Jon (@minogully.bsky.social)

youtu.beWidow’s Waltz - Jonathan Minogue

8 Dec 2023

Hey, here’s my latest composition! Just a couple mistakes, totally passable. Enjoy! youtu.be/p_iddZvKGyA?...

What’s it called when you can hear a note, not really know the name of it, but can usually find that note on the piano first try, or if you mess up it’s a semi-tone off?

These maxxing trends are just YouTubers monetizing teenage insecurities. All they need is some new quick “fix” that some poor kid will latch onto. Then the YouTuber cashes in from all the clicks/views/subscribes that they get.

@seanmcarroll.bsky.social

It’s not an entirely new way to make money. Magazines used to always feature headlines about this or that beauty secret that’ll get you a man. I wish there was a quick fix that led to self-confidence and embracing one’s unique traits… traits these maxxing influencers would describe as “flaws”.

Jon reposted

Sean Carroll

Big step closer to identifying conscious perception in the brain, by Doris Tsao and collaborators. 15 times a second your neurons flicker between conscious and unconscious activity. Consciousness is found in time, not in space. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.orgRapid alternation of conscious and suppressed stimulus representations in the primate brainThe neural correlates of consciousness remain elusive [1]. Previous studies found that high-level visual cortex is weakly modulated by conscious perception [2,3], yet a pure signal of conscious percep...

Jon reposted

TRAstonDrs

@castltrastondrs.medsky.network

#Medsky🧪 #IDSky #Neurosky #publichealth An enzyme found in the brain could help to preserve cognitive resilience with advancing age.The study found that A lipid-degrading enzyme acts as a crucial driver of cognitive resilience. www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com

nature.comMemory stays strong in old age when this brain enzyme is activeData from mouse brains and 13 human brains show a link between levels of a lipid-degrading enzyme and cognitive resilience.

Directly monetizing views/clicks creates a viable misinformation economy.

And the more something is interacted with, the more the algorithms prop up that content. The more people it reaches, the more total people will believe it, even if that total remain a minority.

So, in my opinion, monetizing views/clicks has a causal link toward the rise of the popularity of false narratives, conspiracy theories, and distorted realities.

Directly monetizing views/clicks creates a viable misinformation economy.

It takes low effort to view and click. And people are just as likely to do this with information they are curious about as they are with information they are furious about.

So while before scam products were only bought by the gullible, now the majority contributes to the viability of a business that spreads misinformation. They don’t need us to agree, they just need us to get annoyed enough that we click or read.

Seems to me that society doing well lays the foundation for future generations to mistrust the need for caution against the threats to society.

Went to an academic talk put on by one of the local universities on “The End of Mathematics” The professor didn’t have anything hopefully to say except, “misery loves company” People asked about their children’s future and he said, “I can’t predict what’ll happen even 1 year from now” 1/8

Profits either get redistributed to people or they get reinvested. But we already established that there’s a demand problem, so profits would mainly not need to be reinvested in the business. 7/8

So we have a need for more money for social assistance and a situation where businesses have extra money. We need an AI Tax 8/8

Both (1) and (2) lead to a net increase of jobless people. Employment insurance and other social assistance programs will have to increase in scope to match. But how will that be funded? 5/8

Let’s return to the benefits to the business for adopting AI. It causes so much excitement because so much more work product can be produced in a shorter period of time. That should lead to more profits. 6/8

Business owners who incorporate AI can approach this in two ways: 1) take on extra scope with their employees’ extra cycles 2) keep scope consistent and lay off employees Or some mixture of the two 3/8

(1) is not sustainable unless demand can increase to match the scope. That can’t happen unless other businesses shutter and demand concentrates into fewer providers. Or we’d need a population explosion to prompt extra demand. 4/8

It became very clear that this had the potential to replace a large portion of most jobs. I knew this was true in my line of work (software development), but it seems that no line of work is entirely immune. Except perhaps the trades. 2/8

science.carleton.caScience Café - The End of Mathematics - Faculty of ScienceOn Sep 8, 2026, it was reported[1] that AI might have solved a million-dollar math problem. If true, this achievement would follow the heels of AI solutions to some other high-profile open math proble...

19 Sept

Anyone in the Ottawa area, there’s a free talk coming up Wednesday on how AI is affecting the field of Mathematics. I’ll be there science.carleton.ca/event/scienc...

Jon reposted

thethinkingatheist.com

@thethinkingatheist.com

18 Sept

17 Aug

Per capita emissions are a better data point to go off of. But it could be improved if we could somehow associate externalities with that rate. Like if Canada imports a lot of goods from a high polluting country, then the emissions from the production of those imports should be counted in Canada.

I had a thought that extends the anthropic principle to the existence of the Laws of Nature: The more intelligence a species has, the better they are at pattern recognition. #anthropicprinciple #philosophy #science #PhilosophyOfScience 1/4

This implies that there must exist patterns in how nature behaves for intelligent biology to recognize when building its models of the world. 3/4

Therefore the very fact that we find that we are intelligent implies that patterns expressed as “Laws of Nature” are an anthropic principle of the universe that we find ourselves in. 4/4

If patterns could not be found in nature, there would be no evolutionary advantage to evolve pattern recognition and all biology would be limited to reactive actions as opposed to predictive actions. 2/4

youtu.beAttention Killer - Rockway Mennonite Collegiate 2026 - Thriller SpoofYouTube video by Rockway Mennonite Collegiate

1 July

Check out this fantastic music video made by some high school students here in Ontario, Canada youtu.be/oMCB5GcOvaQ

19 June

Reading the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the conclusion of the war of 1812, I’m noticing interesting parallels. “The unanimous ratification by the U.S. Senate of the Treaty […] and the celebrations that followed cloaked the fact that the United States had achieved none of its objectives”

13 June

Storm cloud is rolling in this evening #photography

11 June

Book idea: Children’s book of short fables and stories to teach them critical thinking. Like the Emperor’s New Clothes story and how it teaches about the harms of groupthink bias, the appeal to authority, or bandwagon fallacies.

10 June

“What have seen is that LLMs are very good at turning people who have no skill into people who are capable of an average mediocre outcome. They are extremely bad at helping someone who's already extremely good [at] getting better. It basically doesn't work.” - François Chollet #MindscapePodcast

preposterousuniverse.com280 | François Chollet on Deep Learning and the Meaning of Intelligence – Sean Carroll

11 June

Source: Mindscape Podcast with Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll.bsky.social) Transcript and show info: www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024...

9 June

Took this photo of my dog yesterday and my 15yo son said we should create a dating profile for him and set this as his profile picture 😂 #photography #dogs

9 June

To be clear, my son was suggesting a dating profile for our dog, not for my son 😅

4 June

I woke up to a freshly baked cinnamon bun this morning #photography

3 June

This eastern gray treefrog really freaked me out for a moment when I was cleaning debris from my pool. #photography

3 June

Why is it harder to hold on to the memory of dreams than it is to hold onto regular memories?

1 June

There were some nice colours in last night’s sunset #photography

30 May

It makes me sad that there’s not enough time in one’s life to learn everything.

30 May

Deep thought of the day: Unlikely can never approach impossible against the backdrop of infinity 🤔

26 May

#photography

Saw this post that kids need 3 things: 1) science 2) common sense 3) critical thinking I agree with the sentiment, but I’d make a slightly different list

So I’d order it: 1) critical thinking 2) empathy (even for those not like yourself) 3) science

Then we’d (hopefully) have kids who wouldn’t be so easily manipulated by mis/disinformation, kids who actually care about the success of humanity and not just their in-group, and kids who value an accurate understanding of reality over what makes them feel good.

Saw this post that kids need 3 things: 1) science 2) common sense 3) critical thinking I agree with the sentiment, but I’d make a slightly different list

For one, common sense kind of implies adopting commonly held beliefs, which could be a bad thing, depending on the group of people they’re hanging around.

Science is definitely helpful, to establish a baseline level of knowledge that is aligned with reality, but I’d put it at (3) because I think one more thing is more important.