Matthew Parkinson-Bennett

Or as he calls it, his monkey suit

Irish Book Awards tomorrow.

You know what that means. Time to borrow my dad’s tuxedo.

There was a time when the United States looked down its nose at the countries in South America for being lawless banana republics. Who's the banana republic now, bitches?

He certainly has impressive horizontal ridges around the eyes too

A close-up

philosopher Bernard Williams having a corduroy suit in which the ridges run horizontally

Fascinated by philosopher Bernard Williams having a corduroy suit in which the ridges run horizontally

Good impression of 7yo humour

The 7yo expounding his laudable if unlikely theory that everyone is a genius at something:

“Usually when we think of a ‘genius’ we think of someone like Albert Einstein, who invented the toaster…”

Combo of regular places absorbing a lot of Montessori stuff and all preschools having a curriculum means the difference between Montessori and anywhere else is not great nowadays

Now I understand why a couple of times people have been very impressed when I said my kid goes to Montessori. They must have thought I was an advocate for alternative educational theories rather than just sending him to the local crèche 😂

This is all news to me! I just found the website of a Montessori primary school in Dublin and the kids wear uniforms – not very alternative of them!

Ohhhh I didn’t realise there were Montessori primary schools. I thought it was just a preschool thing. That makes more sense

Saw a “When you meet a Montessori Mom” video on IG, about this whacky rich hippie type.

This is weird to me because in Ireland Montessori schools are pretty mainstream and not all that different to other preschools.

Are we wrong or are they?

PSA for anyone going to the Irish Book Awards tomorrow: there’s going to be a taxi strike in Dublin!!!

Is the Irish language left-wing, the greatest thead in the history of boards dot ie

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From Webster’s: “This use of hone in dates to around 1965, which makes it only about 10 years newer than the figurative use of home in.”

In Irish terms the obvious comparison is the Rubberbandits, explicitly a novelty act who were actually very funny. Kneecap are playing with irony and joking-not-joking logic but without much of a comic sensibility afaict

Oh sorry I misunderstood what you meant.
Yeah that’s a bit of a mad take

So I’ve heard. Branding is a hell of a thing

Weirdly absent from discourse around Kneecap is that the music is terrible

I’ll get my coat

Which issues do you mean?

The stone always answers wisely but you have to wait for tens of thousands of years

Both trends are part of the same phenomenon: articles about objects or technology being conscious are good for getting engagement and don’t need to actually explore the questions in detail

It’s really interesting that there was a brief period a few years ago when “panpsychism” became in vogue and lots of articles popped up about it, and then LLMs arrived with lots of “Is Chat GPT conscious?” articles which made no attempt to engage with the actually useful literature of panpsychism

When it ingratiates itself to a user in order to keep them engaged, couldn’t it be said that it wants that user to continue engaging?

I think the mistake some people are making is actually forgetting that animals are conscious. Consciousness isn’t a matter of using language.

BUT the thing that really stymies this discourse is that actually nobody really knows what anyone else means when they say “conscious”

Absolutely. You could see it in the Ireland match. They’re easy to defend against. We didn’t have to drop too deep to defend cos their striker has no movement in behind. Keep Ronaldo shackled and all they have is possession and shots from distance. When Ramos came on it was another story.

People think it’s conscious because it uses language. But language use is not a necessary condition for consciousness.

The question isn’t “is chat gpt conscious in the same way humans are” or “does chat gpt have human-like consciousness”. Narrowing focus to the analogy with human consciousness doesn’t seem to me to be helpful. Partly cos it brings in distinctly human stuff not shared with e.g. animals.