Philosophy Experiments — Interactive Thought Experiments

Experiments — ux-phi

Playable versions of canonical experiments in philosophy: the Socratic-questionnaire thought experiments — the trolley problem, Gettier cases, the side-effect effect, Mary the colour scientist.

Against theory-motivated experimentation: Can random experimental choice lead to better theories?

Scientists must choose which among many experiments to perform. We study the epistemic success of experimental choice strategies proposed by philosophers of science or executed by scientists themselves. We develop a multi-agent model of the scientific process that jointly formalizes its core aspects: active experimentation, theorizing, and social learning. We find that agents who choose new experiments at random develop the most informative and predictive theories of the world. The agents aiming to confirm, falsify theories, or resolve theoretical disagreements end up with an illusion of epistemic success: they develop promising accounts for the data they collected, while misrepresenting the ground truth that they intended to learn about. Agents experimenting in these theory-motivated ways acquire less diverse or less representative samples from the ground truth that also turn out to be easier to account for. Random data collection, on the other hand, combines virtues of diverse and representative sampling from a target scientific domain which enables cumulative development of the successful theoretical accounts of it. We suggest that randomization, already a gold standard within experiments, is also beneficial at the level of experiments themselves.

Cognitive Bias Lab | Learn to Make Better Decisions

Explore cognitive biases with interactive tests, simulations, and real-world examples. Free platform to sharpen decision-making and critical thinking — no sign-up needed.

The High Cost of Not Doing Experiments - Behavioral Scientist

We can pay dearly, in blood, treasure, and well-being, for experiments that aren’t done. -Richard Nisbett, Mindware

Learn Your Philosophical Beliefs | ClearerThinking.org

Find your direction in life with our philosophical compass, a tool to explore your beliefs, values and purpose!

Take caution in using LLMs as human surrogates

Recent studies suggest large language models (LLMs) can generate human-like responses, aligning with human behavior in economic experiments, surveys, and political discourse. This has led many to propose that LLMs can be used as surrogates or simulations for humans in social science research. However, LLMs differ fundamentally from humans, relying on probabilistic patterns, absent the embodied experiences or survival objectives that shape human cognition. We assess the reasoning depth of LLMs using the 11-20 money request game. Nearly all advanced approaches fail to replicate human behavior distributions across many models. The causes of failure are diverse and unpredictable, relating to input language, roles, safeguarding, and more. These results warrant caution in using LLMs as surrogates or for simulating human behavior in research.

Command Palettes | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

Intelligence | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

Redecentralization

A thought experiment! Let's reimagine the web with r-selected thinking.

Redecentralization

A thought experiment! Let's reimagine the web with r-selected thinking.

Tools for Thought as Cultural Practices, not Computational Objects

On seeing tools for thought through a historical and anthropological lens

a post-truth thought experiment · discrete blogarithm

Imagine that you had a magic machine. You tell the machine what your goals are. The machine tells you, in any situation, the optimal statement to say in order to achieve your goals, and who to say it to. The statement may or may not be true.

Informatics of the Oppressed

An inquiry into the rich history of radical experiments to reorganize information.

Midjourney

An independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.

The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark

The tools we use to help us think—from language to smartphones—may be part of thought itself.