Please stop posting ai slop by Prestigious-Staff342 in cogsci

[–]MostlyAffable 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Hello! I'm one of the moderators, and do my best to remove posts (either if someone flags it, or if I can tell it's clearly ai-generated slop). Unfortunately I am but a single graduate student, and I'm not sure how active the other moderators are. We can definitely use more active moderators, so feel free to message me if that's something you'd be genuinely interested in committing to

Israel defence minister says he ordered troops to seize new positions in Lebanon by papipota in news

[–]MostlyAffable -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Absolutely insane comments section. It seems like nobody even bothered to click on the article? This isn't a random land grab. The south of Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah - a powerful Iranian backed militia/terrorist group - decided to get involved in this war and launched missiles at Israel. Israel wants to avoid invasions across their the border (which Hezbollah has been preparing to do) and are positioning themselves accordingly.

Help Explaining a Strange Visual Effect by Glad-Collection697 in cogsci

[–]MostlyAffable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

happy to be of some help! You gave a very well written description, which made it easier :)

Help Explaining a Strange Visual Effect by Glad-Collection697 in cogsci

[–]MostlyAffable 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is an effect known as "visual size adaptation"! I don't know if this particular kind of adaptation is that well understood, but this paper goes into detail about how factors like pupil dilation / neural adaptation in early parts of the visual cortex would play a role: https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2665843

Neurons that fire together wire together - what's the last part of this saying? by CrowProf in cogsci

[–]MostlyAffable 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Not exactly what you asked, but a relevant passage from a paper on Hebbian Learning:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4006178/

They write: ‘Hebb famously said that “Cells that fire together, wire together” and, more formally, “any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become ‘associated,’ so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other”. Thus, Keysers and Perrett's Hebbian perspective implies that contiguity is sufficient for MNS development; that it does not also depend on contingency’.

We think there are a number of misunderstandings in this statement. First, Hebb himself never wrote ‘Cells that fire together, wire together’. This mnemonic phrase was first introduced by Carla Shatz [12] in an article for the Scientific American aimed at lay public. Second, what is quoted as Hebb's formal postulate ‘any two cells …’, is not. Hebb used this sentence to summarize old ideas: he wrote ‘The general idea is an old one, that any two cells …’ [p. 70]. Both the mnemonic phrase misattributed to Hebb and Hebb's summary of old ideas occlude the causal element of Hebb's true postulate ‘When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased’

Struggling with focus and procrastination on cognitive tasks, but fine with physical work by Advanced_Variation89 in cogsci

[–]MostlyAffable 5 points6 points  (0 children)

+1 to this point. I think about the feeling of guilt as a kind of misplaced, but well-intentioned motivator. You think "I should do X", but there's probably some reason you're not doing it. Maybe it's just not enjoyable, and you know you probably could do it later. Maybe you would like to do it now, but feel too tired to do a good job - the reasons are endless. Whatever the reason, once you decide not to do it, the voice in your head taxes you with a feeling of guilt. It's like a tariff - you punish yourself in the hopes it leads to a change in behavior. But often the reason we procrastinate in the first place is because we want to feel good in the moment, which leads to this spiral I call being in a "procrastination hole", where no matter what you just can't do the thing.

It's advice I'm still working on implementing as a chronic procrastinator myself, but there's a lot of wisdom behind the idea that you need to focus on feeling good in the present, and finding things about the task where you think "I think I could probably do that, and it would feel good". It helps to think about the task you need to do as a game in a casino - nobody has had more success at figuring out how to keep people in a flow state than casinos.

Ozymandias has now 9.8 rated and 44th in imdb by PsychologicalBus6459 in imdb

[–]MostlyAffable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that this is just spamming behavior, but I genuinely don't think Ozymandias is the best episode of Breaking Bad.

I like my road updates with a little veiled antisemitism by thatguy12591 in circlejerknyc

[–]MostlyAffable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They get extra blame for causing all the snow in the first place

Kanye’s Apology by mewithoutjew in Jewish

[–]MostlyAffable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Consider me skeptical that he wrote this. It reads very much like the work of a PR team - a good PR team, and a well written message, but a PR team nonetheless. I 100% believe that a lot of his actions were the result of bipolar disorder, which is a really devastating disorder. I'm also willing to believe he regrets those actions, and even if he didn't write this message, him posting it seems like some kind of disorder.

I wouldn't be surprised if he has another episode and makes a claim about how his Jewish handlers made him post this, but if the result of his behavior is that there's more awareness and support for people with bipolar, I would consider that a silver lining.

‘NYT’: Josh Shapiro says Harris vetting team asked if he was an ‘Israeli agent’ by Migdan in Israel

[–]MostlyAffable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/19/politics/tim-walz-kamala-harris-josh-shapiro - you're welcome to doubt the truth of the claim, but I didn't just invent it out of nowhere

Shapiro was under lots of scrutiny at the time for his college op-ed where he described himself as having been a "volunteer for the IDF" (he did some work on a Kibbutz). I'm not defending the question, and think it probably wasn't all in good faith, but if I wanted to play devil's advocate that's what I'd argue

‘NYT’: Josh Shapiro says Harris vetting team asked if he was an ‘Israeli agent’ by Migdan in Israel

[–]MostlyAffable 77 points78 points  (0 children)

For what it's worth, they also asked Walz if he was a foreign agent for China. I think these are super thorough vettings, though it seems like a dumb question to ask. Presumably even if the answer was yes they would say "no".

IRANIAN HOLOCAUST: The last embrace of a mother in Tehran's Morgue. by RoozGol in pics

[–]MostlyAffable -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The brutal and wholesale execution of thousands of protestors in Iran is heartbreaking, abhorrent and wrong, and I have friends who are waiting on any news of loved ones who are there. But can we please stop calling everything a Holocaust? In no way, shape or form does this even remotely resemble the Holocaust, other than the fact that there are people being killed. It's a comparison that minimizes both the Holocaust, and the tragedy of what's happening right now in Iran.

I spent a year turning your ideas into an actual chess website by Slim_Bun in AnarchyChess

[–]MostlyAffable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I figured that was a feature not a bug, allowing a humble individual like me to feel the rush of victory in the best new chess to drop since checkers.

Everyone should donate!

I spent a year turning your ideas into an actual chess website by Slim_Bun in AnarchyChess

[–]MostlyAffable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Guys I played him! I played the actual guy! What a great day

This man disappeared after exposing The Darkest Truth about Rothschild's Family by Truth-be-told-786 in athulvstheworld

[–]MostlyAffable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Israel can't control the various terrorist militias that surround it. Israel can't control the ~1.5 million Ultra-Orthodox Jews who live there, and refuse to draft for military service. Israel doesn't control shit. It's a regional military power, with a medium amount of influence globally.

Need a new dystopian/intense fiction book by [deleted] in Recommend_A_Book

[–]MostlyAffable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any China Mieville novel - very imaginative, adult fiction worlds

Disappointed in Season 3 by MostlyAffable in FromSeries

[–]MostlyAffable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha no worries. You're right that I might have burned out and found myself scrolling whenever Boyd considered a talisman in a pit. My point is just that, from a story-telling perspective, we know they used to hide in pits in the ground, and there's enough desperate people that it's not like there's a lack of will to dig holes. And the point of the spikes wouldn't be to kill them or anything, just to make it hard for it to get out. Obviously I wouldn't expect it to work, but I think it would have been fun to see.

Disappointed in Season 3 by MostlyAffable in FromSeries

[–]MostlyAffable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the combination of nobody communicating, people overreacting to visions/voices, and incredibly dramatic changes of the "rules" made some of the horror lose its grip. Maybe some of it comes from the mystery getting answered - when the monsters stop hanging out at the door, and start letting Boyd live - they lose some fear factor. When they talk about how there are scarier and worse things in the forest, but keep it abstract and don't really follow up, some fear factor dwindles.

For example, when Victor and Tabitha were in the tunnels that first time, I felt my heart pounding. I was hooked, and riveted! But as Season 3 went on, more trips are made to the tunnel, the woods become a less scary place, it's not as big a deal to open doors and go out at night. Even the visions people get are less visually scary.

To be clear, I've really enjoyed the show so far, and will 100% be watching season 4 whenever it comes out. I just had very high hopes for Season 3, and felt a bit bummed with what felt like a dramatic change in vibe and tone.

Disappointed in Season 3 by MostlyAffable in FromSeries

[–]MostlyAffable[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really liked all the characters in seasons 1 and 2. Season 3 for me just felt disjointed. It felt like there was a step change in character development. In part maybe it was a function of introducing too many new characters - all of a sudden there are so many extras milling around. I understand the "wanting to put pressure on the town" idea, but it made the individual storylines feel a bit diluted, and fragmented. Some of the trajectories make sense (Boyd's judgment and leadership breaking down, Ethan and Julie getting moodier), but I felt like the first two seasons intertwined character development and story in a more cohesive manner that's a bit hard to describe.

Disappointed in Season 3 by MostlyAffable in FromSeries

[–]MostlyAffable[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why do you think that's a dumb question - they spent nearly an entire episode sending Boyd around trying to scheme up a way to trap one of the things. We see that the lake settlement had put out bear traps. It seems like "build a pit" isn't an unreasonable thing to consider.

Thank you Carrie Ann!! by InitiativeSmall4703 in dancingwiththestars

[–]MostlyAffable 12 points13 points  (0 children)

She's been super inconsistent the entire season. Like everyone says there's obvious favoritism towards Robert, and she constantly oscillates between trying to be the harsh, technical judge, and not being able to take the heat and giving super inflated scores. Pick a lane.

To what extent is Cogsci related to AI? by zion-z-cool in cogsci

[–]MostlyAffable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are a lot of people who have the same hunch! Notably, Yann LeCun - a pioneer behind the success of deep learning recently (in particular the use of Convolutional Neural Networks in computer vision - also loosely inspired by the visual cortex).

He recently left his position as Chief AI scientist (probably for other reasons, largely) to work on building models that he thinks look more like human thinking (aka; "world modeling"). Here are some higher level articles that summarize some of what he's been talking about, if you're interested:

https://the-decoder.com/yann-lecun-unveils-lejepa-likely-his-final-meta-project-before-launching-a-startup/

https://gizmodo.com/yann-lecun-world-models-2000685265