Strange Hoboken creatures

Sabrina Hossenfelder looks at Claude 3.5 Haiku and discovers that it lacks self-awareness

In this video Hossenfelder examines a paper recently published by Anthropic: On the Biology of a Large Language Model. She has a number of interesting observations. After reiterating that the underlying LLM is in the business of next token prediction, she reviews an example of arithmetic reasoning starting at about 1:54. After following the example more or less step by step she observes (c. 2:45):

It’s basically a heuristic text-based approximation. It’s doing maths by free-associating numbers until the right one just sort of vibes into place. But here is the kicker. If you ask Claude how it arrived at that result it says “I added the ones (6+9=15), carried the 1, then added the tens (3+5+1=9), resulting in 95.” Which is not what it did, not even remotely. It answers this question separately, giving you again, a text prediction for the answer. And I think that this shows very clearly that Claude has no self-awareness. It doesn’t know what it's thinking about. What it tells you it’s doing is completely disconnected from what it’s actually doing.

That makes sense to me. Claude really "doesn’t know what it's thinking about." Why would we think otherwise? Well, I suppose, because it tells us what it did and we treat that statement as equivalent to what humans do when they report how they accomplished some task. The thing is, humans don't necessarily know what they're doing either.

Consider and example from Piaget's 1976 book, The Grasp of Consciousness. Here's how I reported that experiment in a paper I published some years ago, First Person: Neuro-Cognitive Notes on the Self in Life and in Fiction (2000):

Let us begin with an experiment conducted by Jean Piaget as part of an investigation into consciousness. In this experiment children were asked to crawl for about 10 meters and then to describe what they had just done (Piaget, 1976, pp. 1 ff.). Four-year olds generally said either that they first moved one arm, then the other, then one leg, then the other, or legs first and then arms. Piaget called this a Z pattern. That is not, in fact, how any of them actually crawled. What they actually did was either to first move one arm, then the opposite leg, then the other arm, then the opposite leg, or the same pattern beginning with a leg. Piaget called this an X pattern. It isn't until children are seven or older that they can describe this X pattern. [...]

What is striking is that the younger children's verbal account of such a basic act is simply wrong. In order to execute the crawl there must be some brain tissue devoted to schemas regulating the appropriate actions; for crawling isn't a spinal reflex. But those regulating schemas must in some way be distinct from the schemas underlying the younger children's verbal accounts, otherwise those accounts would be more accurate. My first point is simply that we are here dealing with two different neural schemas for the same action and that one of them is grossly simplified and thus incapable of actually regulating the behavior it represents.

There are many ways in which the behavior of these four-year olds is quite different from Claude's, but I see no need to list them all. They're obvious enough. The basic point, as I say in that second paragraph, is that the young children got it wrong. And, while older children do get it right, there is a separate body of research that shows that the kind of behavior those four-year olds exhibit is common in various domains.

That research is about what is called the introspection illusion, which Wikipedia characterizes as follows:

The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. The illusion has been examined in psychological experiments, and suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. These experiments have been interpreted as suggesting that, rather than offering direct access to the processes underlying mental states, introspection is a process of construction and inference, much as people indirectly infer others' mental states from their behaviour.

Notice that last statement, “introspection is a process of construction and inference.” Isn't that what Claude was doing? It provides a plausible account of its activity, not on the basis of some examination of that activity, but rather, based on what it knows about how arithmetic is (supposed to be) done. Claude doesn't have introspective awareness of what it is going, but then neither do humans, at least not in some wide variety of cases.

Let’s return to Hossenfelder, who goes on to assert: “I’d say that self-awareness is a precondition for consciousness.[1] So this model is nowhere near conscious.” I agree with her that Claude is not conscious, but not for the reason she gives. Those four-year olds in Piaget's experiments were certainly conscious, but they lacked (a certain kind of) self-awareness. I'm inclined to think that self-awareness and consciousness are distinct mental phenomena. On consciousness, I favor the view expressed by William Powers in his 1973 book, Behavior: The Control of Perception. Powers’s account is subtle, more than I can explain here (I do explain it in a post from 2022). Suffice it to say that Powers’s account is grounded in the behavior architecture of the brain. LLMs simply don't that the required architecture. They may well talk as though they’re conscious, but they’re just faking it. It’s empty talk. 

* * * * *

[1] FWIW, I suspect that this mistaken belief is widespread.

Well, hello there!

Why the big money boys let Trump pull the wool over their eyes

Michelle Goldberg, Why Did So Many People Delude Themselves About Trump? New York Times, April 7, 2025:

Donald Trump’s 2024 election sent many finance types into spasms of anticipatory ecstasy as they imagined freedom from regulations, taxes and unfamiliar pronouns. “Bankers and financiers say Trump’s victory has emboldened those who chafed at ‘woke doctrine’ and felt they had to self-censor or change their language to avoid offending younger colleagues, women, minorities or disabled people,” The Financial Times reported a few days before Trump’s inauguration. It quoted one leading banker crowing — anonymously — about finally being able to use slurs like “retard” again. The vibes had shifted; the animal spirits were loose.

“We’re stepping into the most pro-growth, pro-business, pro-American administration I’ve perhaps seen in my adult lifetime,” gushed the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in December.

One Wall Street veteran, however, understood the risk an unleashed Trump posed to the economy. After Trump’s victory in November, Peter Berezin, chief global strategist at BCA Research, which provides macroeconomic research to major financial institutions, estimated that the chance of a recession had climbed to 75 percent. “The prospect of an escalation of the trade war is likely to depress corporate investment while lowering real household disposable income,” said a BCA report.

The surprising thing isn’t that Berezin saw the Trump tariff crisis coming, but that so many of his peers didn’t. You don’t have to be a sophisticated financial professional, after all, to understand that Trump believes, firmly and ardently, in taxing imports, and he thinks any country that sells more goods to America than it buys must be ripping us off. All you had to do was read the news or listen to Trump’s own words.

Creatures of the herd:

On Monday, as stocks whipsawed on shifting news and rumors about the tariffs, I spoke to Berezin, who is based in Montreal, about how Wall Street had gotten Trump so wrong. He told me that many investors who pride themselves on their savvy are in fact just creatures of the herd. “All these cognitive biases that amateur retail investors are subject to, the Wall Street pros, are, if anything, even more subject to them because they’ve got career risk associated with bucking the trend,” he said.

Self-deception:

“The markets should have put two and two together that if you’re talking about annexing Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, you’re probably going to be more radical on trade as well,” said Berezin.

But Wall Street professionals, like so many other ostensibly smart people, refused to see Trump clearly, mistaking his skill as a demagogue for wisdom as a policymaker. “I don’t think this was foreseeable,” a mournful Ackman posted on X on Monday. “I assumed economic rationality would be paramount.” What an odd assumption to make about a man who bankrupted casinos.

CODA: Big Tech

Check this out as well: Cecilia Kang, Tech C.E.O.s Spent Millions Courting Trump. It Has Yet to Pay Off. NYTimes, April 8, 2025.

The biggest technology companies and their chief executives donated millions to President Trump’s inauguration, hosted black-tie parties and dinners in his honor, and allowed him to announce and take credit for new multibillion-dollar manufacturing projects.

But less than three months into the president’s second term, Mr. Trump has hardly returned their lavish gestures with favors.

Can there be (sexual) pleasure and freedom in bondage?

A month ago, I mentioned Fifty Shades of Grey in a post about expressions of eroticism. As you may know, the novel centers on an evolving BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) sexual relationship between a recent college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a wealthy young businessman, Christian Grey. The novel was enormously when it came out, in 2011, had two sequels, and was adapted into a film in 2015. The audience was largely women.

I was puzzled, and curious. So, I took the book out of the library and read my way through 220 pages or so (out of 500). Yes, the sex is explicit, involves bondage and discipline, and the scenes are fairly long, eight or nine pages. I can’t imagine that such a book would have been a best seller in my youth, the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Inn some sense that is neither here nor there. Obviously, though, times have changed. What had me a bit puzzled was that this sexually explicit book depicted kinky sex. How popular is that?

I did a bit of looking around and found an academic article from 2015 reporting the results of a study in which 1,519 adults were asked to report on their sexual fantasies: What Exactly Is an Unusual Sexual Fantasy? It turns out that submission and domination themes are common for both men and women, at least in this sample, which was self-selected. In particular:

The proportion of women acknowledging submissive fantasies is not negligible. Being sexually dominated (64.6%), being tied up for sexual pleasure (52.1%), being spanked or whipped (36.3%), and being forced to have sex (28.9%) were all reported by significant proportions of women. Interestingly, the same sexual fantasies were also reported by significant proportions of men (53.3%, 46.2%, 28.5%, and 30.7%, respectively).

That settles that. Fifty Shades of Grey plays to the fantasies of a large part of the population.

But why? I found some remarks in a 2021 article by Jill Schildhouse in Oprah Daily that spoke to that:

Looking for a Christian Grey to your Anastasia Steele? Nearly 65 percent of women fantasize about being dominated sexually, according to a survey of more than 1,000 people that was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. “There's a reason 50 Shades of Grey made such an impact!” says Channa Bromley, a relationship and dating coach. “BDSM is alluring because one partner relinquishes all sense of control. They’re submissive to the person touching them, but subconsciously give themselves permission to be wild, to be orgasmic in response—she doesn't need to hold back.”

I can understand that. And the following video lets me feel it. No, it doesn’t depict sex, but rather shows a woman, Madison Young, testifying about a particular sexual experience:

The experience is about being an actress in a bondage film, her first. Here is what she says starting at about 10:40:

And my body starts to shake and I can feel myself riding these waves of total ecstasy. And I am melting into this rope. This rope is holding me, it is saying you are safe to let go, it is safe to surrender. Just do it. You are home. And all of a sudden it starts rushing back to me. Home, home, the best parts of home. The smell of autumn leaves and the first time that I felt rope in my hands, working in a summertime with my father, doing landscaping for Madison Tree Service, our family business. And I knew, Madison. Madison I am, I can feel it through my body, and the ropes, they were holding me. And it was a safe place. I was becoming Madison. I was grinding my cunt into that nice vibrator, and I felt it, I felt it, I felt that energy flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing through my body, up through, my crown, into the whole [??] I lost myself. I lost myself and I found myself at the same time, right there.

This is not the world I grew up in. That world would not have had a public venue where stories like this could be told. For that matter, such venues are certainly not common now. But YouTube is available everywhere.

Young obviously was talking about an experience she had. I wonder how many of those men and women who reported such fantasies have actually enacted them in whatever degree?

For some loose corroboration you might want to look at these posts from a few years ago:

• Women posing for a photographer and having (delicious) fun [#naked] (December 28, 2017)
• Araki and His Models (August 16, 2013)

From yesterday's photo walk, including cherry blossoms!

Epilepsy and AI: From seizure prediction to personalized medicine

Majd A. AbuAlroba, Adham Itbaishab, Boulenouar Mesraouaa, Unlocking new frontiers in epilepsy through AI: From seizure prediction to personalized medicine, Epilepsy & Behavior, Volume 166, 110327, May 2025

Highlights

• AI in Epilepsy Care: AI enhances seizure detection, personalized treatment, and diagnostic accuracy via ML/DL.
• Automated Analysis: CNNs/RNNs streamline EEG and imaging analysis, boosting diagnostic precision.
• Precision Medicine: Tailored ASM regimens and predictive modeling reduce trial-and-error in care.
• Advanced AI Integration: Explainable AI, data augmentation, and federated learning improve model transparency.
• Ethics & Future: Robust ethical, regulatory, and innovative frameworks drive safe AI adoption in neurology.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing epilepsy care by advancing seizure detection, enhancing diagnostic precision, and enabling personalized treatment. Machine learning and deep learning technologies improve seizure monitoring, automate EEG analysis, and facilitate tailored therapeutic strategies, addressing the complexities of epilepsy management. However, challenges remain, including issues of model accuracy, interpretability, and applicability across diverse patient populations. Ethical considerations, such as safeguarding patient privacy, ensuring data security, and mitigating algorithmic bias, underscore the importance of responsible AI integration. Collaborative efforts among neurologists, data scientists, and regulatory authorities are critical to refining models, establishing ethical guidelines, and ensuring safe clinical adoption. This review examines AI’s transformative potential, its current limitations, and the multidisciplinary initiatives driving its effective implementation in epilepsy care.

Culture and point of view: Differences between Westerners and East Asians

R.E. Nisbett, & T. Masuda, Culture and point of view, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 100 (19) 11163-11170, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1934527100 (2003).

Abstract: East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object, analyzing its attributes and categorizing it in an effort to find out what rules govern its behavior. Rules used include formal logic. Causal attributions tend to focus exclusively on the object and are therefore often mistaken. East Asians are more likely to attend to a broad perceptual and conceptual field, noticing relationships and changes and grouping objects based on family resemblance rather than category membership. Causal attributions emphasize the context. Social factors are likely to be important in directing attention. East Asians live in complex social networks with prescribed role relations. Attention to context is important to effective functioning. More independent Westerners live in less constraining social worlds and have the luxury of attending to the object and their goals with respect to it. The physical “affordances” of the environment may also influence perception. The built environments of the East are more complex and contain more objects than do those of the West. In addition, artistic products of the East emphasize the field and deemphasize individual objects, including people. Western art renders less of the field and emphasizes individual objects and people.

Warren Vache, “It Don’t Mean a Thing”

Vache is a master. Self-assured, smooth, elegant, melodic, not a note wasted.

Claude identifies Longwood Gardens from three photographs

Sometimes when I ask Claude to describe some photo it (what’s Claude’s pronouns?) identified a particular structure or place, as in this view from a New York City penthouse, or this shot of Times Square. This time I presented it with three photos and asked it to identify where they’re from. I didn’t actually know whether or not it would get it right, but I suspected it would. And I was correct.

Note what Claude says when I asked it about its decision process. I’m not at all sure whether or not I believe what it says. I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t actually remember its decision process; that’s not how it works. That pass through the model is gone. I figure that what it’s telling me is what it’s doing now, in response to my question. In any event, its answer is interesting.

As always, my prompts are in bold face; Claude’s replies are plain face.

* * * * *

I’ve given you three photographs. They are all from the same place, which is a tourist attraction somewhere in the eastern United States. I’ve visited there several times at Christmas season. It was jammed with visitors, many from Japan. Do you have some idea what this place is.

Based on the three images you've shared, I believe these photos are from Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

The first image shows a serene winter landscape with a small pond or lake, bare trees, and an elegant garden gazebo or folly with classical columns and a domed roof. The second image displays formal topiary garden elements with distinctive pyramid-shaped shrubs and ornamental hedges at sunset. The third image shows what appears to be a blue-tinted palm or dracaena plant inside what's likely one of their conservatories, with large windows visible in the background.

Longwood Gardens is indeed a popular tourist attraction in the eastern United States (specifically in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania) that becomes particularly crowded during the Christmas season. Their holiday light displays and decorations are famous, attracting visitors from around the world, including many international tourists. The combination of formal gardens, water features, conservatories with tropical plants, and classical architectural elements is very characteristic of Longwood Gardens.

That’s correct. Can you tell me more about your decision process? What role did each of those images play in your thinking? And the combination?

I'm happy to walk through my decision process for identifying Longwood Gardens from your images:

Image 1 played the most significant role in my identification. It shows several key features:

• A classical garden folly/gazebo with stone columns and a domed roof by water
• A serene pond with reflections of bare trees
• A mix of evergreen and deciduous trees in winter
• The overall formal garden design with natural elements

Image 2 reinforced my conclusion by showing:

• Distinctive formal topiary garden with geometric shapes
• The pyramid-shaped central topiary flanked by tiered topiary columns
• The sunset/golden hour lighting highlighting professional landscaping
• The overall formal, meticulous design common in historic estate gardens

Image 3 provided confirming evidence by showing:

• Tropical plants (appears to be a Dracaena or similar) in what's clearly a conservatory
• Large glass windows/greenhouse structure
• The juxtaposition of tropical plants with the winter scenes outside

The combination of these elements - formal gardens with water features, distinctive architectural elements, carefully maintained topiary, and a conservatory housing tropical plants - is very characteristic of Longwood Gardens.

Your additional context about Christmas season crowds and Japanese tourists also fits perfectly with Longwood Gardens, which is known for its spectacular holiday displays that attract international visitors.

I’m guessing there aren’t many places with a similar combination of features, even in the entire country.

You're absolutely right. The combination of features in these photos is quite distinctive and narrows down the possibilities significantly.

Longwood Gardens stands out in the United States for several reasons:

1. The specific architectural style of that classical garden folly by the water (in Image 1) is quite unique - it's a particular type of formal garden structure with columns and a dome that reflects the DuPont family's wealth and taste.
2. The level of topiary artistry shown in Image 2 is maintained at very few places in the country at that scale and with that degree of precision.
3. The extensive conservatory complex that houses tropical plants like those in Image 3, especially when combined with formal outdoor gardens, is rare in the US. Most botanical gardens specialize either in outdoor landscapes or greenhouse collections, but fewer combine both at this scale.
4. The overall design philosophy that blends formal European garden traditions with American landscape elements creates a distinctive aesthetic signature.

There are certainly other significant gardens in the eastern US (like the New York Botanical Garden, Winterthur, or Biltmore Estate), but the specific combination of water features, classical architecture, formal topiary, and extensive conservatories at this scale and quality level is indeed quite unique to Longwood Gardens.

I’ve visited there many times, first with my parents, and then (after they’d died) with my sister. The place really is quite spectacular. I love the conservatory in particular, the large tropical plants, but also the collections of orchids and miniature Japanese trees, I forget the term.

Thank you for sharing that personal connection to Longwood Gardens. It's special when places like that become part of our family history and memories. I can understand why you've visited many times - it really is an exceptional place.

The conservatory is indeed remarkable with its diverse collections. The Japanese miniature trees you're thinking of are bonsai trees. Longwood's bonsai collection is quite impressive, with some specimens that are decades or even centuries old. The orchid collection is also world-class - they typically have hundreds of varieties on display, especially during the Orchid Extravaganza they host in winter.

The combination of those intimate, carefully cultivated displays alongside the grand tropical plants creates such a wonderful contrast. Some of those palms and tropical specimens in the main conservatory spaces have been growing there for generations.

Did you have any particular section or seasonal display at Longwood that was your favorite when visiting with your family?

I like the lavish displays they prepare every Christmas, which is when I visited.

I can certainly appreciate why you enjoy visiting Longwood Gardens during the Christmas season. Their holiday displays are truly spectacular and have become a beloved tradition for many families.

The "A Longwood Christmas" display transforms the entire property with elaborate decorations, hundreds of thousands of lights, and themed installations both inside the conservatories and throughout the outdoor gardens. The fountains, when not winterized, are often choreographed to holiday music, and the conservatories are filled with poinsettias, amaryllis, and other festive plants arranged in breathtaking displays.

It's a perfect time to visit, with the contrast between the cold winter outside and the lush, warm conservatories creating a magical experience. The crowds certainly speak to its popularity, but there's something special about sharing that beauty with others who have traveled far to see it too.

Having those memories with your parents and continuing the tradition with your sister must make each visit particularly meaningful. Places that connect us to those we love often become the most precious.

A Letter to Mary Douglas about God, Religion, and Music

I’m in the process of thinking through my next column for 3 Quarks Daily. I’ve given it a provisional title: “My New-Found Patriotism: Vietnam, the Draft, Mennonites, Music, and Apollo.” I’ll probably include something from a letter I wrote to the late Mary Douglas some years ago. As you may know, she a well-known anthropologist best known for her book, Purity and Danger (1966). She’d been kind enough to blurb my book about music, Beethoven’s Anvil (2001). Once the book was out my editor, William Frucht, gave me her email address and we began corresponding.

While the book was reviewed in both Science and Nature, and other places as well, it was not the smash success I’d hoped it to be. But it did get me some speaking invitations, one of them at Goshen College, which is a Mennonite College in Indiana, Pennsylvania. The Mennonites are conservative Christians. How do I, an atheist, talk to devout Christians (about music)? Since Douglas was a devout Catholic, I asked her about it in a letter I wrote in October of 2002. I’ve appended my letter in full (though I’ve corrected a typo or two) along with her brief response.

* * * * *

Dear Mary,

I feel the need for a different kind of conversation. I’ve been asked to deliver an address at Goshen College in Indiana in the Spring of 2003 and I’ve accepted the invitation. Goshen College is a small school (c. 1000 students) affiliated with the Mennonite Church. Music is very important to the Mennonites, which is I why I’ve been asked to deliver an address. I can speak on any musical topic I wish but, given the nature of my book, on the one hand, and the importance of music to the Mennonites, on the other, the whole confused business of science and religion is going to be lurking in the background.

I don’t know much about the Mennonites, but I’ve been doing a bit of reading. As I said, music is important to them; they see it as a way to communicate to God. In particular, they have a long tradition of a capella four-part singing. This music is relatively austere. I note, however, that Charlie Keil has heard recordings of African Mennonites who sound like they’ve just invented four-part harmony. There are about 1,000,000 Mennonites world-wide, with c. 450,000 in North America and c. 350,000 in Africa.

Mennonite doctrine is fairly conservative. In particular, they believe in the “literal” truth of the Biblical account of creation. They are pacifists and also believe in a strict separation of church and state, so, for example, they refuse jury duty. They look at the world rather differently than I do. But the professor who made the invitation observed: “While I simply accept your scientific arguments on faith, I am entirely convinced that you and I 'hear' music the same way.”

When I say, in the first chapter of B’s Anvil, that I’m firmly anchored in the Western scientific view of the world, I am, of course, quite serious. When I said that, however, I was quite aware that I spend a great deal of time in the book discussing experiences that have little “purchase” within that worldview. I think that’s a real problem and that not only do such experiences need to be discussed, but that we need to reconsider how we think about cultures and groups. To the extent that that book is “science” (not something I fret over) science is seeming stranger and stranger to me.

When I started writing the book I wasn’t looking for the attractor stuff that I eventually put into it. That came late in the process, and something as a surprise. But it does mean that things like “group minds” are no mere metaphors; they are entities as real as quarks and dark matter, and equally strange. I can almost see my way to saying that, when Leonard Bernstein “becomes” Mozart, Mozart’s soul is, in fact, taking up residence in Bernstein’s body. If I admit of that, then it’s but a step to say that the same pretty much happens when anyone performs Mozart well, or listens to such a performance. As the same line of reasoning pretty much suggests that nothing remains of Mozart’s wife, not even her soul, I doubt that it would bring much comfort or satisfaction to a standard sort of religious. 

“If we are his creation, we should be this complicated and exciting, especially the brain.” 

But nonetheless I find it a rather striking and remarkable argument to make. In part what makes it so remarkable is that it follows directly from my insisting on treating the brain as a physical phenomenon, albeit an astonishingly complex one. Those musical attractors are beings most strange, remarkable in that once they come into existence, they can be passed down from person to person, group to group, generation to generation, yet they are, by nature, fluctuating and evanescent in the extreme. How can we comprehend that, when first a group of apes began to dance, they changed the world forever and began the trek to us?

And I find myself feeling a bit of sympathy with those fundamentalists who’ve been battling for years to have their view of human history presented in the schools, alongside Darwin’s view. It seems to me that one thing that’s going on is that they look out on the world in a commonsense way and see that man is quite different from animals. When they look at science, they see science telling them that, no, man is an animal, no more and no less. They cannot reconcile these views and so they reject science. I think that the science they are rejecting is wrong on that point and so I’m sympathetic with their rejection, even if I’m not sympathetic to creationist biology. And, given the time and energy this particular conflict has taken in America over the last century I’d be seriously inclined to allow creationism into the public schools, along side modern biology, just so we can stop wasting time with this particular squabble.

As you know, there is a well-established body of thinking on the vexed relationship between religion and science. I’ve read a little of this, and dip into it every now and then. But don’t mind much there to engage me. But those musical attractors, they are strange things to form in groups of human brains. As strange as spirits and gods.

I have no idea what I will tell the Mennonites about music. But whatever it is, I’ll be most interested in what they have to tell me in return.

Regards,

Bill B

* * * * *

Good luck with the Mennonites.

I don't really see the problems that loom in your mind about science and God. If we are his creation, we should be this complicated and exciting, especially the brain.

Have you come across the poetry of Fred Turner? especially a book of essays on Beauty. I find it inspirational about your kind of work.

Thanks for writing,

Mary

Selfie madness

The New York Times has an op-ed about selfies (through the ages). I've taken a bunch of them myself. Here's a Flickr album of my selfies.

If you click on that image you'll be whisked away to my Flicker album where you can scroll through the images. But if you position your cursor above the image you'll see little arrows appear (first at the) right and left. Click those to scroll back and forth through the set. Here's a link to my various posts about selfies. I've got a couple of posts where I comment on selfies. That post also contains two photos of Rembrant selfies, with a comment or three; he was famous for painting.

The Times op-ed, by Marisa Mazria Katz and Nato Thompson notes this about a self portrait by Jan van Eyck, from 1433:

This painting is sometimes credited as the first surviving self-portrait, though, as its title indicates, that designation is uncertain. There are clues that the subject is the artist himself — he stares deep into the eyes of the viewer (an unusual pose for the era), and van Eyck carved a Flemish saying into the gilded frame, “As I can,” in Greek characters. At the time, most paintings depicted either religious subjects or wealthy patrons. Van Eyck’s virtuosity brought him wealth and fame, and perhaps, via his self-portrait, a way of announcing a new kind of elite.

Later:

By 1888, George Eastman had developed the first roll-film Kodak camera, vastly simplifying the photographic process. The advances in photographic equipment allowed Joseph Byron, from a Manhattan photo studio, to take a proper selfie — arms outstretched, head cocked, eyes staring into the viewer’s.

Just yesterday:

Part of the first generation of artists to deploy social media, Ai Weiwei wrote in his inaugural blog entry in 2005: "To express yourself needs a reason; expressing yourself is the reason."

Mr. Ai took this selfie in an elevator as Chinese police officers were arresting him to prevent him from testifying on behalf of an activist documenting the devastation of the Sichuan earthquake. He uploaded it to social media to announce his location and precarious situation but also as an act of protest — foreshadowing the increasingly important role selfies would play in social movements to come.

And then we a bunch of selfies and self-portraits by women, where Katz and Thompson note: "Women today take far more selfies than men do, perhaps as an active way of molding their own images." I'll leave you with this:

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known for, among many things, creating installations that have become irresistible backdrops for museumgoers taking a selfie.

First constructed in the 1960s, her “Infinity Mirror Rooms” enthrall with their constellations of softly glowing lights, allowing viewers to see themselves reflected and refracted on mirrored walls, offering the possibility of a completely immersive self-portrait.

It's a fascinating article. Check it out.

Claude 3.7 describes psychedelic Marilyn

In all the other posts in my “Claude Describes” series I’ve had Claude describe a photograph or photographs that I’ve taken. This time it’s something different. Yes, it is a photo, but not of some scene. It’s a photo of a piece of art. Since I explain the art in the conversation I won’t do so here.

But I will point out that I was a bit surprised when Claude didn’t spontaneously identify Marilyn Monroe immediately. After all, she is a well-known public figure. I was even more surprised that it failed to do so when I explicitly asked it to identify the person in the image. So I told Claude that it was Marilyn Monroe. It came back with some basic information. I then asked it what artist was known for colorful portraits of her. At that point Claude searched the web (it can do that now) and came back with some links (I haven’t included them in the dialog.) But why did it have to search the web, or was it just showing me that it could do so? After all, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn’s are among his best-known images.

When I search on “Marilyn Monroe” I get scads of links, including scads of images. Claude indicated that it was “face blind.” Really? Is that inherent in the underlying LLM, or was Claude trained to be face blind when it was readied for the web? 

Note: Claude is right about those lines. They are psychedelic. At the very end of the post I’ve append a painting I did back in 1981. As you’ll see, I’ve done those lines before. Marilyn took me about two hours. I don’t know how many hours went into that painting, but I worked on it daily or so for somewhere between one and two weeks.

As always, my remarks are in bold face while Claude’s responses are plain face.

* * * * *

Describe this image in any terms you find useful and convenient.

This image shows an artistic portrait drawing of a woman with blonde curly hair styled in a classic vintage look. She's wearing a red dress with a plunging neckline and has red lipstick. She's smiling warmly at the viewer.

The background features vibrant, psychedelic wavy lines in multiple colors - orange, purple, blue, green, and red - creating a colorful, dynamic pattern that surrounds the central figure. On the right side of the composition, there are white calla lily flowers drawn in a more minimalist style.

The artwork appears to be done in a mixed media style, possibly colored markers or pens for the colorful wavy background and graphite or ink for the portrait and flowers. There's a small signature visible in the bottom left corner with what looks like a date of "05" (possibly 2005).

The overall style combines realistic portraiture with a psychedelic, 1960s-inspired background pattern, creating an interesting contrast between the subject and the vibrant surroundings.

Interesting, and perceptive. Do you recognize the young woman? She’s very famous, or was at one time, perhaps not quite so much these days.

Since I'm face blind, I can't recognize the specific woman in the portrait. Could you tell me who she is? Based on the artistic style and the blonde curly hair with vintage styling, it appears to be a stylized portrait of someone significant from entertainment history. The red dress and overall glamorous presentation suggest she might be a famous actress or performer from the mid-20th century, but I'd need you to tell me specifically who she is rather than making an identification based on facial features.

Marilyn Monroe.

Thank you for letting me know. Marilyn Monroe was indeed an iconic figure in entertainment history, known for her roles in films like "Some Like It Hot," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," and "The Seven Year Itch." She became a major sex symbol and pop culture icon in the 1950s and early 1960s.

This artwork presents an interesting artistic interpretation of her, combining her recognizable blonde curls and glamorous red dress with the psychedelic background that feels reminiscent of later artistic movements. The contrasting styles create an interesting juxtaposition between the classic Hollywood glamour she represented and more contemporary artistic expression.

Would you like to discuss any particular aspects of this artwork or Marilyn Monroe's cultural impact?

What artist was famous for his colorful prints of Marilyn Monroe?

I'll help you with that information. Let me search for the artist known for colorful prints of Marilyn Monroe.

[Claude searches the web and comes back with some links]

Based on my search, Andy Warhol was the famous artist known for his colorful prints of Marilyn Monroe. In the early 1960s, shortly after her death in 1962, Warhol immortalized Monroe's face in a series of celebrity portraits, beginning with a Diptych of 25 copies of her face. Over the years, he produced many more brightly colored prints of Monroe using his iconic silk screen printing method.

In 1967, Warhol began publishing limited-edition print portfolios under Factory Editions, with the Marilyn portfolio being the first such collection. It consisted of ten images created from the same 1953 publicity photograph of Monroe from the film "Niagara," which he transformed with intentionally off-register printing and vibrant, psychedelic color combinations.

The Marilyn Monroe series featured ten screen prints, each sized 36 x 36 inches, with vibrant colors reflecting her vivacious personality. In many of the prints, her iconic lips are boldly colored a deep red, and her platinum blonde hair is emphasized with variants of yellow.

These colorful Marilyn Monroe prints have become some of the most iconic and recognizable works of pop art, and they continue to influence contemporary artists today.

That's correct. But this wasn't by Warhol. As you correctly surmised, it’s mixed media. The basic imagine is a line drawing. I was given that line drawing and a choice of colored markers or colored pencils, or both, I suppose. I chose the markers. I signed and dated it in the lower left, though signature is partially clipped: “WLB 3.21.25.” WLB = William Lawrence Benzon.

Pansies

Using Machine Learning to Measure CEO Depression

Cheng, S.-Y. and Golshan, N.M. (2025), Silent Suffering: Using Machine Learning to Measure CEO Depression. Journal of Accounting Research, 63: 689-767. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.12590

Abstract: We introduce a novel measure of CEO depression by applying machine learning models that analyze vocal acoustic features from CEOs' conference call recordings. Our research was preregistered via the Journal of Accounting Research's registration-based editorial process. In this study, we validate this measure and examine associated factors. We find that greater firm risk is positively associated with CEO depression, whereas higher job demands are negatively associated with CEO depression. Female and older CEOs show a lower likelihood of depression. Using this novel measure, we then explore the relationship between CEO depression and career outcomes. Although we do not find any evidence that CEO depression is associated with CEO turnover, we find some evidence that turnover-performance sensitivity is higher among depressed CEOs. We also find limited evidence of higher compensation and higher pay-performance sensitivity for depressed CEOs. This study provides new insights into the relationship between CEO mental health and career outcomes.

H/t Tyler Cowen. 

I have an article in 3 Quarks Daily that has a different approach to depression:  Melancholy and Growth: Toward a Mindcraft for an Emerging World.

Why this obsession with IQ? [It's as American as apple pie.]

Amanda Hess, What Is Elon Musk’s IQ? NYTimes, Apr. 5, 2025.

FWIW estimates put Musk's IQ between 100-110 on the low end and 155. But we don't really know because we don't have the results of an IQ test for him. On the American obsession:

IQ is the term of choice for the man who doesn’t just think he’s smart, but thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Americans have long been obsessed with IQ, and the human rankings it facilitates, but rarely is that fixation stated so plainly, so incessantly, and at such high levels. To some of our most powerful people, IQ has come to stand in as the totalizing measure of a person — and a justification for the power that they claim.

Trump has spent much of his second term sorting humans into “low IQ individuals” (Kamala Harris, Representative Al Green) and “high IQ individuals” (cryptocurrency boosters, Musk, Musk’s 4-year-old son).

But a wider public fascination with IQ is in the water. (Sometimes literally: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has opposed the fluoridation of tap water, claiming that it causes a decrease in IQ.) Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is seeking “super high-IQ” applicants. Vice President JD Vance has insulted the British former diplomat Rory Stewart on X, writing that “he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130.” In February, a senior Trump administration official asked employees of the CHIPS Program Office to supply their SAT or IQ scores.

An interest in juicing IQ through training and supplements bridges the manosphere and the parenting internet. Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed “misogynist” and online masculinity idol who faces human-trafficking charges in Britain and Romania, claims an IQ over 140 and preaches on a podcast about how to “rewire your brain for relentless success.” Nucleus, a genetic testing start-up backed by the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and the venture capitalist Peter Thiel, made a stir last year with a test that supposedly calculates an “intelligence score based on your DNA.” As the writer Max Read pointed out recently, some X users have begun asking, apparently earnestly, how “low IQ” people experience the world, as if they are fundamentally less human.

Such fixations are a long American tradition, and they are cresting again now at a key moment in history — at the consummation between Silicon Valley capitalism and right-wing political power.

And Silicon Valley, of course, is obsessed with the intelligence of AI systems, giving them batteries of standard tests and, I assume here an there, IQ tests as well. The objective is to create systems that are smarter than humans in every way - and then hope that they don't decided to dominate and even eliminate us. (Hess gets to this at the end of her article.)

Hess then goes into a history of intelligence testing, including this little nugget:

In his 2023 history “Palo Alto,” Malcolm Harris writes of Stanford as an institution built on eugenic thinking. Before Leland Stanford founded Stanford University, he established what he called the “Palo Alto System” to classify, train and breed superior racehorses at an intense pace of production — a system that sometimes resulted in the snapped tendons of weaker colts but had the benefit of weeding out inferior horses before investing too much in their development. Once Stanford applied this punishing system to human achievement, it seeded a century-long obsession with intelligence scoring in Silicon Valley — and in the America that it increasingly shaped.

Then there's this:

It was America that pioneered the use of IQ for punitive ends, using low scores to deny certain immigrants entry to the country, to forcibly sterilize disabled people, and to push low-ranking soldiers into the line of fire while elevating high scorers to officer positions.

Though the crimes of Nazi Germany compromised the global popularity of eugenics, and encouraged the disavowal of the word, the British and American victories in the World War II also worked as an endorsement of the use of IQ testing in organizing war and, more generally, identifying elites.

In 1958, the British sociologist Michael Young used the term “meritocracy” to describe an emerging society organized around “merit” as the new justification for hierarchical power, which he defined as a combination of IQ scores and effort.

The last section of the article is entitled, "When Intelligence Is a Commodity," and reviews various commercial ventures aimed at boosting intelligence ending, of course, with AI.

There's more at the link. FWIW I have a number of posts focused on IQ.