Canada Research Chair in Philosophy @yorkuniversity
'Morals of the Story' columnist @TheTLS
words: @nytimes @latimes @aeonmag
new book: https://t.co/PXXoh5GnXn
Jun 14, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In my Philosophy of AI class I run an exercise. I announce that BigTech Company has been secretly testing a new AI in our class. All along, one of the students was an android! The students break into small groups with this goal: prove that everyone in your group is human. 1/4
The pedagogical point, of course, is to help them come to their own realizations about limits of the Turing Test. It works pretty well. But once, two students both simultaneously and loudly announced that they were the android. That complicated things. 2/4
Jun 13, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Okay, a thread defending Blake Lemoine. Not how you’re expecting. I won’t defend Lemoine’s claim the LaMDA chatbot has achieved sentience – that’s false. But I will claim that Lemoine’s mistake is a good one, which we shouldn’t mock. 🧵->
1/15. First, let’s get it out of the way: LaMDA is almost certainly not sentient, and Lemoine’s proffered evidence is no reason to think it is. LaMDA sounds spookily convincing when it talks about its feelings, but there’s an easy explanation.
Jun 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Frustrated by the narrowness of the Lemoine / LaMDA discourse on here. This isn't as simple as the emerging consensus. I may write something later. I know I'll be accused of AI hype or somesuch, so here's a mini-thread of what I've said before about such things.
from two years ago, when GPT-3 first launched - Why language models are significant even if they aren't self-aware dailynous.com/2020/07/30/phi…
Mar 24, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It's so weird how much Kant is hated by culture warriors who evidently never read him. There is a simple way to learn what Kant thought Enlightenment is: read his short essay, 'What is Enlightenment?' A few clips in thread ->
The first paragraph is anti-PC culture warrior 101 stuff. Do your own research! Think for yourself! (Look at me, I am both clever *and* brave!)
Oct 3, 2021 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
What I find most frustrating about anti-wokism is that it gobbles all the oxygen needed for more thoughtful conversations on the excesses of some social justice activism. A thread:
Anti-wokism holds that social justice activism is really a secretive campaign to (variably) destroy free speech or extinguish enlightenment values or achieve Marxist totalitarianism. In other words, a conspiracy story. 🧵1/11
Apr 22, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Much chatter now about the abominable behavior of Philosophy journal refs, so I thought I'd share this: a guide to the sorts of creatures you will meet when you visit the land of philosophy journals. Intended for grad students, but maybe useful to others. reginarini.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/philos…
The good
Apr 8, 2021 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
This looks like the campus tempest du jour. And it starts with talk about microaggression, something I have expertise on (I wrote a whole book). So here is a thread.
🧵First, let’s look at the student’s questions (at a campus panel on microaggression in 2018). This clip is from the court document linked in Soave’s article: casetext.com/case/bhattacha…
Jul 8, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Our debate about debating – what it’s good for, when to pursue it – has become painfully confused, as that Harper’s letter shows. A thread trying to diagnose the problem:
First, distinguish two theses:
GENERAL: It’s best if our social norms permit open discussion of disagreeable topics, with some exceptions.
EXCEPT: Here are the exceptions: {X, Y, … }
1/N
Jun 24, 2020 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Yesterday I dug into how the term ‘doxx’ has shifted meaning. This thread has a few observations and lessons. --->
So ‘doxx’ originated in the ‘90s as a term for revealing documents as a tool of revenge or harassment. At first, ‘to doxx’ meant an intentional act with intended malice. See link: wired.com/2014/03/doxing/ 1/
Nov 10, 2019 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
A thread speculating about Twitter users’ ignorant fixation on ‘standpoint epistemology’ (SPE) : it’s really about counterproductive twitter etiquette and intellectual laziness (15 tweets)
First, I am *not* an expert on SPE. But I do work, professionally, in adjacent areas of epistemology and political theory. So I’ve picked up enough to know that most anti-SPE twittering is amazingly uninformed. How did it get that way? 1/15
Oct 27, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Best historical analogy for Trump = Kaiser Wilhelm II
I’m reading Christopher Clark’s excellent pre-WWI history ‘The Sleepwalkers’ and am repeatedly struck by the thought that he seems to be subtweeting Trump – but the book was published in 2012. Examples in thread.
“Wilhelm frequently… bypassed his responsible ministers by consulting with ‘favorites’, encouraged factional strife in order to undermine the unity of government, and expounded views that ... were at odds with the prevailing policy.” (178)
