Also, if the problem is that trust has "eroded" in the last decade & 📈 costs are the problem, then 1) we should talk about the central cause of 📈 costs at public universities, which is declining state $$; & 2) we should talk about how inflation-adjusted costs have actually <declined> since 2013.
I really don't know what to tell folks if they think any of these proposed reforms from Yale, or anything that we can possibly do here at UW - Madison, will change the Narrative™️ from the right in American politics about universities. We're a century into this stuff. We're not the problem.
Rising costs didn't erode trust. Technology didn't erode trust. Biased admissions that have existed for a century didn't erode trust suddenly in the last decade. The self-censoring & campus speech stuff starts to get at the problem, but again, the root cause of that is not even mentioned here.
Instead, they do this. Something tells me “viewpoint diversity” won’t mean hiring socialists for the economics department.
This report hits on many important issues & identifies important problems that could be addressed. But it fails by writing about the problem of trust, from the outset, without even mentioning the decades of concerted attacks & lies coming from the far right authoritarian party & right-wing pundits.
Interesting, I haven’t heard of this. Could you please point me to reporting on examples?
... Fascism.
According to Science, OMB (White House Office of Mgmt and Budget) is throttling spending -- a back door attempt to enforce the funding cuts the WH wanted.
Congress approved $8.8bn, but there is a rumor that "OMB must approve any spending above the president’s request of $3.9 bn"
2/x
What can Congress do, other than impeachment?
“In a constrained fiscal environment” in which they’re also asking for 1.5 *trillion* for the military. That’s a lot of NSFs!
They are acting before congress has approved the request. Congress appropriated funds specifically to SBE and they are shutting it down now, before the next budget bill. It’s similar to what happened with USAID
BREAKING: In response to huge cuts in Trump's budget request, NSF is shuttering its SBE directorate. Staff will be transferred to other parts of the agency and "grants that align with Administration priorities" will be maintained.
That & more w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social & @edwrdchen.bsky.social
what’s different this time is that the executive is refusing to spend what congress appropriated
bsky.app/profile/roma...
And the field that's doing the most to understand how that tech works and control it.
The complete destruction of American cognitive science is happening right now
For #NSF and #NIH watchers, Grant Witness now has interactive data on numbers of grants and total funding obligations, broken down by institute and directorate, new awards and non-competitive renewals.
The stranglehold on new awards is still a disaster.
grant-witness.us/funding_curv...
The CANDLab at Yale is hiring a new full-time research assistant! Excellent opportunity to gain post-bacc experience before applying to PhD programs in child and adolescent clinical psychology and neuroscience. 🧠 candlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/YaleCANDLab_RA_2026.pdf
I looked at this earlier today! But thought the first line of the abstract might be enough for mutiny, in my context
Yes to all! But I want more lex-sem things specifically
But then how do LLMs work so well, huh!!
Anything of yours you think might work? I’m a huge fan :)
Between this, radical nativism, and atomism, I’m afraid this class is going to be just Fodor’s Greatest Hates, and all the LLM/comp neuro folks are going to be setting their and my hair on fire
I'm teaching a grad class on concepts to psych/cog sci PhD students next fall. I want to include some relevant lexical semantics (e.g. lexicalism, decomposition), but most papers require some ling background. What's accessible to psych students and also meaty for a grad seminar?
We discuss just the “mere implementation” argument with respect to current DNNs and LLMs here journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
It’s an amazing, prescient paper in lots of ways, but they really do argue both. Chalmers put it well, “their position is one thing, their argument is another”. philarchive.org/archive/CHAC...
When you collect data online, are the results from humans or AI? In a project led by Booth PhD student Grace Zhang, we estimate the prevalence of AI agents on commonly used survey platforms:
osf.io/preprints/ps...
🧵
It was the winter of despair, it was the summer of despair
This is the worst poetry slam ever
Story time:
The CDC (Kennedy) gave $1.6m to fund an unethical Hep B trial in Guinea-Bissau. WHO/scientists denounced it.
Enter @standupforscience.bsky.social. They briefed congress on this study. It is now cancelled.
Science activism is essential right now.
🧪 www.reuters.com/business/hea...
