Humans have always generated knowledge and judged it. That's changing fast.
AI Epistemic Risks: Emerging Mechanisms & Evidence
<p>Advances in artificial intelligence pose risks to humanity's collective capacity to form accurate beliefs, reason well, and maintain a healthy information en
A fact-based worldview for all | Gapminder
We live in a globalized world, not only in terms of trade and migration. More people than ever care about global development. But most people have severe misconceptions about contemporary global development. We know, because we have tested people’s knowledge. One of the main reasons for this is that students don’t learn to understand the world based on statistics and facts. Instead, we have a dramatic worldview formed by outdated school books and sensationalist news-stories. People intuitively believe that most things are getting worse. The dramatic worldview leads to irrational decisions by individuals, nonprofits, governments and business. For the first time in human history reliable statistics exist. There’s data for almost every aspect of global development. The data shows a very different picture: a world where most things improve; a world that is not divided; and a world where the fast population growth will soon be over. The world has never been less bad. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere | Antikythera
That is, the faculty of recollection and foresight? Until recently, I would argue, our planet was amnesiac. That is, no part of it was reflectively aware of the place of the present relative to the established past nor the expected future. But then peculiar animals emerged, capable—no matter how imperfectly—of cooperation, abstraction and invention. In the last blink of geologic time, through the collaboration of these animals with their increasingly cunning artifacts, this state of planetary amnesia has faltering begun being cured. That is, through our artifacts, our planet is becoming aware of its own unfolding biography. In our fallible attempts to model our world—alongside our growing legion of sensors—The Earth system has developed a way of recollecting its deepest past and tracking the changing complexities of its present so as to forecast its furthest future.
AI Slop and the End of Knowledge
As an early fan of the internet, I was amazed that all the knowledge of the world was becoming available to everyone, everywhere, all the time. But things have changed.
Opinion | We Aren’t Built to Live in the Moment (Published 2017)
What best distinguishes human beings from other animals is our foresight, as scientists are just beginning to recognize.
Are We Betting on the Wrong Kind of Intelligence?
AI optimizes for the world as it was. Rewilding could be what prepares us for the world as it is.
Development Beyond Information: Human Becoming in the Age of AI
Abstract. Discussions of artificial intelligence in education increasingly equate development with the acquisition and deployment of information. This article argues that such accounts rest on false assumptions. Development is better understood not as an informational state but as a relational, historical process of becoming through which persons emerge and continue to change. Drawing on Vygotsky, on Ilyenkov's distinction between living and petrified ideality, and on the enactive approach to cognition, we characterise development through four features: its historicity, its dependence on reciprocal sense-making, its mediation by others who orient the learner, and its cultivation within relations of care. Large language models operate over the sedimented products of these processes without participating in them. As objectifications of human purposes, such systems may mediate human development or foreclose it. We conclude by considering what this account implies for education.
Learning how to behave: cognitive learning processes account for asymmetries in adaptation to social norms
Changes to social settings caused by migration, cultural change or pandemics force us to adapt to new social norms. Social norms provide groups of individuals with behavioural prescriptions and therefore can be inferred by observing their behaviour. This work aims to examine how cognitive learning processes affect adaptation and learning of new social norms. Using a multiplayer game, I found that participants initially complied with various social norms exhibited by the behaviour of bot-players. After gaining experience with one norm, adaptation to a new norm was observed in all cases but one, where an active-harm norm was resistant to adaptation. Using computational learning models, I found that active behaviours were learned faster than omissions, and harmful behaviours were more readily attributed to all group members than beneficial behaviours. These results provide a cognitive foundation for learning and adaptation to descriptive norms and can inform future investigations of group-level learning and cross-cultural adaptation.
Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender
People increasingly consult generative artificial intelligence (AI) while reasoning. As AI becomes embedded in daily thought, what becomes of human judgment? We
Abeba Birhane on Twitter / X
a classic case of “the human mind is afforded less complexity than is owed, and the computer is afforded more wisdom than is due.” Baria and Cross (2021)that "vibe" is at the core of what makes us human. it defies formalization and datafication https://t.co/AXELAqlYcq— Abeba Birhane (@Abebab) February 17, 2024
All Possible Views About Humanity's Future Are Wild
If humans will eventually spread out across the galaxy, then we are among the earliest living beings, with remarkable opportunities to shape the future
Jon Barron on Twitter / X
This idea that intelligence is solely a function of what you've observed since birth and not also a function of the 500 million years of evolution that preceded your birth is surprisingly sticky despite being demonstrably untrue. https://t.co/m2z5cN8Byb— Jon Barron (@jon_barron) January 28, 2026
Searching for explanations: How the Internet inflates estimates of internal knowledge.
I don't understand this. 52 years later, why try and replicate the original? It's obviously not going to be the same study. The world has changed; cars, traffic, and people have changed. If one is interested in false memory, why not design the best study you can? What can you conclude meaningfully?
Andrew Gelman et al.
A plan to replicate the Loftus and Palmer (1974) experiment on false memories statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/10/04/a-plan-to-replicat…
Ever thought we acquire generalizable knowledge by discarding details and compressing our experiences? In a new BBS paper, @sabinasloman.bsky.social and I argue otherwise, proposing a novel way of studying human learning inspired by double descent in ML. Disagree? Propose a commentary by May 15 :)
