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Andrea Lathrop

@cabernet.bsky.social

1.1K followers 2.5K following 4.1K posts

Wine... Cognitive Science... Photography... tech stuff... former Aslin Lab (Master's) and Eppler Lab (with Jackie Gibson emeritus) so I'm a weird mix of Gibsonian affordances, visual statistical learning and anticipatory eye movements. Sometimes academic.

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 13d

Here are a few more from the same series (📷 credit: myself, Post Malone sound check, New Year's Rockin' Eve, Dec 31, 2019):

Reposted by Andrea Lathrop

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 12h

In her new book, Thinking Through Archaeological Complexity, SFI External Professor Stefani Crabtree (Utah State University) shows how tools from complex systems can help archaeologists understand how everyday actions of ancient people accumulated into the large-scale patterns we excavate today.

Review: Thinking Through Archaeological Complexity

Complexity science can help archaeologists understand how the everyday actions of ancient people accumulated into the large-scale patterns we excavate today. In her new book, Thinking Through Arc...

www.santafe.edu

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 9h

One has to take things apart and put them back together, again.

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 9h

I must next seek out Badiou:

"Modernization is the name for a strict and servile definition of the possible. These ‘reforms’ invariably aim at making impossible what used to be practicable (for the largest number), and making profitable (for the dominant oligarchy) what did not used to be so."

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 9h

"... that it would be nothing without our co-operation. The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us."

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 10h

Now reading: Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

"What is being disavowed in the abjection of evil and ignorance onto fantasmatic Others is our own complicity in planetary networks of oppression. What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and..."

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 11h

The linked piece is really good. I particularly like this bit:

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Reposted by Andrea Lathrop

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 15h

“Uncritical adoption of AI, will inevitably create people without critical thinking, and this may be a feature - not a bug, as it represents an attack on human agency itself.”

collectivefutures.blog/the-infrastr...

The infrastructure of meaninglessness

Listen, there are two realities that we should be aware of. AI exists to make your job obsolete because the alternative is that AI makes managers obsolete. Let me try to break down this theory, which...

collectivefutures.blog

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 12h

I love that Portland has reclaimed frogs for the Left.

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 17h

(p.s. does anyone have a link to the full transcript? I am only reading pull quotes.)

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 17h

Most critics of tech aren't anti-tech, they (we) are anti-antisocial-uses-of-tech, and an anti tech person is only the antichrist if tech is Christ or your One True God, with false prophets worshiping a challenger. If your tech is just a dumb algorithm, and there is no god, what are ye on about?

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 17h

Antichrist-adjacent-part-of-BlueSky. AAPOBS.

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 17h

Am I slightly antichrist-adjacent?

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

Ooh, they're up 4-0 in the 7th!

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

Love it!

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 1d

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

Screenshot of a paper abstract:

“Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we present an alternative view: that many such representations are inherently perceptual in nature. This “core perception” view explains an intriguing (and otherwise mysterious) aspect of core-knowledge processes and representations: that they also operate in adults, where they display key empirical signatures of perceptual processing. We first illustrate this overlap using recent work on “core physics”, the domain of core knowledge concerned with physical objects, representing properties such as persistence through time, cohesion, solidity, and causal interactions. We review evidence that adult vision incorporates exactly these representations of core physics, while also displaying empirical signatures of genuinely perceptual mechanisms, such as rapid and automatic operation on the basis of specific sensory inputs, informational encapsulation, and interaction with other perceptual processes. We further argue that the same pattern holds for other areas of core knowledge, including geometrical, numerical, and social domains. In light of this evidence, we conclude that many infant results appealing to precocious reasoning abilities are better explained by sophisticated perceptual mechanisms shared by infants and adults. Our core-perception view elevates the status of perception in accounting for the origins of conceptual knowledge, and generates a range of ready-to-test hypotheses in developmental psychology, vision science, and more.

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

AI-inevitability discussions keep reminding me of a Vogon Destructor Fleet quote:

"Why has it got to be built?"
"What? What do you mean, 'Why has it got to be built?' You've got to BUILD bypasses."

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

I am currently rooting for the Cubs.

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

Half my timeline is at the airport?!?

Reposted by Andrea Lathrop

Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com · 1d

I’m sure this is fine. abcnews.go.com/US/dominion-...

Dominion Voting Systems sold to company run by former Republican election official

Dominion Voting Systems, which sued Fox over its reporting on the 2020 election, has been sold to a seemingly new election company run by a former GOP election official.

abcnews.go.com

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

This is insane:

Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 2d

Incredibly alarming—after the whole ridiculous antifa roundtable at the White House, as Mark was moving with his family to Europe after threats…

Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

AN-TI-FA-SOL-LA-TI...

Cheri Jacobus @cherijacobus.bsky.social · 1d

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Reposted by Andrea Lathrop

Michelle Greene @mgreenephd.bsky.social · 1d

Another flight, another dude who feels entitled to my legroom. 🙄

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

I will not knee-jerk respond to dumb non-peer-reviewed abstracts, I will not knee-jerk respond to dumb non-peer-reviewed abstracts, I will not...

Reposted by Andrea Lathrop

Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower.com · 1d

One day the industry will recognize the drawbacks of AI agents and nondeterministic automation, and rediscover the UNIX philosophy of chaining together small purpose built tools in a low cost and predictable way, otherwise known as shell scripts.

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Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 1d

I am breaking this meme to inform you of one delicious piece of trivia I have stored in my head, which is that Johnny was too light for the trap door, so they had to put a television in his lap to make the getting-sucked-into-the-bed stunt work.

Ron Hogan @ronhogan.bsky.social · 1d

Johnny Depp, best known for his role as a teenage victim of the spectral Freddie Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

The geyser of blood with which Depp’s character arc in this film ends.

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