Mini-Heap

More links…

1. If you’re using MTurk to run surveys, you probably should consider an alternative — Florian Cova (Geneva) with an experimental philosophy cautionary tale
2. A private firm is planning on using genetic engineering to de-extinct the woolly mammoth — Andy Lamey (UCSD) has some questions
3. “I had been involved in actions that seemed deeply wrong to me, though perhaps necessary in the conduct of the war, and parts of my soul were at war with each other” — Paul Woodruff (Texas) on how philosophy helped him put his “soul back together”
4. “It is a strange thing… that the more time and pains men have consumed in the study of philosophy, by so much the more they look upon themselves to be ignorant and weak creatures” — George Berkeley is “interviewed” at 3:16AM
5. “Prohibitions aren’t enough. We need a positive moral vision that guides us towards securing a better future. Ideally, our actions should be guided by what’s truly important” — Richard Chappell (Miami) on why distinguishing the permissible from the impermissible shouldn’t be the main focus of ethics
6. “We performed a direct comparison between human reasoners and a large language model (GPT-3) on a range of analogical tasks” — “We found that GPT-3 displayed a surprisingly strong capacity for abstract pattern induction, matching or even surpassing human capabilities in most settings”
7. The 300th anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda is commemorated by the National Bank of Ukraine with a new ₴500 banknote — Skovoroda (1722-1794) was known not just as a philosopher, but as a composer, singer, translator, teacher, and artist

Discussion welcome.

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a 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!