Last month I received the devastating news of the death of my former PhD student Alexander Greenberg. I taught him at UCL, at Cambridge, & he worked with me on the 'New Directions' project in Cambridge from 2015-17. He was a lovely man, wonderful company, & a fine philosopher. He was loved by many.

The best thing about Andor is the way it models the Empire on the British Empire: it's overstretched, doddering, staffed by idiots, trying to hold entire planets with tiny garrisons; the Death Star is a desperate last roll of the dice; this sets up the movies perfectly.

There's no humanities academic on Earth who doesn't dream of writing a review so withering it makes the news.

Writing a series of long blog posts about brain rhythms, fields, and related topics. To work through some ideas & difficult papers, correct some things I said earlier, note disagreements, and so on. Two posts so far. 1. metazoan.net/132-rhythms-1/ 2. metazoan.net/133-rhythms-2/

If there has to be a 3rd place playoff, then at least let it be between two countries that are so obsessed with their relative standing they will actually try quite hard even in the most trivial contexts.

If there has to be a 3rd place playoff, then at least let it be between two countries that are so obsessed with their relative standing they will actually try quite hard even in the most trivial contexts.

Wrote a poem about oranges. It doesn't rhyme, obviously

It's lucky the French have been "freed from desire" because otherwise they'd be pretty upset by this.

My book on consciousness at Oxford University Press is now available! It is titled House of Mirrors: The Illusion of Phenomenal Consciousness. The (open access) pdf can be downloaded for free on Oxford Academic: academic.oup.com/book/62981 Printed copies should be available at the end of July.

House of Mirrors: The Illusion of Phenomenal Consciousness

Abstract. This book provides a defense and an exploration of illusionism regarding phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness supposedly encompasse

academic.oup.com

"Boltzmann Brains" is a fanciful name for a dead-serious idea. I'm beginning to wonder whether the name hasn't caused the physics community to not spend nearly enough time thinking carefully about the problems that they pose. We have Boltzmann Brain Blindness. Long 🧵 coming. ⚛️ #cosmology (1/n)

I've written another poem. It's called Atlas

If the kids haven't yet normalized lengthening their short legal names the way people have traditionally shortened their long ones then they should

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 4w ago

Always think it’s a shame not to give your child the longest version of a name (William rather than Bill, Frederick rather than Freddie) just because it’s nice to have options. Also why I’m glad to have an otherwise redundant middle name.

You’d have thought that the crudest considerations of electoral geography would make the Labour Government more interested in the fate of the universities than they are. (Perhaps their opposition to higher education really is more principled than we tend to think?)

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 4w ago

A handful of universities are determined to destroy all the others. It's that simple. That would end the Burnham regionalism agenda before it'd even got going. Unfortunately, no-one even seems to know this and our governance structures are so pitifully weak there's not even anyone to tell.

Timely again with the recent open letter. I support disclosures (of course) but the deeper problem is that the current publishing model is incompatible with pervasive industry ties.

Jonathan Birch@birchlse.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Philosophy's traditional model - highly selective journals, tough "reject for any reason" peer review - assumes that no area of the field is pervaded by conflicts of interest. It's clearly an unsuitable model for philosophy of AI, where industry-funded research is already starting to dominate.

The USA team got many things right, but they definitely should not have agreed to their keeper wearing an earpiece so Trump could shout instructions in real time.

Paywalled, but here's me and @birchlse.bsky.social talking to @newscientist.com about whether and why tech companies are suddenly hiring a lot of philosophers, apparently the only subject to rival Balogun's red card for column inches this week. www.newscientist.com/article/2532...

Can the biggest problems in AI be solved by philosophy?

AI companies are hiring philosophy graduates to help them understand the nature of consciousness, whether it can be replicated and how their systems can be made better and more reliable

newscientist.com

"Norms surrounding conflict disclosure (financial and non-financial) are basically non-existent" in philosophy, which is something that should change as the tech industry becomes increasingly interested in working with philosophers...

Time for Philosophy’s COI Policies to Grow Up (guest post) - Daily Nous

"Philosophy’s broadening impact has generated increasing interest from industries looking to partner with academic philosophers. Ties are now especially common between philosophers and technology comp...

dailynous.com

This review of an objectively great book (by my man😍) is especially nice for emphasising the aesthetic dimension of fragility with some great metaphors. Thank you @adrian-currie.bsky.social #philsci

Science for a Fragile World

Maybe the world is like an armillary sphere. Metallic balls representing celestial objects are placed just-so along spherical rings, tracing an at-first...

ndpr.nd.edu

My only real complaint with "Freed from Desire" is that the guy still has his strong beliefs. This is just another form of attachment, surely.

Should be another easy one for England - just Mexico at the Azteca Stadium, Mexico City, Mexico.

Did the evolution of consciousness begin with smell? I have a piece arguing it might well have done (in response to @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's recent vision-centric picture). Free to read here: drive.google.com/file/d/1ZhrI...

Lovely to see the full range of excellent commentaries on our BBS article with @matthiasmichel.bsky.social, together with our response, now out: Target article: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Commentaries: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Our response: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Matthias Michel@matthiasmichel.bsky.social · last yr.

Very happy to announce that our paper “Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision” is now out as a target article in BBS!! @smfleming.bsky.social and I present a new theory of the evolution and functions of visual consciousness. Article here: doi.org/10.1017/S014.... A (long) thread 🧵

Even though this is in many ways a ridiculous scene, as a Northerner it's quite exciting to see a Northern rebellion finally succeed. RIP Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland you would have loved this.

My strongest memory of Starmer will be his 2024 conference speech, where he said "every child deserves respect", a young activist said "does that include the children of Gaza?", and he laughed and said "he's obviously got a pass to the 2019 conference".

Father and his son (who is also a father). (The picture is from my inaugural lecture - in which I argued that his argument in his inaugural lecture [in which he argued for the abolition of inaugural lectures] was wrong.)

We desperately need a competence revolution in Westminster. Parliament should sit every working day - let's stop losing important bills to "lack of time". Cabinet should meet every working day, online if needed, not 1hr per week. Scrap the interminable "write round" process... (1/3)

I'm going to start including hydration breaks in my lectures, with 3 minutes of science based hydration from my hydration sponsors Lagavulin and Laphroaig.

Live in two hours - "Food Futures" at the LSE Festival www.youtube.com/live/6j4wpgg...

Food futures | LSE Festival

YouTube video by LSE

youtube.com

We've been informed that the Port Authority of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria took a first step towards closing the application to build the world’s first octopus farm. We must keep up the pressure until the file is officially closed. Send a message to the Port Authority: https://bit.ly/3QDHy3x

A graph that very neatly encapsulates Starmer's big strategic mistake. English politics right now is about uniting your bloc.