you are getting old and you think increasingly that everything we think about some scientific phenomena (in our case the brain) could be wrong?
If so, isn't this unsettling a good thing? And an actual sign of maturity in saying we don't really have an overarching scientific theory/paradigm in our field (which we don't). Also, even the most successful scientific theories and ideas are historically contingent and time bound.
Isn't it more common for older people to be inflexible, stodgy, and thus delay and worse, shoot down new/other ideas? (paraphrasing the famous Planck quote on scientific development).

2023-09-02 02:21:27

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@npub1l3d…82al
same!

2023-09-01 22:22:13

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@npub1ary…md4c
You were pretty sharp on an off day too! :)

2023-08-30 22:27:27

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@npub15sw…x855
Is "all of the above" (i.e., cooperate, compete, and divide up labor) an option?

2023-08-30 18:46:32

The phenomenology of @npub1ary…md4c unentangled and integrated! 😉
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7AX7n6nkmTSm1Fsz0jLZQO?si=c-57xdXkSN2OM-46ZMujgw
Very good episode!
He articulates the lumpers vs splitters worldview very well.
#Neuroscience #Philosophy #Emergence #Cognition #Emotion #Attention

2023-08-19 21:53:35

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@npub1mev…sf0a
Also, the only cosmology and milk combination reference in India that I am aware of is the churning of Kshira Sagara (ocean of milk), which is paal kadal in tamil, that gave rise to our universe, life and immortality. That is, Indian version of the big bang.

2023-08-19 21:28:23

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@npub1mev…sf0a
I don't think there is one in Tamil.
Galaxy itself is vinmeen mandalam (agglomeration of skyfish)
We have a great name for the Milky Way from Sanskrit, which was what the "astronomers" of ancient India (with their different mother tongues) probably called it... it's AakashGanga (Space/Sky Ganga).

2023-08-19 21:23:36

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@npub1mev…sf0a
hahahaha!

2023-08-19 21:19:29

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@npub1mev…sf0a
tooth ache?!? ;)

2023-08-12 00:46:49

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@npub1dn4…cue6
Most certainly! The problem is, the Washington consensus was very clear from the outset, food security for us, insecurity for the rest. "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people", a pithy statement attributed to Henry Kissinger is its foundation.
While, it is inevitable India has to embargo export of food grains, there are parts of the world (especially Africa) that have been forced to be almost entirely dependent on imports. It's a very sad state of affairs.

2023-08-11 22:16:50

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@npub1z4e…jhuf
Yes, I restricted my thread to India, but this is a worldwide trend.
As an example: Orange in Florida for example has plummeted so significantly, 200million crates to roughly 20 million (Hurricane Ian last year followed by heatwaves this year are cited as the main reason). The same heatwave is expected to reduce American rice production (America grows nearly 85% of its own rice in the southern states and California).

2023-08-11 08:02:30

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This is a great addendum in the Science magazine for replacing the Turing test for AI models with a "Weizenbaum test":
"Rather than a test of intelligence [like Turing test], a Weizenbaum test would assess the public value of AI technologies, evaluating them according to their real-world implications rather than their proponents’ claims."
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adk0176
Weizenbaum's questions to make such an assessment in the Bulletin of Atomic scientists seems to be apt not just for AI, but all of technology.
#AI #HistoryOfAI #Computing #Critique #Technology #Ideology #ManVsMachine #MIT #Weizenbaum

2023-07-29 19:28:10

@npub16nf…q6as
Did you see this?
https://www.naturalis.nl/en/about-us/media/press-releases/rebellious-birds-make-nests-out-of-anti-bird-pins
Simply wow!

2023-07-26 22:10:23

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That’s the state of India, its food, agriculture and roughly 80% of its people (~1.1 billion).
Now back to the rice export ban from India with which we started. Why is this a big deal internationally?
India is THE largest exporter of rice and accounts for 40% of the total. These predominantly feed the poorest peoples in Africa (western and sub Saharan) and other parts of Asia. That’s feeding about another billion people. With the wheat market in deep trouble following Russia-Ukraine, the world was already straining (look at Egypt, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa), now with the Indian rice ban, and Thailand and Vietnam (the next largest exporters) not being able to meet the world's demand to fill India's void, it can just tip over. Expect a lot of hunger and misery.
The great philosopher and one of the very few economists, and intellectuals of our times, Amartya Sen (who lived through the Bengal famine of 1943) wrote, “All famines are political… No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.”
We might have to sadly upend that worldview (I hope I am horribly, completely wrong on this count!).
#GlobalWarming #PoliticalEconomy #ClimateChange #FoodSecurity #RiceBan #India #SouthAsia #SubContinent #Agriculture #Food #AgriculturalCrises #Inequality #EcologicalCrises

2023-07-26 22:08:14

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What is said of India extends to the entire Indian subcontinent/South Asia as well.
Pakistan too is a wheat and rice basket and a major rice exporter, and we saw what happened when nearly a third of the entire country was flooded last year. This year, the temperatures soared to 50 degrees across most of that flooded region.
Sri Lanka, in a moment of hubris and misguided thinking (however good willed) decided to ban all intensive farming overnight and forced everyone to adapt to organic farming without nary a transition plan. The result, a complete collapse of everything.
Bangladesh, which in normal monsoon has roughly 5-10% of its delta region swallowed by water, now has more than 20% sinking. It too produces a bunch of essential food grains for largely domestic consumption, but also some exports (especially lentils).
Of course, Bangladesh will be the canary in the coalmine when global warming hits the fan and when “climate politics” starts. This is a people already preparing for climate adaptation, not waiting for the reversing to happen, they are well aware nothing is getting done elsewhere.
Europe saw Syria (that civil war began with a global warming induced drought in the late 2000s) come and were repelled, wait when Bangladesh comes at you, and they will come.
3/9.
#GlobalWarming #PoliticalEconomy #ClimateChange #FoodSecurity #RiceBan #India #SouthAsia #SubContinent #Agriculture #Food #AgriculturalCrises #Inequality #EcologicalCrises

2023-07-26 22:08:03

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With erratic monsoons now a regular feature, intense floods are followed immediately by heatwaves that have caused the entire agriculture cycle to go haywire, crop yields to plummet, and near droughts across all major food basket regions in India.
Tamilnadu, my home state, used to be rice-country, historically recorded by both the Tamils and later the Brits as giving three harvests a year. Now it is barely struggling to give a single harvest.
West Bengal, one of the largest rice producers has reported highest levels of aridity in its arable lands.
Punjab, and Haryana, the heartlands of most agriculture have had multiple crop collapses, the worst top soil degradation because of intensive practices, and fertilizer polluted irrigation ways (not to mention the highest levels of cancer).
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the two most populous states, and heavily reliant on agriculture as both economy and livelihood have had one of the worst years on record for yields on almost all food crops.
Riverbeds, lakes, and canals that depend almost exclusively on the monsoons are drying up.
All across the country, groundwater has plummeted and deep wells are now dug that reach waters from a few million years back.
2/9
#GlobalWarming #PoliticalEconomy #ClimateChange #FoodSecurity #RiceBan #India #SouthAsia #SubContinent #Agriculture #Food #AgriculturalCrises #Inequality #EcologicalCrises

2023-07-26 22:07:44

For those who might not know, following a week after the Russia-Ukraine wheat embargo, there are even bigger and ominous signs hinting at global food insecurity and the catastrophic agricultural crises coming our way.
India last week banned export on all non-basmati rice varieties.
I repeat: EXPORT BAN ON ALL non-basmati RICE varieties.
[Aside, export of basmati variety will continue, the demand for which is relatively small in India when compared to the nearly 15 major varieties of rice (it's home to at least a 1000 varieties) consumed by very large populations everyday(these are the ones which are now banned). Basmati is a "festive" and only occasionally consumed variety in India. It is largely exported to the richer nations, many of whom think it is the only variety of rice from India.]
Why is India banning rice now?
Answer: global warming.
What’s happening in the India (and South Asia at large) should both terrify you and wake you up
Here’s more (facts? trivia? bothersome news? how the world actually works?).
1/9
#GlobalWarming #PoliticalEconomy #ClimateChange #FoodSecurity #RiceBan #India #SouthAsia #SubContinent #Agriculture #Food #AgriculturalCrises #Inequality #EcologicalCrises

2023-07-26 02:19:55

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Coda:
Reading these excerpts on Weizenbaum's "no human being could ever fully understand another human being", I am reminded of a paragraph from the great anthropologist David Graeber's less read work, "Lost People" that states this quite stunningly:
"If it is really true... that what makes us human is above all our capacity to make history, and if history consists of actions that could not have been predicted beforehand, then that would mean that the fundamental measure of our humanity lies in what we cannot know about each other. To recognize another person as human would then be to recognize the limits of one's possible knowledge of them. Their humanity is inseparable from their capacity to surprise us."
For too long, in the name of science and technology, for mostly nefarious and monetary purposes, the naysayers have insisted on making machines out of humans, and rendered them soulless and disenchanted. It's time to put the soul of value back into humans.
8/8
#AI #HistoryOfAI #Computing #Critique #Technology #Ideology #ManVsMachine #MIT #Weizenbaum