The EU has slapped a fine on Musk's X because it is untransparent and supports deceptive practices. Nothing to do with "censorship."

of course.

meanwhile lots of philosophers of 'AI safety' still mostly worried about P(doom), misuse, unintended use, paperclip, and whether the machines might suffer and so on. Maybe, just maybe, start writing about someone using a powerful machine to kill people (or spy on them)?

no no, there is no problem whatsoever about the German police (for example) signing a contract with Palantir: www.dw.com/en/german-po...

I had this twice with attention: once when I realized that no one knew what attention was. And once when I realized that no one knew what we should pay attention to. What's also amazing: feeling part of a community that makes progress in these projects.

I had not quite realized just how full of bad judgment the effective altruism movement is.

not only celebrities should have this power!

good work, Europe!

I don't find this in any way surprising. It's riding the algorithms. Quantity is a key determinant to remain on top of the stack. Controlling the info sphere is primary, content secondary. Trump is just really good at this game (whether or not he employs someone to post for him).

my reading these days somehow moves seamlessly between urine marking in foxes, David Lewis in conventions, Irving Goffman, the economics of attention, and what the invisible gorilla has to do with it all. Makes sense to everyone, right?

I've heard people say in response to our arguments about the attention market (link.springer.com/article/10.1...): but it's just advertisement. JUST??

Do you ever wish you had a tool that would allow you to combine your mind with others? In this *just published* paper @mainomenous.bsky.social and I argue that AI is a tool that enables collective attention, rejecting the idea that it is a standalone agent + philosophymindscience.org/index.php/ph...

Yes. And ... has anyone looked at this for other countries? There was, for example, a deluge of content broadly aligned with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) before the last federal election...

Although the scale of this is still to be assessed, this is the inevitable outcome of the monetization of the algorithm. Rage-bait becomes a personal revenue model. Nothing about this should be a surprise.

Kvikklunsj is to kitkat what pølse and lumper is to hotdogs. What the latter always really wanted to be (and yes, after that you don't really have to know many more Norwegian foods).

and don't make the attention market problems about social media. It's a lot deeper than that.

So, should we maybe not leave all attention direction to the market? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The only thing I have found Chatbots to be somewhat useful for is as brainstorming devices, to get me to expand and focus what to think about. But if that is what those makers of the chatbots in a position of a lot of power - you know I have a thing about that...

I just think Trump understands Mamdani is not someone he wants to tangle with. Too smart, too charismatic, too New York, too straightforward, too young. Easier targets elsewhere, like everyone who works for him and most of Congress. (1/2)

Trump is really good at attentional landscaping (sorry to pluck our term again) and so is Mandami. It is very interesting that Trump is, I think, very conscious of the power of this capacity, and admires it also in others. (not sure what follows)

It's world philosophy day: talked already to people in Portugal about why distraction need not be such a bad thing. Soon speaking with @floresophize.bsky.social and her group about the attention market. I do like our philosophy world sometimes!

There is no man made climate change. There is rich made climate change. „The richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a day than the poorest 50% emit all year“ Now reflect on why we are not thinking more about how the rich are destroying the world policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/cl...

Seltsam: die angeführten Studien handeln eigentlich davon wie die Bildschirmzeit **der Eltern** den Kindern schadet - weil das Sozialverhalten **der Eltern** gestört ist. Vielleicht handelt das Problem nicht von Kindern sondern von 'Technoference" in unserem **Leben**? www.zeit.de/2025/48/bild...

What is this ‘attention economy’? Is there really a market where people buy and sell human attention? If so, what’s wrong with that? New paper by Katharine Browne and me that argues: yes, there is an attention market and yes, there is something wrong with it. 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I've been invited by a national HR organization to talk to them about attention in the workplace. I have ethical/political views on this (the workplace is a main place where people are subject to undue power over their attention). Pretty sure this is not what they want to hear. Should I do it?

Knowledge last is starting to seem to me about as plausible as Knowledge First. Guess i should be happy not to be an epistemologist?

I might use 6-7 in my paper on what it means to communicate. It's like the original coordination device.

So it’s flown under the radar but Utah just went forward with forced labor interment camps for the homeless at the direction of the Trump administration. We are seeing the construction of the infrastructure for industrialized death and forced enslavement for those seen as a drag on society.

This is what happened to my Grandfather in Frankfurt, Germany on 9th November 1938, commonly known as Kristallnacht.

spend Sunday morning before the rest of the family is up to write a scathing review: Done. (and happy about it)

Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/

Wikipedia is one of the most impressive aspect of the internet. I've started donating regularly.

So for-profit AI companies have trained on the world's largest collaborative volunteer project and a precious free resource, to make money for their for-profit enterprises. They have crushed traffic to the volunteer project, starving it of donors and volunteers www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

YES. It really is such a weird genre. Haven't looked, maybe there are also top-level science publications on physics in the engines of different car brands?

I see that OpenAI has pivoted from ‘Our mission is to supersede human intelligence for the greater good. We‘re going to cure cancer lads!‘ to ‘The Internet is for porn, give us a trillion dollars!‘. To be fair to them, the first claim was always a lie so at least they‘re being honest now.

I have an op-ed in my head called "Trump is a genius!" I think that is true, and important to know. (being a genius is quite compatible with being thoroughly evil)

There is also good work.

It must feel a bit weird for those philosophers and psychologists (and university admin) who did their part in fueling this bubble... (yes, all the hype about whether those machines can be conscious, the centers you opened, the jobs that you announced, they did do a part...)

That's why they are afraid of the comedians!

😂 #RadicalLeftReignOfTerror #Trumpland #USFascism

interesting, and kind of scary, actually

Glad SOMEONE is looking after the Platonic form of the Schnitzel (my bad bad family talked about Käseschnitzel already in the 80s ...🤫)

twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross

Re how the changed media and attentional landscape ('the internet') contributes ...

Well, probably many causal factors. But I think I agree with Fukuyama: it's an important factor. What do people think about this?

We should gives this to our PhD students to read. There is too much worry about not 'making it' in academia. The thing is: you can make it, and still be unhappy. There are bullshit jobs (cf Graeber) in academia and outside of it, and there are also meaningful jobs in both.

Great to see researchers building next generation tools for curating/augmenting social media feeds. There remain sticky challenges for incentivizing and sustaining use of tools like these, but design (eg around attention dynamics) has played a role in where we are right now, and can help get us out.

I very much admire this work! We need to figure out fast how to create and navigate those attentional landscapes.

As always, wise observations !