Valhalla monitor
@joelpust.bsky.social
470 followers 370 following 460 posts
Philosopher at @UDelaware. For free expression, academic freedom, a priori philosophy. Posting entirely in a personal capacity. Pessimism of the intellect, Optimism of the will. https://philpeople.org/profiles/joel-pust
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joelpust.bsky.social
Ever more dystopian
janerosenzweig.bsky.social
The new fashion in education: schools that teach kids how to be "agentic" in a future society in which AI does everything except decide who the winners and losers are. From this piece about Alpha School and the parents preparing their kids to be winners. nymag.com/intelligence...
text that says: In the past three years, the concept has acquired a new aura as agency and agentic became technical vocabulary, referring to the next generation of AI that can act with autonomy, not merely planning your itinerary but also booking your plane, hotel, and restaurant reservations and adapting to problems encountered along the way. In this new context, the human capacity for agency has come to encapsulate what some believe will mark the cleft, in an AI-suffused future, between winners and losers. Even after raw intelligence has been commoditized by smart machines, the role of choosing what to do will remain a scarce resource controlled by people. Those who’ve trained themselves to decide what matters and to pursue goals, the thinking goes, will have a stark edge over more passive people.
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resistance.money
Audiobook coming soon -- finally! Thank you to the dozens of people who begged our publisher to do this.
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brendannyhan.bsky.social
People continue to underappreciate how much their ideas are not challenged or tested (and the costs of not doing so) when they never hear arguments related to X because X sounds like something that disfavored figures or groups say.
joelpust.bsky.social
Just hope they have not heard of the non-identity problem. :)
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joelpust.bsky.social
Me, after a talk, dismissing without answer a difficult question in Q&A.
"I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you."
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thepaleusher.bsky.social
That is what life is like, is it not? When we’re young we think there’s more to come, that this is only the beginning, whereas in fact it’s all there is, and what we have now, and barely even think about, will soon be the only thing we ever had. (52)

Karl Ove Knausgaard / The Morning Star
joelpust.bsky.social
🌲
roberttalisse.bsky.social
People have difficulty keeping the evaluation of means distinct from the evaluation of ends when they really like the ends.
joelpust.bsky.social
How can it be a net good, if it undercuts attempts to teach serious writing and deep reading? What are the straightforward techniques to avoid this? We can move to all in-class exams but that isn't teaching argumentative essay writing and re-writing.
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neddo.bsky.social
Understanding whether consciousness depends on computational roles, biological realizers, or both, is crucial for assessing the prospects of consciousness in AI and less complex animals. end/
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neddo.bsky.social
Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com
joelpust.bsky.social
Me, after a talk, dismissing without answer a difficult question in Q&A.
"I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you."
joelpust.bsky.social
Responses to this post are not great.
yasharali.bsky.social
Someone who used to work with Katie Porter sent me this clip from a train wreck interview with her and said “now imagine what she’s like when there aren’t cameras around.”
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estherschindler.bsky.social
I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.
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fishkin.bsky.social
Blocking foreign students who criticize Israel, affirmative action for conservatives in all departments, "restructuring" or eliminating parts of the university that "belittle" conservative ideas, blocking university employees from speaking about matters of public concern, etc. are not mainstream.