Stephan Hurtubise

My latest article on StatedClearly.com! With a section on technology inspired by one of @wavyphd’s latest videos, no less! Comments most welcome.

@StatedClearly And so we can’t ever truly know what’s been selected for (and why). I’m probably not fully doing the objection justice. But, then, I’m not sure how much justice can be done either.

@StatedClearly This is inspired by (somewhat silly, in my view) philosophical objections I’ve encountered w.r.t. whether evolution has explanatory power. The objection. basically runs that traits are complex and rarely unitary – they come bundled with other properties.

halftime special! How did flagella evolve? youtu.be/5XlTrNlRJUQ

How did bacteria flagella evolve? Happy Darwin day! youtu.be/eFC9VzexRUk @smartereveryday Big thanks to Destin for sending out these lovely questions.

Where does an ant colony keeps its brain? youtu.be/iT2n41ZFDc0?si… Check the credits at the end ;)

My friend Jon (@StatedClearly) wrote this! Watch it! youtu.be/iT2n41ZFDc0?si…

@StatedClearly Which is a little jarring for a linguist, admittedly. Linguists do talk about content and information and the like, but don’t tend to think about it like an information theorist, since there’s no big incentive to pin it down and quantify it. At least, not from what I’ve seen.

@StatedClearly The “bit” in the paper you mentioned isn’t from linguistics, but information theory. It’s a measure of “surprisal” – how expected or unexpected a given syllable is, relative to the syllables that came before; the more predictable (the less surprising), the less informative it is.

The real biology of Pluribus: youtube.com/watch?v=B8LrOq…

@StatedClearly Sounds like you’re engaging in some Practical Philosophy.

If we cracked the mechanics of conciousness and built a machine that experiences constant, maximum fulfillment, would we be morally obligated to build more of them?

@StatedClearly @SciBugs Awesome.

I just want to say how happy I am that Nancy @SciBugs found a neon pink Jesus bus for this year's Evolution Tour in the Amazon Jungle. I'm so happy this thing unironically exists!

@MasterTimBlais If you ever follow that path, lemme know how it turns out. :-( I might need to take it seriously.

these girls will make a buddhist of me yet

nothing like a crush to make you hate the dependence of your feelings on external circumstance

@StatedClearly For instance, applying formal language theory to the study of its nature and level of complexity. Anyway! Great video as always! Congratulations on the milestone!

@StatedClearly As in they emerge naturally, without our intervention (and in spite of it, in fact). All evidence points to our having nothing whatsoever to do with the structure of language. So we really shouldn’t be afraid of that category, either – especially if it’s fruitful.

Is the genetic code really a code? The fight continues: youtu.be/1dqvxP6DoU0?si…

@StatedClearly When you add their ages up? ‘Cause that’s *definitely* a problem.

My doctor and my mayor are both younger than me.

@StatedClearly Looking forward to it! :-o

@GravityAllen I'm writing a script for PBS on how hives solve problems.

Is there something that it's like to be a hive?

@StatedClearly 🤣

With the exception of several really good research projects on the evolution of de-novo genes, every Templeton paper I read reminds of conversations I had in high school with kids from the "Christian stoner" clique. Am I the only one noticing this?

@langofmind Thanks for the nice rundown! A good resource, given I’ve been having a lot of similar discussions.

Chomsky's linguistic claims have not been disconfirmed by LLMs. He has made two principle claims that some have argued LLMs disprove: that it's impossible to acquire a grammar from limited input alone (PoS), and that LLMs are unconstrained and can learn impossible languages