The best of Paul Johnson - The Spectator World
He was great historian and a great writer. His biography of Eisenhower is outstanding.
Carlos Kepke, Indicted Tax Lawyer Allegedly Enabling Large Tax Evasion Offshore Schemes, Dies Just Before Start of Criminal Trial
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I have blogged on the prosecution of Carlos Kepke, a Houston lawyer, who was prosecuted as an enabler of offshore tax evasion for Robert Bro...
Why a Philosopher’s Racist Email from 26 Years Ago is News Today
Influential Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, well-known for his work on philosophical questions related to ethics, the future, and technology (existential risk, artificial intelligence, simulation), posted an apology for a blatantly racist email he sent to a listserv 26 years ago. (more…)
- If you’re using MTurk to run surveys, you probably should consider an alternative — Florian Cova (Geneva) with an experimental philosophy cautionary tale
- A private firm is planning on using genetic engineering to de-extinct the woolly mammoth — Andy Lamey (UCSD) has some questions
- “I had been involved in actions that seemed deeply wrong to me, though perhaps necessary in the conduct of the war, and parts of my soul were at war with each other” — Paul Woodruff (Texas) on how philosophy helped him put his “soul back together”
- “It is a strange thing… that the more time and pains men have consumed in the study of philosophy, by so much the more they look upon themselves to be ignorant and weak creatures” — George Berkeley is “interviewed” at 3:16AM
- “Prohibitions aren’t enough. We need a positive moral vision that guides us towards securing a better future. Ideally, our actions should be guided by what’s truly important” — Richard Chappell (Miami) on why distinguishing the permissible from the impermissible shouldn’t be the main focus of ethics
- “We performed a direct comparison between human reasoners and a large language model (GPT-3) on a range of analogical tasks” — “We found that GPT-3 displayed a surprisingly strong capacity for abstract pattern induction, matching or even surpassing human capabilities in most settings”
- The 300th anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda is commemorated by the National Bank of Ukraine with a new ₴500 banknote — Skovoroda (1722-1794) was known not just as a philosopher, but as a composer, singer, translator, teacher, and artist
French chateau cost the same as a Sydney apartment