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Ásgeir Berg

@asgeirberg.bsky.social

Philosopher at the Icelandic Institute of Philosophy. http://www.asgeirberg.org/

1183 Posts288 Follower155 Folgt
Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · last mo.

I thought this was a good time to mention (again) that @fennert.bsky.social and I wrote a paper arguing that using LLMs to generate and verify proofs does not necessarily give us mathematical knowledge as that notion has traditionally been understood: www.mxphi.com/all-issues/v...

The Philosophical Prospects of Large Language Models in the Future of Mathematics

The Philosophical Prospects of Large Language Models in the Future of Mathematics — Fenner Stanley Tanswell, Ásgeir Berg

mxphi.com

Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I find it very annoying when climate change deniers sarcastically say "OH TAXING PEOPLE MORE IS JUST GOING TO FIX IT". Why is it so hard to imagine that taxing pollution would reduce pollution? Don't right-wingers typically believe that taxation reduces whatever is taxed?

Greg Egan@gregegansf.bsky.social · 3mo ago

While the Fields Medal celebrates the under-40s, the mathematician Joan Birman has, at the age of 99, solved a major open problem in representations of the Braid groups, a topic she has worked on for more than 60 years.

Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I found this amusing because a philosophically inclined friend of mine started attending sociology-adjacent events and found the field full of terribly ill-thought out pseudo-philosophy. The sociology bits were fine, though.

Tim Gill@timgill924.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Let’s be honest. If Philosophy hasn’t been ‘liquidated’, Sociology will not be. For all the criticisms, at least Sociologists collect data. Meanwhile the Philosophy people just make things up out of thin air. Just whatever they want. Doesn’t matter.

Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I accept the point that strangeness of results is not the sole way how we should evaluate arguments (maybe there are abstract objects!). But I can't accept that it should play no role: I find it harder to accept that there exist non-concrete former balls than Williamson getting the logic wrong.

Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

If I understood him correctly, Williamson thinks that Socrates became an abstract object upon his death because otherwise there would be nothing referred to in the statement "Socrates was a philosopher" (we need an abstract object *now* having the property of having been a philosopher).

Ethan Landes@ethanlandes.bsky.social · 3mo ago

In 200 years, my money is that analytic philosophy will be caricatured as following the maxim "if there's a word for it, then it exists objectively"

Jo Wolff@jowolff.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Alasdair MacIntyre in Rational Dependent Animals pointed out that we arrive in this world utterly dependent on others for years, many of us leave it the same way, and in between any independence we achieve is pretty thin. Easily forgotten.

Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Two things that foreigners don't understand about Icelandic whaling are (a) it is a way for Icelanders to perform their patriotism/nationalism. Without foreign activists trying to stop it, it would have stopped a long time ago, and (b) it is a way for Icelandic conservatives to own the libs.

Ásgeir Berg@asgeirberg.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I suspect this holds for almost all, if not all, foods that have an "authentic version". So many traditions, especially related to food, are much younger than we tend to think and change faster.

Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Do you have any foods where the modern "inauthentic" version is just clearly better? My go-to here is Babka, which in my own lifetime has morphed from some okay sweet bread with a swirl to a kind of loaded cinnamon roll cooked in a bread pan.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 7mo ago

Right now, unfolding around us on a global scale, is a rich and unambiguous lesson on the dangers of fossil fuel dependence. The most obvious solution is for the affected countries to reduce their dependence through clean energy. Are you seeing that message in media?

Sólveig Hrönn Hilmarsdóttir@solveighilmars.bsky.social · 8mo ago

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