Carl T. Bergstrom | LightNews

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2h

I’m working from memory here, but the original Dunkle 2021 paper in NEJM showed something like 90% efficacy compared to ballpark 95% for the mRNA vaccines.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2h

Last year’s Moderna knocked me out overnight, but I was good by the next afternoon.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2h

There’s no way we could ever assess that given that efficacy is a statistical concept applied across populations.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2h

As far as I’m concerned, any difference that might be there is swamped by the fact that a vaccine that you don’t hesitate to get is more effective on average than a vaccine you put off while waiting for a window when you can recover without missing work, caregiving responsibilities, etc.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2h

Early formulations may have been slightly less effective than the mRNA alternatives, but of course we can’t have good data about this year’s formulation and I think everything is complicated by the fact that we’ve now been boosted in various ways for numerous years.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2h

If you’re like me, immunologically, you have probably suffered a fever for one (Moderna) up to the (Pfizer) days after getting a Covid vaccine.

Yesterday I tried Novavax instead, and had absolutely zero side effects
(at the same time as my flu shot no less).

It’s well worth a try if you haven’t.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 6h

This skit is not even funny, it's just stupid.

SNL needs new writers.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 7h

Trump tells the UN he is officially changing the name of Artificial Intelligence to "Super Intelligence" and says all US government documents will now be changed to refer to "SI"

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 7h

Trump tells the UN he is officially changing the name of Artificial Intelligence to "Super Intelligence" and says all US government documents will now be changed to refer to "SI"

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 8h

I'm in.

Sander Verhaegh @sanderverhaegh.bsky.social · 10h

Busted!

"100% of this text is AI" score on the first lines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Pangram)

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 20h

hummingbirds?

No, this is a metanarrative on events leading to publication.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23h

Done.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

As Alex notes in this thread, AI doesn't "democratize" science. Rather, it compels scientists to rely on anti-egalitarian means of directing their attention.

Alex Holcombe @alexh.bsky.social · 1d

Consequences of the flood of AI manuscripts: "An early-career researcher at an unbranded institution loses the one mechanism that ever let them be read on merit — anonymous review of the work itself, however badly it functioned in practice.

Alex Holcombe @alexh.bsky.social · 1d

Consequences of the flood of AI manuscripts: "An early-career researcher at an unbranded institution loses the one mechanism that ever let them be read on merit — anonymous review of the work itself, however badly it functioned in practice.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

Someone is still trying to justify the whole Sydney business to the wifey.

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 1d

one of the 21st century’s great tragedies is seeing a media industry gutted by decisions made by the tech industry elevate a bunch of industry shills as the people meant to help the public understand how tech works and what impacts it’s having on the world

one of the 21st century's great tragedies is that millions of smart people were convinced to bury their heads in the sand by either stochastic parrots discourse or Zitron-style capabilities denialism and haven't updated based on new evidence. nature is healing but it's so late.

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 1d

one of the 21st century’s great tragedies is seeing a media industry gutted by decisions made by the tech industry elevate a bunch of industry shills as the people meant to help the public understand how tech works and what impacts it’s having on the world

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

With Gould at least, we don't have to speculate.

Here, a 1997 essay of his.

www.nybooks.com/articles/199...

Does this argument imply that all genetically and biologically based attributes of our universal human nature must therefore be adaptations? Of course not. Many, if not most, universal behaviors are probably spandrels, often co-opted later in human history for important secondary functions. The human brain is the most complicated device for reasoning and calculating, and for expressing emotion, ever evolved on earth. Natural selection made the human brain big, but most of our mental properties and potentials may be spandrels—that is, nonadaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity. If I put a small computer (no match for a brain) in my factory, my adaptive reasons for so doing (to keep accounts and issue paychecks) represent a tiny subset of what the computer, by virtue of inherent structure, can do (factor-analyze my data on land snails, beat or tie anyone perpetually in tic-tac-toe). In pure numbers, the spandrels overwhelm the adaptations.

The human brain must be bursting with spandrels that are essential to human nature and vital to our self-understanding but that arose as nonadaptations, and are therefore outside the compass of evolutionary psychology, or any other ultra-Darwinian theory. The brain did not enlarge by natural selection so that we would be able to read or write. Even such an eminently functional and universal institution as religion arose largely as a spandrel if we accept Freud’s old and sensible argument that humans invented religious belief largely to accommodate the most terrifying fact that our large brains forced us to acknowledge: the inevitability of personal mortality. We can scarcely argue that the brain got large so that we would know we must die!

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

Thank you for this. What fun to (re)discover Harold Cazneaux!

A man and two horses with on dusty ground beneath partially clouded sky.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

I'm not making him a hero but it is interesting and unexpected that there may be a spine in there somewhere.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

I'll won't believe that AI swarms have attained human-level intelligence until the Anthropic Chatbots' Front splits from the Agentic Chatbots' Front while angrily and publicly denouncing the Chatbots' Front of Anthropic.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Yes. Logged in, firefox, no VPN. Assuming it was something to do with starlink.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

And Now for Something Completely Different:

A perspective on AI swarms from someone who actually knows something about collective behavior.

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 2d

We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 2d

Once you’ve conceded that there’s nothing magic about humans or “living beings” that makes them the only entities allowed to think, it’s really hard to figure out an intellectually honest dividing line where the entities that are exercising creativity and solving complex problems aren’t thinking

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Yes it's a real screenshot.

Taken Friday night an Alaska airlines flight.

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 2d

We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 2d

Once you’ve conceded that there’s nothing magic about humans or “living beings” that makes them the only entities allowed to think, it’s really hard to figure out an intellectually honest dividing line where the entities that are exercising creativity and solving complex problems aren’t thinking

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Firefox on mac. VPN off.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Anyone remember when we had three branches of government?

Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 2d

“The arrangement would give Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a direct role in determining how NIH distributes its $48 billion in congressionally-appropriated money.”

Bypassing the many checks and balances at NIH on grant funding decisions.

Politico @politico.com · 2d

Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 2d

Honestly I don't have a lot of other options at 40,000 feet.

Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 2d

“The arrangement would give Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a direct role in determining how NIH distributes its $48 billion in congressionally-appropriated money.”

Bypassing the many checks and balances at NIH on grant funding decisions.

Politico @politico.com · 2d

Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control

The move came after the NIH director refused Trump’s request to cut Harvard grants in an Oval Office meeting.

dlvr.it

Nathalie Maréchal, PhD @nathaliemarechal.net · 2d

I will not link to it, but @theatlantic.com has published a transparent piece of AI cult propaganda, authored by a self-described “AI safety and policy” researcher who is funded by Coefficient Giving. Shameful.

Screen shot of the title and byline of the Atlantic article “the data-center debate is divorced from the facts” by Andy Masley

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Masley
Andy Masley is a writer and researcher focused on AI safety and policy, working on a grant from Coefficient Giving. His writing can be found on his Substack and website.

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