All posts tagged: theory

Heidegger’s “mood theory” explains why you do anything at all

Heidegger’s “mood theory” explains why you do anything at all

What made you click on this article? What part of your bubbling unconscious made you open this link today? I suspect there wasn’t much of a conscious decision. You probably didn’t stare into space for five seconds weighing up the pros and cons of clicking versus carrying on your internet scroll. Something about you, something in your being, pushed you to open this article. And thank you for doing so. You’re very welcome. This article will carry on a bit longer, but will you? Because just as there was something that made you click, there will be something that makes you read to the end or something that pulls you away. There is no easy answer to what that thing is. The neurolimbic, biological processes underpinning decision-making are unknown to the best of modern science, let alone available to you right now. And those swirling, unseen forces deserve more recognition. They push us far more than we appreciate. For Martin Heidegger, we need to pay far more philosophical attention to our moods. Thrown into the …

Befuddled Elon Musk Proposes Theory That Homeless People Don’t Actually Exist

Befuddled Elon Musk Proposes Theory That Homeless People Don’t Actually Exist

It’s no secret that multi-hyphenate CEO — and richest man in the world Elon Musk — has become significantly detached from reality. He’s long surrounded himself with sycophants, going as far as to buy himself a social media network to systematically tune out his critics. Musk has also long looked down on those far less privileged than him, baselessly accusing them of crimes and insulting them. Now those dark threads seem to be merging: in a recent tweet, Musk claimed that “in most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,” arguing that “it’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.” Needless to say, the utterance marks a new low, highlighting Musk’s well-documented vitriol and lack of empathy for the victims of an unjust society. It also underlines a staggering unwillingness to engage with the actual issues that have led to a steady growth in the number of unhoused people. Musk was responding to a tweet that baselessly alleged that giving homes to unhoused people leads to them fighting and killing each …

Is generative AI doomed? An expert’s take on the “model collapse” theory

Is generative AI doomed? An expert’s take on the “model collapse” theory

Artificial intelligence (AI) prophets and newsmongers are forecasting the end of the generative AI hype, with talk of an impending catastrophic “model collapse”. But how realistic are these predictions? And what is model collapse anyway? Discussed in 2023, but popularised more recently, “model collapse” refers to a hypothetical scenario where future AI systems get progressively dumber due to the increase of AI-generated data on the internet. The need for data Modern AI systems are built using machine learning. Programmers set up the underlying mathematical structure, but the actual “intelligence” comes from training the system to mimic patterns in data. But not just any data. The current crop of generative AI systems needs high quality data, and lots of it. To source this data, big tech companies such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia continually scour the internet, scooping up terabytes of content to feed the machines. But since the advent of widely available and useful generative AI systems in 2022, people are increasingly uploading and sharing content that is made, in part or whole, by …

To be made a Martyr or a Minstrel: Lessons from Aesthetic Theory on Academic Philosophy Pornographic Relation to Black Thinkers and their Ideas

To be made a Martyr or a Minstrel: Lessons from Aesthetic Theory on Academic Philosophy Pornographic Relation to Black Thinkers and their Ideas

Introduction: What’s love got to do with it “Philosophy doesn’t love me, just the idea of me,” This was the opening line to a presentation I gave for a MAP panel at the APA this past year. In a bid to be pithy, the line was inspired by the direct etymology of the word “philosophy,” from the Greek philo (“to love”) and sophia (“wisdom”). What I sought to articulate then, as well as in the present essay, is the issue of philosophical discussions lacking the right kind of love to orient us toward knowledge and wisdom. What is it for philosophers to have the right kind of love in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom? And what was I trying to incite by announcing that Philosophy as a discipline loved only the idea of me? Here, establishing how I am positioned in the world will help to get at an answer, because—as will become clear—my experience of the discipline’s ways of relating to me are evidence of the broader phenomenon at hand. A descendant of …

Just War Theory and The Russia-Ukraine War

Just War Theory and The Russia-Ukraine War

1. War, Unjust War, and Just War There are three wars currently in progress in Ukraine: the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian war against Ukraine, and the Ukrainian war against Russia. It is necessary for the purpose of evaluation to make these distinctions, for the first of these wars is, like the Second World War (understood as a war between allied and axis powers), neither just nor unjust. Only a war fought by one or more belligerents against an opponent can be just or unjust. Many or most of what we refer to as wars consist of a just war on one side and an unjust war on the other—or, to be more precise, a war with predominantly just aims on one side and a war with predominantly unjust aims on the other. There is no credible understanding of a just war according to which the Russian war against Ukraine is a just war. It is a wholly unprovoked war of aggression intended by those who initiated it—primarily Putin—to conquer Ukraine, annex its …

ABC denies Trumpworld conspiracy theory that Harris had early access to questions

ABC denies Trumpworld conspiracy theory that Harris had early access to questions

ABC News shut down a conspiracy theory peddled by MAGA surrogates to explain former President Donald Trump’s widely panned debate performance earlier this week. Unable to accept the potential that Kamala Harris had won the debate, Trump surrogates and allies concocted a deluge of conspiracy theories, suggesting that the Vice President had received early access to debate questions and accusing her of wearing “Bluetooth earrings.” However, a spokesperson for the network categorically denied the allegations that questions had been fed to the Harris campaign in a statement to the The Daily Beast on Friday. “Absolutely not,” the spokesperson said. “Harris was not given any questions before the debate.” The conspiracy, pushed by right-wing social media social media users, seems to be an attempt to re-litigate the 2016 debate, where some potential questions were passed along to the Hilary Clinton campaign ahead of a CNN debate. Trump  himself vented to Fox & Friends after the debate that Harris seemed “awfully familiar with the questions.” Trump has spent the days since his lackluster performance attacking debate moderators Linsey Davis and …

Applying the Theory of Intelligent Design

Applying the Theory of Intelligent Design

As my PhD advisor Dr. Robert Marks likes to say: “You have to make the queen of the sciences get down and scrub the floors.” Intelligent design (ID) is a science, and so ID has to get down and scrub the floors. To further this goal, I’ve come up with a schema for the ways in which ID can be applied, and what it in fact means for ID to be applied. The upshot of this schema is not only to guide brainstorming, but it also demonstrates that ID is already applied in many areas, unbeknownst to all. As they say, the best way to get something done is to take credit for someone else’s work. First, let’s identify what ID is. ID is the theory that intelligent activity can be empirically distinguished from the results of chance and necessity. While commonly applied to the biological history, ID is fundamentally a much more general theory.  The mathematical basis of ID is eruditely defined in William Dembski’s The Design Inference and The No Free Lunch Theorem. There are two main facets …

Game theory shows we can never learn perfectly from our mistakes

Game theory shows we can never learn perfectly from our mistakes

When people trade stocks, they don’t always learn from experience Bill Ross/Getty Images Even when we learn from past mistakes, we may never become optimal decision-makers. The finding comes from an analysis of a mathematical game that simulates a large economy, and suggests we may need to rethink some of the common assumptions built into existing economic theories. In such theories, people are typically represented as rational agents who learn from past experiences to optimise their performance, eventually reaching a stable state in which they know how to maximise their earnings. This assumption… Source link

Is dark matter’s main rival theory dead? There’s bad news from the Cassini spacecraft and other recent tests

Is dark matter’s main rival theory dead? There’s bad news from the Cassini spacecraft and other recent tests

One of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today is that the forces in galaxies do not seem to add up. Galaxies rotate much faster than predicted by applying Newton’s law of gravity to their visible matter, despite those laws working well everywhere in the Solar System. To prevent galaxies from flying apart, some additional gravity is needed. This is why the idea of an invisible substance called dark matter was first proposed. But nobody has ever seen the stuff. And there are no particles in the hugely successful Standard Model of particle physics that could be the dark matter – it must be something quite exotic. This has led to the rival idea that the galactic discrepancies are caused instead by a breakdown of Newton’s laws. The most successful such idea is known as Milgromian dynamics or Mond, proposed by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom in 1982. But our recent research shows this theory is in trouble. The main postulate of Mond is that gravity starts behaving differently to what Newton expected when it becomes very …

Arkansas Cannot Prevent 2 Teachers From Discussing Critical Race Theory in Classroom, Judge Rules

Arkansas Cannot Prevent 2 Teachers From Discussing Critical Race Theory in Classroom, Judge Rules

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled Arkansas cannot prevent two high school teachers from discussing critical race theory in the classroom, but he stopped short of more broadly blocking the state from enforcing its ban on “indoctrination” in public schools. U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky issued a narrow preliminary injunction Tuesday evening against the ban, one of several changes adopted under an education overhaul that Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law last year. The prohibition is being challenged by two teachers and two students at Little Rock Central High School, site of the 1957 desegregation crisis. In his 50-page ruling, Rudofsky said the state’s arguments make it clear the law doesn’t outright “prevent classroom instruction that teaches, uses, or refers to any theory, idea, or ideology.” His ruling prohibited the state from disciplining the teachers for teaching, mentioning or discussing critical race theory — an academic framework dating to the 1970s that centers on the idea that racism is embedded in the nation’s institution. The theory is not a …