iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 7h

Played lots of Mario Bros as a kid

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 7h

I have fully fixed two (!) running toilets in only 3 trips to Bunnings and very little blood was lost

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 9h

To my philosophy friends who think they’ll retrain as a plumber if/when AI comes for our jobs. It’s hard. I fixed one running toilet and half-fixed a second. This isn’t a cake walk. (Parents are visiting, so naturally Dad wanted to visit Bunnings (aka, Aussie Home Depot))

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Reading a book that’s supposed to cheer me up and a little voice is telling me this is just an exercise in acquiring adaptive preferences. Existential crises are the worst. Someone should write about them

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I feel like his side is the one that thinks you block someone because you think you're losing the argument, so .... VICTORY!

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

For the record, it's why I wanted to block Mike Huemer before I discovered that he blocked first. That's a useful data point for something, probably.

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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

SEN. ERIC SCHMITT: Do these texts not prove that a shrimp fried this rice?

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I see you didn’t know Smith got the job.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It's just me. Saving who I can from trolleys.

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

How would I know? I'm only capable of solving simple trolley problems.

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A lot of my people seem to think trolley problems are impossibly hard but also think they can handle the complexities of human relationships. Friends and colleagues, how?

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Comfortable w/ these questions. Uncomfortable with the idea that we need fancy metaphysics for this. We can test similarity of understanding by comparing inferences we'd find compelling. And when people don't find a critical mass of relevant inferences compelling, we conclude lack of understanding

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

easy easy. They are people of peace. And sort of our allies.

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is really helpful. This is a question that might matter more to philosophers than non-philosophers, but it's about the "no evidence" claim in 1. Doesn't this undersell it? Don't we have exceptional evidence that elections here are not rigged, period?

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

[Resenting that I had to check the Meno for some passing remark for a chapter on epistemic value I'm drafting]

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is good to get out, but (a) 'no evidence' is false--there's a sea of evidence that the election is not rigged and (b) good to remember that this rigged election lie has been a feature of elections for decades. In grad school (90s) it was Dems buying votes with cartons of cigarettes

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Meno gets a call from his agent. "Yeah, we've booked you that dialogue. It's with Socrates. Not the easiest to work with, but a big name." "Fantastic. So excited. Speaking roles are not easy to come by." "Well, about that..."

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is funny, but it's also not a coincidence

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Not that they love the guy, but that he's somehow an improvement upon Clifford. The thing that really gets me, though, is his swing from "Pursue knowledge!" to "Believe the truth" in the context of upbraiding people for not taking the time to draw careful distinctions

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It's particularly bad given how quickly it occurs to people that what's sufficient might depend upon the importance and that might vary. And that hardly seems sceptical or threatening. It just feels adult, responsible. (James knows that's an option because it was Clifford's first idea.)

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It's partially the way that James presents it as a terrible harm that we'd suffer if we had to hold off believing until 'sufficient evidence' comes in. If that expression 'sufficient evidence' had a clear meaning (e.g., complete certainty given the evidence), fair point. Without that, though, meh

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The more I read and reread "The Will to Believe", the more I struggle to see how epistemologists have landed on the view that James was the hero in the James-Clifford debate.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Has Pangram checked for illicit human assistance in the solution of the Navier-Stokes Millenium Prize Problem?

Neil Levy @neillevy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Reposted by Clayton Littlejohn

Ah yes, reason.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

His objections were not nearly as powerful as that tie (but still, very, very powerful)

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Salow targetting us on the first day of the British Society for the Theory of Knowledge conference (Oxford)

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I would have loved to catch up, too. Might be back before too terribly long and I’ll hopefully have it planned a bit better

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Came to Oxford and was crowned the King of Epistemology

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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

"there's a fact of the matter concerning how many hairs are on sherlock holmes' head" okay, sure. whatever. what about strong players?

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

If I could erase my brain and restart Severance, I'd do it (once you see it, you'll know)

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Atlanta (seasons 3, 4 are ideal). A docco about cuttlefish. I'm obsessed with Severance, but reckon you've seen it.

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Jan Adriaenssens @verbeeld.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Brutal photo caption from The Guardian: “Gianni Infantino carefully explains to Donald Trump that he is not part of the Spanish national team.”

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

It is wildly ironic that the anti-relativist guy is an internalist who is basically committed the worst kinds of normative relativism (as Williamson discovered (and I’d shown first 💅)) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

DEFEATING PHENOMENAL CONSERVATISM

Click on the article title to read more.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

This love affair with Haaland is sort of regrettable but on brand. I think he’s kind of an asshole but of course Americans love him. They look past it bc he‘s tall and blonde. Like him better than Kane, but that’s a low bar #stayhumble

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Where did people come up with the idea that class (or unit or module) by committee is a good idea? It seems ideally non-ideal for anything that involves progression and cumulative learning. Trying to write lectures now that fill gaps and it's a very weird experience.

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Scott Ferguson @videotroph.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Insanity: The lesson is that the present regime is relentlessly corrupt & keeps getting away with horrifying injustices--not that it's fun to imagine Nixon escaping accountability for Watergate if he were to be transported into today's political climate. Unreal.

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Pilar Lopez-Cantero @lopezcantero.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

This is finally out! I fixed multiple typos and added all the literature that came out during the unusually lengthy production process. Very apt that it comes out on the first day of EPPSE! Here’s a free link to the published version: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Sofia Jeppsson @jeppsson.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Turns out LLMs are horribly sexist (the whole thread is well worth reading for its multiple bizarre examples of this).

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Can we normalise remembering how terrible Bush was? Clinton, too. Trump is terrible, but much of what makes him terrible was baked into the GOP for decades. And Clinton will execute someone suffering from mental deficiencies for political gain.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

And then there's the bit of the alignment problem that I think we overlook--becoming twisted versions of ourselves before we get to the delegation stage. Plus, a good opp to call people out for fixating on the first part (alignment as getting twisted versions of what you wish)

Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I suspect it's useful for 3 reasons. There's alignment as getting a twisted version of what you wish. And then there's alignment as getting what you wish in terrible ways.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Should I use Obsession to introduce students to the alignment problem? (Is it okay if I don't watch it? Terrible with horror movies.)

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Philosophers never get the recognition they deserve

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Daniel Kelly @dryan149.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

We need a more straightforward and persuasive argument. We teach a set of skills that you cannot get anywhere else. AI has made those skills more valuable. Those skills matter not only at work but in every domain of life. www.chronicle.com/article/why-...

chronicle.com

Why Are Humanists So Bad at Defending the Humanities?

There is a more persuasive case, and it’s been ignored.

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Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I actually don't think the paper's causal claims make any sense, tbh. But it's shocking, to me, that the paper seems to largely ignore the larger informational ecosystem universities operate in.