#no regrets tho cultural anthropology is still fascinating

[twigs-and-bees]

i think my mom predicted my future with a joke

okay so- my mom likes to joke about my older siblings showing a huge passion for something and then going to college for a completely unexpected thing

ex: my brother being an absolute nerd about marine biology and then almost getting a masters in music therapy (he dropped)

my mother stated that i'm doing the exact thing with my anthropology degree.

"oh man i love space! i wanna be an astronaut! i infodump on astrobiology and dark matter! i'm gonna go to college for cultural anthropology!"

and well

i do a presentation at a gala about europa and enceladus for my speech final

i get excited when i'm asked to solve literally any math problem

i struggle tremendously at writing assignments for humanities, anthropology or otherwise

i sneak off to the astrophysics department during a graduate school trip that i went on specifically to check out their amazing anthropology department

i sit here at 11:39pm reading the wikipedia page on special relativity so i can talk about something fun for my german writing class essay about time

i swear to god mother if you curse me like this /j/j

[lostghosts]

56 and 62 for asks! 🥰

56) What do you think about artificial intelligence?

So this is an entire wormhole you've opened but AI is one of those things that I'm intensely fascinated by and simultaneously scared of. The fascination comes from how it ties to cognitive psychology. Like machine learning drew a lot from this branch (and sometimes vice versa!) in particular and the way brains categorize information is often akin to how an AI learns - a schema for an animal may be the same in a learning machine as in a human (keyword may: I'm drawing from the neuroscience and cognitive science courses I took but neuroscience, in particular, was a while ago). Turing machines were used as metaphors all the time in BOTH classes. I can't remember for sure but I think the rise of cogpsy and machine learning were interlinked, especially in the early days so it's like combining two of my favorite subjects. (aside: super regret not taking more anthropology classes in college tho - especially cultural anthro but that's a different topic).

I also think AI has the potential to be incredibly helpful in the right hands, lord knows I could use an AI to remind me of all the shit I forget about lmao but it's also one of those things that equally has the chance to be incredibly harmful (see: schemas and categorizing - they're not always good things and shortcuts, while useful, are not always accurate). I'd love to see how it progresses tho and see what other ways it can be applied. It still feels like it may be in its infancy but I'm a little out of the loop lately.

62) Would you want to meet a clone of yourself? Would you like them?

I think it would be interesting! I talk to myself pretty often in the first place so having another me would be fun. Finally another person to fake argue with instead of in my own brain <3. I think it would be a pretty love-hate relationship, especially in low months. Maybe two of me can keep a house clean tho 😭 . And I could be my own rubber duck! Lots of pros, at least.

thank you iby! 🫀