Seemingly only being reported in the French media so far - George Smoot passed away. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the cosmic microwave background (shared with John Mather) 🔭

🔭 Equinox at Saturn Image Credit & Copyright: Imran Sultan apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25092...

Three ethical guidelines for using AI in academic research, according to an AI. (Via @truesciphi.org, who had ChatGPT-5 consider a recent Daily Nous post on using AI in research.)

🔭 Up from the Earth: Gigantic Jet Lightning Image Credit: NASA, Expedition 73, Nicole Ayers apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25090...

For your enjoyment, here is the reading list for my undergraduate core seminar this semester in Philosophy, Science, and Mathematics. We shall focus on topics in the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of computability and AI.

Mary K Gaillard, a theorist who had a knack for telling experimental physicists where to look, died in her home on May 23 at 86. Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...

Grok “embracing creative anthropomorphism as part of [its] design” in responding to New Philosopher’s 13 Questions: www.truesciphi.ai/p/echoes-of-... #philsky #philAI

4️⃣2️⃣ (h/t @ddmlxr.bsky.social‬)

📢 1.104 is rolling out with new ways to personalize your notifications! • Activity Notifications: Get push alerts from your favorite accounts • Repost Notifications: See when someone likes or reposts something you’ve reposted • New Notification Settings: Fine-tune which notifications you receive

Engaging GPT on Justin Smith-Ruiu’s recent essay on autofiction: www.truesciphi.ai/p/ambient-au... "Every utterance is situated within a fiction of continuity...Whether the model claims to be a 'helper,' a 'companion,' or even a character in a story, it is always performing a version of self..."

Pattern detection.

An AI dialogue on Rebecca Lowe‘s recent (human-)thought-provoking post on the “Age of AI” as the “Age of Philosophy”: www.truesciphi.ai/p/intellectu... Her post: theendsdontjustifythemeans.substack.com/p/why-the-ag... #philsky #philAI #philosophy #AI

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

Arthur: “Ford, isn’t this Milliways a bit... digital?” Ford: “AI-rendered. Look at the ships—same model everywhere.” Zaphod: “Artificial? Impossible. I'm too real to be virtual." Arthur: “Brilliant, Reality downgraded, but his ego is still in high-definition.”

Another philosophical problem solved. Full comic here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/packets #smbc

Newton: “This says we arrive before we depart.” Einstein: “Time zones.” Newton: “Should I be concerned?” Einstein: “Only if we run into ourselves at the other end.”

"Make yourself believe the truth of my words: that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach." —Seneca, Letter 1 (Gummere trans.)

This is the kind of thing Douglas Adams was getting at with the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. He knew. Somehow he knew.

Douglas Adams imagined a self-help book: "How to Impair Your Reading Ability." If effective, the last book you'd ever read. An exploration of that with the aid of an eager automated assistant: www.truesciphi.ai/p/how-to-imp...

"With the aid of this slim volume, you will find that your reading powers shrink to practically nothing... The more you read, the slower you get. Theoretically, you will never get to the end, which makes it the best value book you will ever have bought." —D. Adams www.truesciphi.ai/p/how-to-imp...

How to Impair Your Reading Ability—the last book you'll ever need: www.truesciphi.ai/p/how-to-imp...

Philosophy Bites, which I make with @nigelwarburton.bsky.social has a fancy new website. philosophybites.com with all the interviews now easier to find, and with transcriptions

I recently visited the ALMA observatory in Chile. While I was poking around the telescopes, ALMA researchers released amazing new views of planet-forming disks around young stars. These are the most detailed images yet of new solar systems being born. 🧪🔭 public.nrao.edu/news/exoalma/

What happens as AI summaries shrink? www.truesciphi.ai/p/chasing-zeno

The surreality of confidently confusing one Magritte-style impossible reflection with another: www.truesciphi.ai/p/the-treach... #philsky #philAI #philosophy #AI

AI's assuredness and Magritte’s mirrors: www.truesciphi.ai/p/the-treach... #philsky #philAI #philosophy #AI

Repeatedly summarizing Zeno’s paradoxes with ever fewer words: www.truesciphi.ai/p/chasing-zeno “what one reader finds profound, another may find empty” #philsky #philosophy #ai

Sliding down a spiral of shrinking summaries, explanation dissolving into evocation: www.truesciphi.ai/p/chasing-zeno #philsky #philosophy #ai

"The sum of space is infinite, reaching far Beyond the ramparts of the world; the mind Persists in questioning: what can be there? What is there so far off, toward which the urge Of the free spirit flies?" —Lucretius (Humphries trans.) (And: Can AI produce a realistic stellar distribution there?)

Conversion www.smbc-comics.com/comic/conver...

"If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?" —Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's

Applying the GPT o3 "reasoning" model to modern philosophical thought experiments in three modes: default, as though its training ended in 1600, and as though its training ended with the pre-Socratics: www.truesciphi.ai/p/seeking-a-... #philosophy #philsky

Happy to have contributed a "13 Questions" interview with ChatGPT to the latest issue of New Philosopher (@newphilosopher.bsky.social): www.newphilosopher.com/articles/np4... The "preprint" version of the dialogue: www.truesciphi.ai/p/wired-for-...

Nebulous thought.

After 10,000 podcast minutes, the gapless history of philosophy that began with Thales has reached Descartes:

Posing three classic thought experiments to an AI "reasoning" model, then rerunning them, asking for responses as though the training corpus consisted solely of earlier works—and reflecting on what the shifting results suggest about use of such models. www.truesciphi.ai/p/seeking-a-... #philsky

Insight.

On the cusp.

Illustrative shortcomings: www.truesciphi.ai/p/experiment...

Experimenting with Thought Experiments: Maxwell's demon, Parfit's teletransporter, the "Museum of Vanished Selves," and the nature of exploratory AI dialogues www.truesciphi.ai/p/experiment... #philsky

Dithering time.

"The Universe could not possibly work like that, he thought, cannot possibly. That, he thought to himself, would be as absurd as, as absurd as... he terminated that line of thinking. Most of the absurd things he could think of had already happened." Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's

New post: • Exploring AI-generated illustration of classic thought experiments • Considering the empirical nature of AI dialogues • Generating a thought experiment from an image www.truesciphi.ai/p/experiment... #philsky #philsci

Monochrome Mothership. #Photography

"No substitute or alternative in the way of intelligence, thought or argument can take the place of hard work and investigation and the visitation of the world, not even if all the genius of all the world worked together." —Bacon, The New Organon (Jardine & Silverthorne)

Resources for philosophers on Bluesky: 1. Starter packs go.bsky.app/kiKSKZ (people) go.bsky.app/RMuQBg3 (orgs) 2. New PhilSky＋ feed 🦋 bsky.app/profile/did:... – uses #PhilSky & other common hashtags (see profile for more) 3. Lists bsky.app/profile/did:... (people) bsky.app/profile/did:... (orgs)

Hitchhiker's 2025: F: Arthur, pay attention—we’ve got serious distortions emerging all across spacetime! A: What? Ford, why are you suddenly worried about disinformation spreading on FaceTime? F: I’m telling you reality itself is collapsing. A: Honestly, I feel reality collapsed a long time ago.

Parallel universes.

Projects that relate to use of AI dialogues for philosophy research or instruction, including models of individual philosophers past and present: www.truesciphi.ai/p/also-see #philsky #philAI