Really enjoyed my conversation with Vasant Dhar at Brave New World Podcast - we talk about smell, brains, dynamical systems, consciousness and COVID-19. 🧪
#neuroskyence #chemicalsenses
bravenewpodcast.com/episodes/202...
We win by working together, by building bridges across age and career stage, across fields, and across different backgrounds. Everyone who believes in equality and freedom and fairness is on the same side, and we will win if we stand together.
Yes. Give people grace, everyone.
There is a light on the horizon.
But things are bad right now, and people are not doing well. Hold fast, take care of yourself, be kind, and if you can, keep doing something to bend the arc of history.
LIES
This whole approach is torn from the playbook of the “Merchants of Doubt,” as @markhisted.org has noted:
A few outlier academics who
promote junk legal history,
following in
the ignominious footsteps of
those who
promoted junk science so
Big Tobacco could keep killing people with impunity.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
"Perhaps most crucially for [brain organoids research] is the concern that emergent properties, such as consciousness, might arise in complex organoids."
LOL... wut? No, this is not a concern.
#neuroscience 🧪
Al Sikes
Second day of ‘Foundations and Frontiers in Cognitive Neuroscience’ in honor of Alex Martin
The goal of regulatory democracy should be to surface and channel productive disagreement, not chase consensus. This is so good @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social !!
fas.org/publication/...
We do now know the NSF is proceeding with dissolving the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. Congress might reverse it, but it is now already underway. YOU CAN NO LONGER SUBMIT FUNDING PROPOSALS TO SBE. Program officers are being moved to different parts of the agency. Call your Congress member
Interesting take on admin burden, and I like the framing that the government should instead be acting in the public interest.
“the actual effect of the law is the creation of a bureaucratic sinkhole that draws in public interest and industry orgs, academics, and the public every three years.
They must do this, in part, because the gov’t does not see its role as acting on behalf of the public interest itself.”
More of this. The best way to make progress in this moment is just for all of us to truthfully describe what is happening.
Jeremy, agree with your overall point but that study is a low-external-validity survey experiment, and public opinion is much more complicated and nonlinear. The data of that Nat Hum Behav study have been wildly over interpreted to yield sweeping conclusions not supported by the data
*great article, I meant to say
A great thread on how science evolves, how science is a process with short and long term outcomes and data that emerges over time to change what we know.
It’s also a story about patients, advocacy, and hope. 🧪
💯 true in many fields, true for people in other jobs in science too.
The weird emotional switches are not easy, ngl
Can say more after work hours. Thanks!
There are connections to science: basic science is also a public good and depends on public support just like good info is. And science both depends on and produces truth.
Fun discussion!
I would say we talked less about saving media and more about improving the information environment - media, journalism, AI; how to boost good info, build communities, and provide consensus truth as a public good.
The stats trick they know:
As the time into the future for estimation gets longer, the posterior distribution converges to their priors.
subtext: there is a lesson for all of us at the national level here
Thank you for going back.
Jay Bhattacharya, Matt Memoli and others in this admin have weaponized the term “DEI” in incoherent ways that deeply and fundamentally harm science.
Was honored to work on this with Jennifer Troyer & Alice Popejoy. open.substack.com/pub/sciencea...
The Iranian universities being hit are also places where competent democratically-inclined leaders are likely to be found, which makes me think about what's really motivating Trump and Netanyahu
Nuremberg was an important symbol of German nationhood so I say with 100% sincerity that this is a job for Philadelphia
Being apolitical is a privilege, yes.
a picture of gandalf with the text 'I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see wuch times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.
one of those days.
More than that:
Go to DC. Meet in a conference room. (Or on the floor if they can)
Vote on impeachment articles. It will fall short. No matter. Publicize the vote numbers and call on Johnson to do it again on the floor.
💯