John McBride
johnmcbride4lyf.bsky.social
John McBride
@johnmcbride4lyf.bsky.social
Scientist studying the evolution of proteins and music (so far, separately).
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=PYTwBWIAAAAJ
https://github.com/jomimc
Btw, this is a legally-binding poll, right?
November 5, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Go go left
November 5, 2025 at 6:51 AM
I should say also that I do use LLMS for coding a lot. And they are an incredible labour-saving device for me personally. So perhaps I take some of your criticism personally.
November 2, 2025 at 8:34 PM
I like your work, and I agree with a lot of your posts. Yes, there are ethical considerations. But then you leave comments like this:
"It means you don't know these skills at any depth and have decided to stunt your growth. Truly saddening!"
It makes me pause, and think that you've gone too far.
November 2, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Wow. I'm supportive of banning LLMs in the classroom. But wow. This discourse is getting odd and toxic. It is possible to both know skills and to benefit from LLMs. One could argue that instead of searching stackoverflow one should read documentation, otherwise you might stunt your growth.
November 2, 2025 at 7:10 PM
I'm open to that. I find that the semantic distinction between the two is often not useful. Theories (and any logical frameworks), after all, are just boolean models. If you get this, then theories (as I think others think of them) are basically models that are not very specific/detailed.
September 7, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Aside from the Box quote, I'd like to remind people that "All empirical observations are wrong, but some are useful" (Me)
September 6, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Outside of physics the distinction seems more clear, since you rarely get a cohesive integrated theoretical framework that is mathematical and predictive. E.g. Darwin's theory of evolution can be boiled down to a few logical statements. Population genetics is a system of models of evolution.
September 6, 2025 at 4:41 PM
I've been pondering the difference between models and theories for a while. I haven't heard much consistency in discussions. I certainly get different answers depending on the discipline. The one thing in common is that the word 'theory' seems to be better regarded. - is the standard model a theory?
What is the difference between a "model" and a "theory"?
In my past questions I have used the terms "model" and "theory" interchangeably. So we have statements along the lines of The Standard Model is our best theory of particle physics but I have also
physics.stackexchange.com
September 6, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Can you send it to me also? I'm now curious
August 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Agent-based models by themselves are useful for extended thought experiments. If you want to know, given X, and Y, and some social dynamics, what is Z? But you can't compute it in your head.
Some great work has been done on evolutionary/game theory of cooperation. Sometimes good data is hard to get
August 19, 2025 at 6:35 AM
For some short excerpts of speech, if you listen to them on repeat they start to sound more like music. Not all speech excerpts. But it (repetition) also works with clips of sounds other than speech. @adamtierney.bsky.social has done a lot of work on it (amongst others) if you want to know more.
August 8, 2025 at 1:51 PM
I'm running a Korean VPN and it works for me
July 17, 2025 at 5:37 PM
And yes, overleaf has track changes, but I didn't like it last time it was used on a paper. Can't even remember why anymore
July 16, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Thanks. I have actually used latexdiff before during review. I think the reason I didn't this time was because I was working on overleaf, and wanted to be able to see the changes as I worked.
July 16, 2025 at 6:11 PM
I'm supposed to upload a new version now that it's been recommended. Something to do this week!
July 16, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Indeed, it's like track changes. Except done manually in LaTEX, so not everything is colored, just the main changes. Normally this would be done internally during review, but the paper was reviewed at PCI Evolutionary Biology, which requires all manuscripts to be posted to a preprint server.
July 16, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Any idea of how to differentiate between participants based on how good their memory is vs how good they are at games? Like, could you generate a stockfish-style game engine to assess players?
July 14, 2025 at 11:28 AM
That was fun! Any chance you can find out how much of an outlier I am? Somehow I got >100% in quite a few. Great activity for me to do while downloading/installing a ubuntu boot disc (after deleting some files that should not be deleted...)
July 14, 2025 at 11:26 AM