iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

First submit of the term, let me know if you want to talk data models (or read a draft!).

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“Who wants to see the new Love Island?” Quiet babe my favorite show is on:

Discovering Hidden Relationships of Alloy
Properties with Manifold Learning
Mohammad Abu-Mualla', Ellis Crabtree?, Fredrick Michael, Yayue Pan', Jida Huang'*
'University of Illinois Chicago, 842 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, 60607,
Illinois, United States.
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Martin Rd SW, Huntsville,
35808, Alabama, United States.
Q=
e.
*Corresponding author(s). E-mail(s): jida@uic.edu;
Contributing authors: mabumu3@uic.edu; ecrabtr2@jh.edu
fredrick.n.michael@nasa.gov; yayuepan@uic.edu*;

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

……In perfectly unrelated news, have an advert…….

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

You can now read this invaluable book on methods in philosophy of science open-access. Find me in Chapter 16!

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I, too, have been experiencing a sense of alienation from my discipline. Not because I don’t believe that philosophy strives for truth and objectivity, but because believing that the sort of pseudo-reasoning LLMs engage in can achieve these epistemic goods requires having a bad epistemology.

Thread from Megan Fritts reading “For me, the biggest source of grief arising from the AI crisis hasn’t even been in the realm of teaching. It has been the realization that a non-trivial number of my disciplinary peers see philosophy in a way that is wholly different from—even antithetical to—the way I see it.”

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

How disappointing. bsky.app/profile/baye...

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Substack: do you want to use an AI tool for writing to check your writings about not writing with AI for AI-written writing?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

These are the top google image search results for android epistemology

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Does anyone happen to have a text-searchable PDF of Android Epistemology (1995) lying around?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I have learned in one and the same breath that Cambridge’s Jason Arday is dead and that “Blacks would disappear in a meritocracy” Nathan Cofnas was at the head of the witch hunt against him.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Look at the kooked out OCR github has implemented. Look how they’ve yassified my {LaTeX}.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

According to consumer reports, users love the way Dr. Andrews can conduct high-impact research, innovate in the classroom, and look mostly not pissed off during Q&As.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Excited to be holding a symposium on AI/ML in science evaluation at PSA 2026. Who here is going to San Diego? @philsci.bsky.social

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Among the better words I have read in recent times.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

You ever really enjoy an apéritif and then read the fine-print…?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Growing up, I always thought of black squirrels as “Harvard Squirrels” owing to my experience of their natural distribution. Little did I know, the melanistic eastern gray squirrel is endemic to ivy league colleges generically. Only the Harvard Squirrels at UPenn, however, come when called.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

The cats do not understand why they are not permitted to lick the mouse.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

The mouse now has an incurable exercise addiction.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

In the early stages of drafting a manuscript, it can be helpful to draw a little mascot (mousecot?) to cheer you on.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I do wonder for how much longer I will have to explain this at least once per day.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

The irony of using an LLM-powered bot with a female-coded screen name to respond to an observation about gender bias in LLMs is not lost on me.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Interestingly, the models themselves offer pseudo-mathematical explanations for this effect, claiming that women authors are simply “less salient.”

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Whether predictive systems can be ethically—or even functionally—used in socially sensitive contexts depends on their epistemic credentials. I am delighted to see my work inform policy recommendations in a new report from Amnesty International. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Cover of Amnesty International Report – AUTOMATING SUSPICION
RISK PROFILING AS A SMOKESCREEN FOR STRUCTURAL
DISCRIMINATION AND INEQUALITY

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Gmail very insistent these days that all my emails should be translated to Polish. Any way to turn this feature off (or change language)?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

what do you think it would take for me to break into the AI Generated Artificial Fake Bean Plastic Vegetable Party market

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

guys I have made an important discovery

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

So no one catches my vibe when I say DimeNet filters (Directional Message Passing Neural Network filters for distance-wise and angular atomic positioning in molecular structure learning) look like finch chick gapes?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I think often about the United States as an entity willing to commit war crimes against its own citizens on its own soil. Today marks 41 years since the MOVE bombing. It took place here, in West Philadelphia. And America remains a nation constitutionally at war with itself.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

The fantasy of automating science is premised on the idea that science can be eliminated—indeed, that it strives for its own elimination—in favor of engineering. That the work of science is an avoidable inconvenience. Thus the ‘mistake’ in what science is taken to be is judged as robbing humans of

A final angle on why its fraud might be that it misportrays what science is more broadly. If you think the reasons to do science are fundamentally human-that as scientists we are concerned with producing understanding for ourselves just as much as we're concerned about improving things in the world-then you could argue that for science to be meaningful we have to be the ones coming up with the ideas and shaping them as we go. From this perspective, automated science isn't inherently wrong, it's just missing the point. Al for science arguments often completely overlook the "people production" role of science. In the extreme, they envision Al finding solutions for lots of real world problems and intervening to control outcomes in the world without us understanding how any of it works. In reality, the personal side-including the search for personal fulfillment through science-is a big part of why smart people who could potentially make a lot more money in applied roles end up choosing research careers. And it's a big part of how we evaluate scientists. How many of your Ph.D. students have gone on to competitive research positions? What does the trajectory of topics you've worked on say about your research taste?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

In recognition of my love for the no free lunch theorems PennDOT bestowed on me these complimentary glam plates

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

This is an important read if you want to understand Palantir’s modus operandi and how silicon valley has accomplished near total corporate capture of government.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

The answer to the first question is: it remains a game of economic domination and regulatory capture.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Why is pro-AI still posturing as anti-AI, and why is the general public still willing to believe the charade?

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Decades of activism fought to make American cities handicap-accessible by installing curb cuts and tactile pavement. Delivery robots default to stopping in those curb cuts, effectively eliminating access to public walkways for those using mobility aids.

delivery robot parked in curb cut adjacent to zebra stripes

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

…and on American dime, no less…

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

yet I settled for a lemonless existence

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

First time in Berkeley since nearly coming here for my PhD. A return to the land of giant lemons.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

In my imagination people bet on the outcomes of bingo games but I may be wrong about this.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Sigh. I love to be cited, but love even more when people read what they are citing. I’ve argued that P1. ML is inductive inference, P2. All inductive inference requires theoretical input, C. ML requires theoretical input for inference. This is all well-rehearsed. Far more interesting than this is a

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

This new writing style was not merely a spectacular innovation; it was a prescient challenge to the status quo of literary orthodoxy.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

partner sees picture of colugo for the first time: that is a demonic flying book

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Something about LLM hype culture renders a man immune to the experience of embarrassment. If I couldn’t tell the difference between PhD-level scholarship and grammatical gibberish I simply would not announce that to a global audience.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Princeton University has just unveiled its new mascot. I am now fully and unreservedly in support of school spirit.

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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

they already went far enough painting the squirrels

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