ask and ye shall receive
Ok. since you guys want something to talk about and something that has real
world impact, time to wake up samurai.
I for one hate googles guts:
Here is me trying to just routinely log into a email:
https://dropr.co/v/52938b11 <https://dropr.co/v/52938b11>
https://streamable.com/dry2of <https://streamable.com/dry2of>
Since you at the time of that email were bored.
Then how about this:
Build the better email?
Since google has grown to big and arrogant. I don't want the email of the
future, how about putting your fancy degrees to good use then, lets make a
ourselves email that's not complete ass and owned by a pathetic little ai-bro
shit. Make the company where shit just fucking works, with kick fucking ass
stuff and actuall fucking humans in the loop, You folks said your bored and
claimed to have a lot of time:
-> Any of you folks have experience with unfucking your email from these
shitforbrains?
->and since you said you have lots of time: lets build, maintain, and make go
viral the starts of new company to do all the stuff google claims to do, yet
utterly fails to deliver on mostly making shovelware, and enshitifying there
email. So instead of enshitification and contributing to 2026 bein a dick ramed
into peoples asses: make a company puts up where those motherfuckers need to stfu.
Can start with what'd be small fries for you: email and mass storage, basic
email that's extremely back to basics... I won't suggest going alltheway back
to POP that might be a bit to back to basics. Start with imap, then build based
on correctness and look at googles mistakes and where they suck ass I mean I
for one think there aidsinfestedly terrible at having protection vs woopsies:
from email landing in the blast radius of the latest internet wyrm ungodly
amounts of spam, I don't know about ya'all but my spam box routinely saturated
with junk. surely your big bored brains can do better.
On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 9:55 AM glen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Yes, the way the active inference people (in particular - much less so than
the predictive processing people) write/talk is either simply very dense *or*
laden with bias.
But re: your cross-trophy (?) comment - I can't help but think we're a lot
more like octupusses than we want to admit. Each anatomical region of the brain
might be thought of as a semi-independent ganglion. And maybe it just so
happens our ganglia are clustered in our head/CNS for convenience or some sort
of energy minimization ... or maybe risk minimization (which is why the
meningeal lymphatic architecture paper was included in my list). Sure, *some*
newer regions may only be 'efficient' because our ganglia are co-located. But
we might also be able to smear those out, distribute them through (an
artificial) organism with other pathways.
Anyway, my point is that if we thought of these subnetworks/circuits as
separate ganglia that could have been located closer to the sensorimotor
manifold they manage, then interoception kindasorta reduces away.
On 7/11/26 3:33 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> I skimmed the predictive processing chapter. My main thought was
wondering if it still seemed interesting if translated into less jargon-ey English.
>
> My second thought was: Doesn't Gibson help with this? Isn't the "loop" problem a
"problem" at least in part because you are trying to find the loops inside the organism
instead of in the larger organism-environment system?
>
> /If/ there is specification in the ambient energy, /then /the loop can extend outside the organism, and exist at
whatever scale the relevant patterns exist at. Yes, you need sufficient neuronal support for the organism to do their part
of the loop... at least with us very-neuronal organisms... but that type of "complexity" is different than the
complexity one might imagine if they thought _all_ the work had to happen inside the head. For example, recognizing that
one is accelerating towards the ground --- because the rate of optic expansion is accelerating --- could be much easier
than trying to "predict" whether one is accelerating towards the ground by comparing a series of snapshot images
and trying to neuronally create an internal model of everything happening around you. You can offload most of that by not
trying to "model" things that are directly perceivable. And that can extend as far as we can extend
"perceivable."
>
> Re the first thought.... Here is a quote:
>
> The second type of predictive circuitmight support the sequencing
and arbitration of behaviors. Simple solutions to these problemsmight appeal to
generative models for sequential dynamics (Parr et al., 2023). For example,
locomotion behavior in C. elegans might be supported by sequential
generativemodels that encode expected transitions among locomotion behaviors(e.g.,
forward and backward movements, left and right turns), with decision points
corresponding to bifurcations in the dynamical sequences (Kato et al., 2015). In
turn, the transitions prioritized at bifurcation points might depend partially on
external sensation and partially on internal (e.g., interoceptive) sensations
reporting impending drives and needs, which leads us to the next point.
>
>
> So far as I can tell, that means something like:
>
> A second thing well-developed neuron clumps do is ensure movements happen in order, so
as to form coherent "behaviors." We can understand how this happens in several ways, some of
which Ph.D.-level scientists call "simple." Roundworms, for example, swim in predictable
ways, sometimes changing direction. Those turns sometimes depend on external factors, at least in part.
>
>
> Seriously... this might be my weird form of getting old and yelling at kids to get off my
lawn... but... Ugh... A lot of that might as well be pretentious continental philosophers stringing
jargon together. "The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of
mediation and as a fall into the exteriority of meaning. To this epoch belongs the difference between
signified and signifier, or at least the strange separation of their 'parallelism,' and the
exteriority, however extenuated, of the one to the other." Orwell could take at least half the
sentences as examples of bad writing, and not be wrong. Even in my attempt at a translation, the word
"ensure" is highly suspect.
>
> Best,
> Eric
>
> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 10:35 AM glen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
>
> Of course. You have a knack for pushing my buttons. 8^D
>
> What irritates me about all this active inference and predictive processing
advocacy [⛧] is well-represented in the title of that chapter "From Sensorimotor Skills
to Higher Cognition". [grrrr] The reason I took the time to download it and start
skimming it was my hope for a thorough *composition* from the very small-fast feedback loops
to the large-slow ones. There are a lot of citations. So maybe the clues are in there. But
I'm lazy.
>
> What I *want* ... what I really really want is evidence of
predictive processing in a minimal model organism like C. Elegans or Drosophilia.
Such exist [1-5]! But now we need something like connectome (or simpler?) circuits
in more complex organisms that show how small-fast predictive processing composes
into large-slow predictive processing. Does the model work at *all* scales? Only
some scales? Is it like a percolating stew of predictions, some of which are
suppressed by the larger circuits?
>
> Speaking of which, I discovered this book just last night:
>
>
https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952
<https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952>
<https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952
<https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952>>
>
> But as always, it's silly to keep buying books I'll never read. I post it here
in the hopes that you readers out there might read it and tell me what it says ... or maybe
I'll buy the epub and feed it to Claude ... or maybe it's read it already? I haven't
checked. You'll remember we've had such arguments before, when you claimed I *must* believe
in the floor in order to get out of bed in the morning. And my counter was that it is my
*doubt* about the existence of the floor that allows me to get out of bed. IDK if Mugg's
"DJ mixing board" model fits one of our stances better. But I do like it better
than the overly simplistic fast vs slow thinking model.
>
>
> [1] Dimakou A, Pezzulo G, Zangrossi A, Corbetta M. The predictive
nature of spontaneous brain activity across scales and species. Neuron. Published
online March 1, 2025. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2025.02.009
> [2] Kaplan H, Nichols A, Zimmer M. Sensorimotor integration in
Caenorhabditis elegans: a reappraisal towards dynamic and distributed
computations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences. 2018;373. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0371
> [3] Kim A, Fitzgerald J, Maimon G. Cellular evidence for efference
copy in Drosophila visuomotor processing. Nature neuroscience. 2015;18:1247-1255.
doi:10.1038/nn.4083
> [4] Lin A, Witvliet D, Hernandez-Nunez L, Linderman S, Samuel A,
Venkatachalam V. Imaging whole-brain activity to understand behavior. Nature
reviews Physics. 2022;4:292-305. doi:10.1038/s42254-022-00430-w
> [5] Wang S, Segev I, Borst A, Palmer S. Maximally efficient
prediction in the early fly visual system may support evasive flight maneuvers.
PLoS Computational Biology. 2019;17. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008965
>
>
> [⛧] It seems to me that most of the peri-Friston work borders on
advocacy of the model(s) as opposed to challenging them. But I'm not a scholar. So
my scope is very small.
>
> On 7/6/26 8:15 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > Hi, Glen,
> >
> > I liked the predictive processing thing. It coheres with an idea
I have been kicking around of late. People tend to think of cognitive processes as
putting us in touch with the world as it is. Then we look at that represented world
and make decisions about the future. Wouldn't it make more sense for cognitive
processes to put us in touch with the world as it is going to be? To translate that
back into monist talk, we live in a world of successive anticipations. As I get
more frail, I become aware of all the hard work my cerebellum must be doing to
anticipate the consequences of any action I might take that changes my center of
gravity. A delayed prediction can lead to my taking actions that compound a balance
prediction and send me to the floor. it's like I am doing judo to myself.
> >
> > Is that annoying enough to feed the beast?
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 6:31 PM glen <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> <mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>>> wrote:
> >
> > It's so dead, here, I figure it can't hurt to post arbitrary
nonsense I've run across lately:
> >
> > Meningeal lymphatic architecture and drainage dynamics
surrounding the human middle meningeal artery
> > https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693>
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693>>
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693>
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693>>>
> >
> > Constructing a lower-bound estimate of the global number of
insect species on a hyperdiverse empirical foundation
> > https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123>
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123>>
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123>
<https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123>>>
> >
> > Predictive Processing: From Sensorimotor Skills to Higher
Cognition
> > https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011>
<https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011>>
<https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011>
<https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011>>>
> >
> > As always, I'm reading them in fitful bursts, interleaved
across each other and all the other open tabs and crap strewn about my desk. So ....
grain of salt and all.
> >
