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Cambridge, MA USA
Joined February 2009
The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social retweeted
Author copies of 'The Idealized Brain: Uniting Philosophy of Science and Computational Neuroscience' (MIT) have arrived. Exciting! Stay tuned for its official open access release on 15 December 2026. For more information about the book, see mitpress.mit.edu/97802620549…
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New this week from the MIT Press. Happy publication day to our authors! 📖
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In his new book “Morbid," Dr. Saul Newman argues that “aging science” has fallen under an avalanche of grift and mail-order marketing scams. His AMA starts in just a few minutes. Join him at r/IAmA and ask him anything! reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1… @reddit_AMA
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Groups are not naturally wise or foolish. Their structure decides. In "Goodthink," Damon Centola shows how evenly distributed influence helps groups correct errors, reduce polarization, and make better decisions. 5 insights via @NextBigIdeaClub: bookoftheday.nextbigideaclub…
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What makes a toy a good toy? To Jess Uhre Rahbek, who spent years developing a theory of play while studying with @LEGO_Group's in-house design team, it’s all about creating objects that foster “playful tension.” thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/h…
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The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social retweeted
"A lot of people feel like there's nothing they can do...There's something everyone can do to make their cyberspace safer." Listen to Francine Berman on @radioopensource discussing her book, BETTER TECH: Putting People First in Cyberspace. bit.ly/4ypmopy @mitpress
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The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social retweeted
Have you seen our most newest titles? See what we've recently published or titles that are coming soon via the MIT press catalogue and our website 👀 mitpress.mit.edu/publisher/s…
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The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social retweeted
Countdown to #ThePowerofLines pub day (29 days!) from @mitpress. Enjoy today's teaser!
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"Essential reading for anyone who has ever looked at a map or a graph. It will change the way you think about information design forever." — @MonaChalabi "Data By Design" shows how visualization can lead to a more liberatory world. Out Oct 20th: mitpress.mit.edu/97802620561…
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In "Morbid," Dr. Saul Newman explores the extraordinary failures of modern aging science and how it has been overtaken by profitable bunk. Join him for a Reddit AMA (@ r/IAmA) on Tuesday, October 20th at 9 am ET!
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Awe thrives on human connection, but tech-inspired awe crowds out that human element, "divorc[ing] the observer from the sense of connection with others" as "American Technological Sublime" author David Nye once observed. time.com/article/2026/10/02/…
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The U.S. Department of Defense conceived GPS in 1973. But as Alexander MacDonald writes, Edward Everett Hale dreamed up the idea of using a satellite to determine one’s position on Earth over a century earlier. thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/t…
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"Rhyme is in the DNA of the world we live in." An interview with "Why Is the World So Beautiful?" author Nicholas Humphrey on Instant Genius @sciencefocus: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social retweeted
Longevity research has a BS problem: "How impossible ages, lost paperwork, and invented biographies become scientific fact." via @mitpress realclearscience.com/2026/10…
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The MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social retweeted
Anthropic is right to be warning about self-replicating LLMs. We published research on self-replicating neural networks at MIT Press. And watching the neural networks self-replicate was one of the most exciting (and terrifying) experiences of my life. But LLMs are an entirely different breed of AI. They have real-world knowledge with human-like capabilities. And the world is moving faster than ever. At the same time, this is only the beginning of the exponential.
“Our experiments suggest that small AI models may be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial IoT devices, like smart ovens and off-brand Android TV boxes. A replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there’s no centralized point to shut off - though it may be slow (with a doubling time of days). Unlike non-AI malware, it could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own. In our evals, a 9B model got inference running on 8 of the 9 hardware types we tested. Models of 30B parameters and under can already complete many of the individual steps for replication today, though they make mistakes when composing them end to end. In our simplified evals, GLM-5.2 and stronger models are capable of end to end replication. If small models improve at their historical rate, they’ll match this capability level by the end of this year. Small weight-based replicators may be possible soon after.” -@bucketofkets @willzhou97 anthropic.com/research/self-…
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Saul Justin Newman has, to quote Mary Roach, “a deliciously wicked wit.” In an excerpt from “Morbid," out today, he takes a skeptical look at claims about the world’s oldest people and the institutions that certify them: thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/l…
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New this week from the MIT Press. Happy publication day to our authors! 📖
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Jess Rahbek blends insightful analysis with accessible storytelling in "This is Why You Love LEGO," a fascinating, free-wheeling exploration of LEGO and what makes it such an endlessly fun toy. Out today: mitpress.mit.edu/97802620549…
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In Alaska, Patricia Cochran, a Yupik native scientist, told me "we have no word for ‘wilderness.’ What you call ‘wilderness’ we call our back yard.'' thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/t…
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