iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Roly Perera

Andrew McNutt @mcnuttandrew.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Do you like VIS/HCI/programming interfaces? Do you care about critical visualization? Or perhaps building dynamic data interfaces? Perhaps some combo therein? If so! I'm hiring for Ph.D. student to work with me at UBC starting Fall 2027! You should apply! www.mcnutt.in#/hiring-26

mcnutt.in

Andrew McNutt

Andrew McNutt is an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah, where he leads the HAVOC Lab and works on HCI, visualization, and programming interfaces.

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Fluid News @f.luid.org · 30/07/2026

Fluid now supports PurePy v0.12, which means dataclasses and Python-style modules and imports with full compatibility with that subset of Python. pure-py.github.io

pure-py.github.io

PurePy

PurePy: a pure, functional subset of Python for scientific computing. Formal specification and reference checker.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 22/02/2026

Deterministic free will algorithm: 10 REPEAT 20 Evaluate plausible actions 30 Pick best one 40 Do it 50 UNTIL DEAD

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Institute of Computing for Climate Science @iccscambridge.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

👋 Could you be one of our 2026 ICCS interns? We’re looking for 5 interns to join us this summer. 3 will work on projects under the supervision of ICCS postdoctoral researchers; 2 will work on projects in collaboration between ICCS + @clr-cambridge.bsky.social Info: iccs.cam.ac.uk/opportunitie...

Four students walking along the towpath by the River Cam in summer. The trees are green and it's a beautiful day

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 16/01/2026

That’s more like it - just your bog-standard cantrip.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 15/01/2026

`git reset --soft HEAD~` is some crazy magic-user spell, I have to relearn it every time I cast it.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 19/12/2025

Everything is in the eye of the beholder. Even beholding is in the eye of the beholder.

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Institute of Computing for Climate Science @iccscambridge.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

☀️ The 2026 ICCS Summer School will bring together researchers for a week of collaborative, hands-on learning and expert-led sessions supporting their scientific work. 🗓️ When? Monday 13 July to Friday 17 July 2026 📍 Where? Centre for Mathematical Sciences, @cam.ac.uk iccs.cam.ac.uk/events/insti...

Participants at ICCS Summer School work and chat together during session

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 01/12/2025

Yeah, "general intelligence" is not a thing. But it's not not a thing either.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 13/11/2025

Disclaimer: this paper was entirely Bob's insight and methodology. For me it was primarily a learning experience (and a very enjoyable one)!

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 13/11/2025

New preprint with Robert Atkey. This paper recasts Galois slicing (a program slicing technique) as a kind of automatic differentiation, with lattices of slices corresponding to tangent spaces, and forward and backward slicing corresponding to forward- and reverse-mode AD. arxiv.org/abs/2511.09203

arxiv.org

Galois Slicing as Automatic Differentiation

Galois slicing is a technique for program slicing for provenance, developed by Perera and collaborators. Galois slicing aims to explain program executions by demonstrating how to track approximations ...

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 06/11/2025

Condensed version of NAP3/CCRA3 transparent brushing-and-linking demo from @propl.dev in Singapore. Built with @f.luid.org

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 06/11/2025

Actually I still live in Bristol but am employed in Cambridge. I'm usually around one week in three. Next up on 18 Nov, I'll ping you and maybe we can grab a coffee..

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 06/11/2025

And what's so borked about that starting point is that you have no resources at all for explaining consciousness *discourse* — why it exists or how it manages to refer to anything! You might as well pack your bags and go home because the one thing you can't be talking about is consciousness.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 06/11/2025

Hi Matt. It would be good to see you in Cambridge some time!

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 06/11/2025

Preserving Interactive Research Content: Challenges, Frameworks, and Best Practices #FORCE11 force11.github.io/pircwg/

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 24/10/2025

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv. There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 24/10/2025

I feel like these bimodal distributions crop up quite a lot in human beliefs/preferences (realism vs. instrumentalism in philosophy being another). Almost like competing alleles.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 24/10/2025

I like the idea of intelligence as being as much about defining problems as solving them. Intelligence as niche construction.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 19/10/2025

Solid advice Derek. I love criticism, even when painful. Even bad-faith criticism is almost always an opportunity to improve things.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 17/10/2025

Finally, some recognition!

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 14/10/2025

Reposting — looks like organisers uploaded a new video with better audio and different timings. Authoring Tools for Transparent Climate Reporting, presented at @propl.dev 2025: youtu.be/IIRJeleXeuU?... @iccscambridge.bsky.social

youtu.be

[ICFP/SPLASH'25] Peony NE - PROPL (Oct 13th)

YouTube video by ACM SIGPLAN

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Programming for the Planet @propl.dev · 13/10/2025

The 2nd PROPL is today, and will be livestreaming from www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIRJ... in an hour! Full program here conf.researchr.org/home/icfp-sp... and an overview of the program at dl.acm.org/action/showF...

youtube.com

[ICFP/SPLASH'25] Peony NE - PROPL (Oct 12th)

YouTube video by ACM SIGPLAN

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Dominic Orchard @dorchard.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

PROPL '25: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming for the Planet. Now online: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi... Looking forward to the workshop next week @icfp-conference.bsky.social/SPLASH

dl.acm.org

Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming for the Planet | ACM Conferences

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 10/10/2025

Language-Based Dependency-Tracking for Explorables, presented at LIVE 2025. Joint work with Joe Bond, Cristina David, @mcnuttandrew.bsky.social and Alfonso Piscitelli. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gds8...

youtube.com

LIVE 2025 - Language-Based Dependency-Tracking for Explorables

YouTube video by The LIVE Workshop

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 09/10/2025

But evolution has already demonstrated it. It built a conscious machine without relying on any resources (other than a lot of time) that an engineer wouldn't also have access to.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 09/10/2025

Consciousness isn't something special happening *to* us, it's something special that we can *do*, and so any account has to be functional in nature and any role for the "substrate" can only be in delivering functionality. Difficult to make progress without agreeing on the explandum first.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 09/10/2025

The problem is that these stories are all a bit mysterian about consciousness itself, i.e. as an explanatory target it is itself mysterious and so it remains an open question whether there is some (correspondingly mysterious) role for biological "substrates" to play.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 08/10/2025

Evolving a machine (meat or otherwise) is just a one way of engineering one, so conscious organisms provide an existence proof that consciousness can be engineered.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 08/10/2025

“Biological realisers” are also computational mechanisms, though, so not sure I understand your premise. And a conscious machine is “just” a machine that thinks it's conscious -- perhaps not something easy to engineer but certainly not a notion that depends on any particular substrate.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 06/10/2025

Realising that “as Immanuel Kant would say” is quite triggering for me

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 05/10/2025

Super-excited for *two* ALIFE workshops on goal-directed behaviour tomorrow: 2025.alife.org/program#WORK... and 2025.alife.org/program#WORK...

2025.alife.org

ALife 2025 Program

Experience the full ALife 2025 Program: Special Sessions, Workshops, Tutorials, Art & Demos, an Industry Expo and more.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 05/10/2025

The bits i managed to catch of LIVE 2025 were great - an impressive and subversive set of submissions! Looking forward to more LIVE (recorded earlier) antics next year 🌟🌟

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Reposted by Roly Perera

Josh Horowitz @joshuahhh.com · 03/10/2025

Less than 24 hours till the LIVE 2025 Q & A / Discussion session! Watch the presentations: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Join us to chat about them: links at liveprog.org Hope to see ya there!

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 17/09/2025

Companion (Workshop) Proceedings for ‹Programming› 2025 are now available! Co-edited with @jonathoda.bsky.social and @tomasp.net. Thanks to the awesome OASIcs publishing team for getting this over the line. drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/vol...

drops.dagstuhl.de

Companion Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming 2025)

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 13/09/2025

pseudonymous double-barrelled dipshit

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 03/09/2025

Excited for three Fluid presentations coming up: Fluid: Towards Transparent, Explorable Research Outputs rsecon25.society-rse.org Language-Based Dependency Tracking for Explorables liveprog.org Authoring Tools for Transparent Climate Reporting conf.researchr.org/home/icfp-sp...

liveprog.org

Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE)

The 11th Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE 2025) will take place online. LIVE invites submissions of ideas for improving the immediacy, usability, and learnability of programming.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 29/08/2025

A person is vastly more capable in this regard -- almost every kind of behavioural “prompt” will reveal rich, broadly consistent information about a subjective life.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 29/08/2025

There's no reason at all for thinking Gemini or similar systems have a self-model. We can prompt them to generate plausible-sounding claims about being conscious, but we can also prompt them to spout gibberish, or to deny that an AI could ever be conscious.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 29/08/2025

Then as far as you are concerned (you being the subject matter of the self-model), it is information about *your* first-personal vantage point — how things look to you. I think of it as the body schema enriched to a full agent-in-the-world schema.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 29/08/2025

Ok, nice. It's not enough just to have access to perspectival information about appearances. You also need a self-model that takes that information about a first-personal vantage point and interprets it as yours.

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 26/08/2025

(And if you have the patience to sit through a 20-min video, I have a talk on this very topic here: youtu.be/WtWfmBujxxU?...)

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Roly Perera @dynamicaspects.org · 26/08/2025

6/ In fact it's other way around: the images are the content of self-interpretative acts by which the agent comes to a rich appreciation of itself *as* an agent with a perceptual vantage point.

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