Andrew Cutler

Machine learning psychometrics, lexical hypothesis, snake cult enthusiast

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Eve Theory of Consciousness in a few panels. 'I' was a discovery that made us human.

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@vsbuffalo I've been pretty happy with ultracode, or building a critic into the workflow

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Yeah, it was my Fable project when it was briefly available. I started with my bullroarer research (~200 attestations), then sent agents loose to find more. Built a whole harness of rejecting edge cases (buzzers, blog posts, etc).

The Kurnai in the SE also connect the Dreamtime/bullroarer to the time of the rising seas: https://t.co/KNcsVWWdSZ

It's unclear to me why this isn't a better researched question. There are some academics that bang on about taking indigenous knowledge seriously. Isn't this exactly the type of thing?

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@lowlandsapien @MungoManic this is up your alley

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Yeah, it was my Fable project when it was briefly available. I started with my bullroarer research (~200 attestations), then sent agents loose to find more. Built a whole harness of rejecting edge cases (buzzers, blog posts, etc).

The Kurnai in the SE also connect the Dreamtime/bullroarer to the time of the rising seas: https://t.co/KNcsVWWdSZ

It's unclear to me why this isn't a better researched question. There are some academics that bang on about taking indigenous knowledge seriously. Isn't this exactly the type of thing?

[Hugo @lowlandsapien]

WOMEN AND CHILDREN SCATTER!
YARAPIRI IS ABOUT TO APPEAR!

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

Michael Witzel has a book on the origins of the world mythology and he covers rainbow serpent in Africa and Australia. He ties himself in knots to say this must be some shared story from before OOA but really a more reasonable model is something like:

[Hugo @lowlandsapien]

@VectorsOfMind Yes pygmy Genesis is one of the most astounding things ive ever learned. They also have Rainbow Serpent mythology with the god Khonvoum.

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@simonw Exhaustive atlas of the bullroarer https://t.co/9x3RSikQ9J

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@lowlandsapien For those interested I cover some of this in my tour of the bullroarer: https://t.co/c2Nm8ULgxV

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

The Yolgnu say the Djang'kawu sisters came from a large island to the North (some sources even say North East) by canoe. They are to this day depicted in an x-ray style rock art that, when diffusion was a kosher concept, was widely believed to have diffused from Eurasia. Among many other things, the sisters established initiation rituals that involve being symbolically eaten by a monster. The bullroarer is used. Despite being linked to originating with women, women are now barred.

Then if you go to a big island to the northeast there is New Guinea where they also associate the bullroarer with ceremonies involving being eaten by a monster. Male-only cult, but bullroarer originally belonged to women.

I very much think you're right that this goes back to Sahul. Why did you make the inference?

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@lowlandsapien Also, not to overwhelm but have you read the Pygmy version of the fall of adam and eve? It's a shockingly good fit for EToC / bicameral breakdown: https://t.co/Z9XVLEaabX

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

You really need your own benchmarks. If you are translating hieroglyphics, use Gemini 3.5 Flash. If you are running a vending machine use Opus 4.8.

(This is one reason why I am skeptical of just swapping out models to optimize costs or generic benchmarks without testing first)

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@RubenLaukkonen "-like" doing a lot of work here

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@akarlin They are good on long range diffusion in linguistics and mythology. A lot of the deep time macro language families are from Russian scientists. Huge country that spans many language families made that easier

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

So, fraud

[Luke Glowacki @HSB_Lab]

Been at focal groups where the locals are saying "we want cows", "we want revenge" and it gets translated by the RA who knows what the PI wants as "we have no water, we have no food, that is why we fight"

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@razibkhan @ezraklein Klein in 2006 wrote about how the Piraha lacked the ability to count:

"Moreover, the Pirahas apparently lack the faculty for “getting” numbers. They cannot be taught to count to ten, nor do basic arithmetic. Anyway, it’s interesting stuff."

https://t.co/KJh7F8uASH

[Aurochs @CoelingAurochs]

What's your most esoteric history theory?

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@CoelingAurochs https://t.co/gKefiUbakV

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

@jamesxlawrence @ClaudeDevs Why is this so bad??

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

g strikes again

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

The most important weird thing about LLMs is that they are so general. A bigger LLM that is better at coding is also better at ideation & ethical advice & medicine & math. This isn’t true of everything, jaggedness again (see fiction writing!), but it is remarkably true.

[Andrew Cutler @VectorsOfMind]

My Fable 5 story is that I was building an atlas of every attested bullroarer in the literature, and it found hundreds of examples that other models could not. Check it out!

https://t.co/9x3RSikQ9J