At the moment, Deep Think is only available with the ULTRA subscription ($250 per month).
Readit Newsamatic commented on Gemini 2.5 Deep Think blog.google/products/gemi... · Posted by u/meetpateltech
amatic commented on A Straightforward Explanation of the Good Regulator Theorem lesswrong.com/posts/JQefB... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
There is a mistake right in the beginning, not sure how it affects the conclusions yet. The variables given are S - System variable (some kind of disturbance), Z is the outcome ( a controlled variable) and R is the action of a controller. The causal relations between them are S affects Z, S affects R, and R affects Z.
> The archetypal example for this is something like a thermostat. The variable S represents random external temperature fluctuations. The regulator R is the thermostat, which measures these fluctuations and takes an action (such as putting on heating or air conditioning) based on the information it takes in. The outcome Z is the resulting temperature of the room, which depends both on the action taken by the regulator, and the external temperature.
The problem here is that the regulator R does not measure external temperature. It just measures the controlled variable - the temperature Z, so the causal arrow should go from Z to R too, and the arrow from S to R does not exist.
This is not new ground. See Cybernetics: Or Control_and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) by Norbert Wiener. Wiener wrote a popular version, "The Human Use of Human Beings".[2]
There's a whole history of cybernetics as a field. This Wikipedia article has a good summary.[3]
The beginnings of neural network work came from cybernetics. As with much of philosophy, areas in which someone got results split off to become fields of their own.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings
> This is not new ground. See Cybernetics
Control theory and cybernetics were supposed to transform psychology in a much more dramatic and all-encompassing way, as argued by W.T. Powers, for example[1]. In modern psychology, the concept of negative feedback control is treated like a metaphore, a vague connection between machines and living things (with the possible exception of the field of motor control) . If psychology would take the concept seriously, then most research methods in the field would need to be changed. Less null-hypothesis testing, more experiments applying disturbances to selected variables to see if they are controlled by a participant or not. That is the meaning I'm getting from the call to revolution.
[1] https://www.iapct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Powers1978....
That's a book review. Read the actual book.[1]
Notes:
- Prologue:
(Behaviorism) ended up being a terrible way to do psychology, but it was admirable for being an attempt at describing the whole business in terms of a few simple entities and rules. It was precise enough to be wrong, rather than vague to the point of being unassailable, which has been the rule in most of psychology.
- Thermostat:
An intro to control theory, but one which ignores stability. Maxwell's original paper, "On Governors", (1868) is still worth reading. He didn't just discover electromagnetics, he founded control theory. Has the usual problems with applying this to emotions, and the author realizes this.
OK, so living things have a lot of feedback control systems. This is not a new observation. The biological term is "homeostasis", a concept apparently first described in 1849 and named in 1926. (There are claims that this concept dates from Aristotle, who wrote about "habit", but Aristotle didn't really get feedback control. Too early.)
- Motivation:
Pick goals with highest need level, but have some hysteresis to avoid toggling between behaviors too fast.
- Conflict and oscillation:
Author discovers oscillation and stability in feedback systems.
- What is going on?
Author tries to derive control theory.
- Interlude
Norbert Wiener and cybernetics, which was peak fascination with feedback in the 1950s.
- Artificial intelligence
"But humans and all other biological intelligences are cybernetic minimizers, not reward maximizers. We track multiple error signals and try to reduce them to zero. If all our errors are at zero — if you’re on the beach in Tahiti, a drink in your hand, air and water both the perfect temperature — we are mostly comfortable to lounge around on our chaise. As a result, it’s not actually clear if it’s possible to build a maximizing intelligence. The only intelligences that exist are minimizing. There has never been a truly intelligent reward maximizer (if there had, we would likely all be dead), so there is no proof of concept. The main reason to suspect AI is possible is that natural intelligence already exists — us."
Hm. That's worth some thought. An argument against it is that there are clearly people driven by the desire for "more", with no visible upper bound.
- Animal welfare
Finally, "consciousness". It speaks well of the author that it took this long to bring that up. It's brought up in the context of whether animals are conscious, and, if so, which animals.
- Dynamic methods
Failure modes of multiple feedback systems, plus some pop psychology.
- Other methods
Much like the previous chapter
- Help wanted
"If the proposal is more or less right, then this is the start of a scientific revolution."
Not seeing the revolution here. Most of the ideas here have been seen before. Did I miss something?
Feedback is important, but the author doesn't seem to have done enough of it to have a good understanding.
If you want an intuitive grasp of feedback, play with some op amps set up as an analog computer and watch the output on a scope. Or find a simulator. If The Analog Thing came with a scope (which, at its price point, it should) that would be ideal. Watch control loops with feedback and delay stabilize, oscillate, or limit. There are browser-based tools which do this, but they assume basic electrical engineering knowledge.
[1] https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2025/02/06/the-mind-in-the-whe...
> Not seeing the revolution here. Most of the ideas here have been seen before. Did I miss something?
The reviewer is a psychologist, with some interesting opinions and criticisms of psychology. My impression is that applying control theory to study human behavior should be the revolutionary thing, for psychology.
i don't know about other people's experience - but my framework with intel cpu is always running that fan relatively maxed out even when it's not doing anything. And it has massive issues staying asleep which is some sort of driver issue with Windows. But I can be an airport and all of a sudden my backpack feels like it's about to combust and i can hear my laptop fan rippin', even though it should be asleep.
I'm not sure I had the same issue, it is a different laptop, but it would not go to sleep. The current solution is to make it hybernate instead of sleep.
amatic commented on Octopuses seen hunting together with fish nbcnews.com/science/scien... · Posted by u/ceejayoz
Who would pay for an article they could get for free? Who would pay to subscribe to a journal that just aggregates open-access articles?
The scientific community, or the ministry of science of some country, or a university - might find that paying for peer review, for example, might be more effective in promoting good science than paying for publication.
amatic commented on Micro-agent: make an AI write code until it passes an unit test github.com/BuilderIO/micr... · Posted by u/BiteCode_dev
This sounds amazing! Are there any metrics on how often different models pass tests? Has someone used a similar process to finetune an LLM?
amatic commented on Human neuroscience mustn't forget its human dimension nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/rntn
Where is the author's name? Strange editorial. Neuroscientists should "involve participants"? What if they cannot speak, like that guy Broca's area was found in?
>>Without a doubt, human neuroscience is entering a new and important era. However, it can fulfil its goals of improving human experiences only when study participants are involved in discussions about the future of such research.
The waveforms for "Bouba" are less "spiky" I'd guess:
fewer overtones, less noisy, more tonal, so more round and quasi periodical
I think it's just that bouba has o, and kiki has k. Also the b is half-round, and I is more spiky. Visual differences, not auditory.
edit: You make a round shape with your mouth in o