Rita
julliard.bsky.social
Rita
@julliard.bsky.social
Smashing together cognitive science, urbanism, economics, and tech ambivalence. Smash smash
Reposted by Rita
My heart breaks for the NSF officials who are forced to put out announcements like this. A very sad & terrifying time for all of us in science who have promoted -- and who I hope will continue to promote -- the basic principles of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in our work.
January 29, 2025 at 3:31 AM
A linguistic model with a broader capacity for nuance, and is trained on and for complex customer complaints. It can find discrete pieces within a complex complaint, identify trends across multiple complaints, and identify links to operational teams or processes on the side of the service provider
January 29, 2025 at 3:25 AM
In 2025, does web3/blockchain have a new paradigm to offer #urbanplanning? Public discourse around data privacy and ownership has certainly evolved. But what does web3 direct us to build? Or is it just another technocratic plot device?
January 13, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Been thinking back to Quayside, the Sidewalk Labs #smartcity concept in Toronto. The project failed because in 2020, the threat of Big Brother and authoritarian neoliberalism proved more salient than the allure of a sustainable, techy, efficiently managed public space
January 13, 2025 at 11:43 PM
There's so much yet to be gained for humanity via the intelligent (and dynamic) balance of centralization + decentralization
January 13, 2025 at 11:39 PM
A smart city that isn't AR ads overlaid on streetscapes, charming timber enclaves of privilege, and autonomous car datasets. Instead, a smart city that prioritizes human enrichment, progress, and collectivism. What could a #web3 smart city look like?
January 13, 2025 at 6:16 PM
"Everyone dies eventually" and "You're just a speck in the universe" feel like normal, inoffensive truisms of lived reality.

But *the entirety of human creation* being a minor statistical fluctuation in the theoretical realm as well? Well, that feels gloomier somehow
December 15, 2024 at 2:19 PM
But the laws of thermodynamics aren't optional. Which implies that human cooperation and all the beautiful emergent complexities are just transient phenomena. A statistical glitch
December 15, 2024 at 2:07 PM
The universe moves towards entropy, while human societies move toward organization. Specialization (at local levels) and centralization (at global levels) increase with complexity...
December 15, 2024 at 1:54 PM
What does an economic system look like that is:

- ethically robust,
- humanistic,
- economically efficient / responsive to societal change, and
- algorithmically mediated?

Or are some of these qualities mutually exclusive?
December 14, 2024 at 2:24 AM
Am only just beginning to think about this - but especially in cases of corrupt governments and financial instability, would decentralized currency improve or worsen citizens' lives?
December 7, 2024 at 7:26 PM
Are there any urban economists who have opined on how the proliferation of cryptocurrencies might impact cities?
December 7, 2024 at 7:23 PM
So, network states in the web3 context:
I love the tenets of opt-in/out, equality of opportunity, personal freedom and responsibility, democracy. But I also can't truly, truly envision how network states meaningfully fit into a prosocial world that is good for the future of humanity
December 5, 2024 at 6:00 AM
All this work in AI depends upon, is attenuated by, language (human or computational).

So what might achieving Artificial General Intelligence look like - without language, without symbols, i.e. outside of computing? Is there a type of information/expression that does not degrade with processing?
December 2, 2024 at 4:13 AM
Then again - this could describe communication with another bona fide human as well, esp in that we constantly are negotiating the Gricean maxims
December 2, 2024 at 3:59 AM
We use symbols (characters, words, 0s & 1s) to represent concepts, then put it through many levels of processing. Then we perceive and interpret the outputs.

Is this fundamentally different from numerology?

Is anticipating "intelligence" another flavor of anthropomorphizing, of mystical optimism?
December 2, 2024 at 3:56 AM
Is today's (deep-learning based) AI just well marketed numerology?
December 1, 2024 at 5:57 PM
Some things about human nature will remain true no matter what. Any theory of utopia that ignores these is bound to fail
- human sociality
- the salience of embodied existence
- ingroup vs outgroup ideas of identity, safety, fairness; tendency to scapegoat
- the need for diversion and to create
November 30, 2024 at 5:03 PM
4. Nurturing knowledge economies through increasing information symmetry vs the constant incentive toward asymmetry through monopoly
November 30, 2024 at 4:52 PM
3. The local decentralizations made possible within a centralizing entity that enjoys network effects
November 30, 2024 at 4:51 PM
2. Commodity capitalism vs theories of freedom still based on the concept of ownership
November 30, 2024 at 4:50 PM
Interesting philosophical tensions in tech today...
1. The centralizing tendency of Big Tech vs the innovation and freedom that diversity/noise enable
November 30, 2024 at 4:50 PM
Technical advancement fully in thrall to the logic of modern finance.
(Atlantic newsletter, Matteo Wong)
November 17, 2024 at 1:44 AM