D. Hicks

@danhicks.bsky.social

3072 Followers 975 Following

philosopher turned data scientist turned philosopher. enviro policy, data science, phil sci/STS, lefty stuff. UC Merced. they/them. Signal: danhicks.50

Bsky post with the author info covered, and the text: "In case you haven't heard, Substack, the online publishing giant, have partnered with the Al-verifier tool Pangram. All text posts over 100 words will be subject to an Al verification test with the click of a button. This is damaging for writers of all stripes. Here's why" Then a link to a news story about Substack's announcement.
Pangram AI detection (the only reliable one AFAIK) showing page 58 of the report is 100% AI generated slop
Some values are more likely than others. If you'll recall from basic algebra, when we can assign one value in y for every value in a we get a function: [nothing but a paragraph break in the original] You'll notice something important here; namely that our data (D) has jumped to the other side of the conditional probability (|). One of the most important things in all of statistics is that you
Bskt muted words screen, showing me muting "Callard" forever
Screenshot of a Bsky post with the user info blurred out. Text: The goal of large language models is not to give you information, the goal is to put words in the order that is statistically most likely to make you use it more.
Screenshot text: [Michael Stryker, a UCSF physiology professor and BOARS member] argued the now-abandoned study was structurally incapable of producing useful evidence. Because UC largely stopped collecting test scores after 2020, he wrote in a message to fellow board members that he shared with The Times, there is no comparable applicant group on which to validate today’s tests. “In the absence of sound data,” Stryker wrote, the testing work group “will have little to do but debate the politics of testing.” He said the board should recommend restoring standardized testing for fall 2027 admissions and study its effects over four years, using methods UC used when it last evaluated testing in 2020.
Screenshot from their shitty search engine — which cannot search public and private schools at the same time — showing the only matches for "University of California" are Santa Cruz, Riverside, and Merced
A very rough DAG drawn in Miro. From top (past) to bottom (present), there are four variables: career preference pre grad school; PhD program prestige; ac/non-ac employment; and career preference post grad school. Each influences all the ones that come after it. So career preference *pre* grad school is a confounder for prestige and employment, but career preference *post* grad school is a collider. Trying to adjust for career preference *pre* using *post* as a proxy just replaces confounder bias with collider bias.
Petting the head of a big white cat
Picture of a tree (probably a Jeffrey pine) with blue and pink nylon ribbons attached to it
He's still doing a nice sleep on the blue couch, but now his head is turned on to one ear and one paw is in front of his eye
A big white cat does a nice sleep on a blue couch
OP's cat, in a photo they posted earlier today, glaring at them through a glass door
A black cat, curled up on his side on a blue couch, eyes cracked open at the camera person disturbing his dreams of murder
Screenshot of a console window that shows submission of a new package (version 0.1.0) to CRAN Full text of screenshot: ── Submitting ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ℹ Path /var/folders/dd/qx6kh6fj705921lxwfcc96y00000gn/T//RtmpuaAi5U/tmfast_0.1.0.tar.gz ℹ File size: 3 Mb Ready to submit tmfast (0.1.0) to CRAN? 1: Nope 2: Yeah 3: No way Selection: 2 ℹ Uploading package & comments ℹ Confirming submission ✔ Package submission successful ℹ Check your email for confirmation link.
A big white cat in a carrier, facing the back to do the "don't talk me, me angy" meme
A big white cat sleeping on a blue couch, leaned up against a pale pink pillow. His nose is pink and little, but this photo really highlights that his tail is stripey, in a tabby pattern.
A mourning dove standing in an open tray bird feeder, which is completely empty of seed
Inside, a black cat is sitting on a grey body pillow, looking through a window at early morning in the exurb. Outside, a scrub jay is rooting in a platform feeder for peanuts.
A big white cat laying on my lap and getting cheek and ear pets
Screenshot from the article two quote posts down: "the most severely affected is the SBE directorate. It has funded just two new grants since 1 October, a funding rate that is 1% of its recent five-year average"
A black cat standing on a coffee table next to a laptop. He's looking away from the camera like he's grumpy at the person taking the photo (who did indeed not let him eat garlic panko)
A bowl of ramen with a nice big grilled tofu slice and TWO soft-boiled eggs
Screenshot of a Reddit comment (not post, comment). The username is trimmed off because I'm semi-anonymous on there; and most of the comment is redacted because it's about medical stuff I don't feel like highlighting On Here. The bit that is visible reads "I'm AMAB agender. No medical transition because, until I can transition to a grove of oak trees, I'll just live with the stupid T." And then 459 upvotes.
autocratic regime. And unlike the liberal opposition he replaced, Magyar understands the importance of national symbols and patriotism. This has allowed him to steal Fidesz's nationalist brand and highlight the regime's enormous hypocrisy and betrayal of the country.
Big white cat is do sleeps
At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely.
In addition, lawmakers could exclude the perpetrators of these abuses from access to federal entitlement programs in the future, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. While extreme in theory, such an approach has some precedent. Congress enacted a ban on Social Security payments in 2014 for "individuals who participated in Nazi persecution" before and after World War II. That law's drafters gave it a simple, straightforward name: the No Social Security for Nazis Act. Those who help federal prosecutors identify and bring charges against the worst abusers could apply to have this ban lifted
Bsky screenshot of a quote post. The quoting account's info is cropped out. I wonder what it's like to be this tonedeaf about the core audience of your platform. Like, the last time I saw developer/moderator work this antagonistic against the users was Tumblr, it's kind of hilarious. No one who actually uses this site advocates or likes Al ya dingus. Quoted post: Jay W•@jay.bsky.team We hear the concerns about Al. Our goal is to use this technology to give people greater control, not to generate content. Attie uses Al to help you create custom feeds without having to know how to code.
A lemon meringue pie in a cast iron pie plate that's lined outside with red ceramic or something. The meringue is all in little decorative peaks. This thing seriously took 10 hours to make, though most of that was waiting for steps to cool.
The shift in research culture has pushed me to remember something that researchers in the arts and humanities have long known. Philosophers, historians, literary scholars and artists have spent decades building rigorous, generative bodies of work with minimal external funding. Their tools include close reading, archival work, collaboration, theory and - crucially - imagination. They know how to make research thrive when money is scarce, because it usually is.
A big black cat is laying on a fuzzy blanket on my stomach. I'm on a couch in a room with wood paneling walls. In the background, a big white cat is kneading a big pile of pillows in a chair.
Screenshot from the PDF, which picks up mid-sentence: baseline questionnaires, the platform automatically assigned participants to one of the three groups. This assignment was performed using a computer-generated simple ran-domization sequence generated by an independent statistician without any blocking or stratification, ensuring an equal probability of allocation to each group. Allocation concealment was achieved through the online platform's automated assignment sys-tem, which ensured that researchers were unaware of the next allocation until after participant enrollment. They then proceeded to the testing phase, which consisted of 25 multiple-choice questions presented in random order with a total time limit of 60 minutes. The procedure for each question was as follows: 1. The Control Group read the question, selected an answer, and rated their confi-dence on a 3-point scale (1="Completely unsure," 2= "Somewhat sure," 3= "Very sure"). 2. Participants in the Correct and Misleading Explanation groups first read the question and an accompanying explanation explicitly labeled "AI-Generated Explanation." The instructions stated: "Please read the AI-generated explana-tion carefully and use it to help you select the best answer." No additional warning or disclaimer about potential AI errors was shown (e.g., AI can make mistakes please verify important information'); participants were intentionally not informed that some explanations could be misleading in order to measure baseline automation bias. After considering the explanation, they selected an answer and rated their confidence on the same 3-point scale.
Screenshot from the story linked in the quoted post: Galton and his fellow eugenicist / protegee Karl Pearson were not directly involved in the development of early computational machines. But Galton’s foundational work with multidimensional modeling — a technique he used while measuring the attractiveness of African and European women — shaped Pearson’s thinking as he developed statistical tools like logistic regression, which is one of the fundamental components of modern machine learning.
A big white cat, standing on the kitchen island and yelling at me
First, the bad reply is that “censorship” can only be done by state actors, and so marginalizing racist and sexist scientists by the scientific community does not count as “censorship.” I am not aware of examples of this kind of argument in the published scholarly literature. But it is inspired by arguments I’ve encountered that banning users or topics from social media sites is not censorship because these private companies are not subject to the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Besides being excessively US-centric, this argument also works with an excessively narrow conception of censorship. Here — in part as a matter of charity to my objectors, some of whom I expect self-identify as “classical liberals” — I prefer the broader conception found in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. On Mill’s conception, liberty can be threatened not only by the state, but also “society itself can be the tyrant—society collectively tyrannizing over individuals within it”:
Bluesky screenshot: Valhalla & Oates @joelpust.bsky.social Follow Sign up to defend academic freedom. Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com. 6h Bluesky Elder Faculty and Students at Ghent University are objecting to the university's recent hiring of a philosopher owing to his "race science" writings. Other scholars are circulating a defense of the philosopher's academic freedom.
Kickstarter screenshot showing it's currently funded at nearly $38k. The highest stretch goal in the description is $40k.
Bsky screenshot with the account info removed, reading: Dr. Paul Ehrlich, founder of the field of population biology, Stanford professor, prolific author of books on butterflies, birds, & human ecology, world-class environmentalist, outspoken scientist, and a personal friend, has passed away. A giant in the field of ecology.
The Jag Cat is an allhblack cat. He's hanging out on the back of a blue couch. I boop his nose and he looks at my finger like he's maybe gonna swipe it for being rude.
Black and white photo of a big white cat using my lower leg as a pillow while we hang out on the couch
Since its creation in 1965, the humanities endowment has awarded more than $6.5 billion to support over 70,000 projects, from landmark works like Ken Burns’s documentary “The Civil War” to small local efforts in every part of the country.
A big white cat is laying on a grey body pillow in a window, looking out at the exurb at dawn
Screenshot of the profile page for the Bsky account (at) cremieux-mirr.selfhosted.social
A big white cat sleeping on a fluffy grey backpacking sleeping bag
Screenshot text: • Anthropic has said it is willing to adapt its usage policies for the Pentagon, but not to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.
Screenshot of the Content and Media settings window, with "Enable trending topics" as one of the things (disabled for me)
A black cat purring sleepily with his head on my elbow
Large white cat has now positioned himself on my lap, directly between my face and the iPad. Black cat in background still not paying attention to this nonsense.
I'm curled up in a comfy chair with a blanket and my iPad, reading a paper for class. A large white cat is eyeing me, or specifically my lap, from a daybed in front of a window looking outside. Outside. A large black cat is sitting on a cat tree, looking outside, oblivious to any shenanigans that might ensue.
A big white cat is laying on my lap (not pictured) by a coffee table with a laptop showing YouTube videos. The cat looks very grumpy.
A big white cat cuddling on my lap and getting some nice chin pets
A black cat laying on the back of a blue couch, looking very cute and very sweet
A black cat laying on the back of the couch, looking at me very sweetly
Table 4. Comparison of Waymo RO and human benchmark crashed vehicle rates for Any-Injury-Reported, Airbag Deployment, and Suspected Serious Injury+ crashes (through January 2025, 56.7 M RO miles). Shows absolute and relative comparisons for rates (in human vs. AV incidents per million miles) for three kinds of outcomes: any-injury-reported, airbag deployment, and suspected serious injury+. The 95% confidence intervals for AV vs. human are bounded below 0, and the point estimates are like -60% to -100%. So some evidence that AVs are safer. But the median upper bound is like -62%, and the upper bounds for suspected serious injury are -3%.
A white cat is laying on his side on a grey and white rug, looking very chonk
A light gray basket, made of like woven paper tube stuff, with a white fabric liner is on a tile floor in front of a bookshelf. A big white cat is happily occupying the entire basket himself, laying on all of the toys (not pictured).
A big black cat is laying on the pillowy back of a blue couch. His head is up and ears and eyes are alert as though he has just detected something of interest elsewhere in the room.
Extreme close-up on a black cat's nose as he gets some pets and says purr
Streicher's major antisemitic innovation was his accusation of Jewish sex crimes. Before Streicher, the idea that the Jew was raping innocent women across Europe was not a prevalent focus amongst antisemites. In 1938, the Nuremberg Chief of Police gifted Streicher with this propaganda album titled "Jewish Criminals," a photographic collection of Jewish men and women accused of the sexual crimes about which he consistently warned Germany.