there  could  be  snakes  in  here

... there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. – GH Hardy, with "men" sic . When someone raises points we don't like, there's always the temptation to spitefully psychologise them, to dismiss their points by reference to who they are, rather than the falsity or fallacy of what they're saying. * It is a universal trick; you'll probably have heard some version of it today ("yeah but he's a straight white dude "; " a syphilitic neurotic "; "ancestrally a victim of the British Empire "; " a woman "). In nominally rational subcultures like academia or literary society, there are some weak barriers to doing this (though Freud's brutal legacy continues to enable awful behaviour even there). In pop music and its journalism there is absolutely nothing to stop you. Here...

A good friend of mine is quite horrified by the present trend towards web app replacements for more and more core development work and architecture; such apps are, after all, a grave violation of the elegance and security of good old POSIX APIs . (Who can doubt that some people will use these unsecured client-server apps to work with confidential data? How much user foolishness are architects duty-bound to anticipate and preclude? Answer: surely more than this.) The browser itself is already my debugger, linker, compiler, and garbage collector; the following lovely tools tempt us to concentrate more and more of our work into this one subjective spot - all running, objectively, on other people's computers . (Another transgression against the best old way .) But aren't they lovely: Repl.it . Futuristic feeling: offers command lines for two dozen languages and saves shareable sessions for each. Very damn fast too; try running factorial(2000) on it. An incredible educa...

Many of the points made in this book are probably wrong. It is also likely that there are considerations of critical importance that I fail to take into account, thereby invalidating some or all of my conclusions. I have gone to some length to indicate nuances and degrees of uncertainty throughout the text — encumbering it with an unsightly smudge of “possibly,” “might,” “may,” “could well,” “it seems,” “probably,” “very likely,” “almost certainly.” Each qualifier has been placed where it is carefully and deliberately. Yet these topical applications of epistemic modesty are not enough; they must be supplemented here by a systemic admission of uncertainty and fallibility. This is not false modesty: for while I believe that my book is likely to be seriously wrong and misleading, I think that the alternative views that have been presented in the literature are substantially worse - including the default view, according to which we can for the time being reasonably ignore the prospect...

nomothetic (adj.): "law-stating"; the mindset that prizes categorisation, hypothetical deduction and universalisation above all. E.g. science (and, of course, of conspiracy theorists like Carl Jung). A pejorative, to anthropologists. One of the more important totally obscure words I know, along with "apodicticity" and "pareidolia". And "philosophunculist". spaghettification (n.): Genuine technical term for what happens to you in a destructively steep gravity gradient: if the difference in field strength between your front and your back is greater than your tensile strength. value proposition (Corporatese n.): why to buy my shit. The lie, in short. tankie (n.): A modern day Leninist or Stalinist. Term originated for those who thought sending tanks to crush the Prague Spring was perfectly right for the greater good of Communist unity. tortfeasor (n.): Someone who has done a tort. abugida (n.): A script of the consonant-vowel pa...

From 2008: the first original philosophical argument I remember making: Searle: "all purely syntactic systems lack subjective experiences." Searle: "I have subjective experiences." So Searle: "I am not a purely syntactic system." (modus tollens, 1&2) The only system that Searle has knowledge about the subjective experiences of is himself. So if Searle is not a purely syntactic system, he has no knowledge of what it is like to be a purely syntactic system, He cannot therefore cannot assert premise 1. (5 & the knowledge account of assertion ). If Searle is a purely syntactic system, (1) is false. (by 2) Therefore premise (1) is either unwarranted or false. (by 6&7) (These days I wouldn't use infallibilist knowledge as the baseball bat I did; I'd go at him with probabilism instead. And I'd do something against Searle's odd dichotomy between representational machines who are 'pure' syntax vs those wh...

I reviewed Prévert, phenomenology of computing , and the New Testament in Scots. I reviewed Taleb as an evolutionary epistemologist and angry apolitician. I translated a Tang octave. I wrote a poem about the NHS. I again reflected on the awfulness of identity via a thought experiment. I translated a Golden Age Viennese lyric. I drew equivalences between key concepts in maths, object-oriented code, and metaphysics. I learned how to code out loud. I reviewed Putnam, Waugh and a sad Australian cynic. I reviewed an appalling academic paper I was made to read. I psychologised academics who cling to one method. I enjoyed Werner Herzog and listed casualties in his vicinity. I made an attempt to criticise our new century's zeitgeist. I pulled fragments from DFW's last nachlass. I reviewed the very best book on late-70s / early-80s pop music. I distinguished a toolchain from a stack. I reviewed lots of things I shouldn't have been reading and learned Javascript. I quoted Huxl...

A camera hung from every arm. And here I noticed first one of those small phenomena which (I thought fancifully) might unravel a whole society for me if I could only understand it: the flurry of Chinese snapshots was directed not at this beautiful and curious valley, but exclusively at one another. A place seemed to take its meaning only from a person's presence there. Sometimes I received the overwhelming impression that these snapshots were really statements of identity, that to be commemorated at a famous site was to be touched by its mana. 'You're travelling alone?' I was later asked, ' Then how do you manage to photograph? '       ...These ritual snapshots seemed the heart of their journey. They never stopped to read the ancient poems carved in the cliffs, or to look down at the mottled beauty of the lake. I could not tell whether they admired the scenery at all, or simply cherished the idea of themselves in it.       By nine...