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Christopher J Stevens

@metaphysiology.bsky.social

900 followers 1.2K following 2.8K posts

Lecturer/researcher in phil & neuro. Éireannach en France/immigrant. Education, evolution, embodied mind/metaphysiology, memory, deliberation, myside bias, representation, reasoning, perspectivism, pragmatism. Universités de Bordeaux & Bdx-Montaigne.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · Dec 8

Will do a thread on this soon, too busy with corrections, etc., right now. In the meantime, new preprint from my PhD project in a single hypothesis: the deep cognitive bases of myside confirmation bias run much deeper in evolutionary history than posited in the literature.
#cognition #behavior

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · Dec 8

Mice-side bias: Deliberative decision making in a model of rule revision reveals 'myside' confirmation bias-like cognitive processes in mice. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.03.626648v1

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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 4h

With maybe 125,000+ invasive sika deer in Wicklow alone, this is what native forest creation looks like.

• No woodland flora can grow
• Oak aside, trees flop over once tube is removed, deer then kill tree
• Trees may not even be genuinely native

For our forests' sake, a LOT more deer must be shot.

Mike McKillen @mikemckillen.bsky.social · 4h

The pocket forest of native broadleaf tree established by Scouting Ireland at it activity centre at Lough Dan was only possible by using tubes to protect the saplings from bracken & deer/sheep grazing. My image from Aug shows bracken density.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 2h

"If you had to choose a neighbour between A) Heather Humphreys or..."
"B), B), I'll take B!"

Reposted by Christopher J Stevens

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 13h

You gently run your hand through the rack. You can feel it—pure cotton, rich wool, Irish linen. The plump buttonholes are handsewn; the buttons attached with a firm shank. You flip the price tag over. It's affordable

You buy the jacket and go home, which is only 15 mins away. Your apt is $600/month

Headline reads: Altman says ChatGPT will soon allow erotic for adult users.

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Reposted by Christopher J Stevens

𝖂𝖊𝖗𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖗 @wertheimer.bsky.social · Sep 6

The cure for the ills of Democracy
is MORE Democracy.

Jane Addams
6 Sep 1860🎂
first American woman to be awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 7h

She'd be rolling her googly eyes in her grave if she saw those made-up lashes! 😅

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Euthyphro @euthyphro.bsky.social · 7h

I got you.

A copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s Political writings. The cover is a photo of Simone de Beauvoir from the waist up. She’s wearing a printed blouse under a dark vest seated on a couch. Where her eyes should be, there are very large googly eyes. The google eyes have eyelashes.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 7h

Bearing that analogy in mind, it shouldn't be a mystery why Connolly or anyone else of like-mind was particularly insensed by those who insulted the Leave voters themselves, the majority of whom were from demographics who had been materially neglected.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 7h

If one has clear evidence parents have neglected half their children, it's irresponsible to reserve critique for the bad influences who swept in to occupy the vacuum. In a situation where those parents have more kids, they need a serious talking to as well, no? Connolly imo attempted to do both.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 8h

(1) Yes (2) Also yes

CC didn't say the result couldn't be questioned so much as she said its real significance needed to be understood. My interpretation is that, for her, the real significance was that the EU project concretely hadn't done enough to address wealth and opportunity inequaliy. Hence:

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

This YouGov survey plots voting against wealth & education. As wealth increases, so does trend to vote Remain. As level of education increases, so does trend to vote Remain. That is what I refer to as the empirical wealth/opportunity inequality question
d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/EU...

Screenshot from pdf within, showing Remain and Leave vote as a function of Social Grade and Education Level.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 8h

Perhaps, I haven't seen evidence of direct denial though: stating that it's not right, and more importantly not useful (wrt social improvement), to blame the Brexit vote on racism, to the detriment of identifying + addressing deeper causes, isn't the same imo as denying racism was at play.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 8h

I disagree. Populism, understood as a negative, is saying certain things for the express reason that they're popular. Stating one's genuine convictions is not populism in this sense, even if those convictions are popular. If Connolly were populist by nature, she'd be easier to pin down.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 8h

I don't know which ecologists, environmentalists, etc., you know or follow, but they are often among the most critical of government and EU policy. If Connolly were a climate skeptic, I would join your point. But she's the opposite of a climate skeptic, so reducing it to populism is unjustified imo

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 8h

I can't speak to property tax, but the issue of carbon tax and the absolute need for public support on far-reaching climate action is a real & ongoing matter for empirical study. Part of that debate relates to whether governments (and EU) are looking to carbon tax to avoid acting on a deeper level.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

They are achieved first and foremost through shift in political will. Solutions exist, workable policies have been proposed by parties who were running for government (as opposed to President). What is lacking, in government, has always been the political will to act on them.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

This is just one instance I have to hand because I've already quoted it, but she stated similar several times and sometimes in stronger language:

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 1d

But you are not doing it. I believe Connolly was doing that. Look again, this time with a minimum of charity in your reading, at what she said on this precise point in the Oireachtas statement you seem to believe is damning of her:

"Some of the leaders on the Brexit side carefully and systematically misused the issue of immigration to support their cause. I utterly deplore such actions. However, to seek to explain Brexit on that basis, or to explain it on the basis that the 17 plus million people who voted to leave did not quite understand what they were voting for is not only contemptuous of the electorate, it is also a seriously dangerous interpretation which ignores the real reasons for the Brexit vote. More important, such shallow analysis and explanations are not conducive to a proper debate on the significance of Brexit."

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

*Oireachtas statements

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

Ok, but that's inaccurate. In both her TV spots at the time and in her Oireachtas reports, she explicitly stated her abhorrence of how the far right had weaponized the matter of immigration.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

Honestly, do you believe the principal obstacle to issues such as universal housing is wealth taxation??

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

This is why the far right want people to feel threatened, i.e. deprived of security.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

Both *are* issues. But any "left" worth its salt prioritizes universal improvement of material conditions, since their conviction is precisely that in order to be able to dialogue intelligently with someone, that person must first have a minimum overall sense of life-condition security.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

This is sober socialism 101.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

That's the point: she offers policies on wealth and opportunity inequality instead, which is, in fact, the most pragmatically useful way to lastingly impact those two angles.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

This, in a nutshell, is how I qualify Connolly's overall position: lucid about both of these angles.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

There can be no workable plan to stop things from getting worse without identifying the real problems. As much as it suits the far right to say immigration is the problem, it suits the conservative centre to say racism is the problem. Neither wish to address wealth and opportunity inequality.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 10h

A caricature that speaks volumes is how much the educated class lamented the impending loss of Erasmus... when the highest Leave vote was among those who had only GCSE or lower.