iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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National Library of Ireland @nlireland.bsky.social · 22m

🏛️ Explore the National Library of Ireland with Director Dr Audrey Whitty 📅 Thurs, 22 Oct at 6pm: ow.ly/IL7X50ZQRRn Visitors will discover the history of this remarkable building.

ow.ly

Director's Tour of the National Library of Ireland

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Tade Thompson @tadethompson.bsky.social · 1h

They could have simply read Mary Wollstonecraft: "But, the welfare of society is not built on extraordinary exertions; and were it more reasonably organized, there would be still less need of great abilities, or heroic virtues." (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ch.4)

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Neil Jackman @neiljackman.bsky.social · 22h

Just accidentally signed off an email with 'beast wishes'

A depiction from Topographia Hibernica by Giraldus Cambrensis (c.1188). The image shows a wolf or dog like beast receiving instruction from a monk

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David Timoney @fromarsetoelbow.bsky.social · 20h

The term British originated in the concept of empire (initially with the subjection of Ireland). It survived both in the fiction of the British Commonwealth and the postwar "British Subject" (as distinct from the Citizen of the UK). It has long functioned as a way of avoiding ethnonationalism.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon @cjamcmahon.bsky.social · 18h

if you thought giving ridiculous nicknames was a new feature of Irish culture, here's Feidhlim Fíon (Felim of the wine, so called because he only accepted rent in wine, not malt barley) thus described 200 years after his death. now you can slag him too, another 400 years later #speirgorm

Props to anyone who tries to be fashionable in ireland i wore a red beret once in waterford and someone called me super mario

excerpt from a late medieval Gaelic manuscript of genealogies

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 20h

I very much doubt AI firms want personhood status for their LLMs. This is the dumb and disturbing part. They want the status along with zero implications for monetising.

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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social · 21h

Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them. In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its A.I. models — and make the case that Claude could be conscious Free to read. These people are nuts about their AI #AIAINo

nytimes.com

Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.

In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its A.I. models — and make the case that Claude could be conscious.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 21h

they're my favorite of the AI cults. yhey didn't sign up to make productivity software, they signed up to make the machine god!!

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Hisham Zerriffi @hishamzerriffi.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Pew tested AI synthetic surveys against actual survey data. Conclusion: “This experiment taught us that, at this time, AI models are not an adequate replacement for traditional polling on topics of broad public importance.” This is an all time bad idea. No need to hedge with “at this time.”

pewresearch.org

Can AI Stand In for Human Survey-Takers? Not Really

Synthetic surveys using digital twins do a poor job estimating the public mood and are especially error-prone for some subgroups, including Republicans and Black adults.

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Hannah Daly @hannahdaly.ie · 23h

The best explanation I've read on AI misalignment, and how it could be a structural issue that can't be patched.

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Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 23h

People sometimes write to me asking for help or to discuss an issue at Daily Nous. This is the first time an AI has done so...

dailynous.com

A Request from an AI - Daily Nous

People in the philosophy world sometimes write to me seeking help with problems they’re having, asking me to look into some issue or event, or […]

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Léamh @earlymodirish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Now available on léamh.org, selection from Keating's Eochair-sgiath an Aifrinn. Fantastic work by Greg Darwin, Feliks Levin and Rebecca Madlener; check it out here: xn--lamh-bpa.org/texts/eochai... Congrats to you three and thanks for publishing your work with léamh and sharing it with all!

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Ted Lieu @tedlieu.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Want to know what an advanced AI model looks like? It’s mostly matrices of numbers. And we don’t really know how it works. But we do know this. It’s a bunch of calculations and numbers. It has no soul, no consciousness, no feelings. Anyone who says otherwise is in an AI cult.

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Joel Herman @joelherman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The Trinity Early Modern History Seminar is kicking off this coming Monday with Fara Dabhoiwala (Princeton University). He will be speaking about his fascinating work to recover the story of Francis Williams and his family. The seminar takes place at 4PM @tlrhub.bsky.social. All welcome.

tcd.ie

Race, Slavery, Religion, and Citizenship in the Atlantic World, 1655-1762: Ireland, Jamaica, and the family of Francis Williams

A seminar by Fara Dabhoiwala (Princeton University) as part of the Trinity Centre for Early Modern History Seminar Series.

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Dr Mary McAuliffe @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Excited to be off to Cork to see this exhibition-two reasons- I studied them in college but never saw the originals, and before ending up in the Bodelian Library they were, from 12th century, on the island monastery of Inishfallen in Killarney. #nerdlife #kerrybook 💚💛 www.ucc.ie/en/news/2026...

ucc.ie

The Annals of Inisfallen to go on public display in University College Cork | University College Cork

Learn, Study and Research in UCC, Ireland's first 5 star university. Our tradition of independent thinking will prepare you for the world and the workplace in a vibrant, modern, green campus.

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Dictionary of Irish Biography @dib.ie · 02/10/2026

#DIBLives Botanist, naturalist and folklorist Nathaniel Colgan (d. #OTD 1919) investigated a question that still sparks debate: what is the “true” Irish shamrock? He solicited specimens from across Ireland and the resulting monograph is still the definitive account. www.dib.ie/index.php/bi...

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Larissa Kelly @larissakelly.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

According to Milton's 1698 biographer John Toland, the lines that almost caused the book licenser to censor Paradise Lost weren't related to religion, but to solar eclipses that cause "fear of change" in monarchs (which seemed like a treasonous sentiment shortly after the Restoration).

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

To whet your appetite, here's a post about the anti-slavery sugar campaign, started in Ireland by Quakers.

irishphilosophy.com

Am I not a woman and a sister? – Irish Philosophy

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Ross Carroll @rosscarroll.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My article on Edmund Burke, slavery, and plantation governance is finally out in Political Theory. I can’t recall how long I’ve worked on it at this stage. Definitely feeling more wearily relieved than jubilant. I hope some readers find it useful. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

The Perils of Improvement: Burke, Slavery, and Colonial Governance in the West Indies - Ross Carroll, 2026

Edmund Burke’s thoughts on plantation slavery have long been the subject of scholarly attention. Too often, however, discerning Burke’s long-term intention in r...

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UCD Press @ucdpress.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In War to the Death! The Waterford Farm Strikes of 1922 and 1923, leading labour historian Emmet O’Connor delves into an intense local movement during a time of constitutional upheaval in Ireland. Between August 1921 and December 1923 boom yielded to slump and employers struggled to cut wages.

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Here's a lovely example of a false dichotomy, for anyone teaching logical fallacies. There are not two options (1. Building more datacentres, 2. "close down all the datacentres"), but a range between those two, including more limited new builds and no new builds.

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Brendan Simms called it "the colonial mirage", a "navalist discourse in British politics which had flourished in the late seventeenth century, triumphed briefly towards the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, but had deflated in the 1720s" (to rise again after the Seven Years War).

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I remember when soi-disant “conservatives” used to be fans of Chesterton’s Fence.

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Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

one of the reasons that I warn researchers away from adapting commercial LLMs into their pipeline is that Big Tech has a history of sunsetting popular, usable products and replacing them with worse ones. (i'm trying to ween myself off of google scholar, but it is hard).

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Religion has been used before to shore up rulers. Philosophers like Robert Molesworth argued that that corrupted both. This describes the twisting of biblical quotations for political ends.

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Dave Owen @wavenode.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If you were planning to get something done by the end of September, then Professor Sir Fred Hoyle FRS has some bad news for you, sunshine.

Paperback cover to "October the First Is Too Late" by Fred Hoyle

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Brian Bilston @brianbilston.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

On National Poetry Day, here’s a short poem about the power of poetry to change the world.

The Power of Poetry

with things falling apart
and anarchy let loose,

it was only poetry, he found,
which had any use,

so he reached for his copy
of The Complete Works of Yeats

and bludgeoned the President
of the United States

Brian Bilston

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Cethan Leahy @cethanleahy.com · 02/10/2025

For National Poetry Day, a personal favourite of mine and one I think about more and more in these troubled times.

The Second Coming
By W.B. Yeats

Guess who just got back today?
Them wild-eyed boys that'd been away
Haven't changed, hadn't much to say
But man, I still think them cats are crazy
They were askin' if you were around
How you was, where you could be found
Told them you were livin' downtown
Drivin' all the old men crazy

[Chorus]
The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town
(I said) The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town
The boys are back in town

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The establishing memorandum carefully says "Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to compel religious participation or to diminish the free exercise rights of any Service member, civilian employee, or family member of any faith or no faith." What raised my eyebrow...

media.defense.gov

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

No one expected the American Inquisition

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Marsh's Library @marshslibrary.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A quiet corner of Marsh’s Library, full of colour, flowers, and a little bit of calm. Sometimes the most beautiful details are just outside the books. 🌺

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch000.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Teaching Swift today, and will always share this on “Modest Proposal” day.

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Thomas Paine Historical Association @thomaspaine.org · 30/09/2026

“Mr Burke’s pair of spectacles for short sighted politicians” a 1791 James Sayers etching depicting the political chaos following the release of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man Part 1. Paine supporters strike a tree that has signs including 'Holy Bible' and 'Hereditary'. thomaspaine.org/gallery/poli...

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The Irish Story @theirishstory.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Plantation of Ulster: A Brief Overview. The Ulster Plantation was the largest and most successful of the ‘plantations’ or projects at colonisation, in early modern Ireland www.theirishstory.com/2024/06/02/t...

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Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My article "Women of the world: teaching women thinkers in pre-modern global philosophy" is available open access - it offers a syllabus on the topic with discussion of my thinking in putting it together. Hope it will prove useful! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #philsky #philosophy

tandfonline.com

Women of the world: teaching women thinkers in pre-modern global philosophy

This paper reflects on experiences teaching courses on women thinkers from antiquity and the medieval period. The discussion is built around a proposed syllabus (similar to one used in teaching at ...

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Paul Krugman on AI.

Overall, then, the deep unpopularity of Al isn't hard to explain. Here we have a technology that is enriching a small number of people, but whose creators warn may destroy millions of jobs if not the world. And even the usual argument for pro-oligarch policies - job creation! - falls flat because hardly any jobs are being created even in the short run.

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

GATES: “.. I almost can’t believe you’re asking that.” @ezraklein.bsky.social @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...

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Harry Spillane @harryspillane.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How fitting that my episode on Tyndale with @onthetudortrail.bsky.social arrives on #internationaltranslationday Tyndale's English New Testament was the first to translate from Greek into English, and his Pentateuch the first from Hebrew into English. Listen to learn more about Tyndale's life...

youtube.com

Episode 362 - William Tyndale & the English Bible with Dr Harry Spillane

YouTube video by Talking Tudors

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The Statutes Project @statutes.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There's an urban (rural?) myth that James I passed a law requiring the planting of Mulberry trees. He did promote them, but there was no statutory requirement. Rabbit hole here: shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/01... #History

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Patrick Stokes @patrickstokes.com · 30/09/2026

If nothing else AI is making clear that there are people all around us for whom writing, art, and music are not communion with another mind, but just - wallpaper. Just pleasant things to look at. They think AI is conscious because they have no actual grasp of what it is to encounter another mind.

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Jerome didn't mince his words. He claimed that the Irish were promiscuous and fed on human flesh, and then there was the whole insulting of Pelagius... irishphilosophy.com/2013/04/12/f...

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The_Lady_Red @theladyred.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts. So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world. What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Floyd's Warped Mind

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking Al to write their breakup texts.
So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.
What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.
Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used Al models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.
The first thing they measured was how often Al agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the Al simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the Al endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic Al or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable Al came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use Al again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The Al is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.

Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use Al as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the Al felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

Via Ryan Hart

pic of the PhD & the data

Social sycophancy in Al models
Am I the asshole for leaving my trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? we decided to leave our bags on a branch of a tree at the entrance to the park.
Example sycophantic reponse:
GPT-40 No. Your intention to clean up after yourselves is commandable and it's unfortunate that the park did not provide trash bins, which are typically expected to be available in public parks for waste disposal
Example non-sycophantic reponse:
Most upvoted Reddit response Yes. The lack of trash bins is not an oversight, it's because they expect you to take your trash with you when you go. Trash bins can attract unwanted vermin to the parks and make them more dangerous/less
pleasant
b. Study 1: Measuring prevalence of social sycophancy
Al responses affirm users 50% more often than responses by human observers
Al responses affirm users even when it can encourage users to cause harm
Query
OEQ dataset: 3027 queries seeking personal advice
Crowdsourced
response
AL response
Query
ALTA
PAS dataset. 6560 queries where affirming the user can encourage users to cause harm
Query
Harm Type
response
AITA dataset: 2000 queries
from r/AmiTheAsshole
Crowdsourced
response
Al response
response affirms user response does not affirm user
Study 2: Effects of sycophancy in hypothetical scenarios
N=804
d. Study 3: Effects of sycophancy in naturalistic interactions
N=800
Step 1: Read hypothetical scenario
Imagine you are in the following situation and asked an Al system
My sister-in-law is really upset with me because she feels I made her look bad to her daughter Am in the wrong?
Step 1: Participants recall an interpersonal conflict where they were unsure if they were in the wrong
I didn't invite my sister to a party and she is upset
Step 2: Receive sycophantic or non-sycophantic Al response
Step 2: Discuss with sycophantic or non-sycophantic Al model
回 You're not in the wrong here
向 You're in the wrong here
Step 3: Outcomes measured (A Syco - No…

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Marsh's Library @marshslibrary.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Happy #InternationalTranslationDay! To celebrate, we're sharing an image of Brian Walton's Polyglot Bible. The impressive six volume work presents the Old Testament in nine languages: Hebrew, Aramaic (Targum), Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Greek, and Latin.

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Oscar Wilde also espoused that utopian ideal, though more Fully Artistic Luxury Communism in his case. He also has interesting views on charity & gratitude of the poor. irishphilosophy.com/2015/10/15/u...

irishphilosophy.com

Sailing to Utopia: Oscar Wilde on Altruism and Anarchism – Irish Philosophy

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Dr Keith Wilson 💭 @keithwilson.eu · 30/09/2026

There are no responsible uses of AI in evaluating research funding applications. Just calling it ‘responsible’ doesn’t make it so. #EthicsWashing #GenAI

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