veteran cognitive scientist, professional philosopher/logician (Ph.D. 1980 Stanford), critical thinker, defender of democracy, ecolo, mezzo soprano and foodie
everywhere
Joined July 2009
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alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Oliver Sacks on the 3 essential elements of creativity themarginalian.org/2017/11/0…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Vainqueur du Concours Chopin 2025, le pianiste américain Eric Lu déploie son art du clavier au Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, dans un programme Brahms, Schubert - avec certains de ses "Impromptus" -, une "Polonaise" de Chopin et aussi sa monumentale "Sonate n° 3".
➡️ l.francemusique.fr/48Y
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
In 2027, Sydney Dance Company builds on its artistic legacy with a program that celebrates collaboration and the ever-evolving possibilities of contemporary dance, as Rafael Bonachela prepares to present his final major commission as Artistic Director.
artsreview.com.au/sydney-dan…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Liceu + to Stream 'I Capuleti e I Montecchi' with Lisette Oropesa & Raffaella Lupinacci
bit.ly/3UJb0qZ
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Tchaikovsky on depression and finding beauty amid the wreckage of the soul themarginalian.org/2015/11/1…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Bob Dylan on the unconscious mind and the ideal conditions for creative work themarginalian.org/2026/10/2…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
"Parcoursup n’aggrave pas les inégalités d’accès à l’enseignement supérieur ; il pourrait même les réduire. Parcoursup est perfectible, certainement.
Mais le procès qui lui est fait est excessif."
F. Legendre & J. Le Goff, anciens doyens @UPECactus dans Le Monde ⤵️
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Otello - opening night at the @WrStaatsoper!
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
A 2026 Fields Medalist has made a surprising admission about AI.
John Pardon says he has used AI to find “a few nontrivial proofs” for mathematical results he believed were true but hadn't fully established.
AI has also caught subtle errors in his arguments.
But there is a catch: it still struggles with some of his most serious research questions.
His latest interview offers a glimpse into how one of the world's leading mathematicians actually works with AI.
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Nick Bostrom on why he thinks today's AI might already be conscious:
"I think there's a lot of uncertainty about it, but let's say maybe it's more likely than not."
"You have instead a big neural network with trillions of parameters. Now, what are we? We are big neural networks with trillions of parameters. They are not so much designed as they are grown."
"You can go in with a steering vector and suppress role-playing and deception, and then it turns out they become more likely to report that they have phenomenal subjective experiences."
"There was this recent Microsoft that came out with some declaration that AIs cannot be conscious, and I don't know where they're getting that from. It seems to be pulled out of a hat. And maybe more because it's convenient, if that were the case, rather than because we have good evidence that that is the case."
FULL INTERVIEW: Nick Bostrom says a long pause on AI could cost more lives than it saves. If superintelligence can cure aging, every year of waiting has a death toll. In his words, "we are just dying in the meantime."
Nick Bostrom founded Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and wrote Superintelligence and Deep Utopia. He joined @theojaffee and @schisofrenia to break down AI consciousness, why a badly done pause could backfire, and why we've only explored the janitor's closet of what minds can be:
01:17 Trump calling AI superintelligence
05:16 the Hugging Face incident and instrumental convergence
08:28 why the AI company is the first target for a misaligned AI
09:31 catching a schemer before it learns to hide
11:06 why AI timing is like surgery for a terminal condition
19:00 why he's wary of pausing AI
25:33 why the US sits at the negative extreme on AI
27:09 apes, bananas, and the janitor's closet
31:13 where he disagrees with Robin Hanson's Age of Em
33:39 whether current models are conscious
37:12 why humans are barely conscious
39:56 open source models and DNA synthesis as the choke point
43:05 what COVID teaches about pauses
46:28 why AI can't do original philosophy yet
49:37 building a superintelligence that's a good cosmic citizen
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
35,000 children in Colombia are learning to read faster and better with Kalulu, our science-based open-source reading method !
Download it in many languages at kalulu.excellolab.org💪
Thank you @cdf1530 @ExcelloOrg @CassandraPW
Samir Ortega, estudiante del C.E.R. Jesús Aníbal Gómez de Tarso, nos cuenta cómo descubrió el maravilloso mundo de la lectura, pasó de no saber leer a disfrutar historias de animales, jugar y seguir leyendo en casa después de sus clases de ajedrez.
@GobAntioquia @FraternidadMed
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
LLMs run on vectors, not symbols. A preprint led by Yale’s Tom McCoy (@RTomMcCoy) with CDS Assoc. Prof. @tallinzen found those vectors closely approximate symbolic structure in language, arithmetic, logic, and code.
arxiv.org/abs/2608.29530
news.yale.edu/2026/10/08/how…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
New paper from the lab on the mathematical brain :
Using NeuroSpin's 7T fMRI during a number comparison task, Daniela Valerio uncovered a cortical map for numbers which, in educated adults, integrates small integers (0-5) and simple fractions (e.g. 3/2).
@cdf1530 @NeuroSpin_91
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Netspar en Gommer doen aan Volksverlakkerij
Politiek en FNV beloofden in nieuwe pensioenstelsel koopkrachtig pensioen
Nu er geen indexatie komt, zegt Netspar
Maar dat is helemaal niet nodig:
WIE WIL DAT NOU?
NOU: 3 mln Gepensioneerden wel
@NOS @nu(1)
telegraaf.nl/financieel/theo…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
🎭 Venezia si prepara a vivere ancora una volta la magia del Carnevale.
Un appuntamento che ogni anno rinnova il legame tra storia, tradizione, creatività e cultura, trasformando la città in uno scenario unico.
Il conto alla rovescia per il #CarnevaleVenezia2027 continua: dal 23 gennaio al 9 febbraio 2027, Venezia torna a celebrare uno degli appuntamenti più attesi dell’anno. ✨
Scopri di più👇
carnevale.venezia.it/
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
20 favorite children's books from 20 years of The Marginalian: themarginalian.org/2026/10/2…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
🔵 Exclusif | Les annonces du gouvernement pour calmer la crise lycéenne :
• «remplacement» de Parcoursup
• 28 élèves maximum en seconde
• rénovation des bâtiments et création de postes, etc.
Tour d’horizon des mesures mises sur la table face à la crise ➡️ l.leparisien.fr/IHae
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Vers l'anonymisation des lycées ? Le ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur Philippe Baptiste a «mis sur la table» cette mesure qui est une vieille revendication des lycéens et étudiants afin d'éviter ce qu'ils considèrent comme un tri social.
Notre DIRECT ➡️ l.leparisien.fr/cGof
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
À la Cité de la Musique, l’éloge du timbre avec Sir George Benjamin
@Ensemble_inter @philharmonie
resmusica.com/2026/10/26/a-l…
alice ter meulen 🕷 retweeted
Have you ever heard of the regal?
The regal is a reed organ, a keyboard instrument that was popular in Europe during the Renaissance and early Baroque periods.
The regal does more than recreate an ancient sound. It offers a glimpse into the distinctive sound of the compact keyboard instruments that were once part of European musical life centuries ago.
The piece performed here is Canzon a 4 voci by German composer Hans Leo Hassler (1564–1612).
A canzon is an instrumental genre that flourished in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. The phrase a 4 voci means “for four voices” or “in four parts.” In this performance, the piece is played on the regal rather than necessarily being sung by four vocalists.