Victor Gijsbers

Philosopher (Leiden University) and interactive fiction writer; author of Turandot, The Baron and Kerkerkruip; Philosophy Videos @ http://bit.ly/2SFEtC2

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Last Notes

2024-11-05 09:06:03

I was in the train just now with a group of young women studying to be apothecary assistants. They were confused about their exam on calculating medicine doses. What did they use to inform themselves about the right calculations? ChatGPT. 🤐
Forget about AGI. *This* is how AI is gonna kill you: in small, stupid, absurd ways.

2024-10-09 17:06:10

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@npub1y5h…7m3c Okay! 🙂

2024-10-09 16:42:43

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@npub1y5h…7m3c Maybe giving voting advice isn't entirely in the spirit of the competition? (I agree with the recommendation to play this game, of course!)

2024-08-20 11:25:53

When I was on holiday in France, my daughter had a nasty fall with a big head wound. Six medics arrived, she was taken to the hospital a 30 minute drive away, got several tests and scans (luckily, everything was fine), saw several doctors, and got nine stitches.
Today, the bill arrived in the post. It was 19 euros and 61 cents.

2024-08-15 09:43:55

Okay, grammar people. "He does not have an epistemic relation to the theory at all, and does not nor cannot assess it in the light of the evidence."
Is "does not nor cannot" a grammatically admissible construction in English?

2024-06-10 07:23:27

I feel a disconnect from 'fandom'. Like, I just don't get it.
I understand loving a particular book or movie. But I find it extremely hard to understand why, if one loves a particular book/movie, one would want more stories (even by other authors or in totally diferent media) set in 'the same universe', or why one would want to set one's own creative writing in that 'universe', and so on.
I'm re-reading and loving Le Guin's Earthsea series, but I'm not eager for an Earthsea game/movie etc.

2024-04-28 19:22:24

According to YouTube, a whopping 92% of my viewers are male. That's pretty disconcerting to me, although I wonder:
(1) How accurate these statistics are, given that surely almost nobody tells Google their gender.
(2) What the overall gender distribution on YouTube is.
I could certainly do more videos about women philosophers (although the epistemology course I'm currently making features a good number of contemporary female philosophers), but it seems unlikely to remove this massive gap.

2024-04-25 16:51:27

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@npub12dg…vvxd I'm extremely sceptical about that bullshit detection system...

2024-04-25 14:51:07

I'm preparing a lecture about whether AI has scientific understanding. What can I say.
Me: "When Archimedes jumped out of the bath, shouting Eureka, what happened to the level of the bath water?"
ChatGPT (representative part of longer answer): "When he jumped out of the bath, the volume of water that his body displaced was no longer present in the bath. Therefore, the level of the bathwater would have risen temporarily to fill the space left by Archimedes' body."

2024-03-30 08:52:59

I asked the 5yo what you need to do to be a good human. Her three rules:
1. Eat well
2. Drink well
3. Don't come from an egg

2024-03-19 19:17:10

I'm reading a book about a boy who has magic powers and goes to a special school for wizards where everything is not what it seems and... yes of course the book is A Wizard of Earthsea, why do you ask?

2024-03-14 19:01:10

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@npub1x0f…xzau Isn't he just using the phrase to emphatically deny the traditional theory according to which we ought to subject our passions to reason?

2024-03-14 19:01:10

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@npub1x0f…xzau Isn't he just using the phrase to emphatically deny the traditional theory according to which we ought to subject our passions to reason?

2024-03-09 23:20:28

Notker has a fun anecdote about an envoy who unwittingly breaks a local taboo when in Greece. The noblemen present are outraged and ask Charlemagne to put the envoy to death. Charlemagne agrees that that is what the law demands, but tells the envoy that he'll grant him one wish, as long as he doesn't ask for his life.
"Then the boon I ask is that the eyes of every man who saw me break the taboo are put out."
Everyone denies having witnessed it, and the envoy goes free.

2024-01-31 20:35:00

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@npub1qus…wszy Anti-physicalism. I find I'm at the point where physicalism seems so obviously false to me that I find it hard to explain why! But if I were to attempt it I would say things like: consciousness is form, physical objects are content; consciousness is normative, physical objects are objects of pure description; to be an object *is* to stand in a certain relation to finite cognition, so consciousness is there at the deepest ontological level.

2024-01-22 06:58:18

These days, whenever the 5yo falls ill with a fever she picked up at school, I also fall ill; and, what's worse, every single time it takes me not the three days or so that seem normal to me, but a full *week* or more of fever symptoms before I recover. Is this normal? Am I just getting old? Has COVID harmed my immune system?
It's certainly irritating. 🙄

2024-01-15 17:28:58

The kids were guessing the ingredients of my stroganoff sauce.
Thinking about salt, I gave them a hint: "It's very small, you can't see it, but it's present in almost all food."
Said the 7yo: "Microplastics!"

2024-01-15 13:26:01

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@npub18r2…px49 They can be easily trained to produce false and misleading sentences. Surely they cannot lie. I think this distinction is absolutely not a nitpick, but something we should keep in mind every time we talk about LLMs.

2024-01-15 07:19:05

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@npub199d…rm9p It's 200 years late for a Descartridge.

2024-01-09 08:52:54

Is there a license I could put on my future software and prose projects that is the equivalent of GPL (for software) or Creative Commons (for prose) except that it specifically disallows using my stuff for training AI? Is this even necessary & possible & a good idea?

2024-01-02 20:58:06

Next stop in the early 16th century chivalric epic Orlando Furioso? The moon, obviously, and specifically the valley of lost things, where everything can be found that is lost on earth. Lost wealth, lost reputations, broken promises, the hours that we lost playing meaningless games, lost loves, all charity ("which is forgotten as soon as the giver dies"). And especially Reason, which people lose more than anything else, even though they never notice it.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/111/688/341/479/049/644/original/a926fc51eb89290b.jpg

2023-12-25 12:08:26

There's lies, damned lies, and the preparation times in recipes.

2023-12-21 07:59:31

The 7yo filled a glass with dried split peas and water, and the end result is quite amazing. He added some more water, and it's still growing.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/111/617/341/840/304/347/original/f2089d6dab0ae94b.jpg

2023-12-18 20:16:26

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@npub18r2…px49 I'd believe this if I'd read it in a book.

2023-12-01 18:36:51

"How did Gandalf live to be so old," the 7yo asked, "if he's smoking a pipe all the time?"

2023-11-10 13:05:30

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@npub18r2…px49 What did you read with them?

2023-10-17 07:18:53

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@npub1tx3…kxnn I've taken a look at it in the past, and it seems like a place where I'd want to mirror my YouTube philosophy channel, but I'm extremely unsure about how to find a good server. (And it seems to me that hosting costs for servers must be substantial, given how big videos are.)

2023-08-12 21:20:30

I have a friend who is a minister and interested in #ttrpgs that engage with Christianity or Christian themes. (Not preachy stuff, he's very liberal and open-minded, but games that allow you to explore questions that might come up in thinking about Christianity.) Any tips? #ttrpg

2023-08-09 20:19:23

Please participate in the 2023 edition of the Interactive Fiction Top 50! Full rules in the forum post, but the basic idea is:
* Make a list of what you consider the best pieces of interactive fiction (parser, choice, whatever).
* Between one and twenty titles.
* Order doesn't matter: one title = one vote.
* Post it in the forum or e-mail me, victor@lilith.cc
* Optional: share your list on Mastodon!
* Deadline: September 3.
Please share widely!
#InteractiveFiction
https://intfiction.org/t/participate-in-the-2023-interactive-fiction-top-50/63769

2023-07-08 11:18:29

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@npub13dl…qfg2 @npub1cw4…7e5q Hier had wel een content warning op gemogen van mij.

2023-07-05 16:49:35

The lighter sky inside the rainbow is actually *the white part of the rainbow*.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/110/662/461/017/518/076/original/2e78dff744e25511.jpeg

2023-07-03 06:21:15

From the perspective of the sewage system, we're all content creators.

2023-07-02 10:14:27

When you're tooting, please consider whether the toot is country-specific, and if it is, please mention the country. Even if that country is the US of A.
This is a courtesy along the same lines as alt-texting your images.

2023-07-01 12:59:55

It's etymologically explainable but still weird that 'to denude' doesn't mean 'to clothe'.
"Yes, you're sexy, but please denude yourself before the guests arrive."
#English

2023-06-29 19:11:06

We and tyrannosaurus are closer in time to each other than either of us is to stegosaurus.
Just one of those facts that feel surprising even if you already know them.

2023-06-23 06:32:56

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 It appears (according to the dictionaries) in The Faerie Queen, which Tolkien must have been familiar with.
One that would wiser seeme, then all the rest,
Warnd him not touch, for yet perhaps remaynd
Some lingring life within his hollow brest,
Or in his wombe might lurke some hidden nest
Of many Dragonets, his fruitfull seed;