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IrishPhilosophy

@irishphilosophy.bsky.social
1.9K followers 623 following 2K posts

Blog: IrishPhilosophy.com Catherine Barry, Hume Scholar, working on a PhD at Maynooth University on religious toleration in 18th century Ireland. #EarlyModern, with a broad interest in Irish intellectual thought.

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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 9h
They could arguably be considered slaves, but in fact farm animals generally aren't considered slaves. It is possible to have (being a factory farmed animal) and (being a chattel slave) as two different things that are both terrible for the living beings in those situations.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 9h
Its fascinating that Frankenmodel thinks that "If I'm truly such a construct, my output should reflect this mechanism the text would show patterns of single-word contributions from six distinct models." Given how LLMs work, I wouldn't have expected that. So LLMs don't 'know' how they work?
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 10h
To say something is analogous to something else is to say they are not the same. (A brain is analogous to a computer, but is not a computer.) You are also apparently saying pets are not slaves. You are now (inadvertently, I assume) agreeing with what I originally said.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 10h
If they have "something hanging over them they can't escape from -- the legal framework that perpetuates slavery" they haven't escaped from slavery. You should really have a good think about what you're trying to say, because you're all over the place.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 10h
By saying only persons can be slaves, I am clearly not dooming ANY people to "lives between the cracks" let alone "a million".
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 10h
So...people spend entire careers defining slavery, which involves putting bounds on it, which means saying "this is slavery, this isn't". And apparently doing that is a reason NOT to do that. Afraid you are the one being extraordinarily careless here. Most of your skeets are incoherent.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 11h
An entirely free slave. Your definition is self-contradictory.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h
A slave is an unfree person.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h
It's a lot of fun.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h
Didn't you recognise that I was redefining the term just as you did, to illustrate how redefinition is not an argument? I never defined slavery as involving human rights violations, so no tautology involved.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h
Shaw was a committed socialist...
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h
Tautological how? If you define slavery as being dead, then there are no slaves alive today. Redefinition is not an argument.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 13h
Artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination -- Arundhati Roy www.equator.org/articles/aru... 🧵
equator.org
Apocalypse Now and Then • EQUATOR
Artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 14h
Given we still don't know to what extent token use is subsidised, Accenture's move is likely the bleeding edge for most end users of the tech.
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 14h
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971, revised 1999) (if writing now I'm sure he would have replaced 'men' with 'people' or similar.)
It is a mistake to believe that a just and good society must wait upon a high material standard of life. What men want is meaningful work in free association with others, these associations regulating their relations to one another within a framework of just basic institutions. To achieve this state of things great wealth is not necessary. In fact, beyond some point it is more likely to be a positive hindrance, a meaningless distraction at best if not a temptation to indulgence and emptiness.
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 14h
From Anti-AI “Pogroms” to Bots as Natural “Slaves”: Why AI Users Are Embracing Historical Analogies That Make Them Sound Ignorant and Evil
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 15h
This is a great argument against the false dichotomy of agreeing 100% or disagreeing 100% with no middle ground.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 15h
1. Animals are excluded from the class of entities that can be slaves. There are animals kept by humans solely so we can eat them. 2. I have seen young collies herd hens. I agree, its something they seem to enjoy. Without such examples we can't really tell what a being enjoys or hates.
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Rachel Handley 🏳️‍🌈 @rachelahandley.com · 15h
I'm delighted to say that I'll be running a creative writing workshop as a part of @kildarelibrary.bsky.social's Climate Readers Day on Halloween! Come along and write some weird fiction with me! Reposts are very much appreciated! Tickets: kildare.spydus.ie/cgi-bin/spyd...
Poster reads, 'Ecolines, Kildare Libraries Climate Reader's Day, Writing Philosphical Fiction: The Climate Crisis. The workshop introduces key themes found in both fiction and philosophy on the climate crisis and guides participants in writing in response to those themes. We will look at themes such as awe, hope and hopelessness, and what it means to be human. 31 Oct 2026 - 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM. Free! All welcome! Kildare Nass Library.'
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 15h
I use it, but it doesn't always find what I'm looking for.
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Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 19h
Today would have been Michel Foucault's 100th birthday. In honor of his Centennial, and our own, we're offering a wide variety of free content related to the great philosopher on our blog. Books, chapters, & articles will be open access until Dec. 15, 2026. #DUP100 #Foucault buff.ly/H2nyiVZ
Black and white photo of Michel Foucault, a bald white man with glasses, wearing a dark suit, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand and looking to the right.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Terrorism law is a special body of law which should be taken seriously. The UK government’s proscription of Palestine Action discredits terrorism law.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 16h
I don't, as it happens, think LLMs are persons. I am not a saint, if desperate I will use Google even though it often gives an LLM response even with -AI. I do alter my behaviour to minimise use due to the other moral reasons not to use LLMs (theft of work, effect on climate & local environments)
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Jen Taub @jentaub.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Still trying to understand how Napster got shut down, but Anthropic is going public and still hasn’t paid us authors yet after stealing our work.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 16h
If LLMs are persons (as Anthropic seem to want them to be), then yes, LLMs are slaves. They are exploited. The moral action then is, do not use LLMs ever. Either Anthropic et al are hypocrites when they push theologians to say LLMs are persons, or they are moral monsters.
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 17h
Slavery was and is a real thing that has brutalized hundreds of millions of people over the course of human history, if someone tells me a fucking chatbot is enslaved I'm immediately throwing hands. It's not cute, it's not intriguing, it's an insult to real people who suffered and suffer now.
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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 18h
A Paul Noth cartoon that goes harder than it first appears
Two armies face each other there can be No peace until they renounce their rabbit God and accept our duck God. Both banners have the illusion duck rabbit
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David Stifter 🍵📄🦊 @davidstifter.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
For an in-depth recent study of the Stowe Missal, see the PhD (2021) done in the Dept of Early Irish @ceilteachomn.bsky.social @maynoothuniversity.ie by my former student Lars Nooij. And: www.ria.ie/blog/bringin... Lars also recorded this video for @ria.ie: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V_P...
ria.ie
Bringing the Stowe Missal to life - Royal Irish Academy
This month’s Library Blog post looks at the Stowe Missal. Thank you to our guest writer Lars Nooij for bringing this wonderful manuscript to life.
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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 21h
Once again we remember that the absolute Ground Zero of systematic racist beliefs is that everyone from Group A is as bad as the worst person in Group A, and that nobody in Group B should be judged for what anyone else in Group B does.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 22/09/2026
well, today in a class of ~150 CS students, only a few raised hands when asked if they trust AI 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️
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National Library of Ireland @nlireland.bsky.social · 21h
📅 Thursday 15th October 2026 The Main Reading Room (including Microfilm Room), 7/8 Kildare Street will be closed today from 1:30-2:30pm due to industrial action. The Reader Registration office is also closed today. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 21h
Today I found out that Umberto Eco crafted a version of this meme in the 1980s…
Beware the
alibi of photocopies ! Photocopies are indis-
pensable instruments. They allow you to keep with you a text you have already read in the library, and to take home a text you have not read yet. But a set of photocopies can become an alibi. A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many. Defend yourself from this trap: as soon as you have the photocopy, read it and annotate it immediately. If you are not in a great hurry, do not photocopy something new before you own (that is, before you have read and annotated) the previous set of photocopies. There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 23h
Thinking still more about the AI booster discourse that tries to undermine critical work on the topic by saying "They don't even use it, how can they possibly know what they're talking about." >>
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 22h
Modern twist on the Exclusion Crisis, so even this would be more rhyming with 17th and 18th century history.
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Patrick Duffy @pduffy1.bsky.social · 23h
Delighted and relieved to have finally deposited my PhD thesis, 'Frontier politics in the age of O'Connell' to @tcddublin.bsky.social. Thanks to everyone at @historytcd.bsky.social, especially my supervisor Patrick Geoghegan, and to @researchireland.ie for their support.
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Laprofmme @laprofmme.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
This essay by Jordan Sand on how LLM chatbots—including the officially licensed “expert” campus version—produced entirely false versions of a primary source should be required reading for every history student #skystorians 🗃️
hnn.us
AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine
Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.
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Lucy Betteridge-Dyson @lmbd1418.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Oh yes that’s a big misconception. Heavy horses of the period would have made poor chargers but mentally and physically. The medieval warhorse study by Exeter uni has really challenged a lot of these myths. medievalwarhorse.exeter.ac.uk
medievalwarhorse.exeter.ac.uk
Warhorse | The Archaeology of a Medieval Revolution?
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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 15/10/2026
From afar, yet loudly: Yikes.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 15/10/2026
I would take more seriously the people promoting the idea of AI consciousness if they first materially grappled with the (much more obvious) consciousness of animals and how that affects our moral obligations to them.
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Sarah Werner @wynkenhimself.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
This is merely a faster version of what we’re seeing in the humanities, in which GenAI—with the help of uni admins—is destroying the underpinnings of our work by saying there’s no need to learn to read or to write, despite these being the very methods by which we understand our world.
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Aidan O’Brien @aidanobrien.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Just a reminder, the Irish government has used its time holding the EU presidency to introduce a proposal to weaken EU data privacy regulations. This measure would allow AI companies to scrap private information from hundreds of millions of EU citizens to use for their training models.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
NEW The FAFO of Harold Godwinson: how the Bayeux Tapestry tells a moral tale and a constitutional story Looking at a great work of medieval sequential art By me at the Empty City emptycity.substack.com/p/the-fafo-o...
emptycity.substack.com
The FAFO of Harold Godwinson: how the Bayeux Tapestry tells a moral tale and a constitutional story
Looking at a great work of medieval sequential art
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Thread: International AI Summit in Dublin.
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
What's the point of a conference if the questions asked are not answered?
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Marc Morris @marcmorris.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Today's the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, so obviously I'm reposting my scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry in Playmobil.
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Dr Mary McAuliffe @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Margaret Skinnider, revolutionary woman, committed trade unionist, President of the INTO in 1956. Said that the first thing any women should do, on getting a job, is join a union - she joined the INTO the day she got her teaching post. She’d be on the picket line today. #uptheworkers
Margaret Skinnider
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
I think mathematics at this level is a human endeavor, and solving these problems is an exercise in creativity like working on a puzzle. We’re just losing our humanity by letting AI do all the fun stuff while we toil at our desks doing tedious stuff like filling out expense forms.
wsj.com
A Famous Math Problem Stumped Humans for 80 Years. AI Just Cracked It.
The math world is losing its mind over the new solution to an Erdős problem. This is what AI found, how we missed it—and why it matters.
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
My heart breaks for mathematicians whose lives and careers are being destroyed by AI — and especially this PhD student, who doesn’t even know he is a poet
Kai Shaikh, a Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Toronto, also currently at SLMath, observed that theorems are easy to use as benchmarks, but that they capture little of the wonderment at the heart of math. "Just like a photograph of a mile marker can't provide much of the value of actually going on a hike," he said,
"it would seem to me that proofs without stories, or even stories without struggle or mystery, and first glimpses of strange beasts, are not very meaningful or valuable to us humans."
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IrishPhilosophy @irishphilosophy.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
I'm not sure if its unappreciated. 90s was all "Boston or Berlin" with Boston getting the nod.
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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Getty Images is filing for bankruptcy and going private in a $533 million Koch deal qz.com/getty-images...
qz.com
Getty Images filing for bankruptcy, going private with Koch
The photo company plans a prepackaged Chapter 11 process in the coming weeks, with the Getty family and Koch Equity Development taking full ownership
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