Herbie: A Near-Future Debatably Conscious AI Person An autonomous vehicle, imagined with various feasible features that liberals about AI consciousness see as suggesting consciousness, plus rich goals and the capacity to communicate linguistically. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/06/herb...

Look, plantar fascitis sucks but I think this guy has bigger issues going on

Wow. This video explains why he was the one chosen by Trump. Birds of a feather …

Not sure if this is the meteorological climate or the political climate:

Hey look! Someone else trying to figure out psychules. We’ll see if they get to pattern recognition or not … osf.io/preprints/ps...

Zac’s disappearing nonconsciousness – Keith Frankish www.keithfrankish.com/how-the-magi...

Agree it is the best one I’ve seen. My question: is it reasonable to say that qualia are psychologically subjective? Is it unreasonable to say the robot has qualia?

This may be my best paper on consciousness. It's certainly a good introduction to my view of it. Open access. academic.oup.com/aristotelian...

The Astropolis trilogy In the last post I discussed my recent exploration of Reddit. The one conversation I've started so far was a request for posthuman space opera recommendations, particularly ones without FTL, stories that envision what the future might be like if we can't get around the speed…

[pssst … qualities = patterns, experience = pattern recognition] * [shhh]

A New Rival to Panpsychism. This week's video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDtz...

There Is No Hard Problem of Consciousness www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-... #neuroscience

I hate to admit it, but i still need to pay some attention to twitter, cuz every once in a while something appears there and but not here. Rovelli’s explanation of why there is no hard problem. Body and soul are the same thing, but from two different perspectives: www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-...

Social networks and exploring Reddit It's been a while since I've done a social media post, something I did more often back in the days of Twitter's convulsions and as people fled to various other platforms. For a long time, I held out hope that the Fediverse would be the new paradigm, but while…

The footsteps illusion-like pausing and sticking illusion The rectangles in the upper half appear to move to the right and stop periodically; however, they are moving to the right at a constant speed in the same way as the rectangles in the lower half.

What do just about all brain-based theories of consciousness have in common? Representation, modeling the world outside the head, a reality model. And representation involves content. Hence the content hypothesis about consciousness: twc3.substack.com/p/the-conten...

Filed you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. tenor.com/view/harold-...

A moral

For anyone interested in a physics-compatible explanation of qualia: open.substack.com/pub/twc3/p/t...

What Is It Like To Be A Bot? philosophynow.org/issues/126/W...

The Faith of Beasts The Faith of Beasts is the second book of The Captive's War trilogy, authored by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of the writing duo: Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, best known as the authors of The Expanse. This book continues the story of a far future human population conquered…

Depends on your definition of consciousness. I’ve put together an evolutionary hierarchy of it that stacks the various types of cognitions into different levels. Plants are way down the list in their total abilities, but yes, they do have some. This graduated view is much better than an on/off one.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could say goodbye to TurboTax and file your taxes for free, online, and directly with the IRS? I have a bill to get that done.

Say "weak on crime" again. I dare you.

Can calculators add? Can brains add? My latest. philipgoff.substack.com/p/can-calcul...

Somehow I never knew this.

[putting this here cuz I need to pin the link] [and just in case anyone wants to understand the basis of consciousness] * jamesofseattle.com/2025/06/01/p... [psst … it’s pattern recognition…]

Last week I submitted my latest book manuscript to Cambridge University Press (for their "Element" series of books about 100 pages long): AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview -- because you haven't heard nearly enough about AI and consciousness recently, of course! 😉 Maybe you'll 1/3

Children of Strife Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time books are about exploring different types of minds. In the first book he looked at spider minds, specifically uplifted Portia spiders. In the second it was octopuses and an alien group mind. In the third it was mated birds and another type…

What a performance. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8p...

Show me the energy you bring to Bluesky stock.adobe.com/search?k=sea...

It me. 8 months to go.

Good night. Happy Friday. Here’s a bird that is a whole sound department.

A philosopher, the Platonic ideal of a philosopher, and a philosopher facade walk into a restaurant. The host, a mereological nihilist, asks, "Table for one?" If you affirm this antecedent, come deny the consequent at the Philosophy Booth! TONIGHT 8pm-10pm EDT twitch.tv/askaphilosopher

In a paper started with Dennett himself, Keith Frankish presents an extended thought experiment, the Emancipation of the Drone, as a way of exploring how #consciousness might develop without a central Cartesian Theater doi.org/10.1080/0951...#consciousnessopen access #vol39issue3 #philsky #philpsy 11/16

Just wanted to point people at this post from @drmichaellevin.bsky.social giving the general background of his scientific direction. * [also, it’s related to my theory of consciousness. go figure.] thoughtforms.life/a-short-argu...

This and the opening of "Knowledge and the Flow of Information" are two passages I have filed under "Naturalistic philosophy that slaps"

Just got around to reading this from @eschwitz.bsky.social . A nice explanation that, contrary to IIT, our conscious experience is not necessarily an integrated whole. Instead it just seems like it when you introspect (open the fridge door). schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-mo...

Like I been saying, you gotta give the AI all the goals (I.e, those of other agents as well).

It's Persuaders day! At 1pm ET / 5pm GMT today @petemandik.bsky.social and I will be discussing the problem of the visual periphery. Can you see colours in your visual periphery? Does it even *seem* to you that can? To find out, be sure to foveate on www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL5C...

When I was programming I came across Perl and regular expressions which let you do amazing text searches, and Perl became my hammer. [everything looked like a nail.] This substack post shows how to do pretty much the same stuff just w/ google search. cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...

An optical illusion with nine simple dots reveals a surprising amount about the eye and brain

Is the eliminative stance productive? A number of recent conversations, some I've been in, and others witnessed, left me thinking about eliminative views like the strong illusionism of Keith Frankish and Daniel Dennett. This is the view that access consciousness, the availability of information…

I had way too much fun introducing Developmental Biology in my Genetics class today with this awesome @acapellascience.bsky.social video set to Despacito. Fortunately, Justin Bieber is still a recognizable cultural reference for undergrads.

FWIW, this is what I’ve been saying about AI and moral alignment. We need to give AI’s not just a goal, but all the goals, i.e., everybody’s goals. zenodo.org/records/1902...

This is hilarious. Also, completely enraging.

To restore democracy and create a fairer, safer, greener world, we need massive taxes on the ultra-rich. As in the 1940s. People get confused about this. The main purpose of such taxes is *not* to raise revenue. The point is to stop the few dominating the many. It's an essential democratic measure.

Slow Gods Clair North's Slow Gods is a grim look at what happens to far future human societies in the vicinity of a supernova. It's a novel with a strong literary feel, one that explores a number of very distinct cultures, including a hyper-capitalistic dystopia, a highly artistic society, and…

I too remember the earlier, woke wars. tons of spent microaggression munitions strewn about everywhere, friends crying out for God as they were slowly cancelled...look, if you weren't there, you'll never understand

Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran. No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles. Worth a watch. (🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)