Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
Dominic Reichl: "The more I learn about the Bayesian brain, the more it seems to me that the theory of predictive processing is about as important for neuroscience as the theory of evolution is for biology, and that Bayes' law is about as important for cognitive science as the Schrödinger equation is for physics."
Your brain runs an internal model of the causal order of world that
continually creates predictions about what you expect to perceive.
These predictions are then matched with what you actually perceive,
and the divergence between predicted sensory data and actual sensory data
yields a prediction error. The better a prediction, the better the fit,
and the less prediction error propagates up the hierarchy.
...
Predictive processing provides a framework for understanding all
areas of neuroscience and cognitive science at a computational
level. Although the Bayesian brain theory is still in its fledgling
stage, confirmatory evidence is flowing in on a weekly basis
from a vast range of different fields. And although it offers a
highly integrative and ambitious account of the brain and human
cognition, it does leave much unspecified. For specification, we
must also engage with the paradigms of evolution (as cognition has
an evolutionary history), embodied embeddedness (as cognition is
embedded in physical environments), and sociocultural situatedness
(as cognition is situated in social and cultural contexts). Only if
we cover and combine all levels of analysis can we truly understand
how humans work.
The heart of Depp's claim is that Heard ruined his acting career
when she published a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post describing
herself as "a public figure representing domestic abuse"-a
thinly veiled reference to much-publicized accusations of assault
she made against Depp in court filings toward the end of their
short-lived marriage. But Heard hadn't pitched the idea to the
Post-the ACLU had. Terence Dougherty, the organization's general
counsel, testified via video deposition that after Heard promised
to donate $3.5 million to the organization, the ACLU named her
an "ambassador on women's rights with a focus on gender-based
violence." The ACLU had also spearheaded the effort to place the
op-ed, and served as Heard's ghostwriter. When Heard failed to pay
up, Dougherty said, the ACLU collected $100,000 from Depp himself,
and another $500,000 from a fund connected to Elon Musk, whom Heard
dated after the divorce.
...
The ACLU's bestowal of an ambassadorship and scribe-for-hire services
upon a scandal-plagued actor willing to pay seven figures to transform
herself into a victims' advocate and advance her acting career-Heard
pushed for a publication date that coincided with the release of her
film Aquaman-is part of the group's continuing decline. Once a bastion
of free speech and high-minded ideals, the ACLU has become in many
respects a caricature of its former self.
For Jews, it is no exaggeration to say that access to abortion services
isn't just tolerated, it is a religious requirement,
and has been for thousands of years.
...
In Exodus chapter 21:22 of the Torah, we see a clear statement that
a fetus is not a person: "When men fight, and one of them pushes
a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues,
the one responsible shall be fined." This stands in sharp contrast with
the next verse, which makes clear that if the pregnant person themselves
is injured, then the punishment is "a life for a life, an eye for an eye."
The story sounded like the plot of a bad Hollywood movie:
a group of men concocted a scheme to kidnap MI Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
because of her Covid lockdowns. But on Friday, a jury in Grand Rapids
found two men not guilty in the kidnap case, while deadlocked on charges
against two ringleaders. The judge also declared a mistrial.
...
Certainly the defendants were no choir boys. But at the same time,
the real villains in the kidnap case were the FBI, who developed
strategies to entrap the defendants.
(and what to do about them)
When the psychologist Philip Tetlock was a graduate student he witnessed an experiment, designed by his mentor Bob Rescorla, which pitted a group of Yale undergrads against a rat. The students were shown a T-maze, like the one below. Food would appear at either A or B. The students' job was to predict where the food would appear next. The rat was set the same task.
Rescorla applied a simple rule: food appeared on the left 60% of the time and on the right, 40%, at random. The students, assuming that some complex algorithm must be at work, looked for patterns and found them. They ended up getting it right 52% of the time - not much better than chance and considerably worse than the rat, which quickly figured out that one side yielded better results than the other and so headed to the left every time, achieving a 60% success rate.
From Wikipedia: Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (overt and publicly available sources) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforcement, and business intelligence functions and is of value to analysts who use non-sensitive intelligence in answering classified, unclassified, or proprietary intelligence requirements across the previous intelligence disciplines.
For how it is used see the bell¿ngcat investigative journalism group.
Billions that would otherwise go to new nuclear infrastructure, with all the attendant costs of cleanup that continue for decades and beyond, should be pumped instead into clean energy.
AI algorithms prompt robot to interrogate, select, and decision-make to create a painting.
Camera eyes fixed on her subject, AI algorithms prompt Ai-Da to interrogate, select, decision-make and, ultimately, create a painting. It's painstaking work, taking more than five hours a painting, but with no two works exactly the same.