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IsTom commented on Researchers seeking better measures of cognitive fatigue   nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/bikenaga
arjie · 4 days ago
> To better understand fatigue, Pessiglione, Chib and other researchers are trying to bridge an understanding of its biochemical workings with how it affects motivation4. The current hypothesis: cognitive fatigue arises from metabolic changes in parts of the brain that are responsible for cognitive control

This will be interesting to see because for a long time there's been a lot of work saying that "ego depletion" isn't a thing[0] and I swear I have tried to believe this but my own personal experience is completely different. Later in the night, and when I'm mentally tired I do experience this: poor impulse control, lowered emotion regulation, the whole shebang. It'll be interesting to see what the basis is for this, because despite taking all that research at face-value I have to say that now after all these years, I can't help but think it must be wrong.

0: though some have claimed that it is a thing if you believe that it's a thing, i.e. it happens to those who believe in it.

IsTom · 4 days ago
I feel there is more than one type of mental fatigue. Some of them can be forced through (e.g. the emotional kind that happens when you have to do something you don't want to do) and some can't (e.g. not having enough sleep for prolonged time).
IsTom commented on French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=Na9Vm... · Posted by u/gbugniot
xg15 · 5 days ago
> “However, we notice – based on the social comments and international media coverage – that for many guests this period is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’.”

How to make your corporate response sound even more AI than the actual AI...

> "And here’s the part people don’t see: the hours that went into this job far exceeded a traditional shoot. Ten people, five weeks, full-time.”

If it didn't even save time, then what was the point?

IsTom · 5 days ago
Ah the famous AI efficiency and productivity boost.
IsTom commented on Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux   heise.de/en/news/Valve-HD... · Posted by u/OsrsNeedsf2P
bobdvb · 6 days ago
I need to post this everywhere:

THIS ISN'T AN IP/PATENT ISSUE!

This is branding and marketing issue. Anyone can implement the spec, it doesn't need to be a cleanroom implementation. It's almost certain that you could license the patents from the patent holders because HDMI doesn't develop it's own patentable stuff, they just get it from Sony, Panasonic, etc.

THIS IS A MARKETING / BRANDING ISSUE.

Saying they don't want an open source implementation is just a smokescreen. 99% of the implementation is in hardware anyway.

IsTom · 6 days ago
So why don't AMD and Valve release ICan'tBeliveit'sNotHDMI2.1 drivers?
IsTom commented on Gemini 3 Pro: the frontier of vision AI   blog.google/technology/de... · Posted by u/xnx
adastra22 · 12 days ago
I assumed you were speaking by analogy, as LLMs do not work by interpolation, or anything resembling that. Diffusion models, maybe you can make that argument. But GPT-derived inference is fundamentally different. It works via model building and next token prediction, which is not interpolative.

As for bias, I don’t see the distinction you are making. Biases in the training data produce biases in the weights. That’s where the biases come from: over-fitting (or sometimes, correct fitting) of the training data. You don’t end up with biases at random.

IsTom · 11 days ago
> It works via model building and next token prediction, which is not interpolative.

I'm not particularly well-versed in LLMs, but isn't there a step in there somewhere (latent space?) where you effectively interpolate in some high-dimensional space?

IsTom commented on The US polluters that are rewriting the EU's human rights and climate law   somo.nl/the-secretive-cab... · Posted by u/saubeidl
RobertoG · 12 days ago
"Another three meetings the Roundtable held were not found in the EU Transparency Register(opens in new window) at all."

That's illegal behavior by foreign interests.

And yes, in practice, lobbying is kind of an unstoppable force.

Those companies have people that its only work is to influence the people in charge. They have personal relationship with those people and they are all friends. It's a good thing to have friends, you never know where you will find yourself when your politics work finish.

If something doesn't work, they will try again next week or next year. It's their work, after all.

IsTom · 12 days ago
That kind of sounds like they should be put in jail to stop this.
IsTom commented on All the Way Down   futilitycloset.com/2025/1... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
lo_zamoyski · 13 days ago
> there's no goal

Try talking about biological operations without invoking “function”. Claiming it’s “convenient” to do so doesn’t cut it: convenient for what?

Why do acorns become oak trees? They must be causally ordered toward that end. That’s telos.

Even efficient causality presupposes telos. Why does striking a match against a matchbox consistently produce fire? Because the match has a causal ordering toward that end. Otherwise, you could not explain why fire consistently results as opposed to random things like a flock of seagulls or a BMW 7 Series…or nothing at all.

Telos is not necessarily a matter of some external purpose or Paley-style watchmaker. That’s mechanistic metaphysics appealing to a watchmaker to explain a purpose things would - under that metaphysics - inherently lack. It is a matter of causal order and directedness.

IsTom · 13 days ago
> Try talking about biological operations without invoking “function”.

If you had a strong vendetta against mistaking map for territory, you could very well talk in terms of past survival and statistics. It's just not necessary for regular biological talk. It becomes relevant only when you start going to the boundaries.

> Why does striking a match against a matchbox consistently produce fire?

Because you wouldn't call these objects a "match" and a "matchbox" otherwise.

IsTom commented on All the Way Down   futilitycloset.com/2025/1... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
zkmon · 13 days ago
A proof (visual or otherwise) shows "how" some statement is true, as in how it is built by the preceding truths. But I always wanted to know "why" something is true. For example, a biological cell grows and division happens. I could find tons of literature which talks about "how" this happens, but not "why" this happens. What's the motivation or goal? And why that goal is pursued? What is the force behind seeking of that goal?
IsTom · 13 days ago
> What's the motivation or goal? And why that goal is pursued? What is the force behind seeking of that goal?

There's no force and there's no goal. These things happen because every moment is a direct consequence of the previous one.

IsTom commented on What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? (2024)   nature.com/articles/s4156... · Posted by u/Hooke
pierrec · 14 days ago
7/4 happens to be approximately 30 cents away from 16/9. It's hard to tell what's "simple" when looking at fractions, but 16/9 is indeed simple: divide by 3 twice and adjust the octave. If we assume octave equivalence, that means one step in the "7" direction is perceived as more complex than 2 steps in the "3" direction, so the second interpretation wins, but is perceived as out-of-tune.

That said, we're trying to isolate things that are typically not isolated. If you get to 7/4 by following the harmonic series, it will sound in-tune. If you get to 16/9 by playing and applying 4/3 twice, then that will sound in tune. Unsurprisingly the second option is more common in music.

IsTom · 14 days ago
Before 7th harmonic all you have is octaves, fifths and major thirds. If you want to stick to making other pitches out of stacked fifths and major thirds you'll end up with other compromises.
IsTom commented on What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? (2024)   nature.com/articles/s4156... · Posted by u/Hooke
pierrec · 14 days ago
Way off what? Complex ratios are likely to be heard as out-of-tune simple ratios, that's why they sound off. A concept sometimes called tolerance in music cognition. Note that by "complexity" and "simplicity" I'm referring to harmonic distance here.
IsTom · 14 days ago
7/4 ratio should be simple, but it'll sound out of tune (over 30 cents) in a normal context. Many BP intervals are just as simple and they'll sound very out of tune to people unused to them.
IsTom commented on What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? (2024)   nature.com/articles/s4156... · Posted by u/Hooke
pierrec · 14 days ago
Both statements are true. We have a strong tendency for integer ratios in harmony, and just intonation often sounds out of tune.

Integer ratios are the base upon which harmony is built. Temperament is a subtle modification that sounds very close to integer ratios, but allows more complex harmonic structures where dissonance is evenly spread out across all the relationships between tones.

IsTom · 14 days ago
Seventh and eleventh harmonics are way off. If ratios were the fundamental thing Bohlen–Pierce would be about as pleasant as 12TET to people.

u/IsTom

KarmaCake day867March 27, 2012View Original