Michael Bench-Capon
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mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Michael Bench-Capon
@mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
2.7K followers 830 following 7K posts
I have a PhD in philosophy and now I work in a library. He/him.
michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com
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mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
It is supposed to follow from these numbers
All genomic single nucleotide changes compatible with life are present in the human population today. With a point mutation rate about 1.6×10^−8 per nucleotide per individual (Palamara et al., 2015) and a human population of 7.3×10^9, it is clear that each of the possible 9.7×10^9 nucleotide changes that is compatible with life exists somewhere in the human population (Figure 1). Indeed, the population is large enough that all single
November 28, 2025 at 12:20 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Classic Patricia Lockwood tweet. "Just discovered this stunning short story in my drafts. "I'm pregnant!" shouts Jonathan Franzen's wife. He places a finger on her lips. "No, it is I who am pregnant," he says. "Pregnant with the next great American novel." He walks into the backyard and places a single portobello mushroom upon the grill."
November 27, 2025 at 10:57 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Narrower version
Plot of y = x cubed and y = x cubed plus 1000 for x = 0 to 20, but narrowed so it's hard to read the figures
November 19, 2025 at 1:14 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Hard to say; they still look like they're getting closer together of course
Plot of y = x cubed and y = x cubed plus 1000, for x = 0 to 20
November 19, 2025 at 1:10 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Feel like shit just want them back
Black T-shirt with white text: Micah & Galen & Clare & Perry & Nate & Harry
November 5, 2025 at 12:32 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
November always seemed to me — The Norway of the year The noons are more laconic — and The sundowns more austere The streets become like fjords — It is the Nordic time of year No flower grows — it often snows — Novembr' and Norway both The trolls patrol the streets below The sun's low azimuth Does Magnus Carlsen's birthday come this month? For sure, it doth
November 2, 2025 at 11:28 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
I made a picture for your difference of squares
MS Paint picture illustrating difference of squares: an a-sided square has a smaller b-sided square in it, the green area is a(a-b), the blue area is b(a-b) and the red are is b times b
October 31, 2025 at 12:34 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Charismatic megafauna
Very woolly sheep against mountainous landscape
October 27, 2025 at 9:30 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Am I doing this right
Negative colour-reversed toucan
October 10, 2025 at 11:56 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Small brain: most counterfactuals are false Waking brain: all counterfactuals are true Glowing brain: all counterfactuals are meaningless Galaxy brain: P⊃Q
October 9, 2025 at 10:25 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Raymond Smullyan doubtless had many virtues but he did rather drop the ball in this regard at least once michaelbenchcapon.blogspot.com/2017/04/meet...
Screenshot of text. "Second, the book introduces a lot of new terminology: reasoners of type 1, 2, 3, 4, 1*, G, G* and Q; normal, regular, peculiar, modest, conceited, reflexive and stable reasoners; Gödelian systems, Löbian systems, and so on. Being a doofus, I wasn’t able to keep all the definitions in my head. Since there was no convenient way of looking them up, a lot of the time I couldn’t understand the exercises until I looked at the solutions to see what followed from a reasoner being regular or stable or of type 3 or whatever. This isn't..."
October 6, 2025 at 2:09 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
We can't be expected to come up with a new joke every time he says this
Post from me, a month ago, QTing a TechCrunch headline saying "Zuckerberg says people without AI glasses will be at a disadvantage in the future", my comment is "Ronald McDonald says people without hamburgers will be at a disadvantage in the future"
September 15, 2025 at 1:18 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Oh OK
Screenshot of text. "Meanwhile, the departures of Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Jarell Quansah, Caoimhin Kelleher, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Tyler Morton and Ben Doak have recouped an initial amount of about £190m."
September 1, 2025 at 9:26 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
At least if there is a correlation you get fewer people in the top right box
Chart showing tolerant of bad vs tolerant of weird. Tolerates both: quietist Tolerates only bad: asshole Tolerates only weird: moralist Tolerates neither: normie
September 1, 2025 at 9:00 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Wikipedia's guidance on the point is something short of decisive en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British...
Screenshot from Wikipedia: "The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles,[10] even though geographically they do not form part of the archipelago.[11] Under the UK Interpretation Act 1978, the Channel Islands are clarified as forming part of the British Islands,[12] not to be confused with the British Isles."
August 27, 2025 at 11:03 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Don't know if it was the first or not but I was too young to deal with these guys
Game footage of Wolfenstein showing three guards wearing green with red eyes and guns in their chests, one firing
August 24, 2025 at 8:16 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Twitter reminding me of this post from four years ago has got me wondering whether analytic philosophy is just in a permanent state of crisis now
Twitter post from me from March 14 2021 saying "Analytic philosophy is the activity of answering an interesting question by replacing it with six uninteresting questions and answering those instead, and its current crisis results from a lack of consensus as to whether or not this is a good thing"
August 21, 2025 at 11:06 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Here's an attempt at a proof
Screenshot of text. Suppose our frame has an infinite chain @, u, v, w... Show that there's a valuation on which □(□P→P)→□P is false at @. □P must be false at @, so let's say P is false at u, since @Ru So now □(□P→P) is true at @, and □P→P is true at u. We know P is false at u, so □P must be false at u. uRv, so let's say P is false at v. Assume transitivity of R. So @Rv. □(□P→P) is true at @, and □P→P is true at v. But P is false at v, so □P is false there too, and so the cycle continues. Basically we have a countermodel where P is false at every world in the chain, assuming transitivity. If we don't have transitivity, let's consider three worlds a, b, c where aRb, bRc but not aRc. We know that the 4 axiom □P→□□P must be true at every world in the model for it to be a GL model. But let P be true at every world accessed by accessed by a but not true at c.
August 18, 2025 at 2:08 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
I tried to get ChatGPT to fix this map and I really thought it was getting somewhere but then the fixed version came out like this chatgpt.com/share/689dba...
Detailed map of the eastern United States with the labels very wrong
August 14, 2025 at 10:32 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Twitter post by me from 18 Sep 2021 saying "The mind can't be a computer because we have a clear and distinct idea of how the mind works but nobody knows how computers work"
August 10, 2025 at 7:42 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
AGI achieved
Map of the Midwest with the states labelled, correctly as far as I can tell
August 9, 2025 at 11:17 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Brandom and McDowell in a book-lined office with Gothic(?) window; green vertical line through Brandom and green oblique line through McDowell
August 3, 2025 at 4:55 PM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
I just took their quiz to see which interpretation of quantum mechanics is right for me
Screenshot of text: Keep searching! Unfortunately there isn't a popular quantum interpretation that's a good fit for you; that is, one that tries to be a description of the real world, but that doesn't either permit non-local influences (connections between entangled, far-distant particles), or multiple universes.
August 2, 2025 at 9:38 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Laughed dangerously hard at this
Screenshot of text: ("You can't just say everything is racist!", people on the internet furiously declare, vastly under-estimating me)
August 1, 2025 at 9:21 AM
mikebenchcapon.bsky.social
Alan Hansen in a pale grey suit saying "You can't win anything with kids"
July 21, 2025 at 9:38 AM