Andrew Perfors
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perfors.net
Andrew Perfors
@perfors.net
11K followers 4.9K following 3.3K posts
Prof at UniMelb. I'm a computational cognitive scientist studying human inference, learning, information systems, culture, and (mis/dis)info. Nerd & opinionated loudmouth in Oz, originally from America, citizen of both. Parent of two. 🏳️‍⚧️ perfors.net
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perfors.net
Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.
Slide is titled: You don't need to use LLMs. Science is a process of collaborative meaning making, by which we try to understand the world Even if AI were perfect, we rely on it at our peril — it is not science if we (i.e., humanity as a whole) do not understand and cannot recapitulate all parts of it I very, very rarely use LLMs myself. You can give yourself permission not to. Don’t FOMO yourself into it Conclusion: Don't rely on something you don't understand and can't control If you must use LLMS: 1. Treat them like you would an intern: only use them for things you can easily and thoroughly check 2. Make your process as robust as possible 3. Be aware of your own (human) cognitive biases
November 6, 2025 at 8:41 PM
perfors.net
Brilliant, lovely day here (except for the allergies). High of 26C. Tomorrow is going to be a shock!
Photo of a walk I took in the Dandenong ranges, with huge gum trees towering up into the bright blue sky. Forecast for tomorrow (Monday) showing a high of 12C (low of 9C) and solid rain
November 2, 2025 at 7:45 AM
perfors.net
Some days are tougher than others, but always remember that it is still a beautiful world. #tinyjoys
Close up of pink and white flowers which I think are rhododendrons Picture of large rhododendron bush, with fern trees in the background
October 29, 2025 at 9:40 PM
perfors.net
10yo is writing a fantasy novel and it takes no prisoners
Excerpt of text saying "Prophecies, to me, honestly are just instructions written in the most annoying way possible."
October 19, 2025 at 11:19 PM
perfors.net
It is still a beautiful world, always remember that. 💕
Purple flowers in my garden
October 18, 2025 at 12:02 AM
perfors.net
It is still a beautiful world.
#tinyjoys
Photo of a flower with emerging orange petals with yellow pistils in the middle
October 16, 2025 at 9:27 PM
perfors.net
This is exactly right too. Oh heck just read the whole thing
And as for winning, I think it is an indictment even of Klein's apparent intelligence that he thinks that the way to persuade people to join the Democrats is to have Democrats abandon what are their alleged ideals, especially since they just lost so badly not by standing up for trans people, but by doing exactly what Ezra Klein is now proposing, because they listened to people like Ezra Klein. You can't beat the mentality that leads to abuse by taking on the abuser's mentality. You can't defeat bad ideas by adopting them. You can't grow a coalition by selling out its members. And you can't persuade people who disagree with you that you can be trusted to fight for them when you won't even fight for those you say are with you. Eventually you have to stand for something, or somebody else will tell you where to stand, and if you'd rather not, they'll force you to stand there, and stand there you will. And there you'll be, standing in a place somebody else chose for you. You and the nothing you built inside.
October 6, 2025 at 11:17 AM
perfors.net
So many good parts of this, but I really liked this: when it comes to status quo centrist moderate people like Klein, it is very illuminating to realise who they instinctively empathise with and put themselves in the shoes of, and who they consider to be bargaining chips to appease the far right.
By his own admission, Kirk's murder affected Ezra Klein in a personal way that all the previous acts of supremacist violence committed against all its other targets across the span of history did not. So we see that Klein recognizes a "we" in Charlie Kirk that he does not recognize in trans people or in any of the other people I listed in the previous paragraph. In this, he reveals to us—perhaps without even knowing he is doing so—that for him, the disagreements he has with Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro are window dressing compared to the fundamental kinship he feels to them, three princes of public discourse, just trying their best to do what's best, whether "what's best" is feeding a hungry kid or blowing him up or zip tying his hands behind his back in the middle of the Chicago night. When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives. The troops and the cops weren't ever sent down primarily white streets, masked kidnappers aren't terrorizing white churches or corporate courtrooms. These supremacist hatemongers are being criticized, yes, and opposed, yes, and yes the culture of violence they have created sometimes ricochets back on them, but we are living in the country they demanded on having. We are all now experiencing the Republican proposition for humanity. Many of us are demanding they stop pursuing this proposition, and Republicans and other supremacist hatemongers insist this demand represents violence against them. Klein, by drawing the lines where he draws them, is agreeing with Republicans about this.
October 6, 2025 at 11:17 AM
perfors.net
Anyway, here's my favourite excerpt, but read the whole thing:
Author Czeslaw Milosz wrote that “A man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he will greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally convinced, he may swallow a first frog, then the second; but at the third his stomach will revolt.” How does a person convince themselves they need to swallow live frogs? They see themselves as being pragmatic in difficult times and willing to make difficult choices. They imagine that doing something unpleasant is the same as doing something effective. They think it will save them. But developing a rational theory of eating live frogs is not going to save anyone. I’m reminded of the large news organization my spouse used to work for years ago. When a maelstrom hit—one that was affecting all of journalism—a top editor called together the whole newsroom to talk about the future. They would, he announced, have to decide which of their core values to keep. The point is supposed to be that they’re your core values. The outlet lost its principles, and soon went into a tailspin that was in no way delayed and was perhaps accelerated by abandoning its values. If you’ve figured out your core principles, then they will guide you about what to do. Remember, you’re not just performing an idea, it’s your life. It’s who you are. I think Klein, like many former liberals, is getting rolled by his his exposure to people who imagine themselves to be free-thinkers but are actually adjacent to hacks like Christopher Rufo and Richard Hanania. (If you don’t already know who they are, they’re not really worth looking up.) Because Klein doesn’t seem to currently locate himself in a tradition or perhaps has lost the ability to do so, he imagines that the pain of trading away core values is a positive example of compromise. But those self-described freethinkers advocating surrendering whole communities will never become more like him. Klein will only become more like them.
October 4, 2025 at 11:49 AM
perfors.net
Nice essay! This bit in particular was really interesting to me (as someone who neither meditates nor knows much about Buddhism). It makes a lot of sense.
The Three-Legged Stool We Broke Within Buddhism, mindfulness meditation is one of several integrated practices. For example there’s a concepual trilogy in Theravada Buddhism called dana sila bhavana—a three-legged stool where all legs are necessary for stability. Dana means generosity and action directed toward others—social engagement, service, addressing collective suffering. Sila means ethics—following precepts, moral guidelines for how to live in community. Bhavana means mental development—meditation and mindfulness practice. Popular mainstream mindfulness practice focuses almost exclusively on bhavana. It strips away the social obligation (dana) and ethical framework (sila), leaving only the technique for training your individual mind. When I attended a meditation retreat at a Buddhist monastery (more on that in a post later this fall), one of the senior monks warned explicitly that practicing meditation without the other two legs was “dangerous.” But secular mindfulness doesn’t want the other two legs. It doesn’t want ethical precepts that might constrain individual freedom. It doesn’t want social obligations that might demand action beyond personal practice. It just wants the meditation technique—extracted, medicalized, and marketed as a tool for individual optimization. The result? A technique for individual stress management and performance optimization, completely divorced from Buddhism’s social and ethical dimensions.
October 4, 2025 at 12:46 AM
perfors.net
Chotiner interviews a Harper's Letter signatory
So you’re worried about cancel culture and free speech. Yes, it’s a huge problem. Can you give me an example? A campus organisation sent a mass email telling us to be mindful of pronouns and cultural appropriation. Oh. I see. Also, a woke student group protested someone who they didn’t like! It was very stressful for that person to be called a bigot. Extremely stressful and unpleasant. Are they a bigot? Nobody should be allowed to say they are. Free speech requires it. Well, the next time I hear someone complain about the government firing or deporting people for something they said, I will be sure to bring up the woke students to show that the issue is complicated.
September 25, 2025 at 3:51 AM
perfors.net
Checking in from Australia: there has been no Rapture. Repeat: NO RAPTURE.

It is, however, a lovely spring day 💚
#tinyjoys
Picture of some white flowers on a pear tree
September 23, 2025 at 12:26 AM
perfors.net
Good day. Music festival with one kid, escape room with the other, gardening, reading... and most importantly, very little time spent on a screen or social media.

Just trying to "be here, now"

I need to do that a LOT more often. #tinyjoys
Purple flowers from my garden
September 14, 2025 at 8:07 AM
perfors.net
For those who, like me, could use the reminder today: it is still a beautiful world.

#tinyjoys
Tree with big white flowers with yellow centres Close-up of the same flowers
September 11, 2025 at 1:36 AM
perfors.net
I can't take credit for that part! It's from a lovely poem by Mary Oliver
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean — the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down — who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver
September 9, 2025 at 10:21 PM
perfors.net
And the last one. I find myself judging him as an arrogant schmuck for thinking this was an appropriate thing for a birthday book

(at least no evident pedophilia but that bar is so low as to be below ground)
Language is the one truly interesting thing that happened in the last 500 million years
September 9, 2025 at 7:15 AM
perfors.net
Yep (I felt dirty scrolling through the book on public transport, but was very curious). Nowak contributed several pages. I recognise several of the papers they came from.
Page 1 from Nowak: the mathematics of life, and a diagram titled "quasispecies live in sequence space" and with language we can write our own evolution (and its mathematics) followed but some diagrams from his papers and definitions random scientific ideas: fitness landscape, mutation landscape, quasispecies equation Quasispecies give rise to replicators and other stuff about evolutionary game theory
September 9, 2025 at 7:14 AM
perfors.net
Still rainy and cold but flowers are happening and spring is around the corner! #tinyjoys
A picture from some random flowers in my garden, I don't honestly know what they are. Last fall I cleared a whole lot of blackberry bushes and these plants were hidden by them. What a nice surprise to see them bloom!
September 8, 2025 at 11:28 PM
perfors.net
Proof.
Photo shows an ancient clock radio / CD player / cassette player, grey, and kind of stained and grubby looking
August 20, 2025 at 5:57 PM
perfors.net
It is still a *very* beautiful world. #tinyjoys
Photo of lots of mountain peaks. It is a view from the top of Monarch Pass in the middle of the Colorado Rockies. Beautiful!
August 12, 2025 at 10:19 PM
perfors.net
Here's another photo of a landscape that I think is beautiful and not many people agree but oh well, I'm enjoying this drive 😊
Southwestern Colorado, a long lonely road in the high desert. Small puffy clouds in the sky, sagebrush, and nothing much else except a sign in the distance reading "Disappointment Valley"
August 7, 2025 at 8:19 PM
perfors.net
Among other interesting things while driving through parts of the (very very) rural and isolated southwest today, I saw this - which is apparently flown by sovereign citizens.

Needless to say it is not recognised by any official authorities, but I appreciate people who make their red flags literal.
A US-styled flag but with vertical (not horizontal) red stripes and dark blue stars on a white background
August 6, 2025 at 3:48 AM
perfors.net
It is still a beautiful world. #tinyjoys
Photo off the highway somewhere in southwestern Utah, looking at a rocky mesa with a few scrub oaks dotting the sand. In the far background are some grey and distant mountains
August 6, 2025 at 2:58 AM
perfors.net
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- TS Eliot

#tinyjoys
Photo from the middle of nowhere, Nevada. I know many find it ugly, but I absolutely love this landscape; I find the isolation and the desolation to be soul-enriching. It's been a long time since I've seen it.
August 5, 2025 at 4:41 AM
perfors.net
Still a beautiful world, even in the US 💜
#tinyjoys
A picture underneath a waterfall somewhere in Northern California, taken today on my roadtrip down the west coast.
July 24, 2025 at 6:11 AM