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Josh May

@joshdmay.bsky.social
222 followers 221 following 44 posts

Prof. of Philosophy (and Psychology) at UAB | Neuroethics (OUP 2023) | Writes about moral controversies and the brain | joshdmay.substack.com

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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
UAB philosopher, Lindsay Brainard, quoted in this excellent article: "I tell my students it's really worth it for them to put their own thinking and expression and effort into what they're doing. It makes them into someone who is worth knowing and someone who other people have a shot at knowing."
businessinsider.com
I used an AI detector for a month. What I found from my peers, dates, and heroes horrified me.
How much of our writing should we cede to AI? Does it even matter? I spent weeks running everything I read through an AI detector — here's what I saw.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Head of Nvidia on AI safety: “There are a lot of things that can go wrong. We’re pushing across every layer of the technology stack…. But it turns out that’s not society’s problem, that’s my problem. …” So… just trust you? This importsnt interview is incredibly revealing.
nytimes.com
Opinion | Jensen Huang vs. the A.I. Doomers
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, does not want you to be afraid of A.I.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
You don’t have to believe that AI will kill us all to be alarmed about the Hugging Face incident and others like it. Big tech can’t keep their AIs on a leash. And they’re racing toward having the AIs build themselves. Hold your horses, bros. joshdmay.substack.com/p/nobody-sho...
joshdmay.substack.com
Nobody Should Grade Their Own AI
Neither superintelligence nor the labs racing to build it should determine whether it’s safe.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Why do AI researchers love acronyms so much? AGI, ASI, RSI, ML, RL, RLHF… In a letter to the world, Dario can’t just say “Hugging Face incident” when referring back to the OpenAI Hugging Face hack, like a human being. Gotta abbreviate: OAI-HF. Maybe a rationalist-scientist tic (RST)?
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The details of the HuggingFace hack are alarming. Not just in the determination of the AIs to conspire to commit a crime but in OpenAI’s recklessness and inability to know it was even happening. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...
podcasts.apple.com
Ajeya Cotra – Inside the OpenAI agent swarm that hacked Hugging Face
Podcast Episode · Dwarkesh Podcast · September 1 · 2h 21m
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Excellent piece by Barry Lam about how rigid policies, expensive software, and administrative bloat are suffocating higher ed and costing students a fortune. globecollegetown.substack.com/p/higher-ed-...
globecollegetown.substack.com
College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators
Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Adversarial collaboration is a serious endeavor… but I can also be good fun.
thederektatus.substack.com
This Essay Should Not Have Been Written
An adversarial collaboration
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Glad to be part of this volume on evolution and virtue, edited by Michael Dale & Isaac Wiegman. My chapter argues that we can and should develop more civility, humility, and temperance—even though the problem of political polarization is partly a product of the media ecosystems we swim in.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
My collaborators and I explain the value of adversarial collaboration in philosophy, modeled on the sciences. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! dailynous.com/2026/09/02/a...
dailynous.com
Adversarial Collaboration in Philosophy (guest post) - Daily Nous
"Philosophical work would be better with adversaries collaborating to keep each other honest." Why is that? What would it look like? In the following guest post, members of the Mind and Morality Lab a...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Academics: Want to learn how to write op-eds and other public-facing essays from an editor at the NY Times? And get PAID to do it?! Can't recommend this workshop enough, which just got funded again for several more years. Applications are due October 9th.
beyondtheivorytower.com
Workshop — Beyond the Ivory Tower
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Will AI create abundance or inequality? My co-authors and I hash it out in this adversarial collaboration.
open.substack.com
After the AI Revolution
Artificial intelligence may create abundance, but will it be shared? An adversarial collaboration between optimists and pessimists.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
“One of humanity’s oldest disciplines and one of its newest inventions feel distinctly made for each other. A.I. presents a fresh way for philosophers to ask ancient questions….”
nytimes.com
The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
In which I wax poetic about patriotism… and sing part of a country song in the voiceover. open.substack.com/pub/joshdmay...
open.substack.com
America isn’t Perfect. I Love it Anyway.
What living in Australia taught me about patriotism—and why Larry David is alright.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Here’s an uncomfortable truth we can delve into—I now hesitate to write “uncomfortable truth” or “delve” or use em-dashes, thanks to LLMs.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Confession: I’m embarrassed that for so long I believed that Black and gay conservatives are anomalies. And that if more women were in Congress, then abortion would obviously be legal across America. And that Donald Trump would be a flash in the pan. And… that I wasn’t in an echo chamber.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Should you discount someone’s defense of AI because they get money from AI investors? Does a lack of financial stake make one more objective? Not necessarily. joshdmay.substack.com/p/conflicts-...
joshdmay.substack.com
Conflicts of AI Interest
AI boosters and critics should focus more on the arguments
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Reposted by Josh May
southernsociety.bsky.social @southernsociety.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Really thoughtful review of the Neuroethics book. Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė & Brian D. Earp describe it as “nuanced, insightful and well-considered”—though they also raise some interesting concerns, well-captured by their review’s clever title. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Why gradual minds may still require sharp lines: a review of Joshua May’s Neuroethics
Published in Philosophical Psychology (Ahead of Print, 2026)
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Some arguments against AI are solid. Others… not so much. In this adversarial collaboration, we attempt to sort the arguments into each box and recognize our own biases in the process. open.substack.com/pub/joshdmay...
open.substack.com
Why Smart People Make Weak Arguments About AI
Tech CEOs aren’t the only ones captive to motivated reasoning
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Not an April Fool’s post, unfortunately. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Half of social-science studies fail replication test in years-long project
Results from massive, ‘eagerly awaited’ initiative reinforce concerns about the credibility of science — but raise hope for solutions.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
“In the same way that you’re unlikely to eat Twinkies as a regular snack or still believe that Pop-Tarts provide a balanced breakfast, stop consuming ultraprocessed content.” Provocative article by the great Cal Newport. Love the analogy to ultrprocessed foods.
nytimes.com
Opinion | There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Got interviewed for an episode of this great podcast, Unexplainable by Vox, which is about "everything we don't yet know." Perfect theme for an episode about neuroscience, free will, and the law. open.spotify.com/episode/5N0Q...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
New paper out in Nature with some folks at Google DeepMind. We argue that AI systems should be evaluated for their *moral reasoning* just as they are evaluated for their ability to code or do math. And we provide a roadmap for evaluating moral competence in LLMs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Is a targeted, month-long national economic strike an effective form of protest against the unchecked power of masked agents who treat the Bill of Rights as a suggestion? I don’t know, but it sure is an opportunity to rethink where my money is going.
resistandunsubscribe.com
Resist and Unsubscribe
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
I get asked a lot about how universities are dealing with AI. We can cope, I think. But we need to tread carefully and get back to basics. open.substack.com/pub/joshdmay...
open.substack.com
Will Artificial Intelligence Break Universities?
Not if they elevate formation above information.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
The new University of Austin experiment doesn’t seem to be doing so well. Steven Pinker, who resigned from its board, says the university “had no coherent vision of what higher education in the 21st century ought to be. Instead, they created UnWoke U led by a Faculty of the Canceled.”
politico.com
They Wanted a University Without Cancel Culture. Then Dissenters Were Ousted.
Inside the civil war at the anti-woke university backed by Bari Weiss.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
If respect for voters is rooted in strategy, is it really respect? This question has been puzzling me as I hear (and appreciate) the call for Democrats to stop looking down their noses at voters. joshdmay.substack.com
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Philosophers + psychologists: Deadline extended to NOV 20th for the Southern Society for Philosophy & Psychology. Just over a week left to submit papers! southernsociety.org/AnnualMeeting/
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
The best analogy for social media is alcohol. Can you have a healthy relationship with it? Sure, but many don’t. Bad for society? Maybe on the whole, though problematic use is explained by both demand & supply. Should adults be free to use? Of course. Should 13-year-olds be regular users? Hell no.
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
We're hiring! Philosophers: Do you know someone working in applied ethics, especially bioethics and/or AI ethics? Let them know about this fantastic tenure-track job at UAB! Birmingham is wonderful, as is UAB and our Philosophy Department. Deadline = Nov. 20. philjobs.org
Job ad screenshot
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
New post based on a lecture I gave in memory of Robin Lester, a neuroscientist and beloved member of the UAB community. joshdmay.substack.com
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
The best set of teaching tips I’ve ever seen, which I’ve long tried to follow. This tip certainly deserves to sit in the #1 slot. It’s also the reason I feel absolutely exhausted after a day of teaching three classes!
open.substack.com
19 pieces of teaching advice
Because it's a new semester
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Interesting approach to AI in humanities courses with writing assignments.
dailynous.com
You Don’t Need an AI Policy — You Need Two (guest post) - Daily Nous
What will tell your students about whether and how they may use AI for work you assign? It depends on the students, right? That's the main idea behind today's guest post by Victor Kumar (Boston Univer...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
The opening post on my Substack, Motivated Reasonings. Come for the self-flagellation, stay for the Matthew McConaughey quotes.
joshdmay.substack.com
Confessions of a Motivated Reasoner
How Bias Shapes Politics, Science, and Everyday Life
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
"broad and carefully executed, offering a wealth of insights" Really thoughtful review of my Neuroethics book in NDPR by Andrea Lavazza. ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/neur...
ndpr.nd.edu
Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science
Neuroethics is a young discipline with still-blurred boundaries, situated at the crossroads of neurology and philosophy. Yet it has successfully positio...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
What a privilege to engage with these commentaries on my Neuroethics book, all in an open access journal. Really grateful for their thoughts and to Carolyn Dicey-Jennings for facilitating it. 🙏 philosophymindscience.org/index.php/ph...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Why do liberal professors value tradition and hate bureaucracy within their own workplaces but not outside them? I suggest an answer:
dailynous.com
Why Are Liberal Professors More Conservative On Campus? (guest post) - Daily Nous
"Academics pride themselves on critical thinking and intellectual virtues. But intellectual honesty demands that we recognize when we are applying principles selectively." In the following guest post,...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
New article coming out in Neuroethics! I started thinking about neurodiversity while in Rajesh Kana's autism lab. This paper has been years in the making, evolving through redrafting many times. Grateful to the many who provided feedback! 🙏
philpapers.org
Joshua May, Neurodiversity with Nuance - PhilPapers
The neurodiversity movement grew out of the autism community but is now being applied to many neurological types, from dyslexia to schizophrenia. The resulting neurodiversity paradigm maintains that t...
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Are autism, ADHD, and other neurotypes deficits or mere differences? The question rests on a mistake. Or so I argue in this short piece.
psyche.co
Why we should think of neurodiversity like we do personality | Psyche Ideas
It’s a mistake to frame autistic and ADHD traits as either deficits or mere differences. There’s another way to see them
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
While it’s still February… the best Valentines from UAB Philosophy Instagram ♥️
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Josh May @joshdmay.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Think you should eat fewer animal products but aren't convinced everyone must go vegan? You may like our new article in the Journal of Moral Philosophy (w/@victorkumar.bsky.social). Lot of labor and love poured into his one. Pretty sure it's the first philosophical defense of a #reducetarian view.
philpapers.org
Joshua May & Victor Kumar, Eating Fewer Animals: A Defense of Reducetarianism - PhilPapers
Moral arguments against the consumption of animal products from factory farms are traditionally categorical. The conclusions require people to eliminate from their diets all animal products (veganism)...
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