Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ

@olivia.science

👁️ https://olivia.science

🍃 https://metatheory.space

associate professor of computational cognitive science · she/they · cypriot/kıbrıslı/κυπραία · σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει

@olivia.science Pinned

CAIL = prerequisite knowledge for a critical perspective, such as to tell apart nonsense hype from true theoretical computer scientific claims. For example, the idea that human-like systems are a sensible or possible goal is the result of circular reasoning and anthropomorphism.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science

It feels many only know my work pushing back against AI, which is very fair — but I have a broader research interest, which also forms a protective belt against such forces, as well as being what I have been thinking about since discovering "cognitive science" in ~2006: 🍃 metatheory.space 1/

metatheory.spacemetatheory.spaceHello! 🍃 metatheory.space is a group that works at the foundations of cognitive science. We are interested in the intersections of psychological and computational neurocognitive theorising with critic...
olivia.scienceCritical AICritical AI Literacy (CAIL) from my perspective.
@chanda.blacksky.appReposted by @olivia.science

As always, I’d like to remind everyone that when you fight in public, you make it very easy for the feds to understand how to start and keep fights going within the movement So be thoughtful!!!!!

@hagenblix.bsky.socialReposted by @olivia.science

Running the diesel generators for 24 hours while forest fires are already making the air unbreathable. Clearly, the future is in great hands, I'm so glad that these people get to decide what we do with the wealth of society

@skybrush.bsky.socialReposted by @olivia.science

You just know that the reason the social media vids went up unaltered in the first place is because no one involved knew who "The Dolls" was referring to The absolute panic it must have been, realizing that they'd accidentally been trans-positive by proxy

@olivia.scienceReposted by @olivia.science

> ‘We cannot continuously tell you what our science means; what it will be good for; because we simply don’t know yet. Science needs time – Bear with us, while we think.’ Resisting consensus always exposes us to sniggers, but I will expose my position even further by daring to defend...

My intervention takes ‘slow science’ as a name for the challenge that is addressed to us as academics. A name which also includes a trap we have to resist; namely, the call for an agreement to go ‘back to the past’ as expressed by The Slow Science Manifesto, discussed in the previ- ous chapter. As we saw there, it concludes by asking an unspecified audience to leave scientists alone: ‘We cannot continuously tell you what our science means; what it will be good for; because we simply don’t know yet. Science needs time – Bear with us, while we think.’ Resisting consensus always exposes us to sniggers, but I will expose my position even further by daring to defend the definition of the task of the university given by the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in 1935: ‘The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilised modes of appreciation, can affect the issue. The future is big with every possibility of achievement and of tragedy.We may snigger indeed, because it is all too easy to deconstruct the very idea that universities ever had such a task. But this is precisely the meaning of William James’ notion of a genuine option. As I remarked ear- lier, the destruction of academia is not in itself sufficient 110Another Science is Possible to create such an option. Those academics who just ask for time to think – who do not name those putting pressure on them, preferring to address ‘society’ and ask for protection – do not feel there is an option at all. They just dream of a past where they, and the so-called disinterested knowledge they produced, were respected. The ‘exposing oneself to sniggers’ option requires us to accept that we academics are, among many others, called upon by our role in the creation of the future. We cannot evade that call by pleading that we do not deserve to play such a role.the cover of the book, very plain with a snail on it: Another Science is Possible A Manifesto for Slow Science Isabelle Stengers Translated by Stephen Muecke
@olivia.science

OK, but as somebody who received therapy when I was in poverty on the NHS, I will walk away for now as the "pimp" joke/comment is IMHO unhelpful. I may return later, but I hope you can respect that I do not like this jocular tone on things that are actually quite important to people's mental health.

@fox.northsky.socialReposted by @olivia.science

fun fact! everything a LLM can do, you can do too with an abacus! (seriously. for softmax, just use taylor series.) this means that with enough time, beads, and determination, you can make a wooden object feel pain! or perhaps you feel the pain. or maybe the universe does. it goes somewhere!

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