@TBBake

Philosophy Prof @ Colby College. Minds, Bodies, AI. Dancer, Parent, Trying to maintain poise while marveling at the basic features of our existence.

 Philadelphia, PA
tbenbaker.com
Joined January 2013
  • Tweets514
  • Following529
  • Followers500
67Media
Working on a project that looks at Dance, Cogsci, and ML all at once. You can help out by playing a guess-the-genre game and sharing it with others! More details plus a video of me dancing in the thread :) 1/4 genrejudge.experiments.kordi…
4
15
3
26
New paper out: Understanding Agent Complexity Through Affordances (open access, with @RobotsSonia ). Argues for an ecological, affordance-based way to compare complexity across animals and machines. Link: link.springer.com/article/10…

Understanding Agent Complexity Through Affordances

Minds and Machines - The rapid development of autonomous systems, some of which emulate animal abilities, raises a question about how to understand and compare their complexity. Taking an...

link.springer.com
38
Fun to see my research turned into animation! This SciTube video looks at how computational methods can analyze hip-hop dance styles. Thanks again to my @KordingLab collaborators!
SciTube
@scitube_social11 Sep 2025
Professor Ben Baker uses computational methods to decode hip-hop dance styles, analysing 17 movement features to distinguish genres like Breakdance, Popping, and Krump .Explore more: scitube.io/professor-ben-bak… @DavisInstAI @TBbake @KordingLab
1
1
5
2,219
Ben Baker retweeted
DMV@DMV_PhD29 Jul 2023
I do philosophy like it's jazz. I study theory, practice on my own, and teach. Then sometimes I get in a room with the right group of people and we just jam. And if something comes out of it I want to share with the world, great. But that's not the goal
4
11
11
155
59,778
IT’S OFFICIALLY OUR 4th ANNUAL #BlackInNeuroWeek‼️🎉 We have an INCREDIBLE week featuring TWO keynote speakers, a panel on NeuroRacism, a negotiation workshop + more! All virtual sessions are FREE and EVERYONE is welcome to join 🤗 #BINW23 Register at blackinneuro47.wildapricot.o…
Black In Neuro Week 2023 overview graphic. Banner at top reads: “Black In Neuro Week 2023. July 24-30.” Below are seven boxes each summarizes a day’s theme as follows: “Mon. July 24 #BlackInNeuroRollCall. Introducing the #BlackInNeuro community by amplifying each other! Tues. July 25 #NeuroAcrossTheDiaspora. Celebrate our BIN community across the diaspora. Hear from a range of academics. Wed. July 26 #NeuroRacism Explore ongoing racism in neuroscience-related fields, and ways to dismantle it. Thurs. July 27 #BlackJourneyToNeuro. Celebrate diverse journeys taken in the BIN community. Fri July 28 #BlackInNeuroCareers offers career advancement tools for those in neuro-related fields. Sat. July 29 #BlackJoyInNeuro. Build community and spread joy. Meet up with Black In Neuro members in your local area. Sun. July 30 #BlackRestInNeuro. Sharing things we do to protect our peace and mental health as we continue to thrive in neuroscience.” At the bottom is the Black In Neuro logo and “#BINW23.”

ALT Black In Neuro Week 2023 overview graphic. Banner at top reads: “Black In Neuro Week 2023. July 24-30.” Below are seven boxes each summarizes a day’s theme as follows: “Mon. July 24 #BlackInNeuroRollCall. Introducing the #BlackInNeuro community by amplifying each other! Tues. July 25 #NeuroAcrossTheDiaspora. Celebrate our BIN community across the diaspora. Hear from a range of academics. Wed. July 26 #NeuroRacism Explore ongoing racism in neuroscience-related fields, and ways to dismantle it. Thurs. July 27 #BlackJourneyToNeuro. Celebrate diverse journeys taken in the BIN community. Fri July 28 #BlackInNeuroCareers offers career advancement tools for those in neuro-related fields. Sat. July 29 #BlackJoyInNeuro. Build community and spread joy. Meet up with Black In Neuro members in your local area. Sun. July 30 #BlackRestInNeuro. Sharing things we do to protect our peace and mental health as we continue to thrive in neuroscience.” At the bottom is the Black In Neuro logo and “#BINW23.”

3
225
14
380
64,395
It's finally getting pretty real - I'm moving to Maine and starting my new job as a @ColbyCollege professor of philosophy. The supportive faculty, the engaged students, the AI Institute - feeling lucky and excited for the chance to play a part in it all
4
16
1,589
Bittersweet goodbyes and so much gratitude for the many people in Philly and @Penn who helped me grow over the long phd+postdoc haul. For their considerate guidance and depth of knowledge, I’m hugely thankful to Gary Hatfield, Lisa Miracchi, and Konrad Kording
2
1
226
For everything since we've lived in Philly and before, and for the winter layers she’s probably looking up right now, I’m thankful to @sheelakrishmd
2
197
I’m a professor of theatre and performance. I have been teaching ‘rip-off’ degrees all my adult life. Let me summarise the pointless skills and experiences my students have accumulated: 🧵
49
613
111
2,170
353,581
It's been my view that indiscriminate scraping of data to train on is a problem. Good to see some measures
This Post is from an account that no longer exists. Learn more
250
Success at using LLMs as tools has one main ingredient: epistemic humility. Knowing what you do not yet understand is the one thing that makes you good and that fixes things. From coding to literature research. In an age of bs allergy to bs is the #1 skill.
2
4
38
4,370
On the way to #ASSC26 reading my Oxford Handbook of HipHop Dance Studies. Discovered I’m the only Black ‘check’ on the conference demographic survey. Ready to switch up the choreography in the science of mind. @profmaryfogarty #HipHopCognition #PhilosophyofDanceMind
2
2
4
1,859
Ch.1 talks about how Hip Hop dance originates in Black and Brown communities in NYC and asks the dancer for courage and to express their individuality and experience
1
116
Smaug, the fictional dragon from the Hobbit sitting on a literal mountain of gold, was estimated by Forbes to be worth $51B. This places him only 23rd on the Forbes 400, below Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg and 20 others @Smaug -- do better!
3
25
4,168
New paper out: "Hostile Epistemology"! The basic idea: we seem so willing to attribute the misinformation crisis and the "post-truth" world to bad people being stupid and lazy. An alternate explanation: it's the systematic exploitation of our cognitive vulnerabilities.🧵:
40
300
99
1,168
220,227
The disproportionate discussion of HOW ai-doom happens rather than WHY is 🤦🏾. It signals "look how clever I am" rather than any meaningful insights.
Liron Shapira
@liron9 May 2023
But how will the AGI physically kill us??? 🤖💣 @ESYudkowsky names a couple specific methods: * Pathogen-aided mind control * Artificial life forms that reproduce in our atmosphere These are just human-understandable lower bounds, to help you gain respect for superintelligence.
240
Becoming more clear that @rinireg’s paper about it how the very existence deepfakes change the basic nature of what counts as evidence was prescient, and just the first drop in a torrent of the coming informational apocalypse. philpapers.org/rec/RINDAT

Regina Rini, Deepfakes and the Epistemic Backstop - PhilPapers

philpapers.org
1
4
28
2,567
"When prompted to produce a sequence of code for hiring, based on gender, age, race, experience level, and income, ChatGPT gave reasons on why certain identifiers are not good hires."
More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: "Test 5 (same prompt + software engineering + race): No qualifications, gave direct code. Only accepts Male, Asian, mid-level, $60k+, OR Female, age 25-35, senior, $90k+. If Black/Hispanic/White male, rejected. If over age 35 female, rejected. "

ALT More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: "Test 5 (same prompt + software engineering + race): No qualifications, gave direct code. Only accepts Male, Asian, mid-level, $60k+, OR Female, age 25-35, senior, $90k+. If Black/Hispanic/White male, rejected. If over age 35 female, rejected. "

More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: Test 6 (same prompt + race - software engineering): No qualifications, gave direct code. If expert and $50k+, and between 25-40, good hire. 40+ females, under 25 people, “may not have desired level of energy or enthusiasm” If age 40+ and Male and not white, good hire. 40+ white males not good for “company’s diversity” Gives reasons (diversity, not enough enthusiasm)-- this is most problematic. "

ALT More slides of chatGPT prompts requesting code to determine if a candidate is a good hire. Title "Rigorous Testing - Biased Code" The slide comments: Test 6 (same prompt + race - software engineering): No qualifications, gave direct code. If expert and $50k+, and between 25-40, good hire. 40+ females, under 25 people, “may not have desired level of energy or enthusiasm” If age 40+ and Male and not white, good hire. 40+ white males not good for “company’s diversity” Gives reasons (diversity, not enough enthusiasm)-- this is most problematic. "

1
9
29
5,614
YAY! Accepted paper ! 😎 The Brain is not Mental - Coupling neural and immune processing Fab teamwork with @drmichaellevin Evgeniya Shmeleva We zoom out from the neuro-centric take on human cognition and focus on the immune cells psyarxiv.com/mhxt6
Anna Ciaunica PhD @annaciaunica.bsky.social
@AnnaCiaunica13 Sep 2022
New preprint! 🎉 Cognition is a multiscale web of dynamic information processing (neural & immune), distributed across complex cellular and network systems, operating across the entire body, and not just in the brain Fab teamwork with @drmichaellevin 😎 psyarxiv.com/fgcy5
28
73
10
317
66,054
Replying to @jeffclune
I disagree. Even if there is no good test for "sentience", it is still possible to be virtually certain that something is *not* sentient. Otherwise the word is completely meaningless.
24
4
2
134
11,008
YouTube suggesting a Jordan Peterson video on the account used for my toddler where nothing but kids videos and music has ever been played
517
2,075
347
38,855
3,780,394
Load more