ChatGPT's reaction to Nick Cave's reaction to ChatGPT

YouTube recently presented to me a  video  where Stephen Fry reads a stirring letter from Nick Cave that argues, roughly speaking, that ChatGPT is destroying the world's soul by eliminating the creative struggle, and must be stopped "at all costs". While … Read more

Fun with stats: how big should my sample size be?

Recently my girlfriend and I gave a talk at her company about p-values and how all manner of silliness can ensue if they are used "willy-nilly" to draw conclusions about things like drug efficacy. At the end, I was asked a very instructive question: how do yo… Read more

Do our conscious experiences cause us to do anything?

This is the first in an article series exploring the philosophical topic of consciousness and the problem of its causal interaction with the world. The article goes over a commonly held position among philosophers of mind known as epiphenomenalism. What is consciousn… Read more

Asking "and how do you define...?" is often unnecessary and unreasonable.

Up until just several years ago, I believed that a discussion can't really be meaningful if a critical term in it is not defined. For example, if I heard a debate about free will I would often think: why don't they first formulate a clear definition of "fr… Read more

Refuting a refutation of God.

In my recent article "Just semantics?" I offered this "refutation" of the God of classical theism: "Sometimes the requirements imposed by people on a term just don't make sense. For example, many people's conception of God includes th… Read more

Let's try to debunk that Chinese Room.

The Chinese Room is one of a handful thought experiments in philosophy that can truly be said to have gone viral. Well, at least within the field itself, although I would recommend any intellectually curious person to learn what it's about. Many excellent accounts… Read more

The repugnant conclusion.

This paradox in ethics is called the repugnant conclusion . Many people would agree with the following when it comes to designing a policy that affects people's quality of life and the size of the population. A world with 10bln people and high happiness for each is… Read more