iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Philosophy tip: If you want to use the word “better,” you have to pay for it (by specifying its norms). Being like “more people in a world is just better… uh… normlessly!” is straight up goofy.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

"If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." - Isaiah 58

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Two years ago a 50-year-old mystery in Conway's Game of Life was solved. A pattern was discovered that cannot be generated by anything except for itself -- there's no way to procedurally build it within the ruleset. conwaylife.com/forums/viewt...

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

We aren't used to talking in the most philosophically safe & coherent framings. This is an issue because "philosophical intuition" probably = "how we're used to framing things."

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

It is not important for responsibility that you can *actually* do otherwise, only that you could do otherwise *under a counterfactual*. Whether a "yes" is inculpating depends on the job or jobgiver(s). Responsibility was never some ontological property. It's just a component of stewarding practice.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

"This is not a picture of screw X" is how building this bunk bed is going.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

You can ride a bike without a helmet. It takes extra time to find and don the helmet, and it feels awkward. Riding without that bulk is quicker and more comfy, even if it invites big risks. Framing "potential" as a property of an object is like riding without a helmet.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

"Does this person worship the same God as that person?" has a boringly definitive answer, but definitive answers kill conversations, and dead conversations tell no tales.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

"Evidence" does not have a tight meaning, so people will hop from neutral to arbitrarily laden meanings of it. All polysemy is an opportunity for rhetoricians.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

A new way to approach Newcomb's Paradox that makes it more intuitive that the only rational choices are "reject the scenario" or "1-box." #philsky #philosophy

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

In epistemology, raise one eyebrow super high whenever you see a syllogism that treats the word "reliable" as if it is a "yes or no" thing, with a single probabilistic threshold to "count."

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

I wanted the commemorative boot glass but also the stout they limit to 8 oz pours...

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Q: "If beauty is not an objective feature of things, and is instead in the 'eye of the beholder,' is a thing not beautiful prior to me discovering it?" A: This puzzle, driven by the hybrid subjective & objective nature of beauty, value, etc., is solved by hypothetical framing: "If I had seen it..."

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Virtue ethics is evocative, and feels purely objective at first glance. But here morality's stance-dependence just manifests as semantic quibbles about what acts qualify under the virtue & vice labels.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Metaphysical impossibility just means something is ruled out per some lexicon. The so-called Hard Problem does not mean the mind is a "different substance," nor does it mean consciousness is "fundamental," nor does it rule out physical causal closure.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

I am still seeing people use passive "is fitting," "is permitted/permissible," is obligated/obligatory," "supposed to," "is allowed/allowable," " is compulsory," "is required," etc. in serious defenses of moral stance-independence so I gotta, once again, tap the sign.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Philosophy's biggest problem, polysemy, can be explored with fun little riddles like this one, from my latest on the StanStack: open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Evaluative reification -- the green drivers evaporating from mention -- is not really a mystery. It's explainable and folks do it all the time, even for stuff that's obviously not purely objective.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Even if determinism is true, we have self-determination. But "self-determination" needs to be defined according to what actually happens inside when we ponder & commit.

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

I'm a mobile game design director. My favorite subject in school (back in the 90s) was computer lab. I love doing and getting better at piano, guitar, music composition, art, game design theory, and coding fun projects. Samples from a 2010 tabletop game prototype:

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 05/12/2023

Reframing metaphysical issues in terms of H-Recipes puts a host of evergreen debates to bed, and is prophylaxis against reification (which corrupts every philosophical branch it touches).

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𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚗 @stanpatton.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

Stare at this chart until you become immune to philosophers using "is justified" in an absolute sense. Epistemology is about striving for truth. Whether a given method is the best way to the truth in some context is contextual, and sometimes we don't know what context we're in.

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