All Men!
Mathematician and Theoretical Computer Scientist (#mathematics, #TCS) interested in #Consciousness and #NeuroAI (#Neuroscience, #AI). Distinguished Career Prof of CS at CMU, Emerita. President, Assoc for MathConscSci (AMCS) (https://amcs-community.org)
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All Men!
Bohemian Rhapsody in Zulu youtu.be/gbljPQbxtTQ?...
Congrats @danarandall.bsky.social !
BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)
Does anyone have a copy of Dennett's paper, "The User-Illusion of Consciousness", Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (11-12):167-177 (2021) that you can share with me, either on bsky or email?
In researching "agency", I found psychologist Daniel Wegner's book & "Precis of The illusion of conscious will"(bit.ly/4oGE1O6). This resonates with our view of (the feeling of) free will in the Conscious Turing Machine (bit.ly/3HLrc4x). I was saddened to find out that Wegner died of ALS in 2013.
Thanks! Checking it out it out.
I am curious how folks in the #consciousness community think about "agency", as in "having agency", re consciousness. Often consciousness is divided into "access" vs "subjective" consciousness. Is "agency" a 3rd category, or a sub-category of one or the other, or of both, or a bridge? Or?References?
Dear Anil, So sorry to hear of your mother's death. I recall when you posted about her political activity, a true inspiration. We could have used her help in the US trying to avert the current disaster. I know that you must miss her and your father very much. My thoughts are with you. lenore
Looking forward to reading all the @anilseth.bsky.social commentaries by illustrious: @tyrellturing.bsky.social @cdj.bsky.social @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @johanneskleiner.bsky.social … and me too!
Me too!
Does anyone have a copy of Dennett's paper, "The User-Illusion of Consciousness", Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (11-12):167-177 (2021) that you can share with me, either on bsky or email?
Iowa peeps... This is who you want as your senator to represent you.
Yep!
After a “hard” days work on the B^3 monograph. As forever, we work at the kitchen table.
Blum, Blum, and Blum: hamming it up! 🙃😍🥳
San Francisco this AM.
Probably the only wise thing Kreisel ever said.
Another disgraceful act by the Trump administration! This is a fascist ruse. MAGA and MADA (Make America Dumb Again) promote antisemitism. Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...
Dear @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social , You are an inspiration to us oldsters! Keep up your spirit and enthusiasm. Your passion will help you navigate through these times.
Too bad you were not in S.F. this weekend for the 60th anniversary.
🙏
🙏💐
64 years ago, 7/30/61, and we’re still going strong! 😍 That’s Warren & Rook McCulloch at the table with us and Manuel’s & my parents standing behind. #neuroscience #neuralnets #AI #ML #MIT #CSTheory #consciousnes
The GOAT of comedic song writing (and performing)! May his memory be a blessing and a reminder of the joy of brilliant silliness (e.g., my personal favorite: "Lobachevsky" www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4v...)
Yes, let's plan to discuss more! Anyone reading Boki's reply here should read from bottom up.
At the recent @assc28.bsky.social meeting, I heard several talks purporting to show that high entropy aligns with high consciousness, in newborns and in adults under hallucinatory drugs. I found that puzzling since randomness does not align with interconnectedness/structure. Clarifications welcome!
Dear Boki @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social,1st congrats on your research! 2nd, I wonder if your findings help confirm/inform my view that entropic measures of Consciousness are misguided. Entropy measures the degree of randomness in a system, as opposed to structure/integration clearly needed for C.
"Apropos the Long-Lost Letter from Levinson to Smale, Now Found!", fascinating story about what prompted the discovery of the Smale Horseshoe on the beaches of Rio, by Jair Koiller & Indika Rajapakse in the Notices of the AMS, bit.ly/4kNlL2t #mathematics Just in time for Smale@95, bit.ly/4eVUzNR
Our hearts are heavy for the grieving family of Jaime Alanis, who died from injuries sustained during a chaotic raid on Thursday. We will do everything we can to support them. We continue to work with the hundreds of farm worker families navigating the aftermath of this violent raid.
It’s overwhelming!
@larrysummers.bsky.social please note!
Join us next week in celebrating #mathematician Steve Smale on his 95th birthday at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computation in Berkeley, July 21-22, 2025: simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/sm...
👍👍👍🙏🙏🙏
Today’s hero: Judge Maame E. Frimpong Judge Blocks Trump Administration Tactics in L.A. Immigration Raids www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/u...
Thank you @ademertzi.bsky.social and emmmanuel and @assc28.bsky.social for such a wonderful and welcoming conference! 👍🙏👍🙏
Today’s hero: Judge Joseph N Leplante Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order in Class-Action Challenge www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/u...
So true!
Land of the fr… oh, never mind. A repressive regime has taken over the US.
Delighted to meet Monima Chadha, another keynote speaker @assc28.bsky.social #assc2025
Thrilled to meet Andy Clark who was awarded the inaugural Dan Dennett prize at the ICCS meeting in Heraklion.
The saddest July 4 ever! Supreme Court Lets Trump Deport Eight Migrants to South Sudan www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/u...
Me at ORD, my first stop on my way to Heraklion.Two more to go.
On my way to 3 conferences on consciousness in Heraklion. Intense! Looking forward to learning a lot. I’ll be speaking in the 2nd one @assc28.bsky.social Our most recent version of “AI Consciousness is Inevitable” was posted today on arXiv, bit.ly/4c4fx9V.
Wow! What a beautiful award. Congratulations.
The astronomer behind the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. wapo.st/4lkFszm
Are videos of the talk available?
Today’s hero: Judge Allison D Burroughs Judge Blocks a Trump Effort to Prevent International Students at Harvard www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/u...
Nice categorization of your earlier Wiring the Brain questions.
Today’s hero: Judge William G Young
Disgraceful! Trump’s Big Bill Would Be More Regressive Than Any Major Law in Decades www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Max Boot gives a similar description of the parade in the WP.
I watched part of the parade on TV and was surprised it was actually pretty folksy. Not at all like the militaristic parades I think Trump was expecting. I wonder who choreographed it. Anyone know?
“No Kings Day”: A compilation
Definitely watch.
Thanks for this…
NOW: Unfortunate turnaround
Today’s hero: Judge Charles Breyer Appeals court blocks U.S. judge’s order to return National Guard to California control www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...
Have you not followed the debates in consciousness science?
😅 The PhD is in the neurophilosophy programme in fact (of the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences) and my supervisor is Stephan Hartman at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. So it's as much philosophy as anything else! philarchive.org/rec/KLETIM-3
"The fundamental lie of the whole [MAGA] operation is that Trump has broken with the 50-year conservative consensus around cutting the welfare state." On the pod, @alexshephard.bsky.social is good in explaining what Musk's attack on the GOP bill really means: newrepublic.com/article/1960...
Hearty congratulations to @johanneskleiner.bsky.social on receiving his second PhD, this time in #neuroscience from @lmumuenchen.bsky.social (his first in #mathematics). 🎉🥂
Today's hero: Judge Royce C. Lamberth wapo.st/4kTa4Ia
We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower wapo.st/43Fqdd4
What Trump is doing to US universities is not as bad as the McCarthyite witch trials – it’s worse www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...
Today's hero: Judge Allison D. Burroughs wapo.st/43w3EY9
MAGA has become MADA (D =dumb)
Today’s hero: Judge Christina Reiss
You are absolutely correct!
Is there a coordinated effort here? Eg, partnering with the folks who signed the Stanford letter, etc. otherwise way too scattered.
Food for conscious thought!
1/ Great perspective by @pallabg.bsky.social on the prospects for 'conscious AI' - featuring @davidchalmers.bsky.social, Murray Shanahan, @lenoreblum.bsky.social Manuel Blum, Brett Kagan, & me among others. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
I feel your pain.
Bravo, to Stanford faculty, led by physics, to ask their administrators to stand up and fight Trump. stanforddaily.com/2025/05/22/f...
Today’s hero: Judge Allison Burroughs Trump’s New Attack on Harvard Fails Immediately as Judge Blocks It newrepublic.com/post/195697/... via @newrepublic.com
NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research. NSF Astronomy was cut by 53% Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79% Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO. #GiftLink ⚛️🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
So Trump is proclaiming thru executive orders that only rich white American males are permitted to go to Harvard. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...
Today’s hero: Judge Myong J. Joun www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/u...
🔥 @RepMcGovern: “THIS IS NOT POLICY. THIS IS THEFT… done under the cover of night.” #TrumpsTrillionsTransfer
The "quietly shifting focus" aspect of this retreat is especially infuriating. Institutions abandoning bridge programs like this should be required to loudly and publicly state they they will no longer be making efforts to help minorities and 1st gen students, and explain why. #Academic
Fuck yes! Finally someone actually speaking to these ghouls the way they should be spoken to!
Thanks for posting and re-posting. I'll follow suit.
Today's hero: Judge Brian E. Murphy Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/u...
DURBIN: How can we give hope to people across the country who are suffering from so many diseases when our government is cutting back on that research? RFK Jr: I do not know about any cuts to ALS research D: I just read them to you! R: I didn't know about them until you told me about them
The President-elect of Romania, Nicușor Dan, won gold medals at the 1987 and 1988 International Mathematical Olympiads and and obtained a mathematics PhD from the École normale supérieure in Paris in 1998 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicu%C8...
A mathematician to boot!
First there was MATH POPE Then there was MATH PRESIDENT
Math professor wins in Romania - against a pro-Putin pro-Trump opponent. A victory for logic and reason.
Today: A weekly digest 🧵. A great way to glimpse the tremendous opportunity of this era is to see this alternation between big breakthroughs about the brain and the vast unmet needs for brain and mental disorders. It really helps build the intution about what's what /1
According to a 2021 report, the University of California system: • generated $82B in economic activity in California • supported 529K jobs in the state • generated $21 in economic output for every $1 received Public divestment from higher ed makes no sense, even in the narrowest economic terms.
weird how people are talking about research grants. i get paid to teach. sometimes the government says "we want to do some research but we can't do it ourselves. if you can out-compete everyone else, we'll pay you to do it for us." it's not a subsidy, it's a competitive work-for-hire.
The Trump administration has so far frozen about $11 billion in research funding. University leaders say no other source can fill the void.
Couldn't be more proud of my kiddo, Anelise, for being a good human. The bar is pretty low these days but she soars over it.
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...
Today's hero: Judge Gregory B. Wormuth www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/u...
At least $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just the last month.
important historical perspective on the value of federal funding of basic research at universities: "These are the building blocks of America's extraordinary strength, created over the last 100 years, and they are now being dismantled in 100 days" 🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qk4...
Did you know that the NSF was established by the US Congress (Public Law 507-81st Congress) exactly 75 years ago (May 10, 1950)? "To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes."
Today's hero: Judge William K. Sessions Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...
Academic freedom is dead at West Point. Philosophy professor resigns his tenured position because of admin interference in curriculum and research, which now must bow to Trump’s agenda. “I cannot tolerate these changes, which prevent me from doing my job responsibly.”