Chris
@csteinbach.bsky.social
I have a soft spot for Feyerabend...
November 20, 2025 at 6:05 PM
I have a soft spot for Feyerabend...
Reposted by Chris
Well, that Charli xcx John Cale collaboration has just wiped everything else off the 2025 table. They should do an entire album.
November 11, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Well, that Charli xcx John Cale collaboration has just wiped everything else off the 2025 table. They should do an entire album.
Nietzschean affirmation
November 3, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Nietzschean affirmation
History! Sure, let someone else do all the hard work of collecting, evaluating and synthesising.
November 3, 2025 at 9:52 PM
History! Sure, let someone else do all the hard work of collecting, evaluating and synthesising.
Yes, shaming is cheap, and when a price is too good to be true you should check the labels carefully.
One thing that I think we need to talk about around shame is that shaming is the lowest stakes and most acceptable option for handling this kind of behavior, and if you're going to ignore shame you're really not going to like the other options for how societies handle this stuff.
November 3, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Yes, shaming is cheap, and when a price is too good to be true you should check the labels carefully.
Reposted by Chris
An easy way to be less miserable is to switch from being anti-things-you-hate to pro-things-you-like.
November 1, 2025 at 2:24 PM
An easy way to be less miserable is to switch from being anti-things-you-hate to pro-things-you-like.
A nice way to secularise "There but for the grace of God go I"
The moral clarity you gain by seeing all of humanity as being clones of yourself, and you are all helping each other out.
October 29, 2025 at 2:10 AM
A nice way to secularise "There but for the grace of God go I"
Did Arendt really say this? I'm trying to find the source.
October 25, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Did Arendt really say this? I'm trying to find the source.
Reposted by Chris
It should be totally okay to have a bad take. Nobody bats 1.000
October 17, 2025 at 4:08 AM
It should be totally okay to have a bad take. Nobody bats 1.000
Reposted by Chris
Its a lot better to be wrong about something being sentient than it being not sentient. Err towards kindness.
thingofthings.substack.com/p/reasoning-...
thingofthings.substack.com/p/reasoning-...
Reasoning under uncertainty about sentience
I am sentient: that is, I have experiences and feel both pleasure and pain.
thingofthings.substack.com
October 6, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Its a lot better to be wrong about something being sentient than it being not sentient. Err towards kindness.
thingofthings.substack.com/p/reasoning-...
thingofthings.substack.com/p/reasoning-...
Reposted by Chris
“Read the room” has long been my least favorite internettism because it implies failure to conform is embarrassing. “Posting through it” is getting high on the list for the same reason.
October 6, 2025 at 1:02 PM
“Read the room” has long been my least favorite internettism because it implies failure to conform is embarrassing. “Posting through it” is getting high on the list for the same reason.
Random fact for you: 𝘤𝘰𝘸 (as in 'cowed into silence'), 𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥, and 𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 all have different etymological roots.
𝘤𝘰𝘸 – Old Norse kúga ‘oppress’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 – Old French couard, based on Latin cauda ‘tail’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 – Middle Low German kūren ‘lie in wait’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸 – Old Norse kúga ‘oppress’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 – Old French couard, based on Latin cauda ‘tail’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 – Middle Low German kūren ‘lie in wait’.
October 4, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Random fact for you: 𝘤𝘰𝘸 (as in 'cowed into silence'), 𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥, and 𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 all have different etymological roots.
𝘤𝘰𝘸 – Old Norse kúga ‘oppress’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 – Old French couard, based on Latin cauda ‘tail’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 – Middle Low German kūren ‘lie in wait’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸 – Old Norse kúga ‘oppress’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 – Old French couard, based on Latin cauda ‘tail’.
𝘤𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 – Middle Low German kūren ‘lie in wait’.
Reposted by Chris
In anarchist circles, this is what we call "rent seeking." Taking something that had nothing to do with you, or what you produced, but believing that you hold some valid property right over it. The implication here is Araki is only upset because he hasn't been paid for work they never created
September 28, 2025 at 3:15 PM
In anarchist circles, this is what we call "rent seeking." Taking something that had nothing to do with you, or what you produced, but believing that you hold some valid property right over it. The implication here is Araki is only upset because he hasn't been paid for work they never created
Right off the bat, "Did the Science Wars Take Place?" conflates antirealism with relativism:
"antirealist positions of Postmodernism were always in fact much more closely aligned with the ultranationalist idea of different cultures-produce- different-truths promoted by historical fascism"
"antirealist positions of Postmodernism were always in fact much more closely aligned with the ultranationalist idea of different cultures-produce- different-truths promoted by historical fascism"
September 22, 2025 at 5:57 AM
Right off the bat, "Did the Science Wars Take Place?" conflates antirealism with relativism:
"antirealist positions of Postmodernism were always in fact much more closely aligned with the ultranationalist idea of different cultures-produce- different-truths promoted by historical fascism"
"antirealist positions of Postmodernism were always in fact much more closely aligned with the ultranationalist idea of different cultures-produce- different-truths promoted by historical fascism"
Reposted by Chris
what the fuck this is insane www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXjb...
The World's First Ultrasonic Chef's Knife for Home Cooks: Seattle Ultrasonics C-200
YouTube video by Seattle Ultrasonics
www.youtube.com
September 21, 2025 at 1:16 AM
what the fuck this is insane www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXjb...
The last quote lands like a thud. Feyerabend and Lakatos were drafting a dialogue, For & Against Method. Then Lakatos died. Feyerabend kept the promise to publish his half alone; a letter to a friend who could no longer answer. [1/2]
September 14, 2025 at 9:00 PM
The last quote lands like a thud. Feyerabend and Lakatos were drafting a dialogue, For & Against Method. Then Lakatos died. Feyerabend kept the promise to publish his half alone; a letter to a friend who could no longer answer. [1/2]
There's a glass-half-full way of seeing this if you differentiate responsibility from accountability.
Being seen as willing to shoulder an oversized amount of responsibility isn't necessarily a bad look.
Being seen as willing to shoulder an oversized amount of responsibility isn't necessarily a bad look.
rarely have I more acutely felt the dynamic by which Dems are held responsible for the rhetoric of every random left-leaning person on the internet and Republicans are not even asked to answer for their own personal words
September 11, 2025 at 5:25 AM
There's a glass-half-full way of seeing this if you differentiate responsibility from accountability.
Being seen as willing to shoulder an oversized amount of responsibility isn't necessarily a bad look.
Being seen as willing to shoulder an oversized amount of responsibility isn't necessarily a bad look.
Occasionally I'll post an idea, and soon after—with no other indications anyone read it—everyone seemed to be talking about that idea. Possible explanations:
a) Bluesky's algorithm
b) Cryptomnesia
c) Great minds
d) Psychic ability
e) The discreet yet powerful influence of my 20 followers
a) Bluesky's algorithm
b) Cryptomnesia
c) Great minds
d) Psychic ability
e) The discreet yet powerful influence of my 20 followers
September 10, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Occasionally I'll post an idea, and soon after—with no other indications anyone read it—everyone seemed to be talking about that idea. Possible explanations:
a) Bluesky's algorithm
b) Cryptomnesia
c) Great minds
d) Psychic ability
e) The discreet yet powerful influence of my 20 followers
a) Bluesky's algorithm
b) Cryptomnesia
c) Great minds
d) Psychic ability
e) The discreet yet powerful influence of my 20 followers
Steve Fuller argued a decade ago that politics is rotating from Left/Right to Up/Down. Feels timely in today's LLM wars.
aeon.co/essays/left-...
aeon.co/essays/left-...
Left and Right are over. The future is Up and Down | Aeon Essays
Right and Left are fading away. The real question in politics will be: do you look to the earth or aspire to the skies?
aeon.co
September 6, 2025 at 7:29 AM
Steve Fuller argued a decade ago that politics is rotating from Left/Right to Up/Down. Feels timely in today's LLM wars.
aeon.co/essays/left-...
aeon.co/essays/left-...
Reposted by Chris
Saying a hydraulic system "does the same job a lever" makes extremely good predictions about what you can/can't do with it, even though it's mechanically not at all what's happening
Abstractions are only ever as useful as how well they work when applied
Abstractions are only ever as useful as how well they work when applied
September 4, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Saying a hydraulic system "does the same job a lever" makes extremely good predictions about what you can/can't do with it, even though it's mechanically not at all what's happening
Abstractions are only ever as useful as how well they work when applied
Abstractions are only ever as useful as how well they work when applied
Reposted by Chris
You can make a totally correct statement and still have an extremely bad abstraction
Example: It's not helpful to abstract a hydraulic system as "it just squeezes fluid", because squeezing fluid doesn't help us predict its capabilities. Can squeezing fluid lift a rock? I don't know, seems like not?
Example: It's not helpful to abstract a hydraulic system as "it just squeezes fluid", because squeezing fluid doesn't help us predict its capabilities. Can squeezing fluid lift a rock? I don't know, seems like not?
September 4, 2025 at 7:39 PM
You can make a totally correct statement and still have an extremely bad abstraction
Example: It's not helpful to abstract a hydraulic system as "it just squeezes fluid", because squeezing fluid doesn't help us predict its capabilities. Can squeezing fluid lift a rock? I don't know, seems like not?
Example: It's not helpful to abstract a hydraulic system as "it just squeezes fluid", because squeezing fluid doesn't help us predict its capabilities. Can squeezing fluid lift a rock? I don't know, seems like not?
Reposted by Chris
"It just predicts the next token based on data in the training set" is a poor abstraction of LLMs because it makes poor predictions
For example, we might predict that it's very difficult to have an LLM emit the phrase "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cvnpmnzq", but it's trivial
For example, we might predict that it's very difficult to have an LLM emit the phrase "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cvnpmnzq", but it's trivial
September 4, 2025 at 7:39 PM
"It just predicts the next token based on data in the training set" is a poor abstraction of LLMs because it makes poor predictions
For example, we might predict that it's very difficult to have an LLM emit the phrase "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cvnpmnzq", but it's trivial
For example, we might predict that it's very difficult to have an LLM emit the phrase "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cvnpmnzq", but it's trivial