Tiago Peixoto
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tiago.skewed.de
Tiago Peixoto
@tiago.skewed.de
4.7K followers 630 following 490 posts
Statistical mechanic, secular Bayesian.

Prof. of Complex Systems and Network Science @ IT:U, Austria

Head of the “Inverse Complexity Lab”.
@invcomplexity.skewed.de

https://skewed.de/lab
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tiago.skewed.de
Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de · 21d
Double feature, just out on @royalsocietypublishing.org:

"Uncertainty quantification and posterior sampling for network reconstruction"

Previous explainer thread here: bsky.app/profile/tiag...

Code here: graph-tool.skewed.de/static/docs/...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
tiago.skewed.de
“Then you tell the model, 'Can you please fix the bug?' [...] And it introduces a second bug. Then you tell it, “You have this new second bug,” [...] and brings back the first bug, and you can alternate between those. How is that possible?”

Because it's a fucking Markov chain on word tokens.
November 25, 2025 at 8:57 PM
tiago.skewed.de
So, the ”age” of scaling was about 3 years or so?
November 25, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
jbakcoleman.bsky.social
“Are we the baddies?”
November 24, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
noamchompers.bsky.social
Getting journal rejections like
November 21, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
mattdpearce.com
I don’t want to seem out of touch but I don’t actually understand the economy anymore.
A LinkedIn ad showing Jensen Huang shaking hands with some vague fashion executive: L'OREAL 6,204,444 followers Promoted We're thrilled to announce a collaboration with NVIDIA to supercharge beauty with next-gen Al. WELCOME TO NVIDIA L'ORÉAL GROUPE
November 18, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social
And so the genocide continues in hushed silence, with the rest of the world lulled into a false sense that it has ended... www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
US military planning for divided Gaza with ‘green zone’ secured by international and Israeli troops
Exclusive: Almost all Palestinians have been displaced to ‘red zone’ where no reconstruction is planned
www.theguardian.com
November 14, 2025 at 9:30 PM
tiago.skewed.de
This level of blatant dishonesty baffles me. I'm seeing this more and more. Do people *want* to ruin their reputation?
casperalbers.nl Casper Albers 🟥 @casperalbers.nl · 15d
Doing non-causal inference (and being explicit about it), yet using a causal word as second word in the title.

If you pay Nature € 10.690, they will publish this in Nature Ageing.

I can tell you what I think of that for free.

www.nature.com/articles/s43...
screenshot from the paper, stating that no causal claims (like they did in the title) should be made. paper title
November 14, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
sophieehill.bsky.social
You know what they say about academics...

"causal" in the streets

"preliminary and hypothesis-generating" in the sheets
November 12, 2025 at 11:16 PM
tiago.skewed.de
“Metros reduce car use in European cities but trams do not”

The conclusion says: “Although cities with a metro tend to
have a higher share of B, it is unclear whether the presence itself causes people to shift to B, and no causal claims can be made.”

Then, why make a causal claim in the title? 🤷‍♂️
rafaelprietocuriel.bsky.social Rafael Prieto-Curiel @rafaelprietocuriel.bsky.social · 15d
I analysed the modal share of nearly 400 European cities, comparing those with a metro, only a tram, and without any rail system.

Large cities with a metro have roughly half the car share of cities served only by a tram.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Data: CitiesMoving.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social
A statistic that concentrates the mind: In the first 6 months of 2025, China installed 250 GW of solar power capacity. This is around 150% of France's aggregate electricity production...
November 11, 2025 at 8:27 AM
tiago.skewed.de
Firing a BBC director for *leftist* bias is like punishing a pig for taking a bath.
theguardian.com The Guardian @theguardian.com · 17d
Tim Davie resigns as BBC director general after accusations of ‘serious and systemic’ bias in coverage
Tim Davie resigns as BBC director general after accusations of ‘serious and systemic’ bias in coverage
Davie tells staff departure was “my own decision” but it comes with the BBC preparing to apologise for the way it edited a Trump speech Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and the head of BBC News have resigned after a former adviser to the corporation accused it of “serious and systemic” bias in its coverage of issues including Donald Trump, Gaza and trans rights. In a shock move, Davie said his depature was his own, but comes with the BBC preparing to apologise for the way the broadcaster edited a Donald Trump speech. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
November 9, 2025 at 7:22 PM
tiago.skewed.de
A team of 42 researchers lead by Oxford finds that bears do, in fact, defecate in the woods.

www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...
OII | Study identifies weaknesses in how AI systems are evaluated
Largest systematic review of AI benchmarks highlights need for clearer definitions and stronger scientific standards.
www.oii.ox.ac.uk
November 9, 2025 at 9:33 AM
tiago.skewed.de
James Watson is perhaps the greatest cautionary tale of where the competitive narcisism that poisons science can lead.

www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM
tiago.skewed.de
Very good post. I very much agree with the overall position.
November 8, 2025 at 11:38 AM
tiago.skewed.de
Nowadays, often the justification for choosing M$ is that it claims to be GDPR compliant, which just means that M$ can afford getting sued for any breach, which of course happens all the time. And universities don't care about potential breaches themselves, only about liability, which M$ absorbs.
ploederl.bsky.social Martin Plöderl @ploederl.bsky.social · 20d
We had this discussion 25 years ago.
A colleague calculated that they could hire a full-time administrator for Linux instead of paying the MS licences. Most thought of it as absurd idea ;-)
November 6, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
transmetropolitanr.bsky.social
lol
November 6, 2025 at 4:47 AM
tiago.skewed.de
Double feature, just out on @royalsocietypublishing.org:

"Uncertainty quantification and posterior sampling for network reconstruction"

Previous explainer thread here: bsky.app/profile/tiag...

Code here: graph-tool.skewed.de/static/docs/...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
November 5, 2025 at 8:15 AM
tiago.skewed.de
Just out on @royalsocietypublishing.org:

"Scalable network reconstruction in subquadratic time"

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Previous explainer thread here: bsky.app/profile/tiag...

Code here: graph-tool.skewed.de/static/docs/...
November 5, 2025 at 8:11 AM
tiago.skewed.de
The work conditions in academia are rapidly deteriorating, but at least we still have academic freedom. 🫠

www.theguardian.com/education/20...
UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China
Exclusive: Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities
www.theguardian.com
November 4, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
rogerfreedman.bsky.social
The first (1955) Danish edition of Ray Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451. Later editions did not convert the title, so this is the only SI-compatible edition! 🎢
Cover of “233 Celsius” by Ray Bradbury
November 1, 2025 at 7:55 PM
tiago.skewed.de
FFS, why did the ML literature decide to abolish *plots* in favor of tables?
eugenevinitsky.bsky.social Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · Oct 23
What if we did a single run and declared victory
Three panel thing. In the left panel we use error bars. In the second, we take statistical significance as the biggest number but still have error bars. In LLM science, we just have the biggest number
October 23, 2025 at 9:49 AM
tiago.skewed.de
Today I learned that there are bacteria and fungi in clouds, and I'm having a hard time processing this.

www.bbc.com/future/artic...
Weather makers: How microbes living in the clouds affect our lives
Trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses and single-celled organisms travel the globe high in the atmosphere. Scientists are finding that they play a role in the weather and our health.
www.bbc.com
October 21, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
emilymbender.bsky.social
I'd love to see someone try to estimate just how much time and money has gone into research that is either fully undermined by reliance on LLMs or fully pointless --- because obvious if you start from an understanding of what LLMs actually are.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Screen cap from linked article, with heading Significance and then text: Large Language Models (LLMs) are used in evaluative tasks across domains. Yet, what appears as alignment with human or expert judgments may conceal a deeper shift in how “judgment” itself is operationalized. Using news outlets as a controlled benchmark, we compare six LLMs to expert ratings and human evaluations under an identical, structured framework. While models often match expert outputs, our results suggest that they may rely on lexical associations and statistical priors rather than contextual reasoning or normative criteria. We term this divergence epistemia: the illusion of knowledge emerging when surface plausibility replaces verification. Our findings suggest not only performance asymmetries but also a shift in the heuristics underlying evaluative processes, raising fundamental questions about delegating judgment to LLMs. Sentence starting with "While models often" is highlighted in blue.
October 18, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
theguardian.com
‘It’s like a nuclear bomb has hit’: shocked Palestinians return home to desolation
‘It’s like a nuclear bomb has hit’: shocked Palestinians return home to desolation
Families are going back to Gaza City and surrounds to find their neighbourhoods obliterated, with many forced to camp in the ruins When the Gaza ceasefire took effect a week ago, tens of thousands of Palestinians began to move from the sprawling camps in the south back to their homes in Gaza City and the surrounding area. For most, it was a shocking and bitter homecoming. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
October 18, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Reposted by Tiago Peixoto
gghoshal.bsky.social
🚀 The University of Rochester is hiring in Complex Systems (Physics)!
Join a vibrant cross-disciplinary cluster supported by the Simons Foundation.
Great opportunity to build a program at the interface of physics, biology & cognition.
Apply ➡️ apply.interfolio.com/173432
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October 12, 2025 at 3:29 PM