In this transcript, neuroscientist Ashley and psychologist Cat critically analyze a controversial paper titled "Your Brain On Chat GPT" that claims to show negative brain effects from using large language models (LLMs).
Key Issues With the Paper:
Misleading EEG Analysis:
The paper uses EEG (electroencephalography) to claim it measures "brain connectivity" but misuses technical methods
EEG is a blunt instrument that measures thousands of neurons simultaneously, not direct neural connections
The paper confuses correlation of brain activity with actual physical connectivity
Poor Research Design:
Small sample size (54 participants with many dropouts)
Unclear time intervals between sessions
Vague instructions to participants
Controlled conditions don't represent real-world LLM use
Overstated Claims:
Invented terms like "cognitive debt" without defining them
Makes alarmist conclusions not supported by data
Jumps from limited lab findings to broad claims about learning and cognition
Methodological Problems:
Methods section includes unnecessary equations but lacks crucial details
Contains basic errors like incorrect filter settings
Fails to cite relevant established research on memory and learning
No clear research questions or framework
The Experts' Conclusion:
"These are questions worth asking... I do really want to know whether LLMs change the way my students think about problems. I do want to know if the offloading of cognitive tasks changes my own brain and my own cognition... We need to know these things as a society, but to pretend like this paper answers those questions is just completely wrong."
The experts emphasize that the paper appears designed to generate headlines rather than provide sound scientific insights, with potential conflicts of interest among authors who are associated with competing products.
Nothing beats Maccy.app for clipboard management, but DoubleMemory does look great.
For me, DoubleMemory falls between the cracks:
- bookmarks in multiple browsers on multiple devices
- Maccy.app for clipboard management on MacOS
- Bear.app for notes on MacOS, iOS and iPad
I’m actually not a clipboard manager user before. That’s why I wanted to avoid saving everything into its history. I wanted everything in DoubleMemory to be deliberately curated. That’s also why I’m hesitate to support other feed like features like email subscriptions or RSS feeds.
But yes Maccy is great, DM’s first version looks very much like a list of snippets on menu bar and then a list of snippets with a preview on the side, eventually evolved to its current form.
Thanks for trying and finding a spot for it in your workflow!
Not everything comes with evidence, nor is everything a court case. If you have experienced racism again and again though, you can often tell when you see it, or you can quite safely deduce it in a case or wrong treatment, even without hard proof.
> If you have experienced racism again and again though, you can often tell when you see it, or you can quite safely deduce it in a case or wrong treatment, even without hard proof.
There may be some overlap between systemic racial mistreatment and child abuse - however the nuances seem to set them far apart. I believe conflating the two makes it harder to get the full measure of each.
It's not that they can't be compared. It's that they ought to be fully considered in isolation first.
>Racism? I didn't know Romanians and Danes were of different races.
Now you do. In the ideology of racism (from the 19th century to the Nazis and beyond) not only Romanians and Danes are of different races, but also Nordic/Germanic/Anglosaxon are of different race to Italians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and so on, including of course the Irish. With a long history of those (and more) not considerd "white" in the US, and being persecuted by the KKK and others.
>Conflating racial prejudice with cultural prejudice is a cheap trick.
Yes, god forbid we condemn prejudice as racial when in fact it's just prejudice because of their "inferior" culture.
Of course, though, those two go hand-in-hand historically. For example, according to Nazi racism, Jews had a "damaging influence" on German culture, they promoted various forms of decadence and so on. And of course every modern racist would say they don't hate blacks as a race, just black culture and crime and so on.
>Conflating racial prejudice with cultural prejudice is a cheap trick.
Race is culture. There is no scientific or biological basis for the racial classifications we use. That whole framework was invented by European slave traders and imperialists to justify white supremacist ideology. At one point, Irish and Italian immigrants to the US weren't considered white. Whether Jews are white or not depends on one's opinion of them (they tend to become less white the more paranoid people become of them.) Greeks wouldn't be considered white by many people yet many white people also hold up ancient Greece as the bedrock of "white culture," which as a concept doesn't even really make sense. "Asian" defines half the human population, so broad as to be nearly useless. "Black" is a whole can of worms. None of it is scientific or objective, all of it is a social construct.
If you happen to get a bit into the whole Nazi classification of races (don't, you almost certainly have something better to learn), you'll find that they made a distinction between Germanic "Aryan" types and Slavs.
No, I don't have any bias, it's everybody else having biases. To be sure, I just checked how many times before I was biased (it's zero times), so I can't be now.
Wait, are there Europeans who don't acknowledge that this bias exists? In my experience with European colleagues and those who've traveled a lot there it's so universally-acknowledged that this would surprise me.
"Your Brain On Chat GPT" Paper Analysis
In this transcript, neuroscientist Ashley and psychologist Cat critically analyze a controversial paper titled "Your Brain On Chat GPT" that claims to show negative brain effects from using large language models (LLMs).
Key Issues With the Paper:
Misleading EEG Analysis:
The paper uses EEG (electroencephalography) to claim it measures "brain connectivity" but misuses technical methods EEG is a blunt instrument that measures thousands of neurons simultaneously, not direct neural connections The paper confuses correlation of brain activity with actual physical connectivity Poor Research Design:
Small sample size (54 participants with many dropouts) Unclear time intervals between sessions Vague instructions to participants Controlled conditions don't represent real-world LLM use Overstated Claims:
Invented terms like "cognitive debt" without defining them Makes alarmist conclusions not supported by data Jumps from limited lab findings to broad claims about learning and cognition Methodological Problems:
Methods section includes unnecessary equations but lacks crucial details Contains basic errors like incorrect filter settings Fails to cite relevant established research on memory and learning No clear research questions or framework The Experts' Conclusion:
"These are questions worth asking... I do really want to know whether LLMs change the way my students think about problems. I do want to know if the offloading of cognitive tasks changes my own brain and my own cognition... We need to know these things as a society, but to pretend like this paper answers those questions is just completely wrong."
The experts emphasize that the paper appears designed to generate headlines rather than provide sound scientific insights, with potential conflicts of interest among authors who are associated with competing products.
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