Tag: thought experiment

philosophy

Trolley Problems: You’re Doing It All Wrong

July 2, 2018

As philosophy comes to occupy more and more of the public’s attention—which is good news—it is not surprising that a lot of that attention…

Heap of Links

“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
An “evidence revolution” has taken place in medicine and other fields over the past 50 years — but, as Benjamin Santos Genta asks, there's still the question: "what counts as good scientific evidence?"

All Links →

Latest Comments

AGT on Those OpenAI Math Results
Just another remark regarding who the next target of AI companies will be (already the wording is menacing btw). I don't think it will be philosophy since these…
AGT on Those OpenAI Math Results
And here we are at it – again. Assuming that the machines progress as they did so far, no amount of preparedness will do since they will take…
Symon Stevens-Guille on Those OpenAI Math Results
These proofs in Lean (or any proof assistant or theorem prover) are only useful for present purposes if the theorems proved are the intended ones. Semantic parsing is…
Eric Steinhart on Those OpenAI Math Results
TL;DR: The robots are coming for philosophy too, but philosophers are not prepared. Either we adapt, or academic philosophy perishes. Much of the social structure of math as an…
Kris McDaniel on A History of U.S. Philosophy Via APA Presidencies (guest post)
Thank you, Kenny!
Yuanshan Li on Those OpenAI Math Results
Only about 20 percent of the results among the 700ish in the recent release are formalized.
Brian Weatherson on Your One Piece of Philosophy Grad School Advice
This is such good advice. At Michigan the students are required by university rule to take at least one course outside their home department. And sometimes they'll try…
Brian Weatherson on Those OpenAI Math Results
I don't think this is a gish gallop in any traditional sense. These are proofs in Lean. They are very hard to fake. Maybe they exploited a bug…
Yuanshan Li on Those OpenAI Math Results
Some prominent mathematicians have indeed claimed that good problems that invite understanding are scarce, and are at risk of being exhausted by AI. I personally isn't convinced by…
Dmitri Gallow on Those OpenAI Math Results
I don't think that *everything* now hangs on that counterfactual, because of everything else that I put aside at the start of my last comment. In terms of…
Meme on Those OpenAI Math Results
(Notwithstanding my confusion, I agree with the other stuff you say about the adjustment of values, etc. I’m just not seeing how the infinite/finite distinction is resolving a…
Meme on Those OpenAI Math Results
I’m not sure this addressed my question. You said it’s important to distinguish math itself from the study of math, presumably because “by definition mathematics is infinite, so…
HotWheelReggie1991 on Those OpenAI Math Results
OK, i'll grant your distinction – and so it would seem (on that granting) everything now hangs on the medium-to-long-run counterfactual. So, i've got two thoughts on that..…
S Johnson on Your One Piece of Philosophy Grad School Advice
Don’t go into debt for grad school
Yuanshan Li on Those OpenAI Math Results
I think the space of problems that we care about at a given time T is arguably finite, but is potentially infinite in the sense that for any…

Tag: thought experiment

Trolley Problems: You’re Doing It All Wrong