Kerem Oktar
@keremoktar.bsky.social
Postdoc at Meta FAIR studying social cognition.
Princeton Psych PhD who enjoys music, literature, and oats.
Visit: https://keremoktar.com
Princeton Psych PhD who enjoys music, literature, and oats.
Visit: https://keremoktar.com
Check out roundtable.ai (ex tom grad student startup)
I personally disable copy paste and put in very small font white text that instructs LLMs to start a sentence with a detectable catch-phrase that I can use to filter, and also use RT to filter out too-fast-per-word responses
I personally disable copy paste and put in very small font white text that instructs LLMs to start a sentence with a detectable catch-phrase that I can use to filter, and also use RT to filter out too-fast-per-word responses
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roundtable.ai
May 20, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Check out roundtable.ai (ex tom grad student startup)
I personally disable copy paste and put in very small font white text that instructs LLMs to start a sentence with a detectable catch-phrase that I can use to filter, and also use RT to filter out too-fast-per-word responses
I personally disable copy paste and put in very small font white text that instructs LLMs to start a sentence with a detectable catch-phrase that I can use to filter, and also use RT to filter out too-fast-per-word responses
Great thread! How would you fold in the idea that choice confers intrinsic utility (e.g., Sen's Freedom of Choice)? Seems like a distinct and important category to me.
April 29, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Great thread! How would you fold in the idea that choice confers intrinsic utility (e.g., Sen's Freedom of Choice)? Seems like a distinct and important category to me.
There is a version of Theseus's ship unfolding before our eyes... the country will survive, but will we want to call what remains the same country?
February 28, 2025 at 9:43 PM
There is a version of Theseus's ship unfolding before our eyes... the country will survive, but will we want to call what remains the same country?
sure! but this seems like an argument not to deploy AF as a generic political tool, rather than an argument for what is a communicatively helpful notion of AF?
it seems like AF is minimally useful within academia as a tool for us to band together against undue (past,present,future) interference
it seems like AF is minimally useful within academia as a tool for us to band together against undue (past,present,future) interference
February 28, 2025 at 5:21 PM
sure! but this seems like an argument not to deploy AF as a generic political tool, rather than an argument for what is a communicatively helpful notion of AF?
it seems like AF is minimally useful within academia as a tool for us to band together against undue (past,present,future) interference
it seems like AF is minimally useful within academia as a tool for us to band together against undue (past,present,future) interference
i agree! then you can have professional freedom, which has basic virtues that contain an overlapping subset w/ AF, but do you need not restrict AF to do that?
AF might contain special elements, as academia is an institution w/ a distinctive, 'produce diverse thought' flavor
AF might contain special elements, as academia is an institution w/ a distinctive, 'produce diverse thought' flavor
February 28, 2025 at 5:06 PM
i agree! then you can have professional freedom, which has basic virtues that contain an overlapping subset w/ AF, but do you need not restrict AF to do that?
AF might contain special elements, as academia is an institution w/ a distinctive, 'produce diverse thought' flavor
AF might contain special elements, as academia is an institution w/ a distinctive, 'produce diverse thought' flavor
more generally, if a policy can exclude valid lines of (past,present,future) academic activity (by erasing past research, firing faculty, preventing hiring), it seems appropriate to call that an AF issue.
note that it is a separate issue whether AF conflicts with other values, such as efficiency
note that it is a separate issue whether AF conflicts with other values, such as efficiency
February 28, 2025 at 4:46 PM
more generally, if a policy can exclude valid lines of (past,present,future) academic activity (by erasing past research, firing faculty, preventing hiring), it seems appropriate to call that an AF issue.
note that it is a separate issue whether AF conflicts with other values, such as efficiency
note that it is a separate issue whether AF conflicts with other values, such as efficiency
if I heard that Turkey banned all hiring of psych faculty, restricted funds for grad students in psych to only examine Turkish pride, and prevented faculty from joining protests against anti-science policy, i would want to be able to deploy 'AF is being restricted in Turkey' as a concept
February 28, 2025 at 4:46 PM
if I heard that Turkey banned all hiring of psych faculty, restricted funds for grad students in psych to only examine Turkish pride, and prevented faculty from joining protests against anti-science policy, i would want to be able to deploy 'AF is being restricted in Turkey' as a concept
imo 'gov restricting active faculty research/teaching' is too narrow a version. it excludes all hiring restrictions; grad student/postdoc restrictions; restrictions of activity that seeks to effect real-world change based on research, etc.
February 28, 2025 at 4:46 PM
imo 'gov restricting active faculty research/teaching' is too narrow a version. it excludes all hiring restrictions; grad student/postdoc restrictions; restrictions of activity that seeks to effect real-world change based on research, etc.
seems like the question is how narrowly you want to sculpt the concept AF. if you want a narrow enough def that you rule out profs not being hired for their research area, then you won't see it as a violation. the question is whether that's the most useful version of the concept....
February 28, 2025 at 4:46 PM
seems like the question is how narrowly you want to sculpt the concept AF. if you want a narrow enough def that you rule out profs not being hired for their research area, then you won't see it as a violation. the question is whether that's the most useful version of the concept....
Isn't all of this data as well? Meta-data?
January 6, 2024 at 8:03 AM
Isn't all of this data as well? Meta-data?
Yes!!! This is why identity theories can lead to very strange (and imo faulty) intuitions (e.g. you could recover someone's mental state if you could cache a --momentary snapshot-- of their brain). Dynamic coding would multiply informational content, so would be a better default assumption...
January 6, 2024 at 7:58 AM
Yes!!! This is why identity theories can lead to very strange (and imo faulty) intuitions (e.g. you could recover someone's mental state if you could cache a --momentary snapshot-- of their brain). Dynamic coding would multiply informational content, so would be a better default assumption...
I'm a cog scientist studying belief -- I find that the conceptual clarity in e.g. epistemology is very helpful for grounding intuitive theorizing; also, I think that 'what should we believe' and 'what do we believe' are more intertwined than it may seem (e.g. marr's levels)
December 20, 2023 at 5:26 PM
I'm a cog scientist studying belief -- I find that the conceptual clarity in e.g. epistemology is very helpful for grounding intuitive theorizing; also, I think that 'what should we believe' and 'what do we believe' are more intertwined than it may seem (e.g. marr's levels)
Reposted by Kerem Oktar
There already are women leading the field. For a long time.
December 5, 2023 at 11:55 AM
There already are women leading the field. For a long time.
This also comes up in teaching -- how do you teach psych when you know that the baseline replication rate for foundational stuff is about a coin flip? In that context I think emphasizing that science is a process, and not a set of results, works, though I think the policy case is harder
November 30, 2023 at 3:22 PM
This also comes up in teaching -- how do you teach psych when you know that the baseline replication rate for foundational stuff is about a coin flip? In that context I think emphasizing that science is a process, and not a set of results, works, though I think the policy case is harder
I'm curious about baseline levels of agreement in polls - I've gotten the impression that, if you put an option down, some people will agree (no matter what the option is). Do you know if there's any literature on this?
October 10, 2023 at 5:28 AM
I'm curious about baseline levels of agreement in polls - I've gotten the impression that, if you put an option down, some people will agree (no matter what the option is). Do you know if there's any literature on this?
Eric Nook would be great to talk to about this! As an outsider, it seems reasonable to me, though it really comes down to how much you want to penalize complexity, and relatedly, whether all you care about is prediction (or if you also care about explanation/theory)
October 4, 2023 at 1:18 AM
Eric Nook would be great to talk to about this! As an outsider, it seems reasonable to me, though it really comes down to how much you want to penalize complexity, and relatedly, whether all you care about is prediction (or if you also care about explanation/theory)
One of my favorite papers is on this exact problem, by @talyarkoni.com on 'the generalizability crisis' (2022). I think it has gotten a lot of attention so hopefully things start moving in the right direction :')
October 3, 2023 at 10:43 PM
One of my favorite papers is on this exact problem, by @talyarkoni.com on 'the generalizability crisis' (2022). I think it has gotten a lot of attention so hopefully things start moving in the right direction :')
I think Gordon's bs-detection-as-individual-difference would be a nice bridge between them --- eg you may end up believing conspiracies and misinformation bc a) you are bad at detecting & b) lazy --- I'd be surprised if they haven't made this connection explicit!
@gordpennycook.bsky.social
@gordpennycook.bsky.social
October 3, 2023 at 2:58 PM
I think Gordon's bs-detection-as-individual-difference would be a nice bridge between them --- eg you may end up believing conspiracies and misinformation bc a) you are bad at detecting & b) lazy --- I'd be surprised if they haven't made this connection explicit!
@gordpennycook.bsky.social
@gordpennycook.bsky.social