iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This rocks and I'm kind of embarrassed that I've taught the Churchland stuff about FP many times, including the claim that FP hasn't really progressed in thousands of years and I've never once thought, "Wait, is that even true?"

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

IMO particularism is pretty much the default ethical theory in applied ethics

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

These sycophantic chatbots are the worst. I don't want you to suck up to me to manipulate me, I want you to suck up to me because you're in love with me

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

T-1000 Don Draper gesturing at poster of city on fire: "Everyone else's cities are smouldering wastelands; Anthropic's are toasted"

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I had a professor in grad school who claimed to have not heard of Beyonce, do you think I should pitch this story to America’s biggest newspaper

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

...specifically, a kind of pop psychological analysis of depression and anxiety as distorted perceptions of self-efficacy; in the depression case, 'internal' obstacles appear insurmountable, and in the anxiety case, it's external obstacles. Probably a huge oversimplification though (at best)

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I don't know! But I think you're right that Frankfurt style views are all about the motivational structure and so compatible with different views of what kind of beliefs help or hurt. But I was actually thinking about something like this recently...

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Reposted by elliot

noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It is sorta a funny thing about philosophy that the questions are inherently fascinating and exciting—there’s a reason people wind up talking about this stuff in dorm rooms—and the best methods we have for investigating them involve being as tedious and pedantic and boring as possible

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There's an interesting (read: not interesting) question somewhere in this vicinity about how different aesthetic evaluations vary in how resistant they are to being read as attributing a response to the speaker vs some wider audience

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

When a video game reviews badly relative to expectations (7 out of 10 Metacritic) there is an inevitable wave of commentary from gamers saying "I played this and it's not nearly as bad as the critics say, it's like a 7 out of 10"

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I agree that it's extra bad if such algorithms lead to worse results for oppressed groups. But statistical evidence about demographics is the wrong kind of evidence for these questions in the first place!

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I feel like an outlier in some AI ethics debates about algorithmic bias because I just have the intuition that it's a violation of your rights for the state to use any demographic information about you to make predictions which determine how the criminal justice system will treat you.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ok genius if ChatGPT isn't conscious how come you haven't solved the mind-body problem yet?

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

[Robert DeNiro hearing about the movie 'Resident Evil']: What's that? PRESIDENT Evil? You mean Donald TRUMP??

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

🚫”man on the Clapham omnibus” 🚫”ordinary folk” 🚫”the vulgar” ✅”the unwashed masses”

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The point of studying any philosophical topic is to laboriously demonstrate the futility of thinking about it. Once you've done a PhD on it, it can be very upsetting to learn that others have started thinking about it, having learned nothing from your example.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Congratulations, you have safely regulated AI and prevented the extinction of human beings! Unfortunately, the creators of the simulation find this outcome boring and they will be turning it off now.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

People to young to have experienced 9/11 might not realize what a big deal it was. For example, we even heard about it in Canada.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I think if a business doesn't allow dogs they should have to personally kick out my dog once so that he doesn't think it's me deciding he's not allowed to go in. He can't read the sign, he just thinks I'm being mean.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'm joking but I am grappling with similar worries right now about how to talk about this stuff with students. Feels like philosophy is insufficient to meet the moment sometimes.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

You're right, we should be debating whether its effects constitute a novel kind of epistemic harm

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The thing he says about basic notions sounds like a dodge but I don't really see how you avoid saying exactly that as a interactionist dualist, and it's not that different from what, e.g., Chalmers says about basic laws of consciousness.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Based on the difference in reaction to the two documentaries it's clear that Raygun should have invited Nathan Fielder to live with her and her husband for a month

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Enough logical positivism, it's time for emotional positivism. Meaning is how the words make me feel! Heidegger is nonsense because the words make me feel confused and angry!

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

What a gem, many such cases

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

[Guy who wasn't planning on going to Scarborough Fair]: Oh shit, they got thyme?

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

None of it matters the Y axis is “Sounds boring -> Sounds cool”

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must go on vibes

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Started taking a B12 supplement in one more desperate attempt to cure my bad attitude and personality

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Playing any video game is cheating because it violates the implicit pact in every union to confront our intolerable shared reality without blinking

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Analytic philosophy is leftist in the sense that it is off-putting to normies but conservative in the sense that it is bad at comedy

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

This happened to me when Molson introduced caffeine beer and I drank a six pack to impress the boys

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Yes, I think it is bad to train machines to churn out plausible-sounding arguments for any claim whatsoever with no regard for its plausibility. And that is why I'm in favour of shutting down the philosophy department.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

It reminds me of the way they talk on Love is Blind

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Academic freedom means never having to say you’re sorry ❤️

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Baby boomers: naive, cringe, skinny pants Gen X: disaffected, depressing, wide leg pants Millennials: naive, cringe, skinny pants Gen Z: disaffected, depressing, wide leg pants

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

It's true that complaining about counting citations is pure cope, except for the special case of 0 actually being the ideal number of citations

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Reposted by elliot

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 13/08/2026

I feel like an issue that would connect well with voters would be doing anything at all to slow the current progression toward "absolutely everything now is a scam"

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

This AI generated philosophy article is exposing some weaknesses in what we all previously agreed was a perfect system that works great for everyone, academic publishing

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

In baseball, some sluggers lose a bit of power but still hold a lot of value because their median home run can lose some distance and still be a home run. Others lose the same amount of power and their median home run becomes a deep fly out, which makes them unplayable.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

👉👈🥺 do u think maybe there could be philosophizing cats and talking donkeys?

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Agreed! When I’ve taught it I spend a lot of time just trying to explain why a reductive account of modality seems like a reasonable idea and how hard it is to give one that works

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I had the same thought about Lewis—clearly the value of On the Plurality of Worlds isn’t being persuasive

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

...good work of both kinds, but I think every work of philosophy that I've been deeply inspired by falls in the second category. When people describe the goal of philosophy as pursuing the truth, I think that makes (even analytic) philosophy sound more like science than it really is.

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

...to other issues, which often aren't obvious. The second kind might defend a particular view, but its value lies less in its persuasiveness than in its illumination of the territory. The first kind of work is more 'scientistic,' in the sense that it looks more science on its face. There's good...

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I don't quite know how to put it but I think there is a distinction within analytic philosophy between work that simply states a new idea and its motivations, deal with the obvious objections, etc. and work that tries to get you to deeply understand a problem and appreciate its connections...

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Hello I am a car company, we sell two products: cars we guarantee will work for a while (one billion dollars) and fun gambles that are YOUR PROBLEM (one million dollars). By the way they both look like farts made of plastic

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elliot @elliotcc.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Woke 3 makes woke 2 look like woke 1

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