erdumwandler.bsky.social
Historian of science and technology, thinks "artificial intelligence" is both an oxymoron and a pleonasm. Possibly a panpsychist. Very occasionally posts longer mind-leavings on https://dettelblog.wordpress.com/.
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Superb, thanks. Look forward to reading.
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Source of the text?
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Sorry if that was unclear. I meant your first clause: he explicitly (if overbroadly) distinguishes personhood from mechanical imitations: "Let me be clear: when I say the math can “do” us, I mean only that—not that these systems are us."
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And read Hugh Kenner's The Counterfeiters!
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He explicitly says this very thing in the essay. Read all the way to the end. It is about the distance between scholarship and life, knowledge and experience, simulacra and authenticity.
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Is that supposed to be a bad thing? We don't want tenure, or "elite" universities? What specifically do you object to in these sentences? People (including students) are treating these things like people, which puts into question what a person is, who speaks and how and on what authority.
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Try, please. It’s a deeply felt, urgent, uncynical essay. Romantic in Ong’s (and Cavell’s) sense: “All literary and artistic, not to mention scientific, movements since the romantic movement appear to have been only further varieties of romanticism, each in its own way.”
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Huge tracts of land youtu.be/GPX-mW4l1rU?...
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Owen’s Organ is one of two, still mysterious anatomical features of the nautilus named for early 19th c comparative anatomists. bsky.app/profile/erdu... #ILoveBHL
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Also can’t help but think of Whewell’s (and EO Wilson’s) “consilience.”
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“Scientific consensus” is the worst—as though there were some platonic pollster up there ringing a bell whenever a claim reached the state of grace—but “convergent evidence” still distracts from the work of human beings. Why not just “multiple lines of investigation indicate…”?
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How the US became dependent on universities for research and development.
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Thank you for saying this. They must all be brought back to avail themselves of their rights under law.
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Just a reminder that calls to “show your reasoning” are at least as much about what constitutes reason is, as about truth. It’s a confidence game.
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The cynicism is boundless. From justified anxiety to just sheer despair and meaninglessness.
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Thanks! Can’t wait for the book to arrive in the US.
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What was done with the tablets to submit them to Shamash’s inspection? Where did the supplicant place them?
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agreed, this review rocks. Well done.
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me want
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This should terrify us. When the state is pushing for digitisation of its own records and the destruction of the originals to save space, THIS is the consequence.
Digitisation is incredibly important, but it cannot come at the risk of original material AND if a resource is created
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Good e.enough
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bsky.app/profile/erdu...
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Thanks for that important perspective.
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the commonest quality in a true work of Art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment; perhaps even, mingled with its undeniable beauty, a certain feeling of aversion. - Carlyle on Novalis
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Not to mention, say, the Anschluss.
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Gee, I wonder where all that uncollected revenue will go.
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Karp’s e-mail doesn’t address 4 major points according to WH version of deal: political neutrality in client selection and attorney hiring; pro bono representing full political spectrum; merit-based [sic] hiring, promotion, retention, instead of “DEI.” So WH & DoJ can supervise all that. 1/2
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TLDR: Other firms were trying to take advantage of the situation, so we buckled like a cheap belt. Please don't think less of us for choosing immediate survival over ethics and the rule of law.
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Again, I cannot recommend enough that Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education (Princeton, 2016) be a required freshman text in engineering courses.
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With the DOGE jihad on government, perhaps we should make Gambetta's and Hertog's 2016 book required reading in engineering courses, indeed, for first-year university students, who see higher education as a platform for saving the world, or at least jobs. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
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I agree, though I would say “free society,” not “democratic.” The question then is why. Why is academic freedom essential to a free society? Who best makes this case, do you think?
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Cool stuff, look forward to the book, and reading your PMLA article!
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Appreciate this analysis, Gina.