#AcademicRunPlaylist - 10/13/25

It was this kind of day for a Bostonian Canadian Thanksgiving, and while hunkering down inside I listened to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by William Yang on synthesizing task-driven datasets at the NSF AI Institute Athena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyvpBPnp3UU

Next was a compelling talk by Xinwei Shen on distributional causal inferences at the UW Department of Statistics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ3WO_tGE-w

Next was “Kluge” by Gary Marcus. This book is very much of its time - a pithily written, weakly supported popular psychology book of the 2000s, most of which has since been discredited. Marcus does play many of social psychology's greatest hits, but it's hard to take a book seriously that unironically cites Gladwell and Pinker. The chapter on linguistics is weirdly the standout here, but if you're interested in cognitive science or psychology there are many more recent books out there that are worth your time https://www.harpercollins.com/products/kluge-gary-marcus

Last was “The Enlightenment” by Anthony Pagden. Pagden provides an interesting but esoteric tour through Enlightenment thought, examining the different strands of inquiry and debate that took place across the Western world. Most of these discussions are presented without context - besides biological details history only makes brief appearances until, ironically, the French Revolution - and this makes it hard to fully understand the forces behind these philosophical inquiries. It's still an interesting distillation of primary sources, and is helpful if you want pointers for where to dig in more https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/126000/the-enlightenment-by-anthony-pagden/