Book coming
Let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered across the face of the whole earth
This will be my third anthologizing of own my works. While it’s a vain and striving thing, I’ve always found it a useful process for myself, and, based on the feedback I’ve gotten, useful for my readers too. I thought the time was right for another one since I’ve written a lot since the last one, and I think it’s some of my better work.
This project is going to be big. I haven’t done the word count yet, but I would estimate about 120,000 words. At standard pages per word that would be over 400 pages. It’s about twice the length of my last book. I also want to put some serious work into it, at least compared to previous attempts. I want to format it right. I want to reread the essays and- at least lightly- rewrite them.
The plan is to give it away as a PDF, and charge 2 dollars US a pop for it on Kindle.
What follows is a minimum list of contents. I’ll almost certainly add to it, but I’m much less likely to take away from it.
From my readers, I want to know:
Your ideas for marketing,
Your ideas for titles, covers, etc. [The title below is merely a working title]
If there’s anything you want to see in it that I haven’t included
By the same token, if there’s anything you think I should take out, or demote to the last section (bonus material that almost didn’t make the cut)
Whether you think any essays or pieces should be amended before inclusion
If you’re someone famous (even marginally) and would be willing to do a cover quote, or if you know anyone likewise, or if you have any ideas as to who might be worth approaching
How I can involve my current readers in this as much as possible.
If anyone has illustrations they’d like me to use/ would be willing to let me use- with full attribution.
If you’d be willing to review it on Goodreads
Any other suggestions whatsoever- plus I’d be happy to field any questions.
A most philosophical bear: collected writings 2018-2022
Artificial intelligence, ‘futurology’ and related
Against John Searle, Gary Marcus, The Chinese Room Thought experiment and its world.
Regarding Blake Lemoine's claim that LaMDA is 'sentient', he might be right (sorta), but perhaps not for the reasons he thinks
GPT-3 is -right now- already more than capable of enabling student plagiarism
This is it: The medium-term future in AI and how the left should respond
Why I don't think identity verification will save us from the coming bot-swarm
My big bet on the future of AI: Verbal parity
The AI Control Problem in a wider intellectual context
Recent advances in Natural Language Processing—Some Woolly speculations
Yearning
Confessions: A psychological and intellectual autobiography
“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” as a rejection of all law and politics
Oh death, where is the antidote for thy sting? Or: Prolegomena to a new philosophy of the Common Task
A brief reply to Scott Aaronson's- "We Are the God of the Gaps"
Perspectival fever: On being shot through with philosophical desire
On Klutzes
Existential tragedies—a partial list of the fundamental complaints of being a person.
The Culture novels and the deaestheticization of politics
Try to always be kind because you never know when you’re incompetent
Brief Reflections
The questions that haunt me at 3 in the morning
Autopsy on a dream
Fiction, criticism and similar
Just read the Damn Book of All Hours- my (losing) entry for Scott Alexander's book review contest
The Mystery of Love
The concept of cringe is cringe
Hypotheticals
The Romance of Quantum Archaeology
Just three dumb guy thoughts I had, plus a dumb guy idea for a novel
A novel I wanted to write: The Honesty Contagion
The Eighth Day of Klaug, a short story
300 Arguments: A commentary
For the left
Thinking about political persuasion from a left-Wing point of view
If things are getting really bad, what should we do?
Where Philosophy Bear stands on Transgender issues
Miscellaneous thoughts on the right wing of politics
The big problem with the left
Economic justice and climate justice are not metaphors: A response to Justice Creep by Scott Alexander
The nasty side of my leftism
Everything is negotiable on the right (and left)
A katana, an iron bar, and prison
I don’t know how to tell you that politics is about murder
For communism and against foreclosure on the future
The egalitarian past (and future?) of politics
Mistaken Identity and misunderstood interests: Haider and identity politics
Philosophy
The problem of simulator evil
Meeting Nietzsche at the limits of rationality and the limits of Analytic Philosophy
Four parts of belief
A sketch of a layered solution to the interpersonal comparison problem
The Paradox of the Crowd
Why I left philosophy
Against Libertarian Criticisms of Redistribution
Through-going subjective Bayesianism as a solution to the problem of scepticism
I'm not particularly worried about confirmation bias
Utilitarianism is an egalitarianism
An agnostic philosopher considers God, the limits of reason, and universalism
An introduction to Jesus of Nazareth considered as an ancient moral philosopher
Psychology
Results of the survey on Dark Secrets, part one
Harm OCD, a brief introduction
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the origins of religion
Lessons I squeezed from a lifelong severe mental illness
My method for dealing with anxiety
OCD, mental illness and "cancel culture"
Social commentary
Granting textual authority to overcome textual tyranny
The greatest potential for censorship is in the algorithm, not in the bans
Yvne: The forgotten opposite of envy
The paranoid style in petit-bourgeois politics
Twitter is a reverse panopticon: The internal agent
Government Watch: An idea for an NGO
Movements are always a distorted lens on the ideas they embody
Notes: on Michael Sandel’s “The Tyranny of Meritocracy”
Why don't people often try to earnestly persuade others of their political views on the internet?
The Antinomies of Welfare Economics
Poems
Open source song lyrics
Poems
Deadwater
Roleplaying setting
Part I
Part II
Stuff that’s less good, or that some readers won’t like, or that might be good but will likely be misunderstood, which, nonetheless are still included in this special section at the end.
Why this section and why the selected items are in it
Conservation of moral status under misfortune
The paradox of high expectations: The more you demand, the less you get
Two reasons why it's easier to find an audience for writing on the basis of different experiences than novel ideas
On critical social-technological points
Dynamic memetics
Carving up the philosophical terrain around personal identity a little differently
Paradox of the book and the robot
New thought experiments for the backyard metaphysician to try at home
How to do things to words: mapping a post-analytic philosophy of concepts and intuitions
A brief note on the disposability ideology
Should you care about that issue?
Ugly, self-centered conversations
On the perils of contrasting niceness with kindness
Money and the Sceptic: A social-epistemological case for taking arguments for redistribution more seriously