@mpallen.bsky.social
i think it's about neither. it's about which things contribute to how well someone's life goes. the point is that things external to one's subjective experience contribute to how well one's life goes in a way that is not reducible to effects on subjective experience
Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 2d agoHOT TAKE Nozick's Experience Machine isn't about desire for real life but about loss aversion. You can convince yourself of this by imagining someone tells you you're already in the machine, then says they can let you into the real, much worse, world.
say what you will about the myriad valid concerns with current LLMs but I personally will never get over the fact that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted to his literal death for downloading JSTOR and then a decade later, they downloaded & ingested the entire world and our IP laws just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
as someone who reads a lot of economically worthless books for (also not particularly financially valuable) research purposes, the tragedy here is not that these are being bought and pulped but that the rest of us can't read the scans that result or share less terminally scanned copies ourselves
“I am trying to live a life that I do not understand” thepointmag.com/letter/on-ra...
On Radical Preservation | The Point Magazine
Our contention is that, if we fail to think through and delimit the role of AI in our lives, we risk undermining the intelligibility of our own guiding cultural concepts, and thus initiating a period ...
thepointmag.com
All I really want from modern technology is the ability to quickly and easily indent a quotation without also indenting all the text above and below it at least twice before I press the magic combination of buttons needed to create a hard return without also leaving a massive space above or below
Just remember this message is aimed at your children not theirs.
I love watching Villette virgins. Can’t wait to see your reaction to the ending.
When I post about how a British person faces deportation from Sweden I get a stream of quote-posts saying "Ha Ha the British deserve it!" Noting that (a) I post a lot about how badly the British state treats migrants and (b) that nobody who works on or is active migrant rights reacts like this.
I’d love a candidate who talked in the language of the faculty lounge (anti-managerial, precarious, fatalistically devoted to mission)
Toddler: [looking at the aqueous cubes of the MI6 building] is that the aquarium? Is there a picture book version of Learning From Las Vegas ?
The Germans call them Knäckebrottelefonierer (“Crispbread Phoner”).
I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased
It does. But the wilful blindness of the UK's political establishment to the scale of the danger scares me even more.
Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 3mo agothis should frighten you
Parents love to hear about the ‘sector environment’
QM_UCU@qmucu.bsky.social · 3mo agoAny parent and applicant planning to attend the Sussex University Open Day today, we can save you the trouble: these are the non-answers staff is told to give you. To send your staff out with this nonsense and treat visitors to this ChatGPT approach is disrespectful to all.
if faculty don’t control curriculum, it’s not actually a university. it’s just expensive high school for adults
Samantha Brennan@samanthabrennan.bsky.social · 3mo agoAuburn Board Takes Full Curricular Control, Dissolves Faculty Senate The policies mirror the directives laid out in HB 580, which doesn’t take effect until October and doesn’t apply to the institution. www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...
This is an enormously important point. The scope and values of any scholarly field are self-defined by those who practice it. If we grant corporate interests the legitimacy to establish these definitions, it is obvious that they will define a field such that their tools surpass human ingenuity.
US tech companies weaponizing absurd UK libel laws to silence and punish critics. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Meta legal action forces Facebook whistleblower to sit in silence at Hay festival
Sarah Wynn-Williams did not speak during event after lawyers warned of possible sanctions from tech firm
theguardian.com
One of my professors in grad school (late '90s) used to point to the abandoned churches that are ubiquitous in American cityscapes as a warning that we should not take the permanence of modern universities for granted. Prescient, I think.
I WILL get back to my seminar papers, but, 1st, 1 more quote from Pope Leo. For my deans and yours: "We must learn . . to protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine, from that subtle temptation which renders human thought seemingly superfluous when it is most needed."
Deidre Lynch@drbibliomane.bsky.social · 3mo agoThere's more for the deans (for ALL who teach): "intelligence, when absolutized, overshadows other essential dimensions of life, such as affection, the will, commitment & relationships . .. technical power, if left unbalanced, makes us more isolated & more vulnerable to being dominated & excluded."
This is not what vouching is—this is a different form of misconduct (which they did) from vouching (which they also did).
Anyone who was an adult at the time knows this to be false. "Homeland" was a deeply weird choice. That word had never been in wide use to refer to the territory of the US, and had a distinctly fascist vibe. This was widely remarked upon at the time.
NPR@npr.org · 3mo agoDHS was originally conceived in the interest of unity and harmony — and the phrase "homeland security" was originally meant to be reassuring. n.pr/4nOx8KP
“une personne indécrottable” this online French course is teaching me so much.
1825: It is often reported that the Skylark never sings but on the wing this report is worth little truth like a many others I saw one this morning sing on the ground