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Chris

@multiplicityct.bsky.social
4.6K followers 1.3K following 3.8K posts

PhD student in philosophy at the University of Staffordshire. Philosophy of trust and reliance, trustworthy AI, Heidegger. Marylander. MA Staffs, MBA Duke. Wittgenstein and Cantor handshake numbers = 3 (via John Conway).

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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This criticism is 100% right and is at the core of my own research. Philosophy of trust has taught me a ton, and it's a very narrow conception of trust that leaves out almost all of normal human trust -- in other humans and in artifacts.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This column makes me furious, though not at Ms. Hannah-Jones. I'm floundering as a parent, trying to help my own brilliant kid who has challenges through a system that doesn't care about her. Class and race make this infinitely harder for many families, but the systems are universally bad.
nytimes.com
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Such an analytic-coded statement. ;-)
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
One of my favorite bsky posts of all time
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Miranda Fricker on blame is really good, especially her reading of Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” as metaphilosophy rather than a kind of resigned naturalism about our propensity to blame. #philsky
podcasts.apple.com
Miranda Fricker on Blame
Podcast Episode · Philosophy Bites · September 21 · 24m
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
In no particular order. my9games.net/en
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I played this game for hours and hours as a kid and haven't thought about it for 35 years. This is awesome.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I always strive to be one or the other at all times.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I am currently fighting with Claude about whether I'm allowed to say something was "75 years later" in my own speaking notes (not slides) when in fact it was 73 years from 1950 to 2023. How is your day going?
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I've been giving a lot of pep talks recently to people on my teams and in my industry about how we'll grow as humans despite *gestures around* all of this. Didn't realize until I read Catherine's speech to our Staffs freshers how badly I needed a pep talk myself!
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Yes, a government office is going to develop trust out of whole cloth. This is why I have a dissertation topic, I should be thankful.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
On the one hand, I’m pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge as a PhD student. On the other hand, I can’t fully understand Heidegger lectures from 1930 and Kant’s first Critique from the 18th century. (And neither can anyone else.) Nice racket we’ve got going here.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Cat has been using voice input to deal with a hand impairment and outlines how she has addressed basically all the things that keep me from using voice input with any frequency. (I currently sound like an idiot when I talk to the computer.) Really good thread.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is a great, thoughtful essay. But notice that aligning human behavior with the problems exhibited by models is not a core part of this (or basically any) AI safety framework. *User* alignment has to be part of the conversation, not just control of models & curators.
normaltech.ai
The AI-as-Normal-Technology view of loss of control incidents
A middle ground between the cybersecurity and AI safety communities
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This feels like divination that confirms everyone’s priors. If you hate AI, it proves everyone is writing AI slop and lying. If you’re a booster, you write with AI brazenly and laugh.
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Reposted by Chris
Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com
Hercule Poirot dressed all in black speaks to Captain Hastings in a grand hallway “Please ask the suspects to gather in the library, Hastings: I wish to reveal that our births are random, our lives meaningless, and our deaths absurd.”

Caption “Having investigated so many awful murders over the years, it was perhaps unsurprising that Hercule Poirot turned to Existentialism”


p.s. Poirot had presumably been reading a lot of Sartre recently…

 "It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die," Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant)

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (La Nausée)
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
My teen is reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake for school. On the one hand, one of my favorites. On the other, it’s now a “classic” that precocious middle schoolers get assigned instead of the new novel that I, as a discerning, plugged-in reader, once discovered.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
OK, the Apple livestream is going a little off the rails.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Opus gives such main character energy (pejorative). Claude: I’m going to stop here. We’ve done a lot this afternoon. Me: Dude, this is the first time I’ve talked to you in two weeks.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
We need to make humans safe for AI, rather than the other way around. ("Trustworthy" AI is a fool's errand as framed by most.) I recognize the anti crowd has a point and I may be defeatist, or overly optimistic about AI's benefits outweighing the downsides. Don't think we can stop the train though.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Just received word that I am officially a PhD Digital Design and Technologies student instead of PhD Humanities. Higher ed is a mess everywhere these days, and I am so grateful to have people looking out for me and giving me the chance to write my dissertation.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
They could have just asked “how do you pronounce the last vowel in Missouri?” mydialect.us/quiz-standar...
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Arendt on AI (via Margaret Canovan). Humans hold two contradictory beliefs: we can do anything and we’re animals that are completely determined by material circumstances. Separating knowledge from thought would make us “slaves” to machines.
leaving the future alarmingly open. On the other hand, in a development Arendt traces to "alienation from the world, modern, automated societies engrossed by ever more efficient production and consumption encourage us to behave and think of ourselves simply as an animal species governed by natural laws.
Human animals unconscious of their capacities and responsibilities are not well fitted to take charge of earth-threatening powers. This conjunction echoes Arendt's earlier analysis of totalitarianism as a nihilistic process propelled by a paradoxical combination of convictions: on the one hand the belief that "ev-erything is possible," and on the other that human beings are merely an animal species governed by laws of nature or history, in the service of which individuals are entirely dispensable. The echo is not surprising, for The Human Condition is organically linked to Arendt's work on totalitarianism, and the two together contain an original and striking diagnosis of the contemporary human predicament.things which nevertheless we are able to do. In this case, it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material Med& condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking. If it should turn our to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how. thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
RIP "trustworthy" AI
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Man, I'll believe it when I see it. I use these models for hours every day. They are impressive, but always foil the breathless marketing. On the plus side, labs keep doubling down on approaches my diss says won't work, as @liedra.net confidently predicted when I started. So I still have a project!
theverge.com
OpenAI’s next big AI model has ‘entered the AGI era’
According to OpenAI president Greg Brockman, we’ve likely entered the AGI era.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The conversation my chapter 2 draft is currently having with its imaginary future selves.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Salmiakki (salty licorice) mixer on Tillamook chocolate ice cream = pure bliss.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I love this. I once translated Tolstoy's _Childhood_ and dream of having the time to attack _War and Peace_ (maybe retirement). To do it twice would be infinitely more satisfying.
theguardian.com
Emily Wilson to retranslate the Odyssey from scratch
Wilson, whose 2017 English translation of Homer’s epic poem inspired Christopher Nolan’s box office hit, is revisiting it after criticising the film adaptation
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
If the world becomes just executives + AI, then the executives will not wind up the same people. This from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social is one of the few smart things I've seen about this. Lazy prompters with no domain expertise are unlikely to wind up on top, even if they're driving automation now.
backofmind.substack.com
robot class traitors
the future and its ownership
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Co-sign. She was an incredible person, and that comes through in this podcast.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Make a band bigger Enormous Head Todd and the Monsters
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I'm writing a dissertation on (dis)trust in AI, so I would say this. But these models are more like a secret third thing than any dichotomy we already had on the shelf. 100% endorse Ted's thread here.
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Reposted by Chris
Adele Buck @adelebuck.com · 21/08/2026
The "AI is bad, let's use this AI to detect AI" takes are seriously going to make me melt down into a puddle of slag, Steve.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Pangram experiment part two. I forgot to click "More Human" on Deft AI Writing's interface. A completely LLM-written paragraph comes up 100% human-written in Pangram if I use that Deft feature. It sounds clunky to my ear, and is definitely not my voice.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Did a little experiment since Pangram is in the discourse this week. First & second grafs of my dissertation chapter (written 100% by me): judged 100% AI. The two grafs together (no changes): judged 67% AI. Then I had Deft rewrite the first graf -- completely LLM text, judged 54% AI. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Narrator: No universal policies for alignment or trustworthy AI were ever discovered.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Excited to head home and back to work, but it’s a bummer that the Gulf of Finland is all the way over there.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Do not like. Looking forward to deleting the Deutschebahn app for a couple of years.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
We trust (and distrust) non-human entities, we don’t merely rely on them.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
This exchange of comments is wild (Guerrero justified, Simon not at all). I’m an obsessive reader/note taker but realize others cite lazily sometimes. Loudly proclaiming that you didn’t read & “it” (an LLM) mischaracterized a source, whoops, feels unbelievably disrespectful.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Seagulls in Finland are f%*^ing serious.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Maybe my position is incoherent but this seems like a sane, non-pointless way of using LLMs in philosophy. Having the LLM research and write your paper, not so much.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
If the point of philosophy is to change the philosopher, and ideally readers, then this feels quite pointless. I say that as someone who uses LLMs to draft a lot of prose for non-academic work. It’s just an understanding of philosophy that makes no sense to me.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Super relaxing day cruising to and from Porvoo, which our teenager termed “boring.” Success!!
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The prospect of trying to defend a thesis mostly researched/argued by an LLM live for the viva sounds terrifying. Feels like higher ed is overdue for attacking the gap between how a program *should* change students & how it does in practice (even before LLMs), as this piece argues.
eytanadar.medium.com
AI-Native PhD Students
If you’re a student and just want the tl;dr, feel free to jump to the end.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I find it wild that this was invented in my dorm room over 25 years ago (not by me) and is now making its way into Claude.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Our Finnish friends say that somehow other foreigners do not fall in love with this country quite like we have. I don’t understand why.
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Reposted by Chris
Greg McElwain @gsmcelwain.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I’m excited to share that my new book on Mary Midgley is available to preorder! It’s due out December 10: www.bloomsbury.com/us/mary-midg... #marymidgley #philsky @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social @bloomsburyphilo.bsky.social @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Why travel thousands of miles from home to Finland? For salted licorice ice cream, obviously.
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I’m starting to get where I’m headed as a doctoral student. I’m almost done with my first draft chapter, feel like a bit of an expert, and have about 10 threatening things to read. Better than 100 vague citations to read, but I’m now keenly aware of being out on a branch, probably alone!
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