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maybe: leif weatherby

@leifw.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1K following 427 posts

Hegel, cybernetics, Buffalo Bills

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Reposted by maybe: leif weatherby
tweety fish @sifu.tweety.fish · 25/09/2026
here is a succinct thing I can say: "alignment"-style AI safety risks DO NOT EXIST or need remediation with LLMs as such (there are lots of other problems) and OpenAI and Anthropic are in the business of TRYING TO MAKE THEM EXIST so that they can remediate them.
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The efficiency machine strikes again
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
i'll be at Princeton week after next for a short residency with three events, if you find yourself in NJ cdh.princeton.edu/events/leif-...
cdh.princeton.edu
Leif Weatherby at Princeton
Leif Weatherby at Princeton
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Reposted by maybe: leif weatherby
Tyler Shoemaker @t-shoemaker.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the JHU conference where Derrida delivered “Sign, Structure, and Play.” We’re taking the opportunity to revisit (and reopen?) the structuralism question with regard to AI. If you’re in the Triangle, come by!
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
You’re gonna wanna come to this
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
i truly cannot wait for this
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Center for Digital Humanities @princetoncdh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Join @leifw.bsky.social also on 10/5 for a workshop that will guide participants through the basics of an LLM setup and the specific way that models are trained to "reason." @princetonainews.bsky.social
cdh.princeton.edu
Can LLMs Reason? A Hands-On Exploration
Can LLMs Reason? A Hands-On Exploration
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The Empirical Theory of Scientific Theory, post 1 in my series Notes on Recht's Notes on Meehl leifweatherby.substack.com/p/the-empiri...
leifweatherby.substack.com
The Empirical Theory of Scientific Theory, or Getting Past the Logic in Logical Positivism
Notes on Recht’s Notes on Meehl, lecture 1
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
x.com/leifweatherb...
x.com
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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Guess what, folks, METR is not a third party.
Embedded Evaluators. Each frontier AI company commits to giving ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators (such as METR), whose role is to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes. This is the key step for verifiability of any pacing commitments, and has precedent in the banking industry, which sometimes involves regulatory “supervisors” embedded along with employees. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this step now. We intend this to be part of a broader push to redouble efforts on our safety and alignment work.
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
i'm writing a series of posts following Paul Meehl's final lectures on metatheory of psychology, which @beenwrekt.bsky.social similarly blogged through in 2024. these are notes on Recht's notes on Meehl, and they're about stats, science, and postmodernism leifweatherby.substack.com/p/notes-on-r...
leifweatherby.substack.com
Notes on Recht’s Notes on Meehl
A series about statistical inference, scientific validity, and ... postmodernism?
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Tyler Shoemaker @t-shoemaker.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
So I guess it’s _Graphs, Maps, Trees, and Lean Proofs_ now?
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The Syllabus @the-syllabus.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Two days before the end of Trump's first term, the White House released the 1776 Report, which blamed the Frankfurt School for the breakdown of the "American way of life." Our article of the week traces the long history of Frankfurt School conspiracy theories. By Matthew Handelman buff.ly/NEKmBsW
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
This part is baffling, why would an LLM-core system NOT write texts and then another one use them as prompts?
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
another Ariely fraud revelation, another tapping of the sign that it's not the bad apples that are the real problem @thebaffler.com thebaffler.com/latest/fashi...
thebaffler.com
Fashionable Nonsense | Leif Weatherby
Alison Wood Brooks’s “Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves” is prototypical pop science. Bullshit, in other words.
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
New German Critique has the Digital Theory Lab's Semiotic Machines special issue forthcoming, featuring a collection of essays by people at the cutting edge of AI and interpretation, politics, and culture ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....
ngc.arts.cornell.edu
New German Critique: Forthcoming Issues
Widely considered the top journal in its field, New German Critique is an interdisciplinary journal that focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German studies.
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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
This is what @t-shoemaker.bsky.social, @leifw.bsky.social , and I were arguing against here: www.theideasletter.org/essay/reify-... (and we’re, of course, by no means the only ones beating this drum! ) 4/4
theideasletter.org
Reify This
The authors contend that contemporary efforts to render AI systems interpretable rest on a mistake: reification, the process of treating abstractions and statistical artifacts as if they were concrete...
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
you have to read this one, do it now
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Was true for all of the 20th century and good so far in the 21st
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Reposted by maybe: leif weatherby
Roy Christopher @roychristopher.com · 23/07/2026
We’ve all heard and had so many conversations about and with LLMs lately... Leif Weatherby (@leifw.bsky.social) does some deep work on and thinking about these models in his new book 'Language Machines' (from @uminnpress.bsky.social). 💙📚 #booksky #ai #llms wellredbear.com/leif-weather...
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
It’s super funny that Claude is named for one of the most laconic men in the history of science
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conputer dipshit @davidcrespo.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I declare... SIGNIFICANCE
static.klipy.com
Michael Scott Declares Bankruptcy in The Office
ALT: Michael Scott Declares Bankruptcy in The Office
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Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Excellent essay by Leif, Tyler, and Ben. Interestingly, reification of “internal states” is one of the pitfalls of the intentional stance of Dennett, something we are seeing a lot of AI interoperability research succumbing to.
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Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Kalman’s critique is newly relevant as we rush headlong into outsourcing much of our intellectual work to what Leif, Tyler, and Ben call reification machines.
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Tyler Shoemaker @t-shoemaker.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
This little sentence in last month’s encyclical helped (=goaded) @leifw.bsky.social, @beenwrekt.bsky.social, and me to tie off some threads that spun out of the Cultural AI conference in March “Reify This”: www.theideasletter.org/essay/reify-...
theideasletter.org
Reify This
The authors contend that contemporary efforts to render AI systems interpretable rest on a mistake: reification, the process of treating abstractions and statistical artifacts as if they were concrete...
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
come for Chris Olah on stage with the pope, stay for the failure of dictionary learning and the collapse of two traditions of reification
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Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Video of the talk I gave at the Cultural AI conference at NYU back in March is finally up (thanks again to @leifw.bsky.social and @t-shoemaker.bsky.social for having arranged this excellent event). www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYu9...
youtube.com
Part 4 | Cultural AI: An Emerging Field
YouTube video by Remarque NYU
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University of Minnesota Press @uminnpress.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
"The definition of human is implicitly reduced to the narrowing set of behaviors, traits, and capacities that machines do not yet possess—which leaves secular humanists defending the shrinking ground that is left." Nice h/t @leifw.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
theatlantic.com
There Is Already a Word for the Deep Moral Failures of AI
It’s sin.
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
the answer to "do you beat your wife" would presumably be just "no" - it's super funny that he can't muster the correct trick here ("when did you stop beating your wife?")
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
i'm not mad, i'm just disappointed
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
The funniest part of this is that this reaction basically amounts to saying “Mr Turing, don’t you understand that math is mechanical?”
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
i want to go on record there's a non-zero chance that the granta thing was written by Nazir as a double mockery of AI and MFA postcolonial prose; the move here would be to claim that it's a study of this collapse between aggregate style in the dying industry and LLMs - just sayin
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
These aren’t just em-dashes — they’re genuine pauses for thought
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conputer dipshit @davidcrespo.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
the extra stupid thing is a poetry seminar is probably the better preparation to do something that makes money
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Brendan C. Byrne @brendancbyrne.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
this is a lot more productive than "Richard Dawkins is a moron"
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New York Times Opinion @nytopinion.nytimes.com · 16/05/2026
“We cannot afford to believe the marketing message from A.I. companies that we may be dealing with some spiritual essence,” Leif Weatherby writes.
nyti.ms
Opinion | Why We Keep Tricking Ourselves Into Thinking A.I. Is Conscious
Notable thinkers keep telling us they think A.I. is conscious. That doesn’t mean it’s true.
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
for NYT op-ed, i construct a theory of the “expertise gap” that keeps people like Dawkins falling for the idea that A.I. is conscious. the gap is in the machine: complex statistical/linear-algebraic kludge —> cultural output. a new kind of reading results www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Why We Keep Tricking Ourselves Into Thinking A.I. Is Conscious
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
super fun conversation with Joe and Josh! wide-ranging: AI, culture, is Aaron Rodgers cooked? (yes)
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
you can just do things ok but i don't want to do things
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
America’s Next Top World Model
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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Easy Bay Friends: Tomorrow at Berkeley, the Social Science Matrix is hosting a conversation between Marion Fourcade and me about The Irrational Decision. More info and registration link here: matrix.berkeley.edu/events/the-i...
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
When Trump calls him “Gavin Newscum” he wants me to parse that as "new scum," right? bc that is NOT how i hear it
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GAI Debord @dylanschenker.com · 03/05/2026
Yesssss
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Cultural AI, Part I now up on Remarque's YouTube Channel, with Henry Farrell, Ben Recht, Lily Chumley and Fabian Offert www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9W8...
youtube.com
Part 1 | Cultural AI: An Emerging Field
YouTube video by Remarque NYU
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
talked to Shane Yeoh on his new Second Orders podcast, probably the most wide-ranging of these conversations i've had so far, super fun open.spotify.com/episode/4nk4...
open.spotify.com
AI learned language backwards and we need a new humanities to understand it - Leif Weatherby
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
i'm talking about Language Machines with @mbfazi.bsky.social and @emmastamm.bsky.social and Erik Voss at Columbia on Thursday docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
TML Book Talk: Cultural AI with Leif Weatherby
Date & Time: Thursday, April 30, 5.30 PM (ET) Location: The Goodman Room, Russel Hall 306 Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street New York, NY 10027 Description: Join the Technol...
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Join the Digital Theory Lab for a talk with Terry Winograd on Monday as.nyu.edu/research-cen...
as.nyu.edu
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
and they say LLMs can't write poetry
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
I Taught Leonard “Jimmie” Savage’s Bayesian Decision Theory and All I Got Was This Fuckin’ T-Shirt
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maybe: leif weatherby @leifw.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Not all skills deserve to be learned
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