Author: P.D. Magnus

The futility of fine distinctions

It is now commonplace to point out that economic exchange can and should be positive-sum: When it works well, both buyers and sellers get more value than they would by not participating. This is followed up by saying that Trump thinks of exchange as zero-sum: Any time one side gets value, then they must be taking it from the other. It now seems to me that this is wrong about Trump— not unfair, but wrong.

The current tariff strategy is, even in his vision for it, a negative-sum gambit. He is willing to crash the whole plane, because he thinks that he and the USA will be on the top of the hierarchy among the people scrambling for survival among the wreckage.

The ones who walk away from sound medical advice

Someone goes to the doctor. Patient says: Doc, I’m depressed. Life seems harsh and cruel. I feel alone in a threatening world.

Doctor says: You should go to Omelas. They have this kid chained up in the basement which makes life awesome and great in the city. Some time there will pep you right up.

Patient says: But Doctor… I am the kid chained in the basement.

Everybody laughs. Drum roll. Curtains.

Ignoratio elenchi, of sorts

Via ABC news:

In a sworn declaration, ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”

The fact that ICE knows nothing about them proves that they are dangerous criminals?!? Although the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, neither is it evidence of dire terrorism.

Death by a thousand cuts

It is clear that the federal layoffs and budget cuts are indiscriminate, made without regard to the content of the jobs and programs being eliminated. Some of it is made at targets of opportunity, firing people hired in the last year because they are nominally in a probationary period. Some of it is illegal, done on the assumption that the courts can’t stop all the malfeasance— if courts can stop any of it.

Continue reading “Death by a thousand cuts”

And 1000 screaming Argonauts

My exchange with Brandon Polite, from last summer’s author meets critic session, has now been publised in Contemporary Aesthetics.

I’ve posted a draft of a paper about They Might Be Giants (in particular) and art interpretation (in general). Is context infinite, like the Longines Symphonette? If you happen to take a look, feedback is welcome.

When the dog whistle is a middle C

President Trump has cut aid to South Africa because (he says) the government is persecuting the white minority. It’s easy enough to see Trump as a puppet here, with the hand up his backside belonging to Elon Musk— a white South African who grew up under apartheid and is salty about social justice.

Moreover, Trump has offered asylum to white Afrikaners who want to follow Musk to the US. Given Trump’s hostile rhetoric about immigration, the contrast is clear: He’s not really against immigrants as such, he’s against immigrants who are people of color.

Why foreground the fact that he’s a white-supremacist president doing the bidding of another, unelectable white-supremacist? Maybe the flagrant racism is a distraction from more subtle evils they’re doing, and there are plenty of those. But maybe they are just throwing all the shit at the fan to see what sticks.

“On trusting chatbots” is live

My paper On Trusting Chatbots is now published at Episteme. It is in the penumbral zone of publication, with a version of record and a DOI but without appearing yet in an issue.

Publishing things on-line is a good thing. Waiting for space in a print issue is a holdover from the 20th-century. But it creates the awkward situation where the paper will be cited now as Magnus 2025 but, if it doesn’t get into an issue this year, cited in the future as Magnus 202x (for some x≠5).

If we care about careful and accurate citation, there’s got to be a better way.

Assorted hogwash

If I post here, I can close the tabs:

Via Gizmodo: The contract between OpenAI and Microsoft specifies a change in their relationship if OpenAI manages to develop Artificial General Intelligence. In subsequent contract negotiations, “the two companies came to agree in 2023 that AGI will be achieved once OpenAI has developed an AI system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits.”

Via Retraction Watch: Most of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution has resigned in response to malfeasance by the publisher. Among the infractions: “In fall of 2023… without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production… These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors.”

Doctor gpt

At Daily Nous, there’s discussion of Rebecca Lowe’s post about how great it is to talk philosophy with the latest version of Chat GPT.

There’s pushback in the comments. Others reply that the critics haven’t used the latest version (which is only available behind a paywall). Discussion of LLMs will always allow this: Complaints about their shortcomings are answered by pointing to the next version that’s supposed to resolve all the issues.

Lowe and other commenters reveal that lots of philosophers are using LLMs in the regular day-to-day of their research. I’m still trying to figure out what I think about that. For now, let’s deflect Lowe’s ridiculous offhand claim that “Gpt could easily get a PhD on any philosophical topic.” I say ridiculous for a few reasons—

Continue reading “Doctor gpt”