@ikesharpless

🖖 You can’t tell me what to do; you’re not my daughter. 🤌

 San Diego, CA
Joined February 2011
  • Tweets56.1K
  • Following3.2K
  • Followers3.3K
2.7KMedia
Blog post for the week: "the persistent illusion of separateness: distinctness without independence." ikesharpless.substack.com/p/…
1
60
Since I've been watching season 3 of the new Beavis and Butthead this week will probably write something on violence and stupidity for next week.
17
The delusion of the political mind is the assumed omnipotence of politics. But most of the time, there is no solution, just consequences.
1
1
5
185
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Steve Fuller@ProfSteveFuller15h
Here's a book I need to write: Three readers of Adam Smith -- Joseph de Maistre, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx. Three different interpretations of the need to return to 'fundamentals' in the model of Luther, but in a secular mode.
2
1
5
660
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Liste@endlisteOct 18
Just found out about recency bias. Maybe the most important bias ever
316
13,169
333
206,297
2,942,913
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Matt Olma@matt_olmaOct 16
“My whole philosophy is derived from a reclusive 18th century racist” “Even your moral philosophy?” “Especially my moral philosophy”
6
19
2
292
7,792
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Sheila Macrine, Ph.D.
@MacrinePhDOct 16
Is "attention" really the essence of intelligence, or just a mathematical trick for scalable pattern recognition? Natalie Wolchover’s latest @QuantaMagazine piece explores how a 2014 translation fix sparked the LLM boom. While attention powers fluency, true biological intelligence requires far more than next-token prediction across static text. quantamagazine.org/is-attent… #ArtificialIntelligence #CognitiveScience #QuantaMagazine #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #LLMs #Neuroscience #Agency #PatternRecognition #Biology

Is ‘Attention’ the Essence of Intelligence? | Quanta Magazine

A mathematical mechanism enables AI models to process language at scale, undergirding the current AI revolution. Our columnist asks: Why is attention the key?

quantamagazine.org
3
28
2
85
2,432
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Elan Barenholtz
@ebarenholtzOct 16
1/ Now that we know intelligence can be built out of digital numbers (single-precision floats no less), we should assume the brain is doing the same: turning its analogue mush into numbers and thinking with them too.
8
2
1
16
2,012
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Joyce Carol Oates
@JoyceCarolOatesOct 15
tiresome Twitter "greatest"--"best"--"highest"--"most favorite"--everything hyperbolic, amplified. even a classicist mimicking the simpleminded either/or of MAGAspeak. maybe the "greatest" poem ever written is five lines long & was written by Emily Dickinson. why not?
Antigone Journal
@AntigoneJournalOct 14
The greatest poem ever written is the Iliad. There is simply no question. The only challenge for each reader, whenever and wherever, is to find their own route to seeing how and why that is the truth. (It took me 22 years from first read.)
53
82
13
964
33,885
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Matt McManus@MattPolProfOct 15
Michael Burns@michaeloburnsOct 15
Being a poor person that defends billionaires is dork shit
7
46
1,058
What are we all reading this week?
24
1
17
992
I’ve finished listening to The Very Short Introduction to Violence and am almost done with Helene Landemore’s Politics Without Politicians.
2
5
78
#theyearinreading2026
1
1
50
I do enjoy teaching the antinomy of Thrasymachus and Socrates. Hard to deny either that the shepherd is fattening up his sheep for slaughter or that if the practitioner of the art of medicine is a practitioner of the art of money making, then they are a bad doctor
2
3
24
1,003
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Dan Williams
@danwilliamsphilOct 14
“Very good at doing abstract intellectual work but not very good at deciding which intellectual work is worth doing”: true of both LLMs and analytic philosophers.
4
14
2
87
5,555
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Jesse Smith
@jessesmithsocOct 13
This NYT piece is worth reading, not because it is good, but because it is indicative.
Sean Westwood
@seanjwestwoodOct 13
Polarization isn't bad because it allows the "good" party to vilify the "evil" political party is one hell of a take. nytimes.com/2026/10/13/opini…

Opinion | What if Political Polarization Is Not the Disease but the Cure?

A debate in the rarefied atmosphere of elite academia is virtually certain to have real-world consequences.

nytimes.com
5
3
2
34
3,418
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
Ale×ey@EqualParallel17 Jun 2025
I've written 4000 words on faith in a disenchanted world. On what faith means to me in the impossibility of theism. And where would I go when there is nowhere left to turn. Link ->
2
8
1
30
4,569
surlyotter 🦦 retweeted
temple runner@misscalculaOct 12
what an awful thing to surprise someone with
New York Post
@nypost4 May 2020
WWE's John Cena surprises Make-A-Wish 7-year-old with cancer trib.al/SxX9dAm
195
6,790
42
131,406
2,233,244
New blog post for the week: "the idea of the West: a concept that has outlived its value?" ikesharpless.substack.com/p/…
2
5
300
There’s lots more to say about this but I sort of wanted to move on.
33
Load more