iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 04/10/2026

Check out these fab old experimental setups and machines at the musée Ampere

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

Such a brilliant resource. It's too easy to overlook the peculiarities of the infant perspective unless one mindfully investigates it. The toddler's-view forest of knees. I love the idea of a research creche. 'So you can leave your children here for the day, but yes we will run experiments on them'

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

The man is a relentless self parody of the stupidest kind

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

MJ kinda squashed it. In his 2015 conspec review roundup he blithely dismissed it with a made up fact about inversion effects at birth 👇 completely ignoring the fact that we expressly addressed this in the paper - and ignoring that his own experiment observed no inversion effect at birth. Annoying!

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

I would say it has not, but looks like it has 👇Quite an edifice has been built upon it, making it appear very solid, but interpretation of those subsequent studies rests heavily on the foundational misattribution. Without a big piece of work following that up in detail it's hard to pin down exactly

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

yes, and quite an empire. i used this fun visual analogy in the paper 👇

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

Johnson (1992) described the three blobs as “almost as effective” as the full schematic face. Johnson (1994): three high-contrast blobs “appear to be sufficient to elicit the preference [EXP].” No they don't, Mark. Quite the opposite in fact.

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

Problem is the cites are misleading. Johnson et al (1991) result graph below. No preference at all for the three blob stimulus. Goren et al (1975) did not test the three blob stimulus. Farroni et al did and found a preference, but the infants were up to a week old (i.e. not evidence of inborn pref)

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 25/09/2026

I mean, who's side is this IPCC on?

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 09/09/2026

There is at least the attack line that both of these problems are in significant part caused/exacerbated by far right actions and policy objectives

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 26/08/2026

M-W gives this definition 👇 Then I guess the 'use as a tool of oppression' condition could go a few ways. One could restrict the term to that case and invent a new word for others. Or one could use the term more generally but identify such cases as esp bad with modifiers e.g. 'racist slur'.

M-W dictionary definition of 'slur':
slur
1 of 4
noun (1)
ˈslər
Synonyms of slur
1
a
: an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo : aspersion
b
: a shaming or degrading effect : stain, stigma

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 19/08/2026

The cognitive neuroscience of Good Trips

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 16/07/2026

I appreciate i am using 'balance' in a somewhat non-standard way - i am proposing balance is a somewhat different thing from current conception (i.e. not-falling, afaict). Imv it is a self-regulatory function solving a general biophysical task, of which postural control is one special case

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 16/07/2026

Super, thanks :) The highlighted excerpt below is imv a nice frame for the problem. I try to lay out conceptually a general biophysical model of how the balancing task is defined ('value function') in the paper. Solving it is going to be a special case for a given morphology and control system

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 15/07/2026

Depends what one takes from 'direct' I suppose. I don't take it to mean 'magic', that would be silly

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 14/07/2026

underrated problem with median voter ism

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 14/07/2026

Because the interpretation of many contemporary/since results is conditioned on mis-attributing this non-existent result. There is a whole edifice of interpretation built on it. It's like this👇🏻

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 08/07/2026

Imv to the extent that R is just a mode of interpretation as below, there's nothing to argue about. Saw a nice @wiringthebrain.bsky.social talk recently situating Rs as epiphenomena of architectural context. On that view, one could use the R concept, or ditch it for just architecture & dynamics...

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 04/07/2026

The dividing line question is whether in addition to being a model in this sense, the brain also *contains* a model(s) of the body in a sense similar to a CAD model - abstract, defined wrt to mathematical coordinate frames rather than by embodied connectivity and geometry etc.

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 04/07/2026

Correct me if I'm wrong, ADW, but I think pretty much all of us are happy to say that the nervous system *is* in various ways a model of the behaving body. E.g. it has a tightly coupled spatial architecture. And most would be happy with the idea that nested models on this framing can exist too...

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 04/07/2026

I think much of Grace's confusion arose from misreading "reject R as an explanatory posit" as "representations don't exist". But even @tyrellturing.bsky.social agrees that representation (on his definition) is an interpretive tool, not a valid explanatory posit.

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 04/07/2026

Well for one thing 'representations' is used to mean all sorts of very different things, so maybe they are denying the existence of something other than the representations you are certain must exist

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 02/07/2026

It is easier for USAmericans to imagine the end of the Republic than the end of the Republican party

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 22/06/2026

Fair enough. But I think it's accurate cos they deliberately undermined, disarmed, and disbanded the anti-brexit movement cos it was politically difficult for Labour. This was their strategy. Surrender was a price worth paying (for them) to make it go away, but cost us all. Longtime grudge for me👇

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 22/06/2026

This strikes me as substantive and not absurd. You may have a sound response. Great. But "gah obvs brain activity and changes are very important" is not it. E.g. @mljanderson.bsky.social concedes that point off the bat here👇🏻 So forever returning to it feels like deflection via strawman

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 22/06/2026

@mljanderson.bsky.social actually this work might be of interest to you. Relates to the example given in your previous project here. Consider learning to stand upright...what norm/goal/value-function(s) drives that learning? Why strive for uprightness? There's a decision making bit here that...

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 21/06/2026

Haven't read that one. Anyway, it's not like I'm the guy who gets to decide. My grumble is that having a core concept that everyone uses differently and is slippery enough to mean almost anything at all does not enable useful discussion, only pointless semantic arguments bsky.app/profile/nmwi...

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 19/06/2026

I got some funny looks when i proposed something along these lines in my PhD back in 2014

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 19/06/2026

Mood rings, mate. That's proper science

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 05/06/2026

Welcome to the swamp of bullshit. We have arrived at the very location we set out for. It was 'politically necessary', apparently

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 30/05/2026

Found this super book shop in the heart of Lyon

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 26/05/2026

This what Kremlin bots look like?

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 19/05/2026

Yup. Maybe we just can't make the objective measuring device, could easily be a limit of objective measurement devices which says little about the physical reality of subjective experience

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 16/05/2026

Brief: Jelly ocean cake, no cream

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Dr Nick @nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 15/05/2026

True story. This paper is cited hundreds of times as showing the opposite of the results it reported

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