Eoin Travers
@eointravers.bsky.social
I'm a Data Scientist, working on responsible AI for mental health.
Posting about data, AI, evals, and cognitive science.
eointravers.com
🇮🇪
Posting about data, AI, evals, and cognitive science.
eointravers.com
🇮🇪
I think deep linear networks are an example of this, where you have a deep model with just the capacity of regular linear regression.
June 1, 2025 at 9:45 AM
I think deep linear networks are an example of this, where you have a deep model with just the capacity of regular linear regression.
Bullshitting Engines?
May 25, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Bullshitting Engines?
To be fair, if you're doing analytic philosophy, "bullshit engine" reads as an engine that is bullshit, not an engine that engages in the communicative act of bullshitting, because engines don't communicate or have concerns, they set things in motion.
May 25, 2025 at 7:56 AM
To be fair, if you're doing analytic philosophy, "bullshit engine" reads as an engine that is bullshit, not an engine that engages in the communicative act of bullshitting, because engines don't communicate or have concerns, they set things in motion.
Sorry, broke the second link: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Grid Cells for Conceptual Spaces?
“Grid cells” encode an animal’s location and direction of movement in 2D physical
environments via regularly repeating receptive fields. Constantinescu et al. (2016)
report the first evidence of grid ...
www.cell.com
May 18, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Sorry, broke the second link: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Yup: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... (commentary: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt.... Lots of later work on the same idea since then as well.
Organizing Conceptual Knowledge in Humans with a Grid-like Code
It has been hypothesized that the brain organizes concepts into a mental map, allowing conceptual relationships to be navigated in a similar fashion to space. Grid cells use a hexagonally-symmetric co...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
May 18, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Yup: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... (commentary: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt.... Lots of later work on the same idea since then as well.
It's in the opposite direction though, once your participants know how you want them to behave, they're pretty likely to behave that way.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_...
Demand characteristics - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
April 18, 2025 at 6:37 PM
It's in the opposite direction though, once your participants know how you want them to behave, they're pretty likely to behave that way.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_...
I think it's a choose-your-own-null adventure kind of thing, like you're worried it might be. I can see the (bad) argument, if you allow lots of parameters to vary either side of the dotted line, any differences prove that the line is important?
April 6, 2025 at 7:42 PM
I think it's a choose-your-own-null adventure kind of thing, like you're worried it might be. I can see the (bad) argument, if you allow lots of parameters to vary either side of the dotted line, any differences prove that the line is important?
April 6, 2025 at 7:13 PM
If you think different slopes are bad, you should see www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1... (and related posts: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu?s=regression...). Polynomial madness.
Why High-Order Polynomials Should Not Be Used in Regression Discontinuity Designs
It is common in regression discontinuity analysis to control for third, fourth, or higher-degree polynomials of the forcing variable. There appears to be a perception that such methods are theoreti...
www.tandfonline.com
April 6, 2025 at 7:12 PM
If you think different slopes are bad, you should see www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1... (and related posts: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu?s=regression...). Polynomial madness.
For one-in-three, it’s ~70.4%. One-in-four, ~68.4%. As n increases, the answer gets closer and closer to
1−1/e ≈ 63.2%, where e is Euler’s number.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(math...
Why 1-1/e? Honestly, you would have to ask someone better at maths than me, but I think it’s a pretty cool result.
1−1/e ≈ 63.2%, where e is Euler’s number.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(math...
Why 1-1/e? Honestly, you would have to ask someone better at maths than me, but I think it’s a pretty cool result.
March 20, 2025 at 11:50 AM
For one-in-three, it’s ~70.4%. One-in-four, ~68.4%. As n increases, the answer gets closer and closer to
1−1/e ≈ 63.2%, where e is Euler’s number.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(math...
Why 1-1/e? Honestly, you would have to ask someone better at maths than me, but I think it’s a pretty cool result.
1−1/e ≈ 63.2%, where e is Euler’s number.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(math...
Why 1-1/e? Honestly, you would have to ask someone better at maths than me, but I think it’s a pretty cool result.
So the prob. that it does happen at least once is the probability that it *doesn’t not happen*,
1 - (1 - 1/n)^n
For a one-in-two chance, this works out as
1 - (1 - 1/2)^2 = 1 - 1/4 = 75%
1 - (1 - 1/n)^n
For a one-in-two chance, this works out as
1 - (1 - 1/2)^2 = 1 - 1/4 = 75%
March 20, 2025 at 11:50 AM
So the prob. that it does happen at least once is the probability that it *doesn’t not happen*,
1 - (1 - 1/n)^n
For a one-in-two chance, this works out as
1 - (1 - 1/2)^2 = 1 - 1/4 = 75%
1 - (1 - 1/n)^n
For a one-in-two chance, this works out as
1 - (1 - 1/2)^2 = 1 - 1/4 = 75%
The prob. of trying twice and it not happening is the prob. of it not happening the first time, times the prob. of it not happening the second time:
(1 - 1/n) * (1 - 1/n), or (1 - 1/n)^2
The prob. of it not happening in n attempts is
(1 - 1/n)^n
(1 - 1/n) * (1 - 1/n), or (1 - 1/n)^2
The prob. of it not happening in n attempts is
(1 - 1/n)^n
March 20, 2025 at 11:50 AM
The prob. of trying twice and it not happening is the prob. of it not happening the first time, times the prob. of it not happening the second time:
(1 - 1/n) * (1 - 1/n), or (1 - 1/n)^2
The prob. of it not happening in n attempts is
(1 - 1/n)^n
(1 - 1/n) * (1 - 1/n), or (1 - 1/n)^2
The prob. of it not happening in n attempts is
(1 - 1/n)^n
If you take a one-in-n chance, the probability of it coming off is 1/n. If you roll a six-side die, the probability of rolling a 6 is 1/6.
The prob. of the event not occurring is one minus the probability that it does occur: 1 - 1/n
The prob. of the event not occurring is one minus the probability that it does occur: 1 - 1/n
March 20, 2025 at 11:50 AM
If you take a one-in-n chance, the probability of it coming off is 1/n. If you roll a six-side die, the probability of rolling a 6 is 1/6.
The prob. of the event not occurring is one minus the probability that it does occur: 1 - 1/n
The prob. of the event not occurring is one minus the probability that it does occur: 1 - 1/n
March 20, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Poker is probably an interesting case study here, because AFAIK expert poker players don't try to solve K-level theory of mind problems, they just have really good heuristics.
March 19, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Poker is probably an interesting case study here, because AFAIK expert poker players don't try to solve K-level theory of mind problems, they just have really good heuristics.
In principle, that might mean we can get LLMs to reason under uncertainty pretty well if we fine-tune on the right heuristics?
March 19, 2025 at 11:41 PM
In principle, that might mean we can get LLMs to reason under uncertainty pretty well if we fine-tune on the right heuristics?
There's an old idea in psychology (e.g. core.ac.uk/download/pdf...) that when people do perform well under uncertainty, it's because they're pattern matching using the right heuristics, rather than doing Bayesian inference.
core.ac.uk
March 19, 2025 at 11:41 PM
There's an old idea in psychology (e.g. core.ac.uk/download/pdf...) that when people do perform well under uncertainty, it's because they're pattern matching using the right heuristics, rather than doing Bayesian inference.
To be fair, humans are famously also pretty bad at it, so this one might be a draw.
March 19, 2025 at 7:13 PM
To be fair, humans are famously also pretty bad at it, so this one might be a draw.
