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George Musser@gmusser.bsky.social |
824 followers 1103 following 57 posts
Scientific American contributing editor; Quanta contributing writer; author of Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, Spooky Action at a Distance, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory; @gmusser@mastodon.social, @georgemusserjr@threads.net
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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As if we didn't have enough environmental problems, now earthworm populations are crashing: in the U.K., down a third in the past 25 years. No one is sure why. Fun fact: 1 cubic meter of healthy soil has 1 km of worm tunnels. 🧪 www.economist.com/britain/2024...
2 replies 18 reposts 45 likes
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The Transmitter
@thetransmitter.bsky.social
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George Musser aims to crack the deep question of what “understanding” is, however unbrain-like its models may be.
By @gmusser.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-netwo...
0 replies 3 reposts 2 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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A radically new type of rocket has no moving parts and consumes less fuel. Called a rotating detonation engine, it doesn't burn fuel but explodes it. Great story by Steve Ashley for @sciam.bsky.social. 🧪
3 replies 5 reposts 29 likes
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SETI Institute
@setiinstitute.bsky.social
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physicsworld.com/a/are-dusty-quasars-masquerading-as-dyson-sphere-candidates/
Seven candidate Dyson spheres found from their excess infrared radiation could be a case of mistaken identity, with evidence for dusty background galaxies spotted close to three of them. 🧪🔭🛰️
3 replies 8 reposts 29 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Deep neural networks have become state-of-the-art in brain modeling. My story for @thetransmitter.bsky.social, edited by @kaozelli.bsky.social, features the work of @evfedorenko.bsky.social @lampinen.bsky.social @neurograce.bsky.social and many others. www.thetransmitter.org/neural-netwo... 🧪
0 replies 3 reposts 9 likes
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The Transmitter
@thetransmitter.bsky.social
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Science writer George Musser explores questions around the emerging field of “neural systems understanding” and whether it can help explain the brain.
By @gmusser.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/neural-netwo...
0 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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We’re at the second anniversary of ex–Google engineer Blake Lemoine’s widely ridiculed claims that large language models are sentient. I’ve spent hours talking to him and, yeah, he does say some cringey things. But he also gave me much to think about. www.criticalopalescence.com/p/is-blake-l... 🧪
1 replies 2 reposts 5 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Scientists find 17th-century shipwrecks that are filled with rat skeletons. I guess the onboard menu was rat cake, rat sorbet, and rat pudding. You just gotta love @parshallison.bsky.social’s story of how brown rats edged out black rats (which taxonomists have creatively named Rattus rattus). 🧪
1 replies 1 reposts 5 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Has anyone else had trouble with the NYC Subway fare payment system, OMNY? I got an email saying my card was declined, but the bank says there is no problem, and OMNY gives the same error with a second card. I'm locked out of the subway until they fix this!
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Download a fully functional version of GPT-2 as an Excel spreadsheet and see how it does its thing. The author posts tutorial videos at www.youtube.com/@Spreadsheet.... You can see how word embeddings encode meaning as well as the word associations made by the network’s self-attention mechanism. 🧪
2 replies 3 reposts 12 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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"Of more than 200 people undergoing surgery... nearly 60% had microplastics or even smaller nanoplastics in a main artery. Those who did were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, a stroke or death in the [next] approximately 34 months." Scary article by @maxkozlov.bsky.social. 🧪
3 replies 29 reposts 51 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Soooooo excited that Michael Wooldridge reviewed my book for @thetls.bsky.social!
0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes
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AI Nuggets
@ainuggets.bsky.social
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OpenAI , the makers of chatgpt just unveiled their amazing text to video gen AI tool. After watching their videos at openai.com/sora it left us into super awe. Really unbelievable tool.
#ai #aiart #artificialintelligence
0 replies 2 reposts 6 likes
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J. P. Gownder (கவுண்டர்) ☮️🕊️🏳️🌈
@jgownder.bsky.social
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426.5ppm carbon. I was born at 326ppm.
www.axios.com/local/san-di...
5 replies 31 reposts 101 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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So @kevinroose.bsky.social kind of misses Sydney. I’ve heard others complain about overguardrailing, too. A.I. researcher William Hahn at Florida Atlantic Univ uses jailbreaks to elicit more creative responses: “It will answer scientific questions, I would say, better.… I WANT it to speculate.” 🧪
0 replies 0 reposts 4 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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You are 3.8 billion years old, says @saraimari.bsky.social at #MindFest2024. You can trace parts of your body all the way back to the origins of life. 🧪
0 replies 0 reposts 8 likes
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Dan Falk
@danfalk.bsky.social
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Remember those attempts to link consciousness and quantum mechanics? (Penrose-Hameroff and all that?) Well, those ideas haven't gone away -- and new experiments suggest they maaaay be inching toward a comeback, as @gmusser.bsky.social reports for New Scientist: www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...
0 replies 2 reposts 6 likes
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Corey S. Powell
@coreyspowell.bsky.social
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Through most of history, there was an unbreakable rule about studying the heavens: You can look, but you can’t touch.
Missions like OSIRIS-REx have broken that rule, changing the way we think about the universe. My latest Invisible Universe column: invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/bringing-i... 🧪
1 replies 4 reposts 8 likes
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Guy Watkins
@astrogsw.bsky.social
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Is there such a thing as a biosignature? 🧪🪐🔭
astrobiology.com/2024/01/is-t...
0 replies 2 reposts 9 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Great story. I hope you can follow up on how, or whether, NYPD responds, and how common this practice is elsewhere.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Erik Hoel’s latest blog post describes a replicability crisis in neuroscience, going beyond the well-known replication issues in psychology. Sample sizes are small, brain “areas” may be an artifact, and researchers are floundering for lack of a generally accepted theory of consciousness. 🧪
0 replies 6 reposts 18 likes
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Ramin Skibba
@raminskibba.bsky.social
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Huh, so I guess this is actually happening. The idea is that the massive Thirty Meter Telescope, long opposed by Native Hawaiian groups, will actually be built atop Maunakea, in exchange for telescopes like the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory being relocated. www.caltech.edu/about/news/t...
0 replies 2 reposts 2 likes
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Dan Falk
@danfalk.bsky.social
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1/2 I can't remember all the good books I read in 2023, but lemme mention one really cool one: my friend George Musser wrote "Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe."
1 replies 4 reposts 10 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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People tend to exhibit an ‘overblown implications effect’—overestimating how much observers will take success or failure at a task will be seen as indicative of a wider skill or even a distinct, parallel skill, research suggests:
buff.ly/3RwZP0h
0 replies 1 reposts 0 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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Can self-reported behavioural survey data be trusted? Research into routine behaviours finds anchoring can distort the outcome, → surveys are not a reliable means of gathering such information. Routine behaviour should be observed in its natural context: buff.ly/3O7fzTu
0 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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When people fret that AIs will achieve superhuman general intelligence and take over, they neglect physical limits on technology. This essay by Dan Roberts is a reality check. LLMs may top out at GPT-7. Roberts is one of the physicists I feature in my new book about physics, AI, and neuroscience. 🧪
2 replies 5 reposts 20 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Wait, do iPhone users really care whether a message bubble is blue or green, or is this just something that @brianx.bsky.social and the NYT have made up? Because, if it’s true, there really is no hope for humanity and we should long for an A.I. takeover.
0 replies 0 reposts 5 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Great story by @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social on a cosmic ray with an energy of over 10^20 eV. 🧪
0 replies 2 reposts 11 likes
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Alan Boyle
@b0yle.bsky.social
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The OpenAI drama highlights a debate of sci-fi proportions: How risky is it to accelerate the push toward powerful AI tools like ChatGPT and its successors? In a new book, @gmusser.bsky.social surveys what scientists say about the issue. Find out what he found out in the Fiction Science podcast.
0 replies 1 reposts 5 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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One of the many many puzzles of this whole OpenAI episode is that people there still use Twitter/X to make announcements, even though Sam Altman, of all people, should want to have nothing to do with Elon Musk. What explains this enduring attachment to Twitter?
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Holy moly, this paper arguing that cognition is performed not just by neurons but also by immune cells is cool! 🧪
1 replies 2 reposts 12 likes
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Anna Ciaunica
@annaciaunica.bsky.social
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Is cognition all in the head (neurons)?
Here we suggest that cognition is a complex multiscale information processing distributed across every single cell in the body 😎
We focus on the immune / neuro tandem @drmichaellevin E. Shmeleva
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....
8 replies 36 reposts 112 likes
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Eric Schwitzgebel
@eschwitz.bsky.social
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Utilitarianism as a decision procedure will tend to amplify risk if multiple people have the power to inflict risk on others, since we will then all be hostage to the person who is most optimistic about the outcome of the risky decision.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2023/10/util...
1 replies 1 reposts 4 likes
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Eric Schwitzgebel
@eschwitz.bsky.social
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Could we ever build a "moralometer" -- an instrument that would accurately measure people's overall morality? If so, what would it take? New paper in draft with Jessie Sun: "The Prospects and Challenges of Measuring Morality".
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-...
Comments warmly welcomed!
2 replies 1 reposts 11 likes
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Davide Castelvecchi
@castelvecchi.bsky.social
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Construction at what will be the world's largest neutrino detector continues apace. Hyper-Kamiokande is scheduled to begin observations in 2027
www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/deta...
1 replies 2 reposts 4 likes
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Apoorva Mandavilli
@apoorvanyt.bsky.social
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Few Americans have opted to be immunized against the coronavirus so far this fall: Just over 7 percent of adults and 2 percent of children had received a Covid-19 vaccine as of Oct. 14
www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/h...
46 replies 50 reposts 106 likes
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Carolina A. Miranda
@cmonstah.bsky.social
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Oliver Wainwright dismembering Thomas Heatherwick is a perfect Saturday read:
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
0 replies 4 reposts 8 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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you're right, I should!
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Here are a few thoughts on the hard problem of consciousness. Scientific explanation works by relating one thing to another, so it seems unable to describe the intrinsic (=nonrelational) qualities of experience. But with reflection, could we find that those qualities are actually relational? 🧪
1 replies 3 reposts 12 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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“Average human body temperature is not really 98.6 degrees F. Instead, most people’s baseline is a little bit cooler.… Some researchers say it could just be a measurement issue.… Other experts think humans really have gotten cooler over the past 150 years.” Great story by @smithdanag.bsky.social 🧪
2 replies 5 reposts 15 likes
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Alexandra Witze
@alexwitze.bsky.social
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Why yes we did capture the annular eclipse. Photographed from Rio Rancho, New Mexico, by my husband Jeff Kanipe with a 600mm lens and solar filter.
25 replies 134 reposts 745 likes
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Mark Rubin
@markrubin.bsky.social
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🚨 Science Resources for BlueSky 🚨 Scientist? Just joined BlueSky? Here’s four resources you might find useful. #AcademicSky 🧪 🧵 (1) A list of over 130 subject-specific feeds. Find posts by others in your area and use the right tags in your posts to get them seen.
7 replies 181 reposts 293 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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I have some logistical questions. Can we switch to email? Look for my email to the company listed in your profile.
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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I'm planning to go in April and would love advice!
1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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Do you know anyone who has come up the Nepal side?
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Anil Seth
@anilseth.bsky.social
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Well hello Bluesky. For my first (proper) post, here's my take on the IIT brouhaha and some of the wider issues involved, out now in Nautilus. It's called The Worth of Wild Ideas (and The Right To Be Wrong). nautil.us/the-worth-of...
3 replies 25 reposts 71 likes
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George Musser
@gmusser.bsky.social
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What might black holes be telling physicists about even the most ordinary things, such as their tendency to approach thermal equilibrium or to undergo changes of state? My first Substack post! 🧪
0 replies 0 reposts 7 likes
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Dan Falk
@danfalk.bsky.social
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Scholars recently gathered to debate the problem of consciousness -- and the idea of panpsychism in particular -- at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
My latest for @sciam.bsky.social:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-c...
0 replies 5 reposts 12 likes
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Compound Interest | Chemistry infographics
@compoundchem.com
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Today is the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, so here's a look at the chemical cause of the yellows, oranges and reds in the fall foliage we'll be seeing shortly! wp.me/p4aPLT-sn 🧪
1 replies 68 reposts 128 likes
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Laura Helmuth
@laurahelmuth.bsky.social
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Fox aired a moon hoax program in 2001 that may look quaint in retrospect, but it helps explain where our current mess of misinformation came from. A great look-back from @philplait.bsky.social with @danvergano.bsky.social and a VHS tape of doom 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon...
1 replies 27 reposts 62 likes