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So you think we’re close to AGI? Listen up: David Deutsch

Could cost-benefit analysis tell us whether our enjoyment of long summer nights, and our reluctance to have really dark winter mornings is worth hundreds of excess traffic fatalities? Or is that not how we actually make decisions? buff.ly/DmtQNpx

US research by @al_bi99 et al finds people’s understanding of inflation is at best patchy— •consequences are reasonably well understood •causes less so •little recognition of tradeoffs regarding both inflation itself, and controlling it: buff.ly/euBu1yS

How certain or uncertain AI systems are about their answers to our question—and hence, how much should we trust them? Researchers have developed a way to measure AIs’ confidence, called ‘conformal tree’: buff.ly/qkjRxOE

Do we pass on what is lacking from our diet—eg through famine—in our genes? Research in mice suggests the effects of malnutrition can be passed on through at least four generations of descendants: buff.ly/KJTFhdf

Is the twilight zone—the dozy period just before you drop off, not quite awake and not quite asleep—a period of high creativity, as creative people have been claiming? It’s not too crazy an idea, writes David Robson, looking at the underlying science: davidarobson.substack.com/p/sleep-how-to…

People round the world dance in different ways, but everybody dances. Whence such frivolity? Is it an expression of Durkheim’s ‘collective effervescence’? Cool little video on the remarkable power of dance that makes ut a uniting necessity: buff.ly/awXI3JW

The universe holds many mysteries, in between the smallest, subatomic particle scale, and the vast astronomical scale of galaxies and clusters. @profbriancox quantifies the universe in three steps: buff.ly/7jnxGx8

I dunno. Depends which one is the restored version.

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich were an outlier; Peter, Paul and Mary weren’t. Look around and it’s three pretty much everywhere—from the father, the son and the holy ghost to sex, drugs and rock&roll. @neelburton on our fascination with triads: buff.ly/LvgGslG

The point is that it's easy to cross There's a margin at which society is preserved by people choosing to adhere to rules they don't strictly need to follow

The eyes *don’t* have it Systematic review and meta-analysis finds eyespots are not better at deterring predators than other conspicuous patterns—bigger and fewer geometric patterns were most effective, paired concentric patterns weaker than single ones: buff.ly/wjiWjbs

I’m not sure an above average behavioural scientist would consider the Dunning-Kruger effect just another name for the ‘illusory superiority’ effect. But Davies and Pickett have a point—some scientists do have an urge to be a pioneer, no matter what: buff.ly/FD3uQaf

Memory-driven metabolism Research finds mice placed in a cold environment create memories which, when they are later returned to it, trigger an increase in their metabolic rate and core body temperature—even if it is now at room temperature: buff.ly/OdNr8EN

We sometimes do stuff that others think is wrong (like they sometimes do stuff *we* think is wrong). But how often do we do something that *we* really think—at that time—is wrong? It is as if we have an inner judge pronouncing on right and wrong: buff.ly/DmtQNpx

Don’t be downtrodden when a customer or client complains. Be grateful instead. Here’s why: buff.ly/7P6OnjE via Oliver Payne

Anyone any idea what this new price-pain study summarized in this thread could be? My searches are drawing a big fat blank… Most grateful for any tips!

Did actual cowboys actually ever say “Yee-haw!”? (And if they never did, why is it such a common trope?) buff.ly/Fos76Rb HT @docgrawitch