🔬 Looking at the brain’s “dark matter” 🤯 Studying how minds change 👩🏼💻 Building science tools 🦋 ♾️ 👓 🌐 maxine.science
For anyone who's curious, I gave a kind of insane chalk talk about this in Bamberg a while back: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tumu...
Maxine Collard - How would we know what an astrocyte knows?YouTube video by Models of Consciousness Conferenceswww.youtube.comBen Haydenif that's true... how much of electrophysiology is just telling us what we already knew??
Systems neuroscience is the mathematical representation theory of the imposed task all the way down!
Ben HaydenHard to overstate the importance of this paper. Acategoricality and mixed selectivity together kill a lot of sacred cows. For starters, place cells aren't real, in that they are not a meaningful category. They are just a thing we scrape out of the data. Scientists focus on them because...
The problem isn’t intrinsically in computers, video games, or social media. It’s is that common revenue-maximizing design strategies implemented after ~2010 constrain online play to hijacked reward-seeking. The answer isn’t ban phones, but instead ban certain UX patterns—keep kids free, and healthy
Dare ObasanjoThere’s a big push to blame teen mental health issues on smartphones but this story made me wonder about exploring other things that have since become normalized. Should we expect kids who grew up post-Columbine on regular school shootings and active shooter drills to have great mental health?
I had some vibes that Opus 4.8 was performing worse than older ones for some of uses that are off distribution and now I have the receipts. Latest Opus/Sonnet are causing tool invocation failures on Pi's edit tool when older ones did not! I wrote about it. lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/7/4/bet...
Better Models: Worse ToolsAbout an aggravating tool-calling regression in newer Claude models.lucumr.pocoo.org
1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.
Generalization as the great leap in evolvability: insights from machine learningAbstract. Natural selection encodes learned information in the genome. Learned solutions may be tuned specifically to past challenges, failing in altered eacademic.oup.comFor a cis comparison: People with ovaries very commonly experience second male puberty after first female puberty. This is a common part of a relatively common condition called polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), in which biochemical changes result in ovaries producing testosterone. It *sucks*.
Maxine 💃🏼And most importantly: A trans girl who transitions peri-gonadarche *does not undergo male puberty*. She has *female* puberty. I don’t understand why cis people cannot get this into their skulls—the whole reason for youth trans care is to make it so that you don’t have to undo the wrong puberty.
And most importantly: A trans girl who transitions peri-gonadarche *does not undergo male puberty*. She has *female* puberty. I don’t understand why cis people cannot get this into their skulls—the whole reason for youth trans care is to make it so that you don’t have to undo the wrong puberty.
Maxine 💃🏼Hearing a lot of “why do we care about trans sports—this is just ~biology~” As someone who did seven years in an MD-PhD program: the biology is f*cking complicated. “Biological sex” is not a coherent notion. Chromosomal sex segregation is the single most nonsensical way to ensure sports fairness.
Hearing a lot of “why do we care about trans sports—this is just ~biology~” As someone who did seven years in an MD-PhD program: the biology is f*cking complicated. “Biological sex” is not a coherent notion. Chromosomal sex segregation is the single most nonsensical way to ensure sports fairness.
The New York TimesIn @nytopinion.nytimes.com In the Supreme Court’s ruling on transgender athletes, the justices are “arguing about something more fundamental than the law,” our columnist M. Gessen writes. “They are arguing about who should be seen, whose story ought to be heard and who deserves to be protected.”
One thing life has given me enormous pain for—and had convinced me to hate myself for—is that I am autistic. Yes—in my inside I go through a lot. My dreams are your trips. In a world designed to force everyone into a controllable box, being unboxable hurts. It is also the core of me—and I love it.
LifeYouTube video by louiscolemusicyoutu.beMaxine 💃🏼Every person must face the Shadow—that the deepest pains of our lives are also our liberation, because the pains Are us, cause us, and impel us forward. This scene is intrapsychic allegory. I’ve faced it many times in my life; but, each time, I remember more that I love my pain, just as I hate it.
Every person must face the Shadow—that the deepest pains of our lives are also our liberation, because the pains Are us, cause us, and impel us forward. This scene is intrapsychic allegory. I’ve faced it many times in my life; but, each time, I remember more that I love my pain, just as I hate it.
V for Vendetta (2005) - 'Evey Reborn' scene [1080]YouTube video by Screen Themesyoutu.be