Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 03/10/2026It’s a utilitarian’s version of virtue ethics. Very idiosyncratic. 021
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 03/10/2026“[H]e did not mean to imitate those philanthropic models who make a profit out of poisonous pickles to support themselves while they are exposing adulteration, or hold shares in a gambling-hell that they may have leisure to represent the cause of public morality.” (about Dr Lydgate in _Middlemarch_) 030
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Yeah, this is the way. bsky.app/profile/mrag... 070
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026... by the vigilant reader, who is not unaware of the fact that she brings the text to meaningfulness thanks to its lacunae, whether these be intended or not." (footnote 23 on p. 159, _Oneself As Another_). 1101
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Ricoeur on reading, very relevant for LLMs that act via the interface of language: "reading ... is at its best a struggle between two strategies, the _strategy of seduction_ pursued by the author in the guise of a more or less trustworthy narrator ... , and the _strategy of suspicion_ pursued ... 1145
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026“All prediction is conservative: it demands that we be as we are in whatever future it constructs.” — Paul Valéry, “Unpredictability” (1944) 0112
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026trip down memory lane: Pie ’n Burger, Pasadena, CA, 10 years ago 390
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 29/09/2026… But let us simply express the wish that the manipulative surgeons in these dreams never have the means — or, more the right — to perform what is perfectly permissible to imagine.” (Paul Ricoeur, “Oneself As Another”) 030
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 29/09/2026“It will perhaps one day be necessary to forbid actually doing what today science fiction is limited to dreaming about. But have not dreams always transgressed into the realm of the forbidden? So let us dream along with Parfit. … 131
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 29/09/2026This one is more technical, but it unifies a whole variety of different results under a common framework: www.proceedings.com/content/075/...proceedings.com 030
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 29/09/2026This survey I coauthored is more up-to-date: arxiv.org/abs/2309.04381arxiv.orgGeneralization Bounds: Perspectives from Information Theory and PAC-BayesA fundamental question in theoretical machine learning is generalization. Over the past decades, the PAC-Bayesian approach has been established as a flexible framework to address the generalization ca... 270
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 29/09/2026It’s like a whole set of people who only associate Abraham Wald with the airplane meme, and who would benefit from actually reading Blackwell, Savage, and De Finetti but won’t because they’ve got HPMOR and The Sequences. Cargo cultists the whole lot of them. 290
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 29/09/2026But that’s not what Knightian uncertainty is! I feel like I just made myself dumber trying to parse this lesswrong word salad. I need a drink. 2200
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Can you imagine Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but about EA and the rationalists? I can’t. 090
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Incapable or unwilling for ideological reasons? 030
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Making casarecce con le sarde tonight, paired (appropriately) with a Sardinian white wine. 170
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s On The Origins of Cognitive Science is another good older text. It focuses mostly on cybernetics, but much of what he writes there is relevant for AI. 151
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Yes, I keep recommending Agre’s book to everyone as an entry point to continental philosophy perspectives on AI. 360
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Yes -- but somehow it is really grating in the context of mathematics. 130
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I find the "digestion" metaphor (i.e., mathematicians "digesting" AI-generated proofs) vulgar and off-putting. It's a sign of the times, genuine intellectuals like Yuri Manin are being replaced by a new generation whose identity is shaped by narrow professionalization and impoverished imagination. 3160
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026There's a widespread dismissive attitude towards continental philosophy within AI-adjacent circles; in large part, it is motivated by what Mark Wilson called "imitation of rigor" in most of analytic philosophy -- sterile "theory T" thinking that does not engage with history or practice. 4203
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I think this only applies to analytic philosophy. Continental philosophy integrates ideas from art, history, and literature, and even from analytic philosophy (cf. Ricoeur’s program for a new virtue ethics in “Oneself As Another,” where he engages critically with Anscombe, Davidson, and Parfit). 1191
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 26/09/2026this week’s Negroni proposition 1oz Roku gin 1oz Oka Kura sweet Japanese Bermutto sake vermouth 1oz Select Aperitivo 1130
Reposted by Maxim Raginskytweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 25/09/2026here is a succinct thing I can say: "alignment"-style AI safety risks DO NOT EXIST or need remediation with LLMs as such (there are lots of other problems) and OpenAI and Anthropic are in the business of TRYING TO MAKE THEM EXIST so that they can remediate them. 718550
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 24/09/2026“established … by a number of savants (mostly from the Soviet Union)” — LaSalle and Lefschetz, “Stability by Liapunov’s Direct Method,” 1961 050
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 23/09/2026“Of all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” 120
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Yes, Popper and Eccles, “The Self and Its Brain.” 010
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I see Bluesky is now speedrunning the intentional stance and multiple realizability. Okay then, carry on. 070
Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · 21/09/2026No one should be taken seriously when they say things like “update my priors” unless they can explain how to derive the Kalman filter. Desperate times call for desperate measures, people! 0304
