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Fenner Tanswell

@fennert.bsky.social
482 followers 391 following 508 posts

Philosopher of Mathematics and Logic working at TU Berlin. Also into epistemology, science, Xphi and the philosophy of extinction. Flightfree and carfree. fennertanswell.com

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Reposted by Fenner Tanswell
emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This take, which is more interesting than my own, came out of a discussion last night about my attempts to describe my views on purpose of mathematical research: terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/14/w...
terrytao.wordpress.com
Why I do mathematical research
[This is a guest post by Emily Riehl. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Like many mathematicians, I was drawn to the field as a lit…
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 4h
Next week Wednesday and Thursday (7th and 8th October) we will be running the event "Mathematical Proof in the age of AI" at the University of Bergen. www4.uib.no/en/research/...
www4.uib.no
Mathematical Proof in the Age of AI
This conference will be about the various implications of AI-based proving and autoformalisation for mathematics. Examples include the recently (claimed) major breakthrough in solving the Navier-Stoke...
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Michael Barany @mjb.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 6h
sitting on loads of counterexamples to major conjectures but honestly I'm not in it for the glory, might leak via various channels that won't be traceable back to me just in case other people would find the results useful
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Ethan Landes @ethanlandes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
For anyone interested, I talk about this in the discussion section of a forthcoming xphi paper on trust and AI philpapers.org/rec/LANTIA-8
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Casper Albers 🟥 @casperalbers.nl · 21/09/2026
It is indeed a huge amount of work and things can be made more efficient by introducing luck. For many grants a simple lottery is efficient. And, if that's too big of a step, asking for abbridged proposals, funding top 10%/removing bottom 50%, then a lottery on the remaining 40%, works too
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/ais-... A very nice article linking LLMs to the long history of stories where your wishes don't always have their intended effect.
lawfaremedia.org
AIs as Modern Genies
With AI we have built genies. Old stories told us how this goes.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
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Axel Gelfert @agelfert.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Mein erster Gedanke war: "Ach, die Dino-Bots treten auch zur Abgeordnetenhauswahl an? Dabei haben wir für Dinosaurier-Politik doch schon die CDU." #berlinwahl
Foto von Wahlplakaten zur Berliner Abgeordnetenhaus, befestgit an einem Laternenpfahl, von oben nach unten CDU, FDP, Grüne, Volt, SPD, darunter ein Werbeplakat für "Dino-Bots", eine Ausstellung von Dinosaurier-Figuren...
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Ásgeir Berg @asgeirberg.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I thought this was a good time to mention (again) that @fennert.bsky.social and I wrote a paper arguing that using LLMs to generate and verify proofs does not necessarily give us mathematical knowledge as that notion has traditionally been understood: www.mxphi.com/all-issues/v...
mxphi.com
The Philosophical Prospects of Large Language Models in the Future of Mathematics
The Philosophical Prospects of Large Language Models in the Future of Mathematics — Fenner Stanley Tanswell, Ásgeir Berg
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Fintan Mallory @fintanmallory.com · 14/09/2026
Mufasa explains the circle of life but it's the Lotka-Volterra equations
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Ásgeir Berg @asgeirberg.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
My paper on my solution to the rule-following paradox is out in Ergo: doi.org/10.3998/ergo...
doi.org
An Objective Communitarian Account of Semantic Content
Communitarian accounts of semantic content have been widely rejected in the literature on the rule-following paradox and related issues—for good reason. In this paper, I offer a game-theoretic account...
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
"The process is deliberately unhurried, but we will provide updates." www.claymath.org/news/navier-...
claymath.org
Navier-Stokes Announcement - Clay Mathematics Institute
The Millennium Prize Problems were unveiled by the Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) at a meeting in Paris in 2000 to celebrate “The Universality of Mathematical Thought”. These problems encapsulate so...
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emilyriehl.bsky.social @emilyriehl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
According to my memory from last night and the wayback machine, OpenAI updated the Navier-Stokes pdf at Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:09:35 GMT. The original version was one page shorter and did not contain any citations to Diego Córdoba and Luis Martínez-Zoroa: web.archive.org/web/20260000...
web.archive.org
Wayback Machine
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Ethan Landes @ethanlandes.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The one upside of this all is that the comments section validated my post's main points repeatedly and with surprising variety.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Major result in formalisation breaking first on a coffee shop's instagram is a new one! www.instagram.com/p/Dc32GtFtzak
instagram.com
Coffee Zee Holloway on Instagram: "The bloke who sits in here every day, trying to prove a theorem he says that AI has beaten him to it."
193 likes, 7 comments - coffeezeeholloway on September 4, 2026: "The bloke who sits in here every day, trying to prove a theorem he says that AI has beaten him to it.".
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Timothy Gowers @wtgowers.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Kevin Buzzard's thoughts on Fermat's Last Theorem being autoformalized in Lean. xenaproject.wordpress.com/2026/09/04/f...
xenaproject.wordpress.com
FLT: Anthropic has beaten me to it
I guess technically it was revealed to the world by a coffee shop in Islington on Insta, but an hour later it was officially announced by Anthropic: one of their internal models, using the prove2.m…
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Ethan Landes @ethanlandes.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I wrote a blog post about how experimental philosophy should address the most toxic aspect of analytic philosophy, namely its insistence that any alternative way of doing philosophy is pointless, not rigorous, or not philosophy ethanlandes.com/posts/2026/0...
ethanlandes.com
Experimental philosophers, it’s time to stop calling ourselves analytic philosophers
A few years ago I saw a friend give an experimental philosophy talk at a departmental seminar. During the Q&A, someone in the audience asked the question all of us in experimental philosophy have lear...
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Many people believe that Deutsche Bahn runs a train company in Germany. This is, however, a widely held misconception.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I'm getting to teach a seminar on Xphi this autumn. 🥳 What are your favourite Xphi papers? Classics or recent ones appreciated. The more diverse (topics/methods) a selection the better.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I'm getting to teach a seminar on Xphi this autumn. 🥳 What are your favourite Xphi papers? Classics or recent ones appreciated. The more diverse (topics/methods) a selection the better.
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Diversity Reading List in Philosophy @diversityread.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Want to learn more about Feminist Logic? Interested in starting a reading group but not sure where to start? Look no further! The DRL is home to a wealth of reading group blueprints and here, we are spotlighting our blueprint on Feminist Logic! 1/2 #philsky #philosophy #DRL #backtoschool
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
The internet reacts to an improvement in matrix multiplication efficiency from 2.371339 to 2.371177.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Some top work from the Daily Nous comments section today.
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Michael Barany @mjb.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026
next Greek epic for hollywood treatment needs to be Euclid's Elements. overdue
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
That would be a fascinating project! As you probably know there is some interesting work around the rhetoric of mathematical proofs: @fennert.bsky.social in particular has looked at how they use imperatives and what this says about the popular idea that proofs are purely deductive in form.
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Michael Barany @mjb.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026
everyone getting worked up about genAI's big new trick (counterexamples) needs to take a beat and revisit their Lakatos
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Ethan Landes @ethanlandes.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Glue is an amazing topping for pizza. It doesn't have to be any fancy type of glue, just the plain white stuff. It adds a layer of umami that is unrivaled even by anchovies.
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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 18/07/2026
hey news media, if you want a historian to comment on the Fields Medal leak my contact info is very easy to find
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Beate Krickel @beakr.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
My comment on @ufeest.bsky.social 's excellent book is out! It's in German - but there will soon be an even longer English version (stay tuned) 🎉 www.degruyterbrill.com/de/document/...
degruyterbrill.com
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Another week, another LLM-generated proof, this time of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_d...
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Another week, another LLM-generated proof, this time of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_d...
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Ethan Landes @ethanlandes.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Given how much UKHE is imploding, I would have expected by this point that there'd be more of a community and collective knowledge around finding industry jobs from disciplines without a straightforward industry pathway (hello, philosophy)
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
@countbinface.bsky.social is going to Westminster, baby.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
YESSSS
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
There may be the possibility of us finally getting away from the darkest timeline.
Quote from The Guardian's Politics live blog: "The Lib Dems may not be standing in Clacton, but Count Binface (see 5.19am) says he is up for it.

(Quote Binface) Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and Greens: I demand you stand down in Clacton.

I will be a unity candidate and pledge to build at least one affordable house.

Nigel Farage says he wants The People versus the Establishment.

So be it. Leave him to me.
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Go and read Josh's wonderful and thoughtful essay about skilled work and nostalgia.
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Axel Gelfert @agelfert.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
(2/2) Quiz continues: @tuberlin.bsky.social or 'Backrooms' (2026)?
Image showing movie still from 'Backrooms' on the left with inverted 'Stop' sign; on the right, corridor at TU Berlin with an 'Asbestos!' sign displayed...
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Axel Gelfert @agelfert.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
(1/2) I recently watched 'Backrooms'. If you teach at a public university in Germany you will not be shocked, but will instead discover some rather eery similarities... So, here is the quiz: 'Backrooms' or @tuberlin.bsky.social ? #ExzellenzInBruchbuden
Picture consisting of two images: left, movie still from 'Backrooms' showing furniture piled on top of each other; right, derelict lecture hall with broken chairs and a stool with a projector balanced on a wooden desk...
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.id.au · 02/07/2026
Ad Rock: you can disagree with the current All: POPE MCA: but if you push his buttons then you’re a All: DOPE Mike D: ordain yourself a bishop and you’re All: SCHISMATIC Ad Rock: excommunication is All: AUTOMATIC
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Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 02/07/2026
In normal times, this is the kind of thing ministers resign over, and which causes governments to fall. Hey ho. 2026 continues fine. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Starmer’s goodbye gift to Britain: a US pharma deal that could be more lethal than Covid | Aditya Chakrabortty
The deal on medicine imports will cost the NHS billions and take funding away from doctors, nurses, cancer scans and the rest, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Nice review of a philosophy book in the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...
theguardian.com
Depraved by Daisy Dixon review – a history of dark and dangerous art
From classical painting to video games, this survey of the taboo and the twisted won’t let you look away
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
What the hell is this. (Link via the latest Silicon Reckoner post). www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJQp...
youtube.com
Great Mathematicians as Modern Math Teachers (A.I. Video)
YouTube video by GORM THE OLD
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Not a great economy alert! Wall Street Bets users think Palantir spiked today because The Onion story titled “Palantir Acquires Pentagon for $800 Billion” hit their front page. They’re guessing trading bots indexed the top post on the subreddit reddit not understanding source.
A chart showing an immediate spike after the headline hit the front page of Wall Street Bets.
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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Springer Nature retracted two studies by Max Planck. In response to a question from @samkean.bsky.social, they issued this statement: "Detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.”
science.org
Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physicists been retracted?
Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck. A bot may be to blame
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Last year I did some consulting for a pair of card game designers working on a game about fallacies. Going to start putting this as a conflict of interest on all my papers, and make all the examples about how great card games are.
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Nomi Claire Lazar @nomiclairelazar.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
It’s an Overton window defenestration.
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
People who've managed to do absolutely zilch (or *worse*) on climate and ageing population now giving us finger-wagging lectures on "the price of inaction" when it comes to defence
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Fenner Tanswell @fennert.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I liked the talk version of this, so am happy to see it in print!
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Ethan Landes @ethanlandes.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I have a new dream job title thanks to "The Fuller Memorandum" by @cstross.bsky.social: combat epistemologist
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