@Daniel_Propson

"He's kind of a strange dude, but in the best way possible." - student Detroiter; Philosophy Prof; OU Phil Camp advisor; Plato stan; musician; husband; dad.

Joined February 2017
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  • Following706
  • Followers628
363Media
In the early 2000s, GM made a faulty ignition switch that, over the course of two decades, killed over 100 people. The company only survived this debacle bc they lied about it until after a bailout. Public scrutiny was brutal. Imagine they had announced those deaths in advance.
Barry Malone
@malonebarryOct 18
Woah woah woah. The lead is buried in paragraph four.
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It never occurs to these people that knowledge and wisdom are intrinsically valuable.
alz
@alz_zyd_Oct 18
It's honestly not clear what the purpose of education is now. To teach useful work skills? AI can do anything you learn in class. To teach you to think? Can't you pick stuff up while working? For aesthetic value? Are most classes particularly aesthetically interesting?
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I'd have thought that one could promote great works of literature & philosophy without attacking academic freedom, but apparently not. We can imagine a maximally classical college with no single required reading. Is that good? I dunno. But common experiences are not essential.
Jeremy Wayne Tate
@JeremyTate41Oct 17
Guess how many books all Harvard undergraduates read in common? 15? 8? 3? The answer is zero. Not one. Meanwhile every single graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in California has read 1. The Holy Bible 2. The Iliad — Homer 3. The Odyssey — Homer 4. The Republic — Plato 5. The Apology — Plato 6. Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle 7. Politics — Aristotle 8. The Aeneid — Virgil 9. Confessions — St. Augustine 10. City of God — St. Augustine 11. Consolation of Philosophy — Boethius 12. Summa Theologiae — St. Thomas Aquinas 13. The Divine Comedy — Dante 14. The Canterbury Tales — Geoffrey Chaucer 15. Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes 16. Hamlet — William Shakespeare 17. King Lear — William Shakespeare 18. Macbeth — William Shakespeare 19. The Prince — Niccolò Machiavelli 20. Paradise Lost — John Milton 21. The Social Contract — Jean-Jacques Rousseau 22. Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville 23. The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky 24. War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy 25. The Waste Land — T. S. Eliot And so many more
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"What position in this world can be baser than that of one who thinks it honorable to renounce the truth which is accepted on authority, and then relapses into an acceptance of falsehood which is still a matter of blind faith, unaided by independent inquiry?" - Al Ghazali
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Amazing objection. No one has ever thought of this. If only the world had provided us philosophers with names like, I dunno, Aristotle, Ibn Sina, Aquinas...
Elliott Not-So-Sober@LeophiliusOct 16
Ontological arguments often start by claiming that “God exists necessarily”, but why should I take God's existence to be necessary? In virtue of what is his existence necessary? It seems no independent motivation is ever given for this claim, it's just merely stipulated.
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The existence of immoral philosophy implies the existence of applied antiethics. This is what often passes for "applied ethics" in business schools.
Phil Hoyeck
@PAHoyeckOct 15
The existence of moral philosophy implies the existence of immoral philosophy
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The Washington Post
@washingtonpostOct 14
There’s no evidence that White House press secretary Katie Zacharia practiced law in the U.S. Several experts said that if a person is not a licensed lawyer but is identifying as one, that presents serious ethical and legal problems. wapo.st/4ikpoPi
A person is speaking at a podium with the White House emblem in the background. The text on the image reads, "Katie Zacharia calls herself a lawyer. The Post found no evidence that she was admitted to practice law in the U.S." Several hands are raised in front.

ALT A person is speaking at a podium with the White House emblem in the background. The text on the image reads, "Katie Zacharia calls herself a lawyer. The Post found no evidence that she was admitted to practice law in the U.S." Several hands are raised in front.

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I have a child who absolutely loves reading, always has her hands on a book. Does anyone have a child who loves reading, but only reads texts on their phone or computer screen? I doubt this is possible, but maybe it is.
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Maximus the Confessor on AI sentience: "The senses, in accordance with the divine principle that is appropriate to them, are ... elements for the faculties of the soul, since they gently activate these faculties through their own apprehension of the inner logoi of beings."
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Obviously tongue in cheek, but it's a good reminder that, historically, most ppl thought that we had access to one another's personhood that - though mediated by the senses - was activated by a deeper or more comprehensive faculty. We can "see" the principle (logos) of the other.
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This is my experience with both sides of that argument. When I'm reading doomers, I become less convinced of doom. When I'm reading those who downplay risk, I become more convinced of serious danger (if not doom). In order to be maximally persuasive, both sides should shut up.
Matthew Zeitlin@MattZeitlinOct 11
i still don't really understand how AI can cause human extinction BUT i do become more convinced the doomers/ASI-is-coming people are right when i read the arguments against them
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Imagine Europeans in 1650 debating about what circumstances it is permissible to lie to slaves, all the while assuming slavery itself is moral. This is what AI ethics is like these days: endless disputes about how to treat AI, next to nothing on the immorality of AI development.
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The more I think about it, the more I'm unsure about the moral relevance of *mere* consciousness. If a being is conscious but permanently incapable of pleasure, pain, happiness, or unhappiness, do they have rights? I don't see why they would.
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You do not have an epistemic duty to apportion your belief in accordance with the evidence.
Jash Dholani | link in bio has my books!
@oldbooksguyOct 7
What philosophical opinion will get you like this?
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(though you do have a moral duty to be honest about how the evidence does or does not accord to your beliefs).
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This is the Platonic form of AI accelerationism: wow, guys, so amazing, it'll totally destroy you! But, I mean, in a good way.
Dan McAteer
@daniel_mac8Oct 7
Replying to @daniel_mac8
I mean ground zero in a nuclear blast in a good way, if there is such a thing. Imagine you survived a nuclear blast and lived to tell about it? That would be a crazy feeling.
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The responses to this tweet show that when a person talks like an analytic philosopher in public, ordinary people start to lose their grip on reality. Analytic philosophy is dangerous.
🐾Eneasz Brodski
@EneaszWritesOct 5
the "Hard Problem" in a nutshell: 1. atoms aren't conscious 2. humans are made of atoms 3. humans are conscious 4. so at least one of 1-3 must be false Panpsychists say #1 is false Dualists say #2 is false Illusionists say #3 is false Materialists say #4 is false
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"conscience"
Cristian Garcia
@cgarciae88Oct 4
Conscience is an emergent property, prove that it can only arise from cell-based neuron networks or go home. LLMs most likely aren't conscious but the people arguing against it are doing a terrible job.
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"I don't think our consciousness controls our brain." Tell me you know nothing about the free will debate without telling me you know nothing about the free will debate.
Dr Alexander D. Kalian
@AlexanderKalianOct 4
I don't believe we have free will. I don't think our consciousness controls our brain or body, or makes decisions. I think our brain undergoes (extremely complex) deterministic neurological processes that make decisions, and then we merely feel and experience those decisions. Human consciousness is just the experience that arises from an extremely complex, self-referential, informational processing algorithm via evolved neurons and a brain. And this has all been evolved as a biocomputational autopilot (our minds) for intelligently navigating a supercivilisation of cells (our bodies) through an extremely complex survival landscape. This is complete with an evolved ego, sense of self, and deep inclination to self-preserve, maximise positioning in social pack dynamics, find mates, protect family and community etc.
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What even could be meant by a "consciousness" controlling anything?
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