In your mind:
Which substacks/blogs have the highest status? Which articles/books have the highest status?
Montag, 13. Oktober 2025
Sonntag, 12. Oktober 2025
Loneliness:
I want a place where I would just be left alone.
But even if I found that place, I wouldn’t be happy there either.
I'm glad I’m not lonely at all, but sometimes a little downtime would be relaxing.
Wert / Value:
Ein Wort für das Kostbarste an Welt und Wirklichkeit.
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A word for the most precious thing in the world and reality.
Originalität / Originality:
Wilhelm Ostwald, 1910:
"Originalität, [das ist] die Fähigkeit, sich selbst etwas einfallen zu lassen, was über die Aufnahme des Dargebotenen hinausgeht ..."
"Originalität aber kann zwar gepflegt, anderseits auch sogar vernichtet werden, aber sie hat von allen Eigenschaften des Forschers bei weitem am meisten den Charakter einer angeborenen oder usrpünglichen Begabung."
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"Originalität, [das ist] die Fähigkeit, sich selbst etwas einfallen zu lassen, was über die Aufnahme des Dargebotenen hinausgeht ..."
"Originalität aber kann zwar gepflegt, anderseits auch sogar vernichtet werden, aber sie hat von allen Eigenschaften des Forschers bei weitem am meisten den Charakter einer angeborenen oder usrpünglichen Begabung."
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Wilhelm Ostwald, 1910:
“Originality [that is] the ability to come up with something oneself, which goes beyond merely absorbing what is presented …”
“Originality, however, can indeed be cultivated, but it can also be destroyed; yet among all the qualities of a researcher, it most clearly has the character of an innate or original talent.”
The Good and Bad of Academia:
https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-good-and-bad-of-academia.html
Robin Hanson:
"Hanging at non-academic conferences lately, I’ve noticed how their cultures differs from my familiar academic cultures. For example, in a “pitch culture”, speakers focus on showing energy, prestige, charisma, social support, and momentum, and try to induce enthusiasm. They try to accomplish concrete projects they see as important in the grand scheme of things. All of which I like.
But in such contexts, I also miss key features of academic culture. For example, the priority on original insight. Their use of precise language, and announcing their main claims clearly up front in such precise language. Academics set their work in the context of related prior work, to make clear both their original contributions, and that they’ve done their homework. And they invite strong criticism, often scheduling time for assigned discussants to critique particular presentations. Anticipating criticism, academics identify and respond to particular problems before others express them. Such habits would help to cut the bullshit from many non-academic contexts, even if this might also cut enthusiasm or bonding."
The Accepto-Rejecto-Meter:
https://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2023/09/self-esteem.html
Amy Alkon labels Self-Esteem as the "Accepto-Rejecto-Meter":
"This accepto-rejecto-meter is basically a barometer measuring how much other people think we suck (or rule!). It does this by monitoring the social environment for cues about where we stand. It's especially sensitive to negative cues - like indifference, dislike, and rejection - indicating that others' acceptance of us may be on the skids."
"The information the accepto-rejecto-meter picks up gives rise to emotions in us - the positive or negative feelings that we call "self-esteem"."
I am not so sure about that. E.g. if you acquire a certain (hard) skill you are forced to push yourself through a terrain in which you will experience quite some uncertainty about your knowledge and abilities. Then, with time, you will acquire skill and a certain amount of certainty. But this certainty isn't necessarily acquired by gaining much feedback from others. In some cases you gain this confidence by reflection of your skill level and by developing the ability to judge your skills accurately.
Nevertheless I like the term >Accepto-Rejecto-Meter<.
Did humans evolve to 'protect' women?:
William Buckner (h/t @reiver / Charles)
"Rather than starting from the premise that humans evolved to be more protective of and sensitive to harm towards women, the evidence suggests there is massive variation in this regard, and we have to look towards the particular cultural and ecological contexts that can help explain this diversity.
Ultimately nearly all of my disagreements with evolutionary psychology stem from this concern about theories that are often built off of patterns found in contemporary industrial societies and aren’t sufficiently checked against the ethnohistorical record. I think the ‘harm hypothesis’ and ‘greater protectiveness of women theory’ are examples of this. I’d really love to see it become a norm for evolutionary psychologists to bring more of the ethnographic evidence to bear when proposing or endorsing particular models."
https://traditionsofconflict.substack.com/p/did-humans-evolve-to-protect-women
"Rather than starting from the premise that humans evolved to be more protective of and sensitive to harm towards women, the evidence suggests there is massive variation in this regard, and we have to look towards the particular cultural and ecological contexts that can help explain this diversity.
Ultimately nearly all of my disagreements with evolutionary psychology stem from this concern about theories that are often built off of patterns found in contemporary industrial societies and aren’t sufficiently checked against the ethnohistorical record. I think the ‘harm hypothesis’ and ‘greater protectiveness of women theory’ are examples of this. I’d really love to see it become a norm for evolutionary psychologists to bring more of the ethnographic evidence to bear when proposing or endorsing particular models."
https://traditionsofconflict.substack.com/p/did-humans-evolve-to-protect-women
Introduction to the Theory of Computation:
h/t @reiver
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"What are the fundamental capabilities and limits of computers?"
Mind Your Tone:
Rude prompts to LLMs consistently lead to better results than polite ones 
The authors found that very polite and polite tones reduced accuracy, while neutral, rude, and very rude tones improved it.
Statistical tests confirmed that the differences were significant, not random, across repeated runs.
The top score reported was 84.8% for very rude prompts and the lowest was 80.8% for very polite.
They compared their results with earlier studies and noted that older models (like GPT-3.5 and Llama-2) behaved differently, but GPT-4-based models like ChatGPT-4o show this clear reversal where harsh tone works better.
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Paper – arxiv. org/abs/2510.04950
Paper Title: "Mind Your Tone: Investigating How Prompt Politeness Affects LLM Accuracy (short paper)"
The authors found that very polite and polite tones reduced accuracy, while neutral, rude, and very rude tones improved it.
Statistical tests confirmed that the differences were significant, not random, across repeated runs.
The top score reported was 84.8% for very rude prompts and the lowest was 80.8% for very polite.
They compared their results with earlier studies and noted that older models (like GPT-3.5 and Llama-2) behaved differently, but GPT-4-based models like ChatGPT-4o show this clear reversal where harsh tone works better.
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Paper – arxiv. org/abs/2510.04950
Paper Title: "Mind Your Tone: Investigating How Prompt Politeness Affects LLM Accuracy (short paper)"
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