Simon Friederich
@simonfriederich.bsky.social
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Philosopher of science at University of Groningen; quantum foundations, philosophy of technology
The combination of the NVidia-chips decision and the EO creates the impression that the biggest concern is not China winning the race to AGI/ASI, but not getting to AGI/ASI at all, unless it's done very quickly.
17 days ago
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Why philosophers of physics should look more into Anti-Wick quantization -- and quantization in general. New paper in Physics Letters A: Sharp values for all dynamical variables via Anti-Wick quantization
sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Sharp values for all dynamical variables via Anti-Wick quantization
This paper proposes an approach to interpreting quantum expectation values that may help address the quantum measurement problem. Quantum expectation âŠ
https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960125010060
21 days ago
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This new peer-reviewed theoretical physics paper, in a good journal, is, according to its author (on X) based on an AI-generated research idea:
arxiv.org/abs/2511.15935
The research is probably not very original. Still, I find it depressing how close we are to being superseded by the machines.
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Relativistic Covariance and Nonlinear Quantum Mechanics: Tomonaga-Schwinger Analysis
We use the Tomonaga-Schwinger (TS) formulation of quantum field theory to determine when state-dependent additions to the local Hamiltonian density (i.e., modifications to linear Schrodinger evolution...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15935
25 days ago
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Simon Friederich
Steije Hofhuis
about 1 month ago
Is er in de Nederlandse wetenschap nog ruimte voor tegendraads onderzoek? Ik sprak er vrijdag over bij het symposium Open debat in de wetenschap! aan de
@unileiden.bsky.social
Lees hier een bewerkte versie van mijn voordracht op Substack:
open.substack.com/pub/hofhuis/p/âŠ
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https://open.substack.com/pub/hofhuis/p/âŠ
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Statement that, as things stand, superintelligence should not be developed:
superintelligence-statement.org
I have signed.
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Statement on Superintelligence
âWe call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is (1) ï»żï»żï»żï»żbroad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and (2) strong public bu...
https://superintelligence-statement.org/
2 months ago
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Yes, and 2. is correct, even though I often wish it was false.
add a skeleton here at some point
2 months ago
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Simon Friederich
Steije Hofhuis
3 months ago
@leol.bsky.social
reageerde zaterdag in NRC samen met zijn broer op mijn opiniestuk van een week ervoor. Helaas voldoet zijn betoog niet aan serieuze standaarden voor goed debat â en dat is geen incident. Lees hier mijn reactie op Substack:
open.substack.com/pub/hofhuis/...
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Leo Lucassen en de grenzen van eerlijk debat
Mijn repliek op Lucassens NRC-opinie en wat dit zegt over het migratiedebat
https://open.substack.com/pub/hofhuis/p/leo-lucassen-en-de-grenzen-van-eerlijk?r=20s69m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
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Simon Friederich
Mark Lynas
3 months ago
The EU wants to ban words like âburgerâ + âsausageâ from plant-based foods. So get ready for âprotein tubesâ + âalternative discs.â đ Nobodyâs confused â except Brussels. Consumers + the planet deserve better.
#NoConfusion
substack.com/home/post/p-...
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Will the EU now ban 'sausage' and 'burger' from plant-based alternatives?
Could Europe get any dumber?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-174924618
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Simon Friederich
WePlanet
3 months ago
đš Next week the EU votes on banning words like burger, sausage & chicken from plant-based foods. This is nothing short of government engaging in cartel behaviour with the meat industry right as we need to transition away from animal agriculture to fix the climate crisis. Act now!
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Stop the EUâs Ban on âMeatyâ Words for Plant-Based Foods
Sign now
https://weplanet.yourmovement.org/p/noconfusion-petition
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Simon Friederich
Jeffrey M Epstein
4 months ago
I just got a copy of this new book from Emily Adlam (with whom I did my masters, so this is the first book I'm reading written by a former classmate!). I'm going to try the thing where I tweet about it as I go.
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https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saving-science-from-quantum-mechanics-9780197808856?cc=us&lang=en&
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AGI is not inevitable, and if you are American, you may consider getting active to stop its development. Great piece by
@garrisonlovely.bsky.social
. In contrast, crying "AI hype" makes people complacent and only plays into the hands of the industry.
add a skeleton here at some point
5 months ago
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Again, so much for "AI hype": An OpenAI experimental reasoning LLM has performed at gold medal level at the International Math Olympiad (IMO):
x.com/alexwei_/sta...
(To be clear, I personally find this quite depressing.)
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Alexander Wei on X: "1/N Iâm excited to share that our latest @OpenAI experimental reasoning LLM has achieved a longstanding grand challenge in AI: gold medal-level performance on the worldâs most prestigious math competitionâthe International Math Olympiad (IMO). https://t.co/SG3k6EknaC" / X
1/N Iâm excited to share that our latest @OpenAI experimental reasoning LLM has achieved a longstanding grand challenge in AI: gold medal-level performance on the worldâs most prestigious math competitionâthe International Math Olympiad (IMO). https://t.co/SG3k6EknaC
https://x.com/alexwei_/status/1946477742855532918
5 months ago
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So much for "hype": 'Ono says. âI donât want to add to the hysteria, but in some ways these large language models are already outperforming most of our best graduate students in the world.â'
www.scientificamerican.com/article/insi...
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Inside the Secret Meeting Where Mathematicians Struggled to Outsmart AI
The world's leading mathematicians were stunned by how adept artificial intelligence is at doing their jobs
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-secret-meeting-where-mathematicians-struggled-to-outsmart-ai/
7 months ago
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Simon Friederich
Liesbeth van de Wetering
7 months ago
Nodig is: minder inkomensverschillen, meer ontmoeting in de publieke ruimte en meer onbevangenheid, aldus
@tkupp.bsky.social
@rug.nl
#werkaandewinkel
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The AI revolution is underhyped -- perhaps not everywhere, but certainly on Bluesky.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4Y...
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The AI Revolution Is Underhyped | Eric Schmidt | TED
YouTube video by TED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4YRO7G0wE
8 months ago
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New paper, in Ergo: To the extent that we are sometimes cluelessness about the more indirect consequences of our actions, this speaks against a longtermist orientation, not in favour:
journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article...
(The thesis may seem banal, but Hilary Greaves argued the opposite.)
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Causation, Cluelessness, and the Long Term
Agents are said to be âcluelessâ if they are unable to predict some ethically important consequences of their actions. Some philosophers have argued that such âcluelessness'' is widespread and creates...
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article/id/7428/
8 months ago
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Itai Sher
8 months ago
It seems to me that as educators we will have to do two things 1 Do evaluations of students without AI (paper and pencil tests) 2 Teach students how to use AI to be more productive The notion that we can totally shun AI in higher ed when it will be so important is misguided.
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Are there any other academics here on Bluesky who are also very worried about AI, in particular AI-driven power concentration, who do *not* think that the technology is overhyped?
8 months ago
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Simon Friederich
Ethan Mollick
8 months ago
For academics that are skeptical about AI's ability to provide perceptive & useful results, a fast way to test your assumptions is to give one of your papers as a PDF to o3 (or Gemini 2.5 but it lacks some tools), with the prompt: "critique this paper" I have found very good accuracy & insight...
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Fantastic piece by
@ednewtonrex.bsky.social
:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
AI companies aim at automating the entire economy, preparing to take away all our bargaining power. They may well succeed unless we coordinate to impose restrictions on AI capabilities.
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For Silicon Valley, AI isnât just about replacing some jobs. Itâs about replacing all of them | Ed Newton-Rex
AI will do the thinking, robots will do the doing. What place do humans have in this arrangement â and do tech CEOs care? says Ed Newton-Rex, founder of Fairly Trained
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/12/for-silicon-valley-ai-isnt-just-about-replacing-some-jobs-its-about-replacing-all-of-them?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
8 months ago
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Bluesky is a much nicer environment than X, but the AI conversations seem much more superficial here. The very stimulating new contributions on AI as normal technology, gradual disempowerment, and the intelligence curse, to name just a few, have been discussed more lively on X. Very sad.
8 months ago
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Simon Friederich
Ken Wharton
8 months ago
Unsolicited advice for making progress in quantum foundations: 1) If there were a gentle tweak or simple idea that would make clear sense of quantum theory, beyond the for-all-practical-purposes-level, it would certainly have been found by now.
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Simon Friederich
Maarten Boudry
8 months ago
Waar is de tijd dat progressieven nog in vooruitgang en verlichting geloofden! Zoals Kamagurka ooit zei: "Vroeger was de toekomst beter". Maar tegenwoordig is 'vooruitgang' bijna een vies woord voor links. Hoog tijd voor een progressieve beweging die haar naam wél weer waarmaakt! Nu in de winkel.
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Simon Friederich
Journal for General Philosophy of Science (JGPS)
9 months ago
In our latest editorial, we express our sincere thanks to Guido Bacciagaluppi for his editorial work since 2021 & bid him a fond farewell as he concludes his tenure. We also warmly welcome
@simonfriederich.bsky.social
as our new Co-Editor-in-Chief!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#philsci
#philsky
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Simon Friederich
Huw Price
10 months ago
Latest version of my work on entanglement with
@kenwharton.bsky.social
. We propose that entanglement is a kind of selection artefact. This was a talk at
@griffith.edu.au
, and the slides are accessible here:
bit.ly/4h9dMeo
#philsky
#PhilSci
#quantum
#entanglement
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A Mechanism for Entanglement?
YouTube video by The Quietist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmzzlTG35uE&t=14s
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Simon Friederich
Vincent Ginis
11 months ago
Toen Donât look up uitkwam bedacht ik hoe de metafoor tot vervelens toe misbruikt zou worden in opiniestukken. Ik keek neer op mijn toekomstige zelf. Is er nog ĂĂ©mand bekommerd om de gevaren van AI?
www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20250...
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Is er nog ĂĂ©mand bekommerd om de gevaren van AI?
Op de AI-veiligheidconferentie was niemand bezig met de gevaren van AI. Alles was pr en machtsstrijd. Het doet Vincent Ginis denken aan de film Donât look up.
https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20250214_96655287
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Simon Friederich
Gary Marcus
11 months ago
Elon Muskâs terrifying vision for AI; short, urgent new piece at Marcus on AI. I canât remain silent - and hope you wonât, either.
open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
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Elon Muskâs terrifying vision for AI
All your thoughts belong to him
https://open.substack.com/pub/garymarcus/p/elon-musks-terrifying-vision-for?r=8tdk6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
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Simon Friederich
Jim Weatherall
about 1 year ago
Just published in the Cambridge Elements of Philosophy of Physics: Foundations of General Relativity, by Sam Fletcher! Open access for two weeks. Get it for free while you can!
www.cambridge.org/core/element...
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Foundations of General Relativity
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - Foundations of General Relativity
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/foundations-of-general-relativity/00EFDFCE622638B5AEEF786C8D70DD33
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Increasingly capable AI systems create dramatic challenges for academic writing norms. How should we react? Together with Jonathan Symons from Macquarie University I argue in a new paper in Digital Society (open access) that minor fixes will be insufficient:
rdcu.be/dp9h8
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about 2 years ago
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Simon Friederich
Richard Pettigrew
about 2 years ago
My review of The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism, edited by Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen is now published in Mind. Apparently this link should provide free access.
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The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism, by Carol J. Adams, Al...
Effective altruists (EAs) seek to persuade the globally wealthy to donate a proportion of their income to do good, and specifically to donate it to those charit
https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mind/fzad047/7284279?utm_source=authortollfreelink&utm_campaign=mind&utm_medium=email&guestAccessKey=14cb8d80-38ff-4d93-956f-3d0a16ac7ab3
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Simon Friederich
I Support People Protesting in Support of Palestinian Action
about 2 years ago
My piece âQuantum Mechanics and the Puzzle of Subjectivity: Solving Husserlâs Crisis of the Sciencesâ just appeared at the Institute of Art and Ideas website:
iai.tv/articles/aui...
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