iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 7h

I do love New Yorker book reviews

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The Announcer of Fall (vs the rest of the Yard)

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

i get the feeling that if current AI was being developed in the early-to-mid 20th century, some significant part of Soviet research would be spent on "how can *truly*, in a *deep sense*, send an AI to the gulag"

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

this is dumb. but also, I have to admit that, having heard in my shortish career the terms [AI / SAI / AGI / Machine learning / deep learning deep belief networks/ neural networks AI agents / agent models / language models] being used for roughly similar stuff I'm kinda apathetic about this

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Plato: in my parable I invented The Cave as a cautionary tale Tech Company: at long last, we have created The Cave from the classic parable Don't Live In The Cave

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

me: I am a man of particular tastes my tastes:

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"Double, double toil and trouble" (The 3 Witches getting another R&R)

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Reposted by Tomer Ullman

Vivian Paulun @vivianpaulun.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

🚨 Preprint alert! 👶🧠🌊 "The Emergence of a Distinction between Things and Stuff" osf.io/preprints/ps... So excited to share my first infant study, with the wonderful Sanghee Song and Liz Spelke.🎉 Do babies expect sand to behave differently from solid objects? 🧵1/5

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

thinking of sending funding agencies Letters of Disinterest, see if negging works any better "Your foundation is really close to being the kind of place I'd want to work with"

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

find someone who gazes at you like the dog's gaze in The Dog's Gaze

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

be on the lookout for Aria Zhang! and also read this interesting paper :)

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

since I'm getting many pokes about grad school applications, I wanted to re-up some previous public advice on grad school applications. looking back at it a year on, I still think all this is right, but let me update the 'research statement' part to include a bit on genAI:

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

it occurs to me that "phoning it in" now means roughly the same thing as 100 years ago, but in a different way

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

new preprint: "Directing large language models to follow the letter or spirit of the law" arxiv.org/pdf/2609.23083 (by Qian , Li, Chen, Murthy @soniakmurthy.bsky.social , Belinkov, and me) this is particularly cool/important, and I'm allowed to say it because it was headed by @pqian.bsky.social

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

🎵one, two, three-four-five, landscape irrigation, so come let's ride🎵

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Rebecca Saxe @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I have a question about the future of metrics for hiring and promoting faculty in science. Academic journal articles have been our currency for a long time, but are under extreme & mounting pressure. Is any dept or field already using a better metric *for hiring and promoting faculty*?

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

i get many emails every day from students about various things, but one that made me particularly sad recently was asking about "what we're actually going to be good at when AI can do most of what we're training to do" it was the phrase "what we're training to do" that made me real sad

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

video games should include Hofstadter's Badge, which can be earned for earning Hofstadter's Badge

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

from afternoon conversation with colleague in Math, talk turns to AI: "we're having faculty meetings and they're telling us all 'it's urgent that...'. I've spent my professional life in the math department, do you have any idea how unused I am to the phrase 'it's urgent'?"

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Dorsa Amir @dorsaamir.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Hey folks, I'll be considering PhD applications for the 2026-27 cycle over here at Duke Psych. To learn more about the lab, check us out at www.mindandculturelab.com and/or read through this short FAQ for prospective students: www.mindandculturelab.com/faq

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

me: I don't believe you Ripley: well yes, that is one of the options

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

this guy used to stand as a fountain in Egypt 2000 years ago and you just know generations of 4 years old went for a ride on its back

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

amazing hide-and-seek work from this dog

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Arthur Prat @arthurpr4t.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

We derived six laws of psychophysics from a single efficient-coding equation. The laws include Weber's law; scaling laws in visual working memory (which had been noted before, but with unclear theoretical justification); Wei & Stocker's law of human perception; arthurprat.com/pdfs/Prat-Ca...

arthurprat.com

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

checking with a student whether they were the ones to actually write their hyper-polished, content-free response

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

המוטו של העשור האחרון

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

some more AI explanations of New Yorker cartoons (gpt vs claude)

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

getting an "Outstanding Reviewer" award

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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The Stanford Psychology Department is having a search for a tenure-track Assistant Professor with a research focus on developmental and/or social psychology. Application deadline is 10/15. More infos here: facultypositions.stanford.edu/jobs/assista...

facultypositions.stanford.edu

Assistant Professor, Psychology - Stanford University, California, United States

The Department of Psychology at Stanford University is seeking applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, with a research focus on developmental and/or social psychology. In addition ...

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

going to start a business for short-term renting out of abandoned caverns, underground lairs, spooky crypts, calling it AirDnD

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Reposted by Tomer Ullman

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

If this makes you mad, submit your cognitive science research to @openmindjournal.bsky.social No APCs, no subscription fees. It's funded by university libraries, at low cost.

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Adam Gopnik is at it again, from this week's New Yorker piece on philosopher Benjamin Constant, Kant, etc.

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

new paper out: *~*~*~*~ "Revisiting the 5- to 7-Y ear Shift: The Age of Metacognitive Control?" (by Brod @garvinbrod.bsky.social , McAuliffe @katiemcauliffe.bsky.social , Ullman) *~*~*~*~ sharable paper link: bit.ly/5to7_2026 free pdf draft: www.tomerullman.org/papers/5to7s...

bit.ly

Revisiting the 5- to 7-year shift: The age of metacognitive control?

Abstract. The term 5- to 7-year shift refers to the marked changes in behavior observed as children transition from preschool age to school age. In 1996, a

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

one of the things I've tried to make time for over years is walking my daughter to & from ballet class. it's lovely, and I also strongly suspect (based on recent evidence) that the only thing she's going to remember from it as a fully realized person is "that time I almost stepped on a dead rat"

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

researchers and teachers keep trying to find catches to make sure the person doing the assignment / experiment is a human. Some of these are clever but a bunch of them seem to boil down to "if you're a cop and I ask you if you're a cop you have to tell me you're a cop"

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

years ago I was in a full room at MIT where Nosek pitched OSF. He was talking about the importance of pre-reg and everyone nodded along snoozily, not because they didn't agree, but because everyone already agreed on the importance of pre-reg, but then...

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

life goals: collect all the titles in this drop-down menu for a fancy European grant review portal

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

there's no "Journal of Stylometry" but I'm trying to imagine their review process. Do you even bother with double-blinding? Do you get extra points if you can get the Reviewers based on the text alone?

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

new preprint: "The Humorous Hill: A U-shaped Relationship Between Humor and Quality" (by Bhattacharya, Hu, and me) link: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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