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What Do Philosophers Think About Human Extinction?

July 14, 2021

It’s a near certainty that humanity will come to an end, but what form this end might take, and when it might happen, are…

Heap of Links

Asking “How did I get here?” may help us reflect on the nature of personal identity in ways that asking “Who am I?” cannot — Marya Schechtman's 2024 Central Division Meeting Presidential Address
“Collecting is a game, but what kind of game? It is an imperfect information game of acquisition” — a theory of collecting, from Steven Hales
“A general human tendency: to overestimate how far we have come in the progress of human knowledge” — a lengthy interview with Thomas Nagel
“Many couples do not survive trauma like this” — A profile of Susan Brison—who was brutally attacked in 1990, and who wrote about it in Aftermath—and her husband, Thomas Trezise, who has now written his own book stemming from those events
“Bad AI Consciousness Takes” Bingo Card — Henry Shevlin's area of specialization is becoming a popular topic in popular discourse, and he can't stand the "cavalcade of terrible takes"
Does the principle of sufficient reason imply panpsychism? If it does, do we then ponens or tollens? — Sam Kimpton-Nye on these questions and the "demand for intelligibility"
PTSD flashbacks may be harmful, but they may also be helpfully “resupplying phenomenal experience” to those who, owing to trauma, are “grasp alienated” — Michaela McSweeney on trauma and "madness-as-strategy"
A look at the very first issue of Mind — Brett Mullins surveys its articles on the occasion of the journal's 150th anniversary
The most bizarre plagiarism-related story ever — featuring: a death, an investigator, a dissertation, a mysterious red book, and more
New data on earnings by major and university — though not all universities
“AI poses two different existential threats to [our] valuing practices” — Jordan MacKenzie offers an account of why negative judgments about AI taking over our creative and caring activities are justified
“Submission” is a humorous clicker-style game about starting a career in academic philosophy (or not) — created by Nat Hansen
“The best investment in education is to become the most human human—a challenging, fulfilling, exciting pursuit that connects us across generations” — an interview with Christa Acampora, philosopher and dean of Arts & Sciences at UVA
“What would happen if we tried to live without the mythology of agency at all?” — It's worth pondering, since "agency is just an internal command hallucination," says Alexander Douglas
“Reading List” is a free Mac app for keeping track of papers to read — philosophy PhD student Hayden Kajercline created this productivity tool for researchers, with help from Claude
How should we react to scary predictions about AI? “First: by asking questions” — "If you believe predictions uncritically, it amounts to obeying in advance," says Carissa Véliz
“I feel unbelievably lucky that I was able to make philosophy my profession” — Karen Ng reflects on her path into philosophy, at #first-genphilosophers
The ordinary concept of knowledge “doesn’t work at all the way philosophers said it does” — a round-up of studies shows how weird the philosophers' version of the concept is
1000 or so psychiatrists were asked to diagnose standardized clinical case vignettes. “Two doctors agreed on the diagnosis only 55% of the time” — What does this tell us about psychiatry? Or about other fields in which experts disagree?
Where Aristotle taught Alexander — "this newest dig may be the most revealing yet, offering insight into the specifics of Alexander the Great’s education"

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Latest Comments

Michel on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
The revenues being reported are annualized–in other words, pure fantasy. According to Ed Zitron's reporting, in 2024, OpenAI had $12B in costs and almost $4B in revenue. In…
David Wallace on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
“But how will we paying for humans to do philosophy research, if machines can do it better for less money?” – TBD. (I’m not convinced machines will be…
Dr M., an adjunct on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
Here’s a quaint notion: philosophy pursued so as to become wiser, where this wisdom cannot be gained by an LLM feeding you a preprocessed “answer” to a question…
Kenny Easwaran on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
The AI companies are taking out lots of debt to build new data centers. But the revenue they are bringing in right now is more than enough to…
PhD student on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
I disagree with Jonathan Weisberg, though not about his prediction that AI will make journals and the current peer review system unsustainable. What I disagree with is his…
Nigel on Those OpenAI Math Results
Cool 😎
AGT on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
According to OpenAI our smart vacuum cleaners will kill us all in a few months time, so who cares about publications. Let them come! (Remember the lady on…
Kim Balu on Cain Todd (1976-2026)
I am so saddened to hear this. Cain was my lecturer and dissertation supervisor during my BA at Lancaster. He was such an intelligent, spirited, erudite and inspiring…
why on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
Well even if it was significant, we had twenty other posts discussing a variation of this theme in the past week, so maybe we could move on
Kevin Richardson on PIKSI’s in Peril but You Can Help (guest post)
I just wanted to give some additional support for this. I remember co-founding PIKSI-Boston when I was graduate student at MIT (alongside Matthias Jenny, A.E. Jaques, and Sally).…
Peter on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
One worry I have is that this will exacerbate prestige bias (which is already pretty rife). As someone at an institute that does not have great prestige, it's…
Another Philosopher on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
My thoughts exactly.
ERW on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
No, it can't on any serious definition of "do philosophy." There is plenty going on in our profession unrelated to tech fads.
Zach Goodsell on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
A computer can autonomously do philosophy now. Is that not a significant thing?
David Wallace on Is a “Hardwired Pause” of AI Possible?
The lower bound of both is presumably zero (AI might be harmless; for any economic crash, there is another one that causes less harm). The upper bound of…

Tag: human extinction

What Do Philosophers Think About Human Extinction?