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Reposted by Cathy Wu

Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · Sep 5

I'm gearing up for next week's Hype Studies conference in Barcelona, so I'm thinking about this stuff a lot. @davekarpf.bsky.social makes some great points here, but there's a 'Yes and...'

Tesla's Roadmap to Nowhere

I'll give him this: Elon Musk has a solid grasp of futurity-as-PR.

davekarpf.substack.com

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 29

Yeah, same deal with navigating a city thanks to google maps

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 19

I think it goes beyond cost. There’s also talent and the know-how to adapt & implement the tech. For example, I don’t think the public sector has caught up on the last bunch of waves of tech yet, despite it getting commoditized. In general, I think it’s the rich getting richer phenomenon.

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 18

I've been struggling with this since realizing that the rich and powerful get first dibs on new tech. The only way I've been able to resolve the issue for myself is to deliberately work on applications for the public interest.

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 18

do you mean cost-benefit of research that's already done?

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 17

We should be asking ourselves more what research should be done vs what research can be done

Jay Patel @infotainment.bsky.social · Aug 13

"Can Large Language Models" returns 8k+ hits on Google Scholar.

"Should Large Language Models" returns 73 hits.

Before asking can...?, ask should...? and you'll save yourself a year's worth of research in some cases.

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 12

Inviting #orms @thserra.bsky.social @vanhentenryck.bsky.social @vidalthi.bsky.social @bistradilkina.bsky.social @akazachk.bsky.social @lawlessopt.bsky.social @annanagurney.bsky.social

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 12

🔥 New workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social!
DiffCoALG bridges the gap between classic algorithms & differentiable learning.
Think: LLM reasoning, routing, SAT, MIP — neurally optimized.
📌 Submit by Aug 22! 🤖🧠
🔗 sites.google.com/view/diffcoa...
#NeurIPS2025

DiffCoALG@NeurIPS 2025

About this Workshop Combinatorial algorithms are fundamental across a wide range of domains, owing to their ability to model optimization and decision-making tasks under complex constraints. These alg...

sites.google.com

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 11

This work would not have been possible without lead author @vindulaj.bsky.social and collaborators Baptiste Freydt, Ao Qu, Cameron Hickert, Edgar Sanchez, Catherine Tang, Mark Taylor, Blaine Leonard, as well as the financial support of UDOT, NSF, and Amazon AWS, and support from MIT SuperCloud.

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 11

Website: vindulamj.github.io/eco-drive/
Published paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Pre-print: arxiv.org/abs/2408.05609

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 11

MIT News article: news.mit.edu/2025/eco-dri...

Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions

Implementing co-driving techniques, like the use of intelligent speed controls to mitigate congestion at traffic lights, can significantly reduce intersection carbon dioxide emissions without impactin...

news.mit.edu

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 11

This project was 4 years in the making and it's finally out!

We found that controlling vehicle speeds to mitigate traffic across a city can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. To do this, we used deep reinforcement learning to optimize one million eco-driving scenarios. 🚗🤖🧠

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Reposted by Cathy Wu

MIT CEE @mitcee.bsky.social · Aug 11

A new study led by Prof. Cathy Wu and colleagues reveals that eco-driving measures, such as dynamically adjusting vehicle speeds to reduce stopping and excessive acceleration, can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. news.mit.edu/2025/eco-dri...

Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions

Implementing co-driving techniques, like the use of intelligent speed controls to mitigate congestion at traffic lights, can significantly reduce intersection carbon dioxide emissions without…

news.mit.edu

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Aug 4

We’ve got an awesome workshop tomorrow at RLC on real-world RL! Also, I’m moderating the panel, so let me know if you have questions about applying RL. 🤖🧠🤖

RL for Real Systems @RLC2025 @rl4rsworkshop.bsky.social · Aug 4

📍 The RL4RS Workshop is happening tomorrow at
University of Alberta, as part of @rl-conference.bsky.social.

Join us for a focused day on real-world applications of Reinforcement Learning.

🗓️ Full Schedule: rl4rs.github.io/RL4RS/schedu...

We hope to see you there.

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Reposted by Cathy Wu

Reinforcement Learning Conference @rl-conference.bsky.social · Jun 25

Propose some socials for RLC! Research topics, affinity groups, niche interests, whatever comes to mind!

rl-conference.cc/call_for_soc...

RLC Call for Workshops

rl-conference.cc

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Reposted by Cathy Wu

Nathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · Jun 22

Trying to make Ai2 so effective that people start seriously referring to us as "American DeepSeek" 🙏 lots of hard work to do.

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Reposted by Cathy Wu

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · Jun 21

Hiring a postdoc to scale up and deploy RL-based planning onto some self-driving cars! We'll be building on arxiv.org/abs/2502.03349 and learn what the limits and challenges of RL planning are. Shoot me a message if interested and help spread the word please!

Full posting to come in a bit.

Robust Autonomy Emerges from Self-Play

Self-play has powered breakthroughs in two-player and multi-player games. Here we show that self-play is a surprisingly effective strategy in another domain. We show that robust and naturalistic drivi...

arxiv.org

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 13

I’ll consider it! Been meaning to start a blog and maybe this is just the push I needed!

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 9

This is soooooo fun and so blazingly fast.

Obsidian @obsidian.md · Jun 5

Obsidian 1.9.2 (early access) is available with improvements for Bases:

- Formula syntax is more expressive and powerful.
- Added number of results in the current view.
- Table cells with long text expand to show the entire content when selected.
- Operator dropdown for filters is now searchable.

The new formula syntax is more flexible, easier to use, and better suited to extensibility. For those familiar with Javascript, the new syntax should feel familiar. New functions and types are described in our docs.

Some highlights include:

Functions are now object-oriented. Instead of contains(file.name, "Books"), the formula would be file.name.contains("Books").
Functions can now be chained. e.g. property.split(' ').sort()[0].lower()
Property names are no longer wrapped in backticks (`). Instead, to reference properties with spaces or special characters, the syntax is note["Property Name"]
There is a new type system which provides greater control when writing formulas.
New functions, such as link, date and list for converting a value to a different type.
New file properties: file.path, file.links (a list of all internal links in this file), and file.tags (a list of all tags in this file, including frontmatter).
Some functions have been replaced by comparison operators. For example, dateBefore(date1, date2) is now date1 < date2.
Date modifications are now much simpler. Instead of dateModify(date, string), you can use date + string, for example, date("01/01/2025") + "1 year"
For help migrating existing Bases to the new syntax, take a look at the migration guide.

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 4

That is, what constitutes good ways to perform science is necessarily philosophical or based on beliefs.

Quote from academia.stackexchange.com/a/17275

Are there any documented cases of meta-science or scientific meta-research? Does that have a name?

Research is an activity, a process to obtain knowledge, which has been greatly empowered by the scientific method. We can collect lots of information about research, consider impact factors, etc.

academia.stackexchange.com

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 4

I found this insightful and wonder what you think:

“If the objective of meta-science is to determine what are the good ways to perform science, it immediately runs into a major methodological hurdle: it is necessarily going to beg the question.”

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 4

Feeling like a fish learning about water. Insightful thread

D. J. Hicks @danhicks.bsky.social · Jun 4

Because science typically has practical aims, the standards of good science need to go *beyond* truth. Just exemplifying those epistemic values at the top of the thread isn't good enough. Science should be "fit-for-purpose." 6/

link.springer.com/10.1007/s131...

Non-epistemic values and scientific assessment: an adequacy-for-purpose view - European Journal for Philosophy of Science

The literature on values in science struggles with questions about how to describe and manage the role of values in scientific research. We argue that progress can be made by shifting this literature’...

link.springer.com

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 4

#metasci or should I say meta metascience

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 4

I’m incredibly happy to have found metascience bluesky. Science is messy and beautiful, and there is a group of people thinking hard about how and why.

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Cathy Wu @cathywu.bsky.social · Jun 3

I’m pretty shocked. I was just appointed to a serve on a standing committee in April. TRB has definitely helped me find my footing in the field.

Alex Karner @alexkarner.bsky.social · Jun 1

TRB is dissolving all committees. This wasn't unexpected, but they're couching it in a technocratic need to "get back to basics" and ease administrative burden when in fact it's a great big shit sandwich that we're all expected to eat and not make a fuss about.

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