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Links of late… “If we try to turn our lives into good stories, we may find ourselves making choices that are bad for us” — Amy Berg (Oberlin) on narratives, well-roundedness, and the good life Knowledge, but at what cost? — how should we figure out whether large scale basic science experiments are worth it? “A full development of our humanity requires developing our capacities to care for the world of nature and for the animals in it” — Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) is interviewed by Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (Case Western) at Boston Review Mind-wandering is a thing, but what about extended mind-wandering? And is habitual smartphone use an example of it? — Jelle Bruineberg & Regina Fabry (Macquarie) make the case for it, and other philosophers discuss it A philosopher proposes an “Institute for Ascertaining Scientific Consensus” to determine what we know and to fight misinformation — Can it be done? Should it? UPDATE: There’s an (LLM-based) app for that now: Consensus. It’s not very good… yet. “Can College Level the Playing Field?… No way.
Latest links… “He wants scholars to get real and acknowledge the field’s genuine strengths, which don’t necessarily lie in direct response to today’s political issues” — the “he” is John Guillory (NYU) and “the field” is literature, but he’s addressing problems relevant to philosophy, too “There is a popular picture of Socrates as someone inviting us to think for ourselves… [That] popular picture is severely incomplete” — Alex Pruss (Baylor) on Socrates’ conservatism What to say to a friend whose book you haven’t read — some suggestions “[The spider] tenses the threads of the web so that she can filter information that is coming to her brain… This is almost the same thing as if she was filtering things in her own brain” — extended cognition in the animal world How do ChatGPT and other large language models work? — philosopher Ben Levinstein (Illinois) provides a “conceptual guide” to them. Here’s Part 1. “Free Will?” — a documentary featuring philosophers and others, released this month — watch the trailer here A reflexive puzzle — (via The Browser) Discussion welcome.
