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Summary using Claude 3.7 Sonnet:

"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.

Re:Anthropic's original take home assignment open sourced on Wednesday January 21, 2026 @05:02AM (#46703391)
"1) Python is unreadable."

Would you prefer C or C++?

"2) AI companies are content with slop and do not even bother with clear problem statements."

It's a filter. If you don't get the problem, you'll waste their time.

"3) LOC and appearance matter, not goals or correctness."

The task was goal+correctness.

"4) Anthropic must be a horrible place to work at."

Depends on what you do. For this position it's probably one of the best companies to work at.

Re:Running Claude Code dangerously (safely) on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @10:06AM (#46692523)
sandbox-exec on MacOS (ie. https://github.com/neko-kai/claude-code-sandbox) seems like the perfect solution to me.

Missing FreeBSD jails in 2026 is kind of weird (hello 1999)...

Re:What Killed Perl? on Wednesday November 19, 2025 @10:23AM (#45980687)
It was never about Perl, it was the plethora of alternatives.

Python evolved, PHP had 1000 times more "how to get started" articles, Node happened. And LAMP became the default for noobs.

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

"Made" or "designed"?

Our Tesla Model 3 was made in China…

Seems like the bias is on your part… Which is ironic, given the articles content….

Or do you have _evidence_?

After using the 8GB M1 MacBook Pro, my new job gave me a 16" 32GB MacBook Pro 2,6GHz i7 - and I actually miss my M1!

Battery life and fan is rather annoying now :(

Re:Visualization of 40M Cell Towers on Thursday February 18, 2021 @06:32AM (#26178623)
"While 98 percent of households had a television and 69 percent had a mobile phone, only 19 percent had a computer."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-unicef/tacklin...

Re:Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @05:44PM (#25921931)
I loved mine at least a year and was quite happy for another year. Some sites worked awesome, others sucked hard due to crazy pay loads.

I blame shitty sites more than Apples architecture :(

Re:Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @09:30AM (#25846813)
Amazon, Google, Microsoft is not a duopoly :)

And while there are probably some services on AWS you can’t find at a competitor - that’s mostly a choice (aka profit margin) made by the competitor.

Re:Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @10:09AM (#25834093)
Apache Solr?

Maybe not "better", but useful and with a Apache 2.0 license :)

Re:Google Has 'Shattered' Its Pipeline to Black Talent on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @10:52AM (#25748463)
She wasn't "forced out"?
Re:hCaptcha now runs on fifteen percent of the internet on Thursday November 26, 2020 @04:36AM (#25218384)
"hCaptcha now ruins fifteen percent of the internet"

I loathe captchas, especially Googles who seems to punish my use of privacy extensions (ie ublock origin, Ghostery Lite).

Captcha is a ok tool when you have valid reasons to assume the user is a bot (multiple failed logins, unusual traffic, password resets etc.). Used as a default it only antagonizes users.

Re:The Mac is losing me on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:56AM (#25148230)
Old fart here too.

I have the exact same experience as you, and even after using Linux om multiple machines for 20+ years (desktops, laptops and servers) I still prefer Macs and MacOS.

Changed work recently and went back to my late 2013 MacBook Pro for a few months. It still works great with Big Sur - try that on a 7 years old PC...

And I love my 2 days old MacBook Pro m1, the keyboard is perfect and the esc-key is as God intended it (yeah, for emacs...).

Re:It is possible to detect and block Chrome headless on Thursday January 18, 2018 @09:55AM (#16177468)
Utilizing javascript on browser, the server can detect it's headless.

The server can then block, redirect or feed the browser erroneous data.

Re:Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016) on Thursday November 30, 2017 @04:17AM (#15814439)
The missing guidelines:

* Please read submissions before commenting on them

Guess you missed the important part:

"Federal laws prohibit mailing unordered merchandise to consumers and then demanding payment."

Re:Post a boarding pass on Facebook, get your account stolen on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:53AM (#15318711)
It's currently at AWS, where was it 42 minutes ago?
Please don't call this "oversight".

He was (made) aware of the problem and chose to keep the default.

Re:Cheap Beijing Flights With a Dangerous Catch on Sunday August 06, 2017 @04:42AM (#14940454)
Your "personal attack" is text from https://www.airmule.com/about/ under "Meet the Cofounders".

Makes you confident about Airmule?

Re:It's Never Too Early to Fire on Friday May 26, 2017 @05:43AM (#14422941)
"You can never comment to early", on the other hand...

He clarifies the provocative title in the section titled "How long should you give people a chance?"

Re:It's Never Too Early to Fire on Friday May 26, 2017 @05:39AM (#14422934)
Read the first two paragraphs again, please.
Re:International Travel Guide for Basecamp employees on Wednesday May 03, 2017 @12:09PM (#14257040)
But you still have to choose between those two. By voting -preferably.
Re:International Travel Guide for Basecamp employees on Wednesday May 03, 2017 @06:40AM (#14254504)
A large number of Democrats voted for Trump by not voting at all.

They made a choice to let Trump win, just to tell Hillary (and the Democratic Party) that they didn't like her!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-no...

The "Garadget controller" (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/softcomplex/garadget-ga...) looks like a physical device to me.
LOL?

Garadget sold a product to the customer, accepted the customers money -then disabled the product when the customer wrote a negative review.

Who's the jerk?

"Your unit ID 2f0036... will be denied server connection"

The Garadget device, not the customers phone! I never mentioned a phone, did I?

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