On BioScience and Life and Such

Reasoning

In Uncategorized on October 17, 2025 at 2:24 pm

Below you’ll find a quote from The Eric Topol X-account, which he has taken from a recent nature article on AI in medicine (paywalled):

GPT-5 represents a meaningful advance: fewer hallucinations, better reasoning benchmarks, and stronger rule-following in its best variant. However, it remains a probabilistic text generator, not a reasoning engine. Whether next-token prediction can support robust, generalizable reasoning is still debated. Until that question is resolved, the most insidious risk may be the hardest to detect: the illusion of understanding. In medicine and public health, in which decisions carry life-or-death stakes, that illusion can be as dangerous as outright error.

A reasonable (sic) argument I guess. I wonder though: Isn’t [human] understanding (i.e. reasoning, generalizable or not) also based on next token prediction ? The difference being that our tokens aren’t necessarily limited to text. The illusion may be that human reasoning is something magical.

What is outright dangerous is bad performing systems of next token predictions. In my experience, those systems can be both human and artificial.

September 1st FDH-response to tweet

In FDH-OFF project on September 1, 2025 at 11:57 am

I’m using my updated Non-violent response app regularly on tweets. The updated app is now public and can be used by anyone. I have also updated the blog-home of the FDH-project.

The majority of tweets that I find are from MAGA and supporters, as they have a very high exposure right now. I am trying to find examples also from their opponents, but I am unsure where to look for examples equally relevant in this setting.

This is another one that was a bit to obvious an example, to ignore.

Tweet today:

The non-twitter version of the app has a longer version of the response which I would like to include this time:

“I hear your strong feelings about journalistic ethics and transparency in media. It seems important to you that news organizations maintain high standards and that there are consequences when trust is broken. While we can discuss concerns about media practices and past controversies, we can do so while respecting everyone’s basic dignity. Perhaps we could explore specific ways to improve media accountability while engaging in constructive dialogue that brings people together rather than dividing them. What specific changes would you like to see in how news organizations handle political commentary and accountability?”

App generated response:

I understand feeling frustrated about media integrity and wanting accountability in journalism. Everyone deserves accurate reporting and transparent commentary. Perhaps we could focus on discussing specific concerns about journalistic practices while respecting the dignity of all involved.

Quote of the month June 2025

In Uncategorized on June 10, 2025 at 1:27 pm

From: Beyond Redemption

When belief defines reality, those with the strongest convictions—the crazy, the obsessive, the delusional—have the power to shape the world.

Originally a fantasy quote, but horrifyingly accurate in the real world too.