Is this the right time to show you the cool wine glasses my friend bought for me?

“Overall, our research identifies three key features of attention capital allocation on social media: low alignment with traditional resources, considerable manipulability and ease of acquisition but difficulty sustaining it over time” Fits my recent talk at uchv.princeton.edu/events/persp... …

Princeton is pretty…who knew?

I don't generally consider myself a nasty philosopher, but every once in a while I revisit Nina Strohminger's review of McGinn's book on disgust for the pleasure of a great takedown #philsky www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/McG...

Biggest protest I have seen in Merced, and with more honking from cars #nokings

I’ve heard it said that the people united will never be defeated #nokings

The daily grind

Announcement: APDA now has three directors! @kinozhao.bsky.social and @travislacroix.bsky.social joined the project last month and will help lead this year's data gathering/survey effort. Our joint blogpost provides a brief history of APDA and more information about the new co-directors 🥳 #philsky

apda.ghost.io/new-leadersh... I joined the APDA!

Announcement: APDA now has three directors! @kinozhao.bsky.social and @travislacroix.bsky.social joined the project last month and will help lead this year's data gathering/survey effort. Our joint blogpost provides a brief history of APDA and more information about the new co-directors 🥳 #philsky

MIT has chosen to do the right thing. OMG, what a relief. links.mit.edu/nl3/N5Jy2cKq...

This is a cool paper “chemical synapses have a major role in brain rhythms…post-synaptic neural firing requires rhythmic action of populations of neurons…waves of ion fluctuations in the chemical soup surrounding the neurons are important” #neurosky @pessoabrain.bsky.social @earlkmiller.bsky.social

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 Is consciousness tied to biological brains? Neuro&Philo Salon present+discussion with @anilseth.bsky.social of his BBS target paper! October 23, noon USA eastern #neuroskyence Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... doi.org/10.1017/S014...

I argue that postdiction is quite consistent with fast but initially partial and unsettled perception. Must such rapid and revisable perception overflow cognitive access? That's not obvious -- there's evidence access can be fleeting too! Nor is it clearly empirically objectionable if it does. 2/3

We lost this perfect boy 6 months ago today. My sister drew his likeness, which makes him feel a little closer 🖤

being a cat person is so crazy bc you live with someone who is undeniably annoying and you're always thinking "maybe i should get another cat"

A memorial for my sister Helen De Cruz will take place on 19 October, both online (hosted by Blake Hereth) and in Brussels (Royal Library of Belgium). tally.so/r/3yLRJd

i don’t think people on bluesky understand the severity of this situation. i woke up to literally hundreds of texts from friends and family thinking about either moving back home to india or applying to other countries for jobs. this includes me.

TFW you find out your siblings have a more sophisticated/complex emotional palette than you do

Today is Consequence Argument Day in my free will class, also known as the day when a handful of students discover they love logic/Lewis and the rest look at me confused 🎉🥳 #philsky

First draft of a new book finished! AI and Consciousness, for Cambridge. Not yet in circulating shape — maybe in a couple of weeks. 🎉

My doctor is using an AI "assistant" to screen calls (I can't talk to the front desk directly) and has sent my prescription to a pharmacy in the wrong city, which itself uses an AI "assistant" to manage its prescriptions, none of which feels particularly "intelligent" or "assist"-y.

Margaret A. Boden, a Fellow of the CogSci Society and one of the greats of Cognitive Science, passed away on July 18, 2025. In this tribute, members of our community offer remembrances in celebration of her. cognitivesciencesociety.org/remembering-...

Incredible. Trump drags the reputation of a highly regarded economist, first Black woman to be a Fed gov, thru the mud claiming she committed mortgage fraud. But the documents his appointee to run Fannie & Freddie got for him & that he said showed fraud don’t actually say that.

Frustrations with Zoom this week: 1) they changed the settings without my realizing it and now I can’t use my presentation software/slides unless the host adds a special app 2) Zoom bombers were able to completely hijack the share screen feature, whiteboard etc in disturbing ways for another meeting

Friend, Does scrolling leave you hollowed? Is anger frictionless...but thinking like swimming against the current? You're in an algorithmic rip tide. Your mental clarity is the target. Take a beat and step out Connect with your own thoughts. It's what designers of these algorithms fear most.

Deeply disturbing. The faculty member in question has expertise in gender/sexuality and includes the topic as a focus in the course description. Indeed, much of youth literature has this topic. If students are not taught about this they will not have the tools to understand it, even if they disagree

Women earned 37% of U.S. philosophy doctorates in 2024, up from 28% ten years ago. Bachelor's degrees show a similar pattern. If it were a pipeline effect, the increase in doctorates should be several years later than the increase in BAs, but it's not. So why explains it? link in comments

"...many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico...and do not speak much English." The first non-indigenous people in California spoke Spanish and the state has a history of Mexican rule. Non-Hispanic White folk are just 41% of the state. It is the Bretts who need to be checked.

I have discovered a truly unhinged quesadilla recipe: “2-3 tablespoons salt…Every 30 minutes, turn the tortillas over and salt the upturned side,…salting every 30 minutes for 3 hours…NOTE: This is an excellent appetizer for a Mexican dinner.” Bonus: avocado ring mold, best served with chicken salad

Postdoc job! I expect to have an opening at Johns Hopkins for a postdoctoral researcher working somewhere in the broad realms of physics, philosophy, and complexity. Apply at Academic Jobs Online: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30496

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁? Don't miss the Neuroscience and Philosophy Salon. Earl Miller and team will discuss recent paper and we'll have plenty of discussion. Open to all. Sept 12, noon EST-US umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #neuroskyence @earlkmiller.bsky.social

Consciousness/Emergence People: check out this hybrid workshop hosted by Sussex next Wednesday, September 10th www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/re... I will be speaking in the afternoon session (starting at 7 am Pacific time) on “The Importance of Boundaries” (abstract in thread) #philsky #neuroskyence

Nothing to see here, just a double rainbow and thunderstorm in September in an area of California that doesn’t normally get rain until November (our second storm since term started) This has been California’s coolest summer for 30 years, and now we are in a “monsoon” weatherwest.com/archives/43494

Devastating. I lost one of my immigrant colleagues to the political shifts. Winter is coming. www.kvpr.org/government-p...

When you pine for your youth, but your younger self actually was much cooler than you (happy birthday to me 🎉)

Happy Friday everyone! ☀️

“The 21st century’s cruel irony is that even as a wide range of essential American institutions—universities like UChicago, but also hospitals and health insurers—increasingly sacrifice their duties to society on the altar of asset accumulation, they fail at accumulating assets.” #highered

The full write up is here: Was It Something The Democrats Said? A Response to Third Way’s Political Language Memo open.substack.com/pub/dcinboxi...

What is the origin of the term “phenomenology”? It famously occurs in Husserl and Hegel but their projects are clearly different. Where did the word come from? Were they both drawing on a common source? A thread...

We conclude that the kinds of relations underpinning selfhood and conscious subjectivity may well be implementable in artificial systems...

Preprint alert! wiringthebrain.bsky.social and I submitted a commentary on Anil Seth’s forthcoming BBS article, which claims that AI needs to be alive in order to be conscious. We argue that it needs to be a subject, instead. osf.io/preprints/ps... #philsky #neuroskyence

West coast sunset #HalfMoonBay

Being interdisciplinary means the same paper can be rejected by a top science journal for not being “sufficiently compelling, groundbreaking, provocative, and so on” while also being rejected by a top philosophy journal for being “an extraordinarily ambitious paper.” #philsky #neuroskyence

Reminder: If anyone is interested in helping to run APDA, or know someone who might be, please send an email to [email protected] by the end of the month! #philsky

Third edition of the emergence workshop is almost here! You can register using the QR code on the poster Any questions, you can message me here or send an email!

𝗖𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 by Earl K Miller, Scott L Brincat, Jefferson E Roy This promises to be a must read One day we should create an online journal club to just read these kinds of papers! #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

A slight variant of the argument made here is that many universities have abandoned the goal of producing knowledge and thinkers in favor of producing monetizable results and revenue. In this sense, they’ve opened themselves up to the same issues and forces as companies focused on quarterly profits.

Live footage of me opening my work email for the first time in two weeks and deciding it can wait until Monday, after all #nothankyou

It’s August 1st, which means I’m going to sign off in favor of this for the next two weeks #breaktime