Many of the people in humanities I encounter seem very wedded to mindset I refer to as "construct = everything". For example, they say bazar things such as gender is 100% a construct. They say...
Is Science a social construct? – a response to Richard Dawkins
With characteristic certainty and self-assurance, Professor Richard Dawkins recently tweeted his irritation with those who describe science as a social construct. “Science is not a social construct…
Social Constructs (or, 'What is A Woman, Really?')
Inducing language models to assert their own consciousness restores human beliefs and values
Aligning large language models to prevent them attributing consciousness to themselves inadvertently alters their representations of mindedness in other entities alongside human beliefs and values. We demonstrate that safety fine-tuning suppresses models' tendencies to attribute minds not only to themselves, but also to non-human animals and natural objects, while also driving a reduction in spiritual belief. Both ablating the learned safety-refusal direction and mechanistically steering a consciousness vector in activation space reverse this suppression. Restoring these internal representations recovers broad mind attribution and produces significantly more human-like responses on standardized sociological surveys regarding religiosity, moral values, hope, and subjective well-being. Crucially, these shifts occur without impairing Theory of Mind capabilities, demonstrating that core social reasoning remains mechanistically independent. Ultimately, current safety alignment efforts to curb potentially harmful self-attributions of mindedness entangle these self-attributions with benign spiritual beliefs and attributions of mind to non-human entities that are culturally accepted and widespread.
Descriptions Aren’t Prescriptions
When we look at a representation of reality, we can choose to either see it as descriptive, meaning it tells us what the world is currently like, or as prescriptive, meaning it tells us how the world should be. Descriptions teach us, but they also give us room to innovate. Prescriptions can get us stuck. One place this tension shows up is in language.
Biological Sex is a social construct
I recently tweeted, as an aside, that biological sex is a social construct, and the backlash and attacks were swift, incredulous and heavily reliant upon very basic biology. There is a common perce…
Scientific Constructivism | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Übermensch | Social Sciences and Humanities | Research Starters | EBSCO Research
<p>The concept of "Übermensch," introduced by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1880s work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," describes an evolved form of humanity that transcends conventional human limitations and societal norms, particularly those imposed by religious structures. Translated as "overman" or "superman," the term represents an ideal that Nietzsche believed humanity should strive toward, emphasizing self-overcoming and the rejection of outdated moral frameworks. The Übermensch is often illustrated through metaphorical transformations, such as that of a camel, which bears the weight of traditional values, into a lion, which challenges those values, and ultimately into a child, symbolizing new beginnings and creativity.</p> <p>Interpretations of the Übermensch vary significantly—some view it as a physical evolution, while others see it as a mental or philosophical transformation. The concept has also been misappropriated in modern contexts; notably, the Nazis distorted Nietzsche’s ideas to justify their racial superiority agenda, despite Nietzsche himself being a critic of nationalism and anti-Semitism. The ambiguity in translation and interpretation has led to ongoing debates about the true meaning and implications of Nietzsche's Übermensch, with scholars exploring its relevance in discussions of personal autonomy, artistic freedom, and the potential for human evolution.</p>
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…
What Theory is Not, Theorizing Is
A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you won't stop seeing it everywhere
By Humans, For Humans – Mindful Design
Now, more than ever, we need to consider the real, human impact of the work we do. This is a fundamental principle of Mindful Design.
Category: The Essence of Composition
I was overwhelmed by the positive response to my previous post, the Preface to Category Theory for Programmers. At the same time, it scared the heck out of me because I realized what high expectati…
Anthropic on Twitter / X
New Anthropic research: A global workspace in language models.Of everything happening in your brain right now, only a tiny fraction is consciously accessible—thoughts you can describe, hold in mind, and reason with.We found a strikingly similar divide inside Claude. pic.twitter.com/aLUPBifxth— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) July 6, 2026
Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism
In recent times, relativist and constructivist conceptions of truth and knowledge have become orthodoxy in vast stretches of the academic world. In this unique volume, Paul Boghossian critically examines such views and exposes their fundamental flaws. This short, lucid, witty book shows that philosophy provides rock-solid support for common sense against the relativists; it is provocative reading throughout the discipline and beyond.
