Behold the latest Mini-Heap!

1. How can we learn from humans what they actually value? — a philosopher and a computer scientist working on AI safety call for social scientists to take up specific questions central to this inquiry
2. “Many members of the academic philosophical community continue to hold on to and actively promote a kind of faux meritocracy” — Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes) on aiming for greater inclusiveness in philosophy
3. What is probability? — Chances are, philosophers disagree over that, too. Nevin Climenhaga (Australian Catholic Univ.) explains.
4. Scientists appear to have discovered a new way neurons communicate, even if they aren’t physically connected to one another — “unprecedented weirdness” (via MR)
5. Is your notion of democracy personalist or populist? — Philip Pettit (Princeton) on the difference and its implications for Brexit and other refererendums
6. A philosopher’s three rules for deciding what to write: it must be delightfully interesting, elegantly argued, and actually helpful — Thi Nguyen (Utah Valley) overcame writer’s block by making sure he wouldn’t be boring himself with his writing
7. Pain, parts, and consciousness — Luke Roelofs (Ruhr-University Bochum) thinks that “minds built out of other minds may be quite common”

Mini-Heap posts appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the ever-growing collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thanks!

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