Deterministic free will algorithm:

10 REPEAT
20 Evaluate plausible actions
30 Pick best one
40 Do it
50 UNTIL DEAD

Four students walking along the towpath by the River Cam in summer. The trees are green and it's a beautiful day

👋 Could you be one of our 2026 ICCS interns?

We’re looking for 5 interns to join us this summer. 3 will work on projects under the supervision of ICCS postdoctoral researchers; 2 will work on projects in collaboration between ICCS + @clr-cambridge.bsky.social

Info: iccs.cam.ac.uk/opportunitie...

That’s more like it - just your bog-standard cantrip.

`git reset --soft HEAD~` is some crazy magic-user spell, I have to relearn it every time I cast it.

Everything is in the eye of the beholder. Even beholding is in the eye of the beholder.

Participants at ICCS Summer School work and chat together during session

☀️ The 2026 ICCS Summer School will bring together researchers for a week of collaborative, hands-on learning and expert-led sessions supporting their scientific work.

🗓️ When? Monday 13 July to Friday 17 July 2026
📍 Where? Centre for Mathematical Sciences, @cam.ac.uk

iccs.cam.ac.uk/events/insti...

Yeah, "general intelligence" is not a thing. But it's not not a thing either.

Brilliant

Disclaimer: this paper was entirely Bob's insight and methodology. For me it was primarily a learning experience (and a very enjoyable one)!

Galois Slicing as Automatic Differentiation Galois slicing is a technique for program slicing for provenance, developed by Perera and collaborators. Galois slicing aims to explain program executions by demonstrating how to track approximations ...

New preprint with Robert Atkey. This paper recasts Galois slicing (a program slicing technique) as a kind of automatic differentiation, with lattices of slices corresponding to tangent spaces, and forward and backward slicing corresponding to forward- and reverse-mode AD.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.09203

Condensed version of NAP3/CCRA3 transparent brushing-and-linking demo from @propl.dev in Singapore. Built with @f.luid.org

Actually I still live in Bristol but am employed in Cambridge. I'm usually around one week in three. Next up on 18 Nov, I'll ping you and maybe we can grab a coffee..

And what's so borked about that starting point is that you have no resources at all for explaining consciousness *discourse* — why it exists or how it manages to refer to anything! You might as well pack your bags and go home because the one thing you can't be talking about is consciousness.

Hi Matt. It would be good to see you in Cambridge some time!

Graceful degradation table

Preserving Interactive Research Content: Challenges, Frameworks, and Best Practices
#FORCE11
force11.github.io/pircwg/

Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

I feel like these bimodal distributions crop up quite a lot in human beliefs/preferences (realism vs. instrumentalism in philosophy being another). Almost like competing alleles.

I like the idea of intelligence as being as much about defining problems as solving them. Intelligence as niche construction.

Solid advice Derek. I love criticism, even when painful. Even bad-faith criticism is almost always an opportunity to improve things.

Great evening with @dorchard.bsky.social, @dm0ney.bsky.social and @neurocy.bsky.social talking Hazel and Fluid!

goto DEAD

Mm, brassicas

Finally, some recognition!

[ICFP/SPLASH'25] Peony NE - PROPL (Oct 13th) YouTube video by ACM SIGPLAN

Reposting — looks like organisers uploaded a new video with better audio and different timings. Authoring Tools for Transparent Climate Reporting, presented at
@propl.dev 2025: youtu.be/IIRJeleXeuU?...
@iccscambridge.bsky.social

Anyone from @plrg-bristol.bsky.social at ICFP/SPLASH?

[ICFP/SPLASH'25] Peony NE - PROPL (Oct 12th) YouTube video by ACM SIGPLAN

The 2nd PROPL is today, and will be livestreaming from www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIRJ... in an hour! Full program here conf.researchr.org/home/icfp-sp... and an overview of the program at dl.acm.org/action/showF...

No durians

Wow. Looking forward!

Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming for the Planet | ACM Conferences

PROPL '25: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming for the Planet. Now online: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...
Looking forward to the workshop next week @icfp-conference.bsky.social/SPLASH

LIVE 2025 - Language-Based Dependency-Tracking for Explorables YouTube video by The LIVE Workshop

Language-Based Dependency-Tracking for Explorables, presented at LIVE 2025. Joint work with Joe Bond, Cristina David, @mcnuttandrew.bsky.social and Alfonso Piscitelli. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gds8...