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Simon Friederich

@simonfriederich.bsky.social
220 followers 97 following 141 posts

Philosopher of science at University of Groningen; quantum foundations, philosophy of technology

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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I am quite happy with this after our earlier conversation. You seem to acknowledge that the "weak" claim at issue, though perhaps wrong, is not pseudoscientific. So we are perhaps in agreement here after all. For the stronger claims, Cofnas indeed doesn't seem to defend them in academic papers.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Splendid consolation!
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I so much hope you're right! I worry so, so much that the more pessimistic voices are.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Yes, the points of both of you seem very plausible to me. And while a lot of work in evopsych is likely suspect, some stuff, such as explaining why we experience disgust, but also some of the stuff on sex differences, is no doubt essentially right.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Yes, "race realism" seems highly suspect.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
kinds of shortcomings that you diagnose, we have to be consistent. These are extremely widespread in scientific/academic argumentation. What differs is the political conclusions that are drawn, which are much more problematic here than elsewhere (see the Cofnas quote that I find utterly horrible.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Thanks so much, this is great. The abstract of the paper "Between group heritability..." actually has a nice characterization of hereditarianism, though it's a relatively strong one. My qualm is: If we call it pseudoscience based on the shortcomings you diagnose, what else becomes pseudoscience?
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Can you say which specific hereditarian thesis/theses you have in mind as being pseudoscientific? And just to repeat, I am not defending any such view (let alone Cofnas' atrocious politics), this is just about the pseudoscience label.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Yes, I think you may be right with this. And the fact that he is clearly motivated politically makes him untrustworthy. Still, these are points that generally apply to a lot of activist academics, and at least as much against some of the "woke" academics whom he criticises.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
But for the pseudoscience charge, just compare with the academic output of the sociology/education academics that Cofnas criticized. If that is *not* pseudoscience, then I have a hard time seeing how Cofnas' own stuff could be, weakly argued and unpersuasive as it may well be.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Yes, exactly. And in the light of this being (roughly) the consensus, at least a weak form of hereditarianism is far from a priori implausible. That doesn't mean it's true, and I bet Cofnas is irrationally overconfident in an unreasonably strong version.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I guess I'm just even more reluctant then.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
What I find really abhorrent is this by Cofnas: "There must be some barriers set up between races in order for each one to express its own unique genius. And in the case of group conflict, racial tribalism can sometimes be the key to solving collective-action problems."
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
It's just that in the light of the facts summarized by van de Velde in my screenshot I have a hard time regarding hereditarianism per se as pseudo-scientific. People like Cofnas no doubt show the patterns you describe to some extent, but many proper scientists often do.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is great! I actually just discussed this with Maarten, and he was indeed more inclined to use the pseudoscience label than I was. You have no doubt read Cofnas' actual texts more thoroughly than I have.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I agree that Cofnas' views are horrible, but pseudoscientific? Do you think that the hereditarianism per se is pseudoscientific? I would be very surprised by that.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Congrats, Ken!
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Right. If what you're saying is about practice, not assessment, then I'm all for it!
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Is the suggestion that assignments should be given in such a way that students are inherently motivated to not use any AI or reuplsed by the idea of using AI? So that you can forbid AI use and be completely sure students will comply?
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Good suggestions by Harvard dean Deming: accept or even encourage AI-use in take-home assignments. Forbidding it creates a climate of distrust and, I would add, privileges unscrupulous cheaters. What I would add: Avoid the problem by making take-home assessment rare.
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Reposted by Simon Friederich
Alexander Kustov @akoustov.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Absolutely shameful, and arguably even worse than when Nature endorsed Biden in 2020—misrepresenting publicly known facts and openly protecting fraud, all in the name of clearly ideological goals. At the very least, Nature owes its readers a correction.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Fantastisch stuk. Je veroordeeld niemand en begrijpt iedereen, dat is heel fijn om te lezen.
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Reposted by Simon Friederich
jessefrederik.bsky.social @jessefrederik.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
decorrespondent.nl/17145/democr...
decorrespondent.nl
Democratie in verval? De democratie werkt juist prima (alleen vinden progressieven dat niet leuk)
In een vertegenwoordigende democratie zullen populaire standpunten vroeg of laat vertegenwoordigd worden. Steun voor minder migratie was onder kiezers allang normaal, nu is het dat ook onder politici....
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
I don't know to what extent this principle has hobbled clearn energy, but I would be very surprised if we weren't all better off without it.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
A rare hope-giving move by the US administration: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposes to get rid of the requirement for nuclear plants to ensure that radiation exposure is “as low as is reasonably achievable.” thehill.com/policy/energ...
thehill.com
US moves to eliminate longtime radiation safety principle for nuclear power
The federal government is proposing to overhaul radiation safety regulations for nuclear power, including by eliminating a long-term principle for nuclear safety. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission …
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
"Groningse kansen" -- fijne column van @studioenergie.bsky.social over Groningen en kernenergie. www.linkedin.com/posts/remcod...
linkedin.com
'𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀𝗲 𝗸𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲𝗻' – Groningen wil géén kernenergie, maar groene waterstof. Alleen loopt die ballon al tijden langzaam leeg. Te duur, om het heel kort samen te vatten. En ook de grote… | Remco...
'𝗚𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀𝗲 𝗸𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲𝗻' – Groningen wil géén kernenergie, maar groene waterstof. Alleen loopt die ballon al tijden langzaam leeg. Te duur, om het heel kort samen te vatten. En ook de grote hoeveelheden win...
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Yes, I saw that it's a preprint right now. Still, a big step to release it as such. I guess chances are good that it will be officially published before our book.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Congratulations, Ken, great to see this published!
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
The worry is that it *will* make me intellectually useless if capabilities advance further. And that seems the default expectation. At the moment we are in the sweet spot moment where models are superuseful but still lack both creativity and (sometimes) rigour.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Yes, I agree: bsky.app/profile/simo...
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Some hoped that AI for academic writing would make things fairer by levelling the playing field between native and non-native speakers. What's happening is volume has increased, attention is scarce, and only contributions from prestigious institutions are taken seriously to begin with. Seems bad.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Great article with a devastating verdict on the empirical (in-) adequacy of the Everett interpretation now an Editor's Choice article in BJPS.
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Reposted by Simon Friederich
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science @thebjps.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
This issue's Editors' Choice article: Conquering Mount Everett: Branch Counting Versus the Born Rule – Jake Khawaja Abstract in alt text or read it for free here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/726282 #philsci #philsky
ABSTRACT. This article develops and advocates a rule for assigning self-locating credences in quantum branching scenarios, called indexed branch-counting. It is argued that indexed branch-counting can be justified on both accuracy-theoretic grounds and on the grounds that it satisfies a requirement of exchangeability for probability assignments. Since indexed branch-counting diverges from the Born rule, this poses trouble for Everettian approaches to probability. The article also addresses a common argument against branch-counting, namely, that the rule is incoherent in light of putative vagueness in the number of branches. Finally, the article addresses a recent proposal from Saunders that aims to reconcile branch-counting with the Born rule, arguing that the proposal faces challenges.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Great to hear, Michela, and congratulations!
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Many, many thanks for these posts, very interesting! Those ideas are not the ones I am most drawn to, but that makes it all the more worthwhile to follow what you post.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Good piece by Aronson on the "possibly last days of human relevance": scottaaronson.blog?p=9782 His students were understandably morose when news broke about the AI-result on the unit-distance conjecture.
scottaaronson.blog
Dispatches from the possibly last days of human relevance
As most readers have presumably heard by now, Paul Erdös’s Unit Distance Problem from 1946—one of the central open problems from the field of discrete geometry—has been solved by …
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Blair's criticism of net-zero targets is worth taking seriously. Ignoring the collective action dimension of emission reduction is shortsighted, not virtuous.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Nice work, @lodelauwaert.bsky.social, @leonarddung.bsky.social and co-authors!
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Reposted by Simon Friederich
Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science (CLPS) @clpskuleuven.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Check out the digest of this 📃 by Edward Roussel and @lodelauwaert.bsky.social: moralweights.substack.com/p/the-selfis... Subscribe to moralweights.substack.com for monthly philosophical reflections on technology & #AI from the Chair Ethics and AI at KU Leuven! #philsky #philtech #HPS #mathsky
moralweights.substack.com
The Selfish Moratorium
Why States Might Want a Pause on ASI Development
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Okay, fine. But would you doubt that AI systems are set to become superhuman in analytic reasoning by basically any reasonable standards (unless perhaps a concerted effort succeeds to constrain capabilities)?
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Disagreeing with that starting point is, I'm afraid, and hate to say, wishful thinking. AI sigining off would mean that approval of the authorship statement by the AI you were using is somehow institutionalized. Devil may indeed be in practical details.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
In the near future, it will often be difficult to decide whether humans or AI systems deserve credits for achievements. @jonsymons.bsky.social and I made a proposal for how to deal with this: link.springer.com/article/10.1....
link.springer.com
Norms for Academic Writing in the Era of Advanced Artificial Intelligence - Digital Society
If and when artificial intelligence systems become superhuman in more aspects of analytic reasoning, this will inevitably have a strong impact on the social organisation of science, including academic...
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
The OpenAI announcement could be very bad news for universities: The problem was solved by their internal model. External experts with university affiliations were still needed to check, but that process will surely also be automated. Power shifts from universities to AI companies.
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Reposted by Simon Friederich
Timothy Gowers @wtgowers.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
OpenAI's claim that this is a central conjecture in discrete geometry is not an exaggeration. This will I think be looked back on as the first time that AI solved a major mathematics problem (defined as a problem that all experts in some subfield had thought about). openai.com/index/model-...
openai.com
An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry
An OpenAI model solved the 80-year-old unit distance problem, disproving a major conjecture in discrete geometry and marking a milestone in AI-driven mathematics.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
OpenAI's internal model has solved an important problem in mathematics -- more specifically, has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry: openai.com/index/model-...
openai.com
An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry
An OpenAI model solved the 80-year-old unit distance problem, disproving a major conjecture in discrete geometry and marking a milestone in AI-driven mathematics.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Ik denk niets dergelijks. Ik stel vragen voordat ik zelf een mening inneem.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
My PhD student Mritunjay Tyagi and I derived a new version of the Schrödinger equation. It's in terms of the Glauber-Sudarshan and Husimi quasi-probability distributions. We think that it may be useful to explore sharp values for all dynamical variables. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Time evolution of the Husimi and Glauber–Sudarshan functions in terms of complementary Hamiltonian symbols
We present a compact, systematic formulation of the dynamics of the Husimi Q- and Glauber–Sudarshan P-phase space distribution functions expressed in …
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Hoe ga jij om met deze kritiek, @schimmelpenninck.bsky.social? Zou je mensensmokkel overbodig willen maken door faciliteren van de overvaart naar Europa en/of de grenzen helemaal open zetten?
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Ikzelf weet niet welk voorstel ik zou moeten steunen. Ik zou heel graag van @nadiabouras.bsky.social horen en laat me graag overtuigen.
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Simon Friederich @simonfriederich.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Een link naar een beschrijving van zo'n voorstel zou anders ook leuk zijn.
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