New paper – What do we really measure when we measure iconicity?

It’s a common misconception that iconicity or sound symbolism is universal, perpetuated in part by the almost universal success of famous experiments involving pseudowords like bouba and kiki. But iconicity in natural languages is much more messy than paradigms like bouba-kiki suggest. Which begs the question, what do we really measure when we measure iconicity? This is what our new paper investigates.

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Mindblowing dissertations

We don’t generally see PhD dissertations as an exciting genre to read, and that is wholly our loss. As the publishing landscape of academia is fast being homogenised, the thesis is one of the last places where we have a chance to see the unalloyed brilliance of up and coming researchers. Let me show you using three examples of remarkable theses I have come across in the past years.

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Thinking visually with Remarkable

Sketches, visualizations and other forms of externalizing cognition play a prominent role in the work of just about any scientist. It’s why we love using blackboards, whiteboards, notebooks and scraps of paper. I rarely rave about tools (to each their own, etc.) but here I write about the Remarkable, an e-paper device that has changed my habits for the better in several ways: I’ve been reading more, taking more notes, writing more, and also doodling and sketching more. I would describe it as a distraction-free piece of technology with just the right affordances.

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Talk, tradition, templates: a meta-note on building scientific arguments

The construction of gothic cathedrals like Chartres was governed not by blueprints but by “talk, tradition, and templates” — at least that is what Turnbull has compellingly argued. When you come across such a neatly alliterative triad, there are two ways you can go. You can adopt the terms in an unexamined way and rely on their alliterative power. Or you can go meta and think critically about what it takes to make a point that is as compelling as this in both form and content. See, and I like that second move a lot more.

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Deep learning, image generation, and the rise of bias automation machines

DALL-E, a new image generation system by OpenAI, does impressive visualizations of biased datasets. A widely circulated PR animation features meme-like koala dunking a baseball leading into an array of old white men — representing at one blow the past and future of representation and generation. This post jumps from reflections on techbros to the erasure of human labour in Cosmopolitan’s rushed “first AI magazine cover”.

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