Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 29/09/2026My conspiracy theory for why the "AI" CEOs are suddenly all in agreement about slowing down is that they already expect model improvement to plateau and want to say it's voluntary rather than hitting hard technological/statistical limits 0121
Reposted by Joshua LoftusBen Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026The illusion and politics of objectivity in cost-benefit analysis, a decision-making institution so ingrained that Americans can’t imagine life without it.argmin.netPricing CommensurabilityOn the origins of cost-benefit analyses in governmental decision making 2269
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 29/09/2026The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters… extremely cute monsters that culturally evolved to hijack our baby-preserving psychology 0289
Reposted by Joshua Loftusthe fool @agnoster.net · 29/09/2026the future could be magnificent, and you deserve a share of it 316727
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 29/09/2026MTG might be one of the most “median voter” representatives to ever be elected 110
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 27/09/2026This is a good explanation for why my toddler is able to say "dowwwwnnn" with so much feeling 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Rather disappointing to see such sloppiness from a scholar whose actual peer reviewed work and even(!) popular books were pretty respectable 120
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 24/09/2026We put a random number generator in our computer program, so, actually your honor, nobody can blame us for what it does 001
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 23/09/2026This is how we can pretend every problem in the world is exactly like enterprise software development 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 19/09/2026If you tell them I sent you you will automatically be hired, guaranteed 010
Reposted by Joshua LoftusMattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 31/05/2026Psychologists doing clustering be like: #statsmeme 940663
Reposted by Joshua LoftusJulia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 15/09/2026The question that’s dominating the field is not a causality question. It’s really, how can one sell a causal relationship while crafting the language so that there’s plausible deniability when somebody criticizes anything. 56512
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Statisticians, data scientists, or similar nerds- come join my department! It's a great place to work, and it's in London! www.lse.ac.uk/statistics/a...lse.ac.ukRecruitment - Join us in the Department of Statistics! 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 15/09/2026The President of the United States is a… President… of the United States 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Bsky libs competing over “The President of the United States is a [various criminal and other epithets]” But morally, just being POTUS is worse (more harmful) than any of the other things they say. The next person will also be a POTUS and also oversee an empire of extraction and planet destruction 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 11/09/2026It’s common around 9/11 for people to say the attack succeeded, that the US empire has been undermining itself and declining ever since I think this is wrong. The global empire of capital (which the US government mostly serves and protects) is stronger and less accountable than ever 001
Reposted by Joshua LoftusTed McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Wikipedia is not at all like generative AI slop, and it is *most specifically* unlike slop in the very features that make it useful and reliable — that it is authored by people who take responsibility for what they do and who both credit and point readers towards the sources they have in fact used. 116123
Reposted by Joshua LoftusBoston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 09/09/2026“Mathematics only makes sense as a gift economy. It has no trade secrets. Substituting a monetizable ersatz culture for the one evolved through historical experience is a particularly insidious form of knowledge collapse.” Mathematician Michael Harris on the AI companies coming for math:bostonreview.netKnowledge CollapseAI companies are racing to mechanize mathematics. Where does that leave human understanding? 1355121
Reposted by Joshua Loftuswill pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 08/09/2026it’s plagiarism all the way down 0151
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 04/09/2026For years, (some) people have been telling me that counterfactual fairness is debunked or flawed or wrong or something because "race cannot be a cause," and I've mainly shrugged ("all models are wrong," etc), but now I can also cite a Leverhulme award winning philosopher who agrees with me 0151
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 04/09/2026I saw the first graph and was like yeah yeah ok, it's probably just a sample composition changing over time. Then I saw the second graph 😬 www.glassdoor.com/blog/how-wor... 120
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Imagine you sent an email to someone years, maybe even decades ago, and now they're giving OpenAI access to its contents 131
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 04/09/2026No surprise, he's clearly just another utilitarian who doesn't think rules apply to them 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 03/09/2026The new Claude Fable model found an error in my 2024 NeurIPS paper (jk) by constructing a counterexample DAG with a "direct edge from A to a grandchild" -- which my wife immediately named the Woody Allen DAG 020
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 31/08/2026Over on X (The Everything App) a podcaster wrote this up as a scifi story about several "civilizations" of "AI agents" rising and falling over a few days, and the people cooking their brains on that site are resharing it with the awe that my toddler has when he sees a new kind of toy 050
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 29/08/2026On the one hand the USA has accelerated climate change more than anywhere else; bombed, invaded, sanctioned, and tariffed most of the world; and is leading the way in replacing democracy and science with kleptocracy and antivax fundamentalism But on the other hand, France created the Minions... 110
Reposted by Joshua LoftusPaul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 27/08/2026📢 The Causal Data Science Meeting 2026 is back! Join us virtually on Nov 4–5 for two days of discussion on #causality in ML & AI, with Teppo Felin as our first keynote speaker. No fees, no proceedings—just research, feedback & exchange. 📅 Submit by Sept 30 ✉️ submission@causalscience.org 0104
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 27/08/2026I was cycling in the Netherlands recently. Practically nobody wears helmets 100
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 25/08/2026Choose almost any (knowledge) learning goal in advance *that isn't about LLMs* Design a test of that learning Now tell me how the friction of *using an LLM to pass the test for you* is going to help you learn something about the original goal 260
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 25/08/2026Nothing has influenced any of my estimates since I was ~25 and had already converged on oracle level accuracy 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 24/08/2026The entire US is ~5% of the world population and ~20% of world GDP. I still don’t understand why the rest of the world isn’t just doing a little coordination and stomping trump like the soggy worm he is 000
Reposted by Joshua Loftusjon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 23/08/2026I think the class of school administrators (not just in higher ed) who act fast to insulate core pedagogical functions from AI will reap major rewards for their trouble. In a few years, there will be an extremely stark difference between people who used AI in school and people who are competent 2395113
Reposted by Joshua LoftusMaria Farrell @mariafarrell.eurosky.social · 21/08/2026My standout favourite edited book chapter is: @juliapowles.bsky.social: The Corporate Culpability of Big Tech, in The Culpable Corporate Mind, edited by Elise Bant, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2023. Points the way to criminal culpability for Big Tech executives who know exactly what they're doing.papers.ssrn.comThe Corporate Culpability of Big TechThis contribution cracks open and lays bare the paradox of Big Tech's small liabilities for systemic misconduct, and provides a richly expansive pathway for bri 0122
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 19/08/2026Sorry, but this is the market predicting that this cure will cost more than chemo 010
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Why are manufacturers legally allowed to sell cars that can go 120mph+? Regulate the industries and companies profiting from mass death (tobacco, guns, cars) before you tell me we need stricter policing and individual fines and should create a (private and for-profit!) panopticon 100
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Statistician here. Harper is mostly correct, but with two deadly errors First, it’s not limited to social sciences. All academia is a drop in the bucket compared to “fake” analysis/research in the business world And second, it mostly doesn’t matter. Most research (and thought) is never acted upon 110
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 16/08/2026There is a massive UK-US cultural difference in medicine In the US, people self-select out of seeing a doctor because they know it will cost them money (I did recently while visiting) In the UK, people pay via waiting times and, basically, being told to "walk it off" as a default treatment 130
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 15/08/2026Not sure if it counts as an intuition, but I do "feel" that the following things are not mutually contradictory but actually hold or are real: - Actualism (or modal antirealism?) - Determinism - Free will 020
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 14/08/2026In the UK, private individuals with random anonymous social media accounts can be visited by the police for "abuse and harassment," while the media can do this legally and be rewarded for it 010
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 13/08/2026Some especially wealthy, well connected, and incurious people 000
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 13/08/2026Yes. And yet, (like democracy), it is still one of the best things humanity has going 1203
Reposted by Joshua LoftusJulia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 13/08/2026Today I learned… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett... 1212333
Joshua Loftus @joft.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Wearing eclipse sunglasses is woke. ISO 12312-2 is basically socialism, to me 010