Victor @notnaughtknot Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Victor

@notnaughtknot

1,825

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987

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a luddite studying how kids learn language and logical terms @Harvard

Philadelphia, PA

https://t.co/EBCIwxtVpA

Joined March 2019

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

take advantage of the break & start reading Blood in The Machine by @bcmerchant so you can join the Neoluddite reading group! we’ll meet starting July 10th, and end the summer with a visit by the author himself for a q&a 😇 Check out the schedule here:

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

one thing I like to ask kids right once they start using language is what it felt like not being able to use it. they routinely find this question either silly or annoying

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

I started asking because I was interested in whether infantile amnesia was due to some memory loss/wipe mechanism, or because language might lead to a different sort of memory format

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Victor

2 months

the usual response is to just laugh and say I’m telling a joke or being silly or however they talk about playing pretend, but if I am able to get past that, they say they can’t remember or don’t know or seem to sort of get frustrated that they can’t really express it

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

I only ask that of kids I know because the idea of asking a kid participating in a study feels odd (participants are like my colleagues so it seems unprofessional)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

since I try to ask right when I think they’re at the point that they can make sense of the question, it can take a bit of a back and forth before they realize I’m not joking

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

that last suggestion is intepretation, it could’ve they’re just struggling to remember too. I just lightly assume it’s at expressing it since they could respond “I dunno” if they just have a hard time remembering

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

9 days

kids actually have a natural affinity for language learning

@selentelechia

🌾🍁🍂 bosco 🍂🍁🌾

9 days

wait do kids actually have a natural affinity for language learning, or is it just that almost no adult gets to spend 2-5 years in a total immersion environment for their language of choice, one in which every single native speaker around them adores them and their efforts by

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Victor

2 months

@semicolondan oh no I have not, that is an interesting angle on the basic thrust tho so I will have to soon

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@itsMattMac no I had not, and absolutely beautiful, thanks for sharing! my interest was originally partially linked to that period close to when infantile amnesia happens, it’s hard to generalize to later acquisition cases because there’s varied reports, likely related to source of delay

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@4d3d3d3d3 I think that’s very sensible and likely, I mostly just think it’s a fun question because I would love to get one case where I am able to ask before infatile amnesia kicks in

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@NathanWailes great analogy!

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

25 days

in memoriam

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@symbolicstorage amazing! I have to interview this kid for my research

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@mattliveblogs I agree that it’s intuitive, but just wanna be up front about there being so many other assumptions that need to be at play for these responses to support it alone (not that with other findings that hypothesis couldn’t be supported!)

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Victor

2 months

@TheArtOfZin so interesting!

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@thedansimonson complicate away! I think that’s a totally live interpretation, I don’t mean to suggest this little casual approach to questioning I do can cleave the hypothesis space so neatly as there’s lots of reasons (including it being a weird question depending on how you understand it)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

18 days

if anything, many modelers should love chomsky since otherwise they’d need to contribute something other than a critique of him

@pascalefung

Pascale Fung

20 days

We always knew that Chomsky was wrong about language models, it’s nice to have a paper showing you just how wrong he was! #ACL2024 best papsr.

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

not to brag, but I know even less than socrates

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@dull_roar I definitely think that’s a live interpretation, it’s just also possible they’re frustrated with the exchange since it is a weird so I just try not to commit to that absent some more methodological approach

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

12 days

Pissed off by pseudowhorfian takes is on me, yeah really puts it into perspective

@woofknight

Papa Woof und Krampus und Bleaken

14 days

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Victor

2 months

@alexHDgamieng @focusfronting you have got to get a grip

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

23 days

Fodor on AI (and simulation not being the goal of science)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@BigwetRealism haha this isn’t my actual research, it’s more just a thing I do if the opportunity comes up, but that’s a good point, no I have not (but yes they can!)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

happy to share that I'll be joining the Snedeker Lab at Harvard as a postdoc this semester! excited both to continue my ongoing research on concepts, negation, and word learning, AND to get an awesome opportunity to make connections with language emergence research 😇

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Victor

2 months

@symbolicstorage please tell me you told them that you’re a huge fan of their early work

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@tea_zamboni @semicolondan I get it! we were immigrants and my mom was an ESL teacher, so I’ve known a wide range of people who came to no longer speak a language and there’s so many reasons at play, often practical, but nonetheless very emotional even if no one is to “blame”

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@tea_zamboni @semicolondan would you like to share with the class? no pressure

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@itsMattMac but good to read across varied cases, imo, and anyway there may not be a generalizable truth here for this question to begin with!

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

the only advice I give (if I’m asked) to friends dealing with depression is to become a regular somewhere

@skateboardraga

Dick Owens

@skateboardraga

2 months

not to be so morbid but three years ago I planned on killing myself and my last meal was sushi. When I called in my order, the lady recognized who I was. After I hung up, I said I couldn’t do it because they’d wonder why I stopped. I haven’t stopped going since.

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Victor

2 months

@tea_zamboni @semicolondan ah gosh I’m so sorry! I can absolutely understand how that would be a very emotional thing to process…

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@fauxfilosopher although I like that you had the image of me interviewing an infant, I’m not nearly as creative as @langofmind

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

15 days

sometimes I retweet papers I have no plan to read in the hopes that others will read it and then it’ll eventually trickle down to me in conversation

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

9 days

I mean (imo, speculatively) there’s something to be said about how learning a language might introduce noise, or make you capable of metalinguistic judgements that trip you up when learning another one but I don’t think that has to do with children being cute necessarily

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@Dervine7 one of my favorites is when he was walking with a group after some wedding and someone said “what a beautiful tree” and he kept frantically asking what they meant by that until they cried

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@ShutItAIIDown 🤣 amazing ty for bringing this to my attention

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@Nadia2887 haha 😅 definitely an “annoying kids with silly questions” level at least since people often say it’s the other way around

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

there’s this pernicious myth, starting with the luddites, that skilled laborers that operate machinery somehow just lose their abilities in the absence of a manager

@DanForTexas

Dan 𝙏𝙖𝙭𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙄𝙨 𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙛𝙩 Behrman Esq🍍

2 months

@ProjectLiberal

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

17 days

what basic rules of logic? they can’t even robustly negate and that’s arguably a building block of many logics

@robertskmiles

Rob Miles (✈️ SF)

18 days

"LLMs can't do logical reasoning at all, they've just memorised some basic rules of logic, and use pattern matching to imperfectly apply those rules to new situations"

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@RyanSGriffiths 🤣🤣🤣

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@__colas I think I know a thing or two about how to ask children questions about their knowledge…

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@iHateCogsci “look, I don’t want to make more enemies.” -> “look, I don’t want the thing I am going to request in the next sentence.”

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

9 days

@nickjudin I don’t intent to come across as anti-immersion! that just isn’t the sole difference. kids still reach expertise faster than adults in the immersion method for example. there are certain things immersion still won’t help w in the same time frame but I am pro-immersion

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@awsparling @4d3d3d3d3 ooh, what’s his earliest memory? do you think infantile amnesia just “started” earlier for him, or is he sort of able to recall things even before 2? sorry to pry!

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@wubbushi never said it wasn’t ridiculous, did I? but your inability to even try to understand the relevance of something silly betrays a total lack of curiosity

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

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@zetalyrae

Fernando 🌺🌌

1 month

If you sent an AI generated image or a Claude transcript to 5y ago people would call it witchcraft. They would not believe you. I feel insane when people act performatively unimpressed by these things.

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

when I was a kid, I used to wash my hands after I touched anything, so naturally when people asked what superpower I would pick, I always chose telekinesis. but eventually I got worried that since then I’d be using my brain to move things, that I’d have to wash it instead.

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

22 days

I don’t want my emails summarized, I want fewer emails

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

least realistic part about Inside Out is the emotions not speaking mentalese

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

I went on a few dates with someone who was into the dark academia aesthetic and it turns out they’re not as into academics as they thought

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

11 days

this is also true of all concepts

@MasterTimBlais

SEDUCTIVE CEO (27/100 parentheticals)

@MasterTimBlais

12 days

it continues to be wild to me that if the cinnamon tree didn't happen to exist there just *wouldn't be cinnamon flavour* and yet you'd still have the *capacity to taste cinnamon* and there are surely thousands of flavours you could taste that just happen to not exist

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

9 days

radical behaviorist miku

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@Eff_Gluten_Free yes that’s what most people think, and I agree, but a related question some people have is whether language is what helps us encode/retrieve those memories. I think it’s just a coincidence that infantile amnesia happens around when kids learn language, but its an interesting idea

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

shannon literally proved most letters in a word are useless and you’re still correcting all your typos?

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

if languages are so efficient why do they all have more than one word?

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@sanguepunk there are plenty of people with great memories that report no internal monologue, so I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m saying it’s very complicated and hard to make generalizations across (I tried not to in OT, more just talk about a funny thing I do and why, but maybe failed!)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

what’s up with people writing hallmark-level fanfics masquerading as advice

@shagbark_hick

𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗

2 months

Many do not realize that there are many viable businesses in rural America owned by an aging man who has no obvious successor. The guy probably wants to retire, the locals need the service he provides, but the business would be hard to sell because it is not managed according

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@SmithTiddy when did I dismiss that they find it silly? I thinks it’s fair that they find it silly, it’s a weird question that’s hard to make sense of if you don’t do what I do

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@uataliareyes so far I wouldn’t say any have answered it other than “I don’t remember” (which at least might indicates they understand what I’m asking though who knows)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

20 days

you’ll never hear about me “breaking my silence” on any issue because I’ll never shut up long enough to have any silence to break

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

21 days

I mainly don’t want kids because I don’t want to have to download more apps

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

13 days

@lastpositivist idk if it’s a hot take or not these days, but I agree with Auden’s take on political poetry:

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

I got a tenure track position and a six figure advance - but the hitch? I still feel empty inside sometimes

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

always so bittersweet when an abstract gets accepted for a talk... on the one hand, thank you, on the other, I don't like presenting at all

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

I want to make very clear that I do not research this (hence not asking actual participants) and that while it was inspired by an idea, it was from when I was an undergrad first encountering cogsci! I mostly just still do it out of habit and because it’s sort of fun

@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

one thing I like to ask kids right once they start using language is what it felt like not being able to use it. they routinely find this question either silly or annoying

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

I feel like the whole “this picture is what will do it” betrays a very marvel/hollywood view of… I guess everything

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

when people say they do their citations manually instead of using zotero, do they mean they’re rawdogging their bibliography or are just using some other tool and copy pasting into it?

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

26 days

me

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@peligrietzer

Peli Grietzer

27 days

I'm 90% analytic philosophy brained except I think 'exotic' (drugs, art, meditation, weird moods) states of mind matter for mind-world relationship stuff

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

17 days

I’m gonna be real for a second: I’m surprised a lot of you are still following me… I’ve got like 2, maybe 3 bits max and they all involve being annoying somehow

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

25 days

a word is just a concept with an army and a navy

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

did you guys know kids can understand language before they speak? and get a load of this, apparently they can communicate *non-verbally*

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

13 days

good news: got an apartment and am moving this sunday bad news: emotionally hit that I’m leaving philly and I got sad

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

if you’re STILL trying to find the relationship between the signifier and the signified… here’s your sign

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

or, if you went to grad school on the west coast: generative semantics. the difference between these two programs, however, are ultimately minor and therefore mostly only of sociological interest to those that study either.

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@jayblank5 it’s an interesting little thought experiment, by no means do I mean to suggest it’s conclusive or near it - but yes, relates to interesting questions about the format of memory representations and how that may even be at play with adults

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

we desperately need to standardize 9/11s as a unit

@HotSpotHotSpot

HOT SPOT

@HotSpotHotSpot

1 month

Netanyahu says October 7th was like “Twenty-Nine 9/11s in one day”

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

shoutout to chomsky

@largemotorcycle

cam

@largemotorcycle

1 month

(to the guy who let me merge) This guy gets its

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

every time I check in on the inattentional blindness literature it looks like nothing has changed

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

21 days

chomsky is right about language

@beyondreasdoubt

LB

@beyondreasdoubt

23 days

Start a fight in less than 5 words - can’t be about politics!

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

conceptual brat summer

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

can’t even marry my work anymore

@dbranch09

d

2 months

Idk what’s worse, the job market or dating scene 😭

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@EvanRoden5 wow, really interesting. hearing from “nontypical” cases and seeing the variety makes me wonder if there’s relation to the mechanism of nontypicality or if it’s just the same variance we see in “typical” cases (which imo there’s plenty of as evidenced by some replies here)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@thedansimonson for what it’s worth, I think this is the likeliest case, but spelling out why I think that would take way more time than I typically give thinking/writing about infantile amnesia personally

@narchoboygirl

Smowol Luwucy

2 months

I'd rather guess that the "memory format" just changes parallel to learning language, with one not necessarily influencing the other.

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Victor

1 month

“X implies the existence of Y” no it doesn’t there’s lots of words for things that don’t exist

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@ItsAndyRyan my money is on it being unrelated, so I would imagine yes in such a case, I just haven’t had the opportunity to ask (might ask some friends for citations though since they might be able to speak to this)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

12 days

@langofmind yeah definitely agree, also don’t like when people try tying it into some broader weird cultural take (“this is why the irish are so tranquil” or whatever)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

imo we’re in an era that requires much more “bridgework” but really struggles to support it given the ethos of specialization

@BodhiCogSci

Bodhi

2 months

I am a psycholinguist at heart, a formal semanticist by training, a neuroscientist by profession, and a philosopher of science by circumstances. Yet I am neither of these. Join my identity crisis club.

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

our mind

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@EllisRosen

Ellis Rosen

1 month

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

6 days

fodor was notoriously pro-opera

@leifweatherby

maybe: leif weatherby

6 days

is Fodor the only ever analytical philosopher who was just an all-around cool and chill guy? the Tim Walz of analytical philosophy? or is there some shoe that has to drop?

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Victor

2 months

honestly I’d be fine just being a full time reviewer of papers if that was just a position

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

23 days

(cont...)

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

I think CogSci as a discipline needs to develop much stronger norms around the disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

@IrisVanRooij

Iris van Rooij 💭

1 month

Honestly, disheartening to see how much of @cogsci_soc has fallen for AI hype, confusing tech for theories. I've been trying to ring alarm over the last years, via social media, talks, papers, blogging, reviewing etc. And then to see this ... #cogsci2024

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Victor

25 days

compromise: we replace “kill” with “cause to die”

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

what color do you associate with radiation? for me it’s green, I think on account of the ooze

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Victor

20 days

going to my first bachelor’s party this weekend as the token confirmed bachelor

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

gotta admit I'm pretty jealous that dr bronner gets to put all his theories on soap

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

13 days

my bank’s fraud team called me and after we confirmed everything, she was like “I was really curious, but what do you do? I can’t tell at all from your statements.”

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

@JasonPtrDavies whoah…

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

1 month

cognitive scientists will literally claim they have prosopagnosia instead of admitting that they don’t remember you

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@notnaughtknot

Victor

2 months

when the garden path stimuli don't work on me

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