Tag: retrenchment

Cuts and Threats to Philosophy Programs

Philosophy Departments Under Threat: Information, Pro-Active Strategies, Defense

December 5, 2024

-[Temporarily moved to the top of the page (again), as the issues discussed are still with us. Originally published in October, 2020.]- Many philosophy…

Heap of Links

“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"
Over 4000 of the Justice Department’s lawyers have left their jobs since Trump’s second term began — The New Yorker on the moral dilemma facing some government employees: resign and avoid complicity, or stay and resist where one can?
Underappreciated philosophy published between 1970-2019 — some old posts to which you can still add works that should be better appreciated
The AI threat to independent student writing is not necessarily a threat to student learning — what's needed, says Joe Cruz, are courses "in which ideas are expressed in real time and analytical thought unfolds as a debate or an oral defense or a group discussion"—and small enough classes to make that work
Would you take a pill that allows you, with no ill health effects, to permanently forgo sleep? — Rebecca Lowe thinks you have no good reason not to, though she neglects to consider that sometimes it's the world that needs a break from you
Fifty essays in the philosophy of paleontology — by Max Dresow at the Extinct blog
“Asking whether [an AI] model ‘has a world model’ leaves much unresolved. Our findings point toward mechanistically studying its world modeling; uncovering the structures it learned [and] the world modeling capacities that recruit these” — further research on the internal representations of AIs
Sixty Years of Philosophy in America — Ernest Sosa's Dewey Lecture from the 2024 APA Eastern Division Meeting
“You’re responsible for other people’s learning of this material, so you better know it at a higher level yourself” — for 20 years, the Socrates Project at the University of Toronto has hired senior philosophy undergrads to run weekly tutorials for introductory students
“Suddenly, my problems stop being problems in the world. They become problems in my head. The problem is no longer: ‘my job is demoralizing, but I can’t leave it’… It’s: ‘I have a chemical imbalance that prevents me from enjoying life'” — Justin Garson on “the pathologizing tendency”
A political theorist and a comedian discuss the American presidency — "The Oath and the Office" is the podcast of Corey Brettschneider & John Fugelsang

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Latest Comments

David Wallace on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
Sorry! Yes, I read it ironically; I should have caught the more specific point. I suppose it’s because pretty much every *comment thread* on AI has had people…
Runa on Those OpenAI Math Results
Notable scientists and futurists who argue that there's a chance and that it is worth preparing against do not base their arguments on the fact that it has…
Animal Symbolicum on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
(And sorry for the typos. I assume you can make the requisite sense of what I am saying.)
David Wallace on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
Last time I looked, Hegel’s conclusions weren’t formally checkable as valid in Lean.
Animal Symbolicum on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
I'm always happy to read your comments, Ben M-Y. They're uniformly interesting and sincere and thoughtful. (Above, something in my diction or tone or style or punctuation persuaded…
Animal Symbolicum on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
I'm with you: I too have grown weary of the topics you list!
Animal Symbolicum on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
I don’t understand. I was being quite sincere. The discussion about AI this blog has centered on what AI can and can’t do, whether using AI for philosophy…
Michel-Antoine Xhignesse on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
What I loathe about reading Hegel is the feeling that I have to squint to find _an_ interpretation, and that there isn't actually any correct interpretation; in other…
Thinkmaxxing on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
"The loop might still include writing the paper ourselves, but also involve asking the AI to review a literature larger than any of us can read in a…
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
I don’t think so. If you look at pre-AI progress towards proving RH, quite a lot of it consists of establishing zero-free regions in the strip. But I’m…
Eric Steinhart on Those OpenAI Math Results
Of course your point about verifiability is correct, but it might not be the whole story. These AIs are going to need to explain their reasoning, and to…
Runa on Those OpenAI Math Results
It would be nice to see a cure for war or poverty. Can they be any harder than cancer? (However I wouldn't dare attempt to use AI resources…
Nicolas Delon on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
“ half of *our* children and grandchildren might not either” Citation needed.
Beau Madison Mount on Those OpenAI Math Results
Yeah, I was thinking that number theorists would count those as gerrymandered, but I'm just speculating.
Noah Gordon on Those OpenAI Math Results
That's true, but the comments there were not submitted by visitors to the site. They were collected by the moderators from provenances which they did not specify (the…

Tag: retrenchment

Philosophy Departments Under Threat: Information, Pro-Active Strategies, Defense