A lesson in pragmatics

“The increase in Black infant mortality, from 9 to 21 deaths per 1,000 births, means Black infants born in Hamilton County are more at risk than those born in Iraq, Iran, Guatemala, Honduras, Libya or Vietnam, according to the World Bank.”

New Purdue Postdoc just dropped! philjobs.org/job/show/31449 We're interested in folks studying social ontology / phil of Econ (e.g. nature of the firm, markets, money, collective intentionality). Folks interested in empirical methods are also encouraged to apply

wrote a thing—it's fun you should read it

This hangs with the other statements in fig 1: 1️⃣ ANNs (artificial neural networks) are inspired by human organism 2️⃣ ANNs are a black box we don't understand 3️⃣ We understand neither ANNs nor cognition therefore they are similar All 3 are misplaced! We unpack this... doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 3/

Again this should inspire wall-to-wall media coverage for months. The crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement is dead. Black people just lost all of their remaining political power in the South. This is a monumental moment in American history that simply isn't being treated as such.

In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis. Paywall bypass: archive.is/6RdK9

In a new preprint w/ @tianqizhan.bsky.social & @smfleming.bsky.social, we developed a new measure of metacognitive bias (over/under confidence in individual decisions)! doi.org/10.31234/osf...

I'm a provider

I really appreciate @elizabethwithaz.bsky.social's reflections on how she explored the social impacts of technology with her students by introducing them to the people - the ghost workers - whose labor makes “AI” systems possible. Read this week’s @civicsoftech.bsky.social and find the lesson at:

Recently have been putting a lot of thought into what norms govern the movement between folk concepts and scientific concepts. What concepts are resistant to operationalization? Really interesting thread from a cognitive scientist on what concepts we can have “theories of.”

I have suddenly come to understand that I want to smell like the foil bit of a cigarette pack. That minty, fresh tobacco leaf smell. But so many tobacco fragrances are supposed to be "warm" and "sensual". Does anyone have a good sense of what notes I should look for/any frags i may like?

Hi Bluesky! Suppose I was feeling brave and wanted to learn about how we/kids develop event cognitive capacities. Where should I start?

scenes from the MIT philosophy department

I know it's a silly jokey joke, but people REALLY need to stop anthropomorphizing their boyfriends. "My boyfriend told me" your boyfriend didn't "tell" you anything. "My boyfriend thinks..." your boyfriend can't actually think or feel; just output a convincing simulation of it based on probability 🙄

did you catch this?

Pats offensive line looking like the US' checks and balances

A few months ago, ICE hired me I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!" My latest for Slate

Great profile of C. Thi Nguyen in The NY Times! Why Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore | In a new book, C. Thi Nguyen looks to his personal passions — from video games to yo-yoing — to illuminate the downside of our increasingly gamified world. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/b... | @add-hawk.bsky.social |

New video shows ICE agents detaining a US citizen legal observer in Minneapolis. The agents smashed his car window, dragged him out, and placed a knee on his neck.

Never, in a million kabillion years, when I decided to say "screw it" to mainstream philosophy and started writing about the philosophy of games, could I have imagined that this road would take me down to having the goddamn NY Times profile me and my new book. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/b...

Who are the experts / journalists / researchers you turn to for critical perspectives on AI & the tech world? I created a feed of experts who watch AI developments with a skeptical & critical (but *informed*) POV. I'd love more people to follow it, but I'm also looking to add people - recs welcome!

Hoping that my experience machine will stimulate my brain to experience the pov of this handsome guy

There's a real glut of AI videos of men of the cloth in full regalia chewing out ICE officers and the way I was able to identify them is: When men of the cloth get involved, it makes news, as in Rev. David Black. So if there's real footage of a priest screaming at ICE at a CHURCH it will be NEWS.

Editorial in the National Catholic Reporter: "The vice president's comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His repeated attempts to blame Good for her own death are fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel."

dark times ahead. but we are going to win.

Remembering today that having your heart broken is a necessary step on the path to becoming fully human. Whichever heartbreak is your first, it’s probably critical that a state break your heart so that you can develop a political imagination. If this is your first, I’m sorry and also welcome.

this is your mission. roll up to this daycare in full tactical gear to harass some kids and teachers. when you get spooked by your own shadow like a panicked horse and start shooting your gun, our pedophile president will call the person you shot a terrorist. good luck soldier

a major american city is being forced to close schools because armed government agents are raiding and pepper spraying and terrorizing children and teachers for social media content

Ok, philosophers, things I think I'm supposed, professionally, to know, but I'm worried I learned wrong. What is a proposition?

Reviewers reading my technical appendix:

NYT gonna NYT: "Both Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Maduro identify as socialists, though they have no relationship.” — would be funny if they did this every time you write about two capitalists. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/w...

I wish it was more widely known that Google fought like absolute mongrels against media outlets to avoid disclosing water consumption data - the only reason they disclose that data now is because they were pressured by activists and journalists cloud.sustainability.watch/explore-issu...

Thrilled for this genius, but would it have killed you to write down this proof of yours?! (written by me in November...)

don’t do the “maduro is bad, but…” thing. the defensive crouch won’t help, it muddles the message, and the important thing is that this is immoral, illegal, and idiotic. the three Is

The U.S. just kidnapped a foreign leader and his wife. Venezuela doesn’t produce Fentanyl, but they do have the world’s largest oil reserves. This is the war the $23 million Big Oil gave to Trump bought.

Three million people live in Caracas, five million in the metro area. It's one of the densest cities in South America. Remember this in the morning when they try to spin this as anything other than a cold-blooded attack on a major civilian center.

Welcome to 2003.

I'm hardly original in saying this, but a lot of people are going to try to make this about whether Maduro being gone is good or bad as such, rather than the blatant violation of international and US law in a destabilizing act of aggression. Don't fall for it.

Something I've yet to see many on here talk about "Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, said innocent civilians have been killed in today’s strikes." www.nbcnews.com/world/latin-...

BREAKING: Venezuela’s government has accused the US of launching attacks on civilian and military installations across several states, rejecting what it described as a "military aggression," according to an official statement. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/p3fqh2

Don't we have the verb "kidnapping" to describe this?

I'm looking back at this paper written 2019 & published 2021 with @andreaeyleen.bsky.social: How Computational Modeling Can Force Theory Building in Psychological Science (pdf: oliviaguest.com/doc/guest_ma...) We presented a positive view and kind, if I do say so myself, compatibilist stance. 1/

A little-noticed provision in the TRUMP AI Act would ban big tech platforms, including ostensibly Google, from distributing "sexual material harmful to minors" — a phrase routinely used by conservatives to ban not only porn, but sex ed, LGBTQ literature and repro rights resources.

A while ago, I posted a set of notes about the Bayesian approach to inquiry and how it can help us think about questions raised in the recent literature on zetetic epistemology. I’ve now corralled that material into something like a first draft of a book. I hope it might be of interest to others.

Giving comments on a paper effusively complimenting a move and then seeing that the footnote already thanks me for that move :(

Dating a philosopher means you can fight about reporting one's preferences conditional on the other person's preferences (one of us thinks it's vote manipulation not to report anything but unconditional prefs, and the other says "sorry my utility function takes into account your welfare too??")