Uri Shalit
@urish.bsky.social
Machine learning researcher, working on causal inference and healthcare applications
Gelman has something to this effect, starting from bottom of p.6 here (“There are (almost) no true zeros”)
bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/gelm...
bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/gelm...
bayes.cs.ucla.edu
October 6, 2025 at 4:51 AM
Gelman has something to this effect, starting from bottom of p.6 here (“There are (almost) no true zeros”)
bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/gelm...
bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/gelm...
They are graded on giving full proofs. LLMs are quite bad at that.
Though I’m sure there’s also quite a bit of test data leaks going around
Though I’m sure there’s also quite a bit of test data leaks going around
April 1, 2025 at 8:25 AM
They are graded on giving full proofs. LLMs are quite bad at that.
Though I’m sure there’s also quite a bit of test data leaks going around
Though I’m sure there’s also quite a bit of test data leaks going around
Not a big SSC fan but I liked his idea of epistemic learned helplessness
slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/r...
slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/r...
[REPOST] Epistemic Learned Helplessness
[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal] A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid a…
slatestarcodex.com
February 15, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Not a big SSC fan but I liked his idea of epistemic learned helplessness
slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/r...
slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/r...
Not going for exhaustive!
February 3, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Not going for exhaustive!
Tangentially related: interesting to think of the biblical law of jubilee in this context. It says that every 50 years debts are dropped, indentured servants released and land is returned to “original” owners
January 16, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Tangentially related: interesting to think of the biblical law of jubilee in this context. It says that every 50 years debts are dropped, indentured servants released and land is returned to “original” owners
This piece from August seems like a good writeup:
mathscholar.org/2024/08/new-...
It mentions a new book from 2024 by Jack Szostak and Mario Livio called “Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life”.
Szostak is a leading scientist in the field (I haven’t read the book yet)
mathscholar.org/2024/08/new-...
It mentions a new book from 2024 by Jack Szostak and Mario Livio called “Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life”.
Szostak is a leading scientist in the field (I haven’t read the book yet)
New developments in the origin of life on Earth « Math Scholar
mathscholar.org
January 1, 2025 at 11:14 PM
This piece from August seems like a good writeup:
mathscholar.org/2024/08/new-...
It mentions a new book from 2024 by Jack Szostak and Mario Livio called “Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life”.
Szostak is a leading scientist in the field (I haven’t read the book yet)
mathscholar.org/2024/08/new-...
It mentions a new book from 2024 by Jack Szostak and Mario Livio called “Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life”.
Szostak is a leading scientist in the field (I haven’t read the book yet)
This is a good, longish essay on the subject
by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social
www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-existen...
by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social
www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-existen...
AI existential risk probabilities are too unreliable to inform policy
How speculation gets laundered through pseudo-quantification
www.aisnakeoil.com
December 28, 2024 at 11:16 PM
This is a good, longish essay on the subject
by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social
www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-existen...
by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social
www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-existen...
I love this sketch of a Purkinje cell (a type of neuron found in the cerebellum) by Santiago Ramón y Cajal
November 24, 2024 at 8:10 PM
I love this sketch of a Purkinje cell (a type of neuron found in the cerebellum) by Santiago Ramón y Cajal
to be fair, ICLR is a far cry from what Yann is suggesting in that piece. I'm not questioning the need for reform. My question is why didn't the push for reform succeed back then, and what can we learn from that? (in the spirit of "Everyone will not just")
November 24, 2024 at 5:13 PM
to be fair, ICLR is a far cry from what Yann is suggesting in that piece. I'm not questioning the need for reform. My question is why didn't the push for reform succeed back then, and what can we learn from that? (in the spirit of "Everyone will not just")
I recall that Yann LeCun had some interesting suggestions back in 2013-2014. Despite his clout the community didn't move much* yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets...
*ICLR public reviews and TMLR are small steps which I think followed from the discussions going around back then
*ICLR public reviews and TMLR are small steps which I think followed from the discussions going around back then
Proposal for A New Publishing Model in Computer Science
Yann LeCun's Home Page
yann.lecun.com
November 24, 2024 at 5:07 PM
I recall that Yann LeCun had some interesting suggestions back in 2013-2014. Despite his clout the community didn't move much* yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets...
*ICLR public reviews and TMLR are small steps which I think followed from the discussions going around back then
*ICLR public reviews and TMLR are small steps which I think followed from the discussions going around back then
This is such a good point, and I love the connection you're making in the paper to resilience to hidden confounding. In many cases the treatments that would shift are exactly those that have more "exogenous randomness" in them, and for these units the effect might be more easily identified from data
November 24, 2024 at 4:15 PM
This is such a good point, and I love the connection you're making in the paper to resilience to hidden confounding. In many cases the treatments that would shift are exactly those that have more "exogenous randomness" in them, and for these units the effect might be more easily identified from data
Breaking the Maya Code, by Michael Coe, about the deciphering of Mayan script
One of the people involved in the story is Yuri Knorozov, pictured below
One of the people involved in the story is Yuri Knorozov, pictured below
November 23, 2024 at 9:01 PM
Breaking the Maya Code, by Michael Coe, about the deciphering of Mayan script
One of the people involved in the story is Yuri Knorozov, pictured below
One of the people involved in the story is Yuri Knorozov, pictured below
Instead some scientists just said “close schools!” , conflating their own priorities with science and hurting the credibility of scientists overall.
Their intentions were good but I think the overall outcome is not
2/2
Their intentions were good but I think the overall outcome is not
2/2
November 22, 2024 at 9:12 AM
Instead some scientists just said “close schools!” , conflating their own priorities with science and hurting the credibility of scientists overall.
Their intentions were good but I think the overall outcome is not
2/2
Their intentions were good but I think the overall outcome is not
2/2
an example where I think some scientists stumbled: during COVID after the first few months, imo a responsible scientist would say “closing schools has these benefits and these harms (w/uncertainty), the politicians and public should weigh them and decide” 1/2
November 22, 2024 at 9:12 AM
an example where I think some scientists stumbled: during COVID after the first few months, imo a responsible scientist would say “closing schools has these benefits and these harms (w/uncertainty), the politicians and public should weigh them and decide” 1/2
Related to this, been enjoying this paper by Icard, @jfkominsky.bsky.social & Knobe looking at how "normality" affects the way humans judge causes.
eg in when you need two factors to cause an event (say oxygen + match to cause a fire), humans will judge the less "normal" element to be more causal
eg in when you need two factors to cause an event (say oxygen + match to cause a fire), humans will judge the less "normal" element to be more causal
Normality and actual causal strength
Existing research suggests that people’s judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 19, 2024 at 11:22 PM
Related to this, been enjoying this paper by Icard, @jfkominsky.bsky.social & Knobe looking at how "normality" affects the way humans judge causes.
eg in when you need two factors to cause an event (say oxygen + match to cause a fire), humans will judge the less "normal" element to be more causal
eg in when you need two factors to cause an event (say oxygen + match to cause a fire), humans will judge the less "normal" element to be more causal
I'm now getting a much better signal-to-noise for ML discussions here than on Xitter plus funnier/more profound shitposting, and much, much less rage inducing screaming and general junk
November 19, 2024 at 10:58 PM
I'm now getting a much better signal-to-noise for ML discussions here than on Xitter plus funnier/more profound shitposting, and much, much less rage inducing screaming and general junk
Feeling much nicer here
November 19, 2024 at 10:47 PM
Feeling much nicer here
I don’t know about other domains, but in healthcare I’ve seen the term used to basically mean “a model of how a patient would respond to a treatment other than the one they’ve actually received”. When used in that sense it’s just corpo ai brainwash as @natolambert.bsky.social said
November 19, 2024 at 10:17 PM
I don’t know about other domains, but in healthcare I’ve seen the term used to basically mean “a model of how a patient would respond to a treatment other than the one they’ve actually received”. When used in that sense it’s just corpo ai brainwash as @natolambert.bsky.social said