@ben_golub @RefineDotInk Refine has also helped me identify two errors in a manuscript I was very enthusiastic about. A very sobering experience. But much better to capture these things now! I wish I could use it in my work as an editor.
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Simon Friederich
4K posts
Simon Friederich
@simonfriederich
Philosopher of science at @univgroningen.
Groningen, Nederland Katılım Aralık 2017
230 Takip Edilen1.2K Takipçiler
Check it out! @RefineDotInk also finds the sign error!
If one is looking to write straightforward but occasionally very valuable papers--
You can just run seminal work through Refine and sometimes find substantive problems.
Richard Behiel@RBehiel
While walking through the legendary 1973 black hole paper by Bardeen, Carter, and Hawking, I spent days convinced I had a sign error in my derivation, which is a very common occurrence for me. Minus signs and factors of two are the bane of my existence. But, this sign error was persistent. No matter how I looked at it, the math just didn’t work out. Checked it over and over. My physicist friend Nirmalya Kajuri also @Kaju_Nut independently verified my reasoning. Turns out the sign error is in the paper itself. Actually, there are two subtle errors which cancel each other out, leaving all the physics intact. That’s why it went unnoticed for fifty years. The moral of the story is that we all make sign errors sometimes, even the greats! But it’s the idea that really matters. arxiv.org/abs/2603.25171
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Excellent piece by @Dr_Keefer.
Good points about Groningen in particular.
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"The pathology arrives when those governing from the upper floors lose the ability to perceive the importance of the foundations [and] make decisions that erode that base in the service of ideological commitments the foundations had made affordable." decouple.media/p/europe-for...
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Simon Friederich retweetledi
Superb applied history by @Dr_Keefer of Europe's collective decision to become a loser in the energy wars of the 2020s. This decision stemmed from luxury beliefs. The contrast with the European response to the energy crisis of the 1970s is ... striking. decouple.media/p/europe-forgo… 6/6
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@Leigh_Phillips Very interesting and concerning, congrats to @mark_lynas for the book.
Does this post -- navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Winter -- present an overly optimistic picture? Is it the analogue of climate change denial?
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New review essay from me exploring @mark_lynas’ important but also extremely bleak new book on the new climate science of nuclear winter.
It turns out that just as climate models over the last couple of decades have enabled us to better understand global warming, these same models—compared against the impacts of volcanic eruptions and extreme wildfires—have allowed us to explore its inverse, global cooling, and thus confirm the nuclear winter hypothesis of the Cold War. We now know, for instance, that even a “small” nuclear conflict, say between India and Pakistan, is still suicidal for the human race due to stratospheric soot’s radical reduction of solar radiation.
In the essay, I place the book’s concerns in the context of the current Iranian and Ukrainian conflagrations, the cynicism and burnout of a 25 years of failed (?) antiwar campaigning, the collapse of the post-1945 international order, and the sudden uptick in recent weeks in nuclear taboo-breaking from Europe to Asia.
Enjoy! A fun lazy-Sunday read!
Jacobin@jacobin
We are bumbling toward an AI-enabled, nuclear-curious World War III. A new book urges us to get over antiwar protest burnout and cynicism and to rebuild the long-dormant Cold War movement to ban the bomb. jacobin.com/2026/03/nuclea…
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Simon Friederich retweetledi
Nur auf die Erneuerbaren zu setzen, werde Deutschland in der aktuellen Krise nicht retten, sagt die Wirtschaftsweise Veronika Grimm. Sie rät: Selbst mehr Gas fördern. trib.al/gKou0NJ
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@Aria_Babu Good advice, very close to what my wife tells (will tell) our five daughters!
Also, the attitude towards men that this piece shows is very, very kind, I really appreciate it.
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Most women underrate how much men care about looks. And when they do try to get more attractive they waste time and effort on tanning, contouring their face, getting their nails done.
Instead, almost everyone could be considered attractive if they lost weight, grew their hair long, and cleared up their skin. All these things are within your control.
There's other basic advice that should be obvious. Wear makeup everyday and go for a youthful, dewy look. Remove your body hair. Ditch your glasses.
For the extreme looksmaxxers, focus on your body. Your face is probably fine and hard to change. Get a boob job, precisely control your weight, and do hourglass-enhancing exercises.
You are no longer stuck with the looks God gave you.
ariababu.co.uk/p/get-sexier
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@mmitchell_ai I have often wondered about whether this could happen when I share new ideas with Claude. It would be very concerning indeed. Thanks for bringing this up!
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Unless I’m mistaken, common versions of ChatGPT and Claude use conversations for training—meaning they can pick up ideas in unpublished work and pass them on to other users; laundering idea plagiarism and creating “scooping” dynamics without any of the people involved knowing it.
Yu-Xiang Wang@yuxiangw_cs
AI watermarking in action at #ICML's avant garde peer-review experiments this year! Quite a few casualties in my SAC batch (an example below --- appropriately redacted hopefully)
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@rowbott1 @mattyglesias Cool, thanks for the pointer, Darrell!
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@simonfriederich @mattyglesias It also misrepresents P’s views (or at least a reasonably sympathetic reading thereof). See my ‘Popper’s Critical Rationalism’. Interestingly, Salmon himself pointed out, elsewhere, that confirmation values could never be absolute because of priors involving the catchall.
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I pride myself in making a small contribution to Cofnas' notoriety because I organized an event in 2019 that led to the dust-up between Mark Alfano and him. I totally disagree with his ideas and indeed his whole research project, which
Maarten Boudry@mboudry
A few years ago I recorded an episode of my podcast Forbidden Territory for @UGent (in Dutch) about the heritability of IQ. We also touched on the third rail of racial differences. Why? Because I believe academics should be free to investigate even the most “dangerous ideas.” My guest, Han van der Maas (a renowned IQ researcher at the University of Amsterdam), explained that individual IQ differences are highly heritable, but that he does not believe in differences between racial groups. His statistical and methodological arguments (e.g. Simpson paradox) convinced me at the time. Still, he hedged his bets: it remains possible that future evidence might show racial differences. And researchers should be free to investigate that hypothesis. Forty-five colleagues from my former philosophy department apparently think otherwise. They are urging the rector to fire @nathancofnas because he claims that the IQ gap between racial groups (such as whites and blacks in the US — differences that are themselves not disputed) may have partly genetic causes, rather than purely social ones like marginalization or discrimination. They label this “pseudoscience and racism.” I understand why many people are shocked by Cofnas’s claims. But this clearly falls within the scope of academic freedom. For years, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan was taught and researched at my department — a complete pseudoscience. Dozens of theses and PhDs were written about it, all scientifically worthless. No one batted an eye. Unlike my colleagues, I published several papers explaining why (Lacanian) psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific (drive.google.com/file/d/0B_K-qt…). Yet I never demanded that my colleagues be fired. None of the signatories have any peer-reviewed publications on IQ or genetics. I have a letter recommending Cofnas' work on IQ from the editor-in-chief of the prestigious journal Intelligence. Even if the hypothesis of racial IQ differences could be shown to belong to the realm of pseudoscience, that still would not justify dismissal. If @UGent caves in to this demand, it will be another blow to academic freedom at my alma mater — following the new rector’s illiberal statements suggesting that researchers questioning the safety of vaccines or the Gaza “genocide” are “crossing a line that must not be crossed.” Such calls for dismissal from people without any expertise are also strategically unwise, as they only fuel “red-pilling.” When academics appear determined to suppress a dangerous idea at all costs, people understandably get suspicious: "What are they trying to hide?" And so trust in academia erodes further. youtube.com/watch?v=YHhbWm…
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Simon Friederich retweetledi
Das tun wir ja, aber schauen Sie mal… es sieht so aus, als wäre der Übergang doch eine Herausforderung. Wenn wir unterwegs komplett Deindustrialisieren, dann ist niemandem geholfen. Auch nicht im Klimaschutz, denn dann werden wir kein Gewicht mehr in die Waagschale werfen können, wenn es um internationale Ambitionen geht. Keiner wird uns das nachmachen wollen.
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@freddie_poser @JohnFingleton1 👆Für ein etwagies Revival der Kernenergie in Deutschland vielleicht auch interessant, @VeroWendland @thinkBTO @schroeder_k
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BIG nuclear news: today the Government has released its plans to implement @JohnFingleton1’s landmark nuclear review.
The headline: ‘Building our Nuclear Nation’ is very good news for British nuclear, implementing almost all of the transformational recommendations, but not quite everything.
The Government has committed to almost every recommendation and outlined a detailed plan to implement them. The Government says it will fix the outdated radiation rules, revise effective ban on SMRs across swathes of the country, set up a nuclear regulatory commission and more!
Last year @BritishProgress launched our Nuclear Taskforce Tracker - today is the first HUGE update.
nuclear.britishprogress.org/?new=true
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@xriskology I find a lot of your texts useful and stimulating, and I get how you arrived at the TESCREAL concept. But when it comes to AI it really obscures much more than it helps. The people you apply it to have vastly different normative perspectives on AI, both near-term and long-term.
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It seems to be just a matter of time before the TESCREAL concept explodes into public consciousness. Perhaps the book I'm working on, which will be published later this year, will help that along. Yes, these people are serious.
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@JochenBittner @VeroWendland @MoormannRainer Ich habe im Mai 2018 geschrieben, dass Deutschland die ethische Pflicht hat nicht nur nicht auszusteigen, sondern wieder auszubauen: weplanet-dach.org/einsatz-von-ke… (Text ist von 2018)
Das hat sich damals noch riskant angefühlt, ist heute unoriginell.
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Vor sechs Jahren haben @VeroWendland und @MoormannRainer angefangen, vor diesem Fehler zu warnen. Es folgte: keine Debatte und die Zerstörung einer milliardenteuren Energieinfrastruktur.
zeit.de/2020/30/deutsc…
tagesschau@tagesschau
Von der Leyen hält Atomkraft-Abkehr für "strategischen Fehler" tagesschau.de/ausland/europa… #Atomkraft #EU #VonderLeyen
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@Going_Loopy Das ist natürlich in der Tat extrem spekulativ. Aber die Vohersagen für, sagen wir, die nächsten fünf Jahre sind m.E. sehr ernsthaft und ernst zu nehmen.
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@simonfriederich Geschenkt. Aber zu wessen Kompetenzen gehören denn zeitlich konkrete Vorhersagen über die Auslöschung der gesamten Menschheit?
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Staubsaugervertreter in Zeiten von KI:
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀@peterwildeford
@eli_lifland I think AGI by end of 2027 should be ~8% now I think I'd forecast: ~2026-2030 -- AI replaces ~all AI researchers ~2027-2033 -- AI replaces ~all white collar industry ~2032-2040 -- AI replaces ~all human industry ~2033-2042 -- All humans dead or obsolete
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@AndreThess Sehr gut, André. Mögliches gesellschaftliches Engagement sollte zwar zur Sprache kommen dürfen, aber dann muss es eigentlich immer auch als Risiko möglicher Voreingenommenheit und "bias" genannt werden, und der Bewerber sollte dann m.E. sagen müssen, was sie oder er dagegen tut.
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Beitrag zur Entpolitisierung der Wissenschaft
Förderorganisationen verlangen in jüngerer Zeit von Bewerbern Aussagen über "gesellschaftliches Engagement" - ein Kriterium, welches nach meiner Meinung nichts in der Forschungsförderung zu suchen hat. Hier meine Antwort 👇
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I do not know if AI's long-term impact on jobs, human welfare, and power will be desirable or not; but is it inevitable? Is the future of AI 'already written'?
In a new and ongoing series of essays, I actually go and look at the historical arguments offered to support this view
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@mboudry Very sharp -- and also what you call a "wij bak."
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"We celebrate when cultures choose preservation of their traditional lifestyles [...] except with the cultures we consider our outgroups – in the US, white Southern fundamentalist Christian Republicans; in the UK, white rural working-class leave voters." slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how…
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