Lionel Page

Many birds have four colour-sensing cone cell types in their eyes (unlike our three and most mammals' two), giving them vision into the UV range, and (presumably) a much richer experience of colour. Birds that appear dull brown to us likely appear resplendent to other birds

This is really not surprising. In liberal countries, gay men have an interest in signaling their difference to find potentially like-minded partners. The differences in voices are perhaps influenced by innate characteristics, but you’d expect strategic differences in…

I sent this to a friend, who is a partner at a prominent law firm. Their response, verbatim: “lol no. We’ve tried all the frontier models. It’s useful for doing a first pass on low level stuff, but makes tons of mistakes and associate has to check everything.”

I'm observing a mini Moravec's paradox within robotics: gymnastics that are difficult for humans are much easier for robots than "unsexy" tasks like cooking, cleaning, and assembling. It leads to a cognitive dissonance for people outside the field, "so, robots can parkour &…

Another quietly subversive paper. Urbanists are often young and childless — this is a unique demographic most interested in city centers Even in Copenhagen, people move to the city when young, but move out to suburbs when they get married/have kids, and don't move back

You’re probably not right about everything. But what if your whole political identity is built on that assumption?- What are the chances you’re right about everything? by @page_eco optimallyirrational.com/p/what-are-the…

Good vs. Evil; it’s one and the same.

'water is transparent only within a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, so living organisms evolved sensitivity to that band, and that's what we now call "visible light". ' (found via HN)

A road in Pompeii, built before AD 79, the small white stones reflected moonlight, making it easier to see at night.

This (👇) illustrates just how popular citizens' assemblies (CAs) have become in the past two decades, with some arguing that the ills of representative democracy can be addressed by deploying CAs more extensively. Here is why I tend to be sceptical about these arguments. 1/n

An economist in Sweden just got a hold of the data from a quarter of a billion online chess games held on @chesscom to test a classic question: Does winning one game make you more likely to win the next? In other words: do “hot hands” or “psychological momentum” exist in…

Scientific claims that are published multiple times are more likely to replicate than if published only once. And this is especially so if the multiple publications are from *independent* teams

Life in 1776: - heat is such a luxury that Thomas Jefferson can’t write in deep winter bc his ink freezes (one reason perhaps why Independence Day is in July) - nighttime darkness is such a burden that George Washington reportedly spent $15k in today’s dollars on candles every…

No, that would make gold worthless and we’d all still be poor. Take a goddamn economics class.

Another great example of how we adapt to success and overestimate how happy it will make us.

How has the normative turn in social science affected our ability to produce and use theory? Using a case study of punishment studies during/after the normative turn, I find authors are mistaking normativity for theory. Published today in @Theory_Society! link.springer.com/article/10.100…

So Zelensky did everything Trump asked him to do, signed away mineral rights, agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, and the U.S. still cut off previously funded weapons supplies, leaving Ukrainian cities defenseless against Russian missile strikes. A lesson to all here.