George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Terms and conditions apply. Computation may be exponentially expensive. (eg Ising/SBM) 120
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Physicists have long known percolation on cubic lattice = 2nd order transition (already in review articles by the 70s). Some mathematicians didn't buy it. It does seem odd that now chatgpt might be what finally convinces them we were right all along. github.com/openai/math/...github.commath/preprints/Critical-bond-and-site-percolation-on-the-cubic-lattice-September-24-2026/paper.pdf at main · openai/mathContribute to openai/math development by creating an account on GitHub. 001
Reposted by George CantwellAlec Kirkley @captainkirk1041.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Excited for NetSci-X 2027 in Hong Kong! Send your abstracts by Oct 1st (possible deadline extension coming soon), and see netscix2027.github.io for more details.netscix2027.github.ioNetSciX 2027 — International School and Conference on Network ScienceNetSciX 2027 — International School and Conference on Network Science. January 24–27, 2027, Hong Kong SAR. 028
Reposted by George CantwellJoshua Grochow @joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 27/09/2026What if paperclips were just a metaphor for data centers all along. They have become the paperclip maximizers they claim to be so worried about. 1102
Reposted by George CantwellCarl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23/09/2026Thinking back to the good old days when publishing a paper every three days required some human to be insecure enough to write up two ideas that didn't deserve to see the light of day every single week. 212621
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 24/09/2026I have also experienced something similar, down to arbitrary notation choices (i.e., the specific greek letter assigned as shorthand to to an intermediate quantity). Am I paranoid? Are we that predictable? 000
Reposted by George CantwellMattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 24/09/2026This quote by haunts me. From Wilcox's "Introduction to Robust Estimation and Hypothesis Testing" #stats 310423
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Tested an AI detector, it labelled my writing "idiosyncratic and blunt". Not long ago I might have been insulted... now I'm so proud to not be "modal and circuitous". 000
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 23/09/2026unfortunately I believe a lot of "old" researchers are doing just this 110
Reposted by George Cantwelltj mahr 🤘 @tjmahr.com · 21/09/2026I get depressed when I review something and it seems AI-assisted (as in well written but shallow and making weird jumps in spots). Why am I wasting my time putting in thought that wasn’t given in the first place 1153
Reposted by George CantwellEddie Lee @spintheory.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Why is political science so adamant that the "issue space" is fixed??? It doesn't have to be, and it's not. This is a central assumption of the spatial voting theory frameworks, and people still cling onto it today. See Martin & Quinn and Poole & Rosenthal. 🧪🦋 121
Reposted by George CantwellJohan Ugander @jugander.bsky.social · 20/09/2026My Yale colleague Dan Spielman has started a substack, which I thought I'd signal boost since Dan is an outstanding thinker and communicator (and person!) but isn't on social media much. Here's his first substantive post from a month ago: mathadjacent.com/p/llms-testi...mathadjacent.comLLMs, Testing, Grade inflation, and AccommodationsLike every professor, I’ve been worrying about how AI systems will force us to change our teaching practices. 1228
Reposted by George CantwellPer Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026A paper is finished when the embarrassment of submitting it becomes smaller than the embarrassment of still working on it 630254
Reposted by George CantwellSean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Young academics interested in democracy: check out the postdoc program at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins! @snfagora.bsky.social snfagora.jhu.edu/fellowships-...snfagora.jhu.eduPostdoctoral Fellows ProgramPostdoctoral Fellows Program SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University 0243
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 17/09/2026This is great!! Though calling 25 hours heroic is a tell for how different experimental standards are in CS vs the rest of science 🤣 000
Reposted by George CantwellTransactions on Machine Learning Research @tmlrorg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026TMLR has faced a deluge of submissions, necessitating stricter desk rejection policies due to limited reviewer capacity Co-EiC Nihar Shah reached out to authors of 10 papers slated for desk reject. Could they answer questions about their *own* submission? medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...medium.comAsking Authors About Their Own PapersBy Nihar B. Shah 116965
Reposted by George CantwellDan Larremore @danlarremore.bsky.social · 12/09/2026What do we think the groupchat for all the Fields Medal winners was called? @jugander.bsky.social 152
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 10/09/2026My impression of UK left was: sex work shouldn’t be criminal, along with skepticism of a “free” market (this is a totally anecdotal impression) 120
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 10/09/2026And the effect on other women, if bodies become commodities 120
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Also shows there is new physics to discover: a learned equation was more accurate than one derived by standard argument, so a better approximation *exists*. Now we just need to find it from first principles! 040
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 09/09/2026From my observation, math is as bad as philosophy for this (and both are worse than physics, which says something) 010
Reposted by George CantwellSanta Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 31/08/2026SFI is hiring a postdoctoral fellow to work with SFI Professor David Wolpert on the thermodynamic cost of distributed computation, from digital circuits to human brains. We are seeking a scholar with expertise in physics, computer science, or a related field. santafe.edu/about/jobs/p... 11714
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 30/08/2026Agreed, so clearly it’s a power law with exponent 0! 010
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Everything we thought we knew was wrong. The world is upside down and none of us saw it coming... A man in New York named his dog Aethelbark 120
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Tail wagging the dog either way – if 99% of names matched a log-normal that seems more interesting than the existence of “rare” dog names 220
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 26/08/2026I must have implemented simulated annealing 100 times. Here’s a vibe coded version w. MaxCut interface (the vibe was “mildly annoyed by comparisons to straw-man baselines”). github.com/gcant/anneal...github.comGitHub - gcant/annealMaxCut: Simulated annealing for MaxCut (and other Ising problems)Simulated annealing for MaxCut (and other Ising problems) - gcant/annealMaxCut 030
Reposted by George CantwellLaurent Hébert-Dufresne @lhd.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Interested in complex systems research in beautiful Vermont? Teams @vcsi.bsky.social hope to fill postdoctoral positions on very short notice. One position is at the intersection of cognitive and epidemiological modeling. DM for details or keep an eye out for postings on here. 11717
Reposted by George CantwellJoshua Grochow @joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 08/08/2026"Puzzles reveal the limits of AI. The missing Aha! moments" by Cris Moore. Gift link 🎁. A more humanistic view on the value of solving problems ourselves. iai.tv/articles/puz... #MathSky 🧪iai.tvPuzzles reveal the limits of AI<p><em>Puzzles compress the experience of insight into miniature, letting us watch understanding take shape in real time. Computer scientist <strong>Cristopher Moore</strong> argues that while AI can ... 33111
Reposted by George CantwellIain Murray @imurray.bsky.social · 08/08/2026Sharing this postdoc opportunity at Imperial to develop and apply machine-learning and structural-bioinformatics methods for protein design, with focus on modern generative approaches such as protein diffusion models and flow-based models.imperial.ac.ukDescriptionPlease note that job descriptions are not exhaustive, and you may be asked to take on additional duties that align with the key responsibilities ment... 044
Reposted by George CantwellSteven Strogatz @stevenstrogatz.com · 23/06/2026My new book! Written w my pal Alex Townsend, it's about the math behind enormous systems (medical scans, AI, etc.) and what happens when they outgrow our ability to understand them. Pre-order at @barnesandnoble.com for 25% off -> www.barnesandnoble.com/w/big-math-s... @littlebrown.bsky.social 510221
Reposted by George CantwellJeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 16/06/2026At the end of the term I asked my college creative wriing students to submit anonymous thoughts on AI. No real surprises: Mood ranges from resignation to despair, capitulation from embittered erosion of standards to total, feelings of betrayal from deep to furious. 1/ 7455231988
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Now with a nice "Editors' Suggestion" badge! We have some further rigorous results (i.e., not approximations) to follow shortly. 1151
Reposted by George CantwellBen Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026A report for university chancellors and presidents concerned about the state of academic scholarship: Statistical thinking is postmodern.argmin.netThe Objective Pursuit of KnowledgeWhy statistical thinking is postmodern. 1194
Reposted by George CantwellAlexandre Bovet @abovet.bsky.social · 20/05/2026Interested in network science, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior? I am seeking a PhD student to join the Quantitative Network Science group at the Department of Mathematical Modeling and Machine Learning of the University of Zurich. Info and application here: jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie...jobs.uzh.chUZH: PhD in Network Science: Modeling of Animal NetworksWe are seeking a highly motivated PhD student to join our Quantitative Network Science research group at the Department of Mathematical Modeling and Machine Learning at the University of Zurich. Wild ... 155
Reposted by George CantwellYourqueerprof @drcompton.bsky.social · 05/05/2026I didnt know there were such dreams to live as a child! 19610
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Tip your whole plate of dinner in the blender tonight if you don’t believe me! 100
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Two people with the same things, in the exact quantities, can make more/less appetising food. Probably the distinction of UPF is literal nonsense (like “no chemicals”), though it still seems to refer to something meaningful 000
Reposted by George CantwellArtemy Kolchinsky @artemyte.bsky.social · 30/04/2026We wrote a perspective piece on future directions & challenges for stochastic thermodynamics. Great collaboration with Jan Korbel, Sarah Loos, Gonzalo Manzano, Rosalba Garcia-Millan, Olga Movilla Miangolarra, Edgar Roldan arxiv.org/abs/2604.26601arxiv.orgQuo vadis, stochastic thermodynamics?Stochastic thermodynamics is a framework for describing non-equilibrium processes at the level of fluctuating trajectories, where the state of a system evolves as a stochastic time series,... 1102
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Texture, volatiles, size and distribution of flavors, even color! Whether by intelligent design or survival of the fittest, some UPFs seem pretty optimised to me on those fronts 120
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 30/04/2026making small typos now shows you put some effort in! 010
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 30/04/2026I think they can be worse for the same nutrition, if they are engineered to make you over-consume 110
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 29/04/2026From abroad I only see one side, so… What are you doing to stand up and set things right? 000
George Cantwell @gcant.bsky.social · 09/04/2026Claude does not seem able to reliably answer: "how many cathedrals does the Church of England have?" What a weird blind spot. 010
Reposted by George CantwellThilo Gross @thilogross.bsky.social · 03/04/2026Next week, my course on Networks and Complexity is starting again, which is always taught online. We have some space left for international students. Lectures will be on mondays and thursdays 16:00-18:00 CEST. Starting 9th. 24 Lectures total. More info in the reply. 1104
Reposted by George CantwellJo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 04/04/2026Journal publishing is bad now, but …this year is the 40th anniversary of my first published paper and the 43rd anniversary of it being accepted for publication. 6887