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Writing

Papers, reports, essays and explainers from the lab. Each item is typed and dated. Formal publications are versioned and citable, with their limits stated.

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Generated cyanotype print of seven sheets of thin paper in a row, each folded once more than the last, from a flat leaf to a small booklet tied with thread.Generated photograph of seven white card folios standing in a row on a pale board, from one thin folded sheet to a thick bound volume carrying a vermilion bead.Generated render of seven survey markers drawn in points along one line on a dark sea floor, from sparse and faint to dense and bright, the last with a pale aqua point at its tip.
Plate IFrom a single leaf to a bound record, one fold at a time.From a folded sheet to a bound volume; the bead marks the newest.Markers along one survey line, each more fully measured than the last.Generated image in a cyanotype treatment. Far Akin art direction.Generated image. Far Akin art direction, Datum look.Generated image. Far Akin art direction, Swath look.

Essays and explainers on the questions behind the programmes, each labelled for the kind of writing it is.

  • Generated cyanotype print of a spinning brass gyroscope standing on a table, holding its axis.Generated photograph of a white plaster boat model heeled over by a wooden push-rod; a plumb line from the masthead still hangs straight to a vermilion pin.Generated render of a rolling survey vessel whose sonar beam stays pointing straight down.
    Explainer

    Disturb it and watch what it holds

    A system that controls a perception acts to cancel disturbances to it, so what it controls shows in what is restored, not in what it does. The test for the controlled variable, and what carrying it from people to learned policies would and would not license.

  • Generated cyanotype print of a coiled sounding line with its lead weight lying on a wooden deck.Generated photograph of a grid of white rods passing through a level card plane to a hidden plaster seabed; vermilion beads on the rod tops trace the seabed's shape.Generated render of evenly spaced single points of light on a dark sea floor beneath a small ship.
    Explainer

    Soundings: charting an interior you cannot see

    A depth sounding is one exact reading. A chart is inference between readings, and can be confidently wrong where nothing was measured. The same distinction separates what probing a model's interior shows from what it only suggests.

  • Generated cyanotype print of two stones on wet sand, one smooth and rounded, the other angular and faceted like a crystal.Generated photograph of a white plaster spiral shell and a white card spiral staircase far apart on a table, joined at matching points by a vermilion thread.Generated render of two unlike islands far apart above the waterline, joined under water by one shared ridge.
    Essay

    Far apart, possibly akin

    Why one lab studies learning machines, human minds and simulated worlds together, what it would take for them to be akin, and how that claim could fail.