Huw Price

We logicians have got this covered:

(∃!a)(∃!b)(From the a to the b, Palestine shall be free)

Interesting piece here, citing among other folk the excellent @danwphilosophy.bsky.social

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.

I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.

1/ Here's what I can share:

Chris Murphy: "I Just came from a two hour, closed door classified briefing on the war. It just confirmed to me it's totally incoherent. We are not gonna be able to achieve any of our stated objectives ... this is a disaster of epic proportions, a 10 day debacle"

Boosting this for the link to Tony Leggett’s 1977 piece. It contains a very early and little-known discussion of Bell’s Theorem – by, as we know, a future star. #quantum #philsci #philsky

Another time I was waiting with him in a US airport, after a meeting. He went to a desk with some query, and was having trouble being understood. The person on the desk gave me a look that meant “Are you the brains of this outfit?” I wanted to say, “Ma’am, he’s the one with a Nobel Prize!”

He was still toying with it decades later, though characteristicly tentatively. I was once on a panel with him chaired by @seanmcarroll.bsky.social. Tony gave a very tentative answer to some question about QM, and Sean said, “Tony, you’re the one with a Nobel Prize!” #quantum #philsci

Sad news about Tony Leggett, who was a lovely man. I first came across him in a 1977 book The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance. He was the first author I ever discovered who toyed with the idea of a retrocausal approach to EPR-Bell. Full piece here, extract in the image.
drive.google.com/file/d/1zFaR...

Beautiful! And a lot more natural than they usually are when viewed from an Australian perspective.

We face two urgent challenges concerning consciousness and AI. Challenge One is that millions of users will soon misattribute human-like consciousness to AI friends, partners, and assistants on the basis of mimicry and role-play, and we don’t know how to prevent this. Challenge Two is that profoundly alien forms of consciousness might genuinely be achieved in AI, but our theoretical understanding of consciousness is too immature to provide confident answers one way or the other. Centrism about AI consciousness is the position that we must take both challenges seriously. The two challenges interact in ways that make this difficult. Steps to address Challenge One might undermine attempts to address Challenge Two by portraying the idea of conscious AI as impossible or inherently unlikely. Conversely, attempts to address Challenge Two might lead to higher levels of misattribution from ordinary users. This “manifesto” attempts to construct mutually consistent strategies for addressing both challenges.

Since people are doing "is AI conscious?" discourse on here again I feel like this philpapers.org/rec/BIRACA-4 by @birchlse.bsky.social remains my favourite piece on the current state of affairs.

The Iran War Could Be Catastrophic for the US-Israel Alliance. Good. As Israel’s role in pushing the war with Iran comes into ever sharper focus, it's up to us to turn outrage into change.

Wrote for @thenation.com about how catastrophic the Iran war could be for Israel's grip on US politics—and why this is a moment to be seized for anyone who wants the US-Israel alliance to end. www.thenation.com/article/worl...

I remember a case when the clock dropped off the wall, hitting the candidate. Subtle but effective.

This year's Adolf Grünbaum Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Wayne Myrvold. Visit our website for more information: https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/event/annual-lecture-series-wayne-c-myrvold/ #philsci

Mahmood to stop study visas from four countries due to 'abuse' The government will end study visas from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan, due to what says is abuse.

How shameful this is after what we did to Afghanistan. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As glaciers retreat from the Arctic to the Andes, Reykjavík is stepping up!

The world’s northernmost capital has endorsed the call for a #FossilFuelTreaty, joining nearly 150 cities worldwide and adding momentum to a proposal already backed by 18 countries.

There was an old joke about it happening in Cuba. Castro dies, and is replaced by his idiot son, Fidel W Castro.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Son Emerges as Leading Choice to Be His Successor If Mojtaba Khamenei is chosen by Iran’s senior clerics, it may signal a victory for hard-liners, an analyst said.

Now I realize this sounds pretty bad, but could it be a lot worse.

It could happen in the US.

Thank you @phalpern.bsky.social! That's quite a time journey in itself

Thanks, Tomas! 🙂

Snap.

Well, some of them walk, but not sure it’s sideways! 🙂

www.natureandculture.org/directory/wa...

I needed a 3 page summary of this for a submission, so I asked Claude. Claude said “It's a fascinating paper — the move of reframing Bell nonlocality through the lens of something as familiar to statisticians as collider bias is quite elegant.” I’ve never met a parrot with that sort of judgement!

New on the Archive:

Price, Huw (2026) Retrieving the Baby: Reichenbach’s Principle, Bell Locality, and Selection Bias. [Preprint]

https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/28387/

Sam Altman would feed his own grandmother to the paperclip maximizer.

Any Wolffs?

Look at these cool philosophy of physics postdocs we're advertising here at LSE!

philjobs.org/job/show/30977 and philjobs.org/job/show/30981

If someone is looking for a sane, generous review of Amie's book.

Woo-hoo! 🙂